The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

> I heard one answer more than any other: the government should introduce universal basic income. This would indeed afford artists the security to create art, but it’s also extremely fanciful.

Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our problems will persist. This article is another in the long series of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are actually facets of a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high. It's not just that musicians, or actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever, can't make a living, it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is narrowing more and more. Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.

> [...] a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high.

What economic inequality would you deem small enough?

And why do you care about inequality, and not eg the absolute livings standards of the least well off? We can 'solve' inequality by just destroying everything the rich have, but that won't make anyone better off.

Btw, the absolute living standards of all members of society, including the least well off, have never been better. And that's true for almost any society you care to look at on our globe. (Removing eg those currently at war, that weren't at war earlier.)

> And why do you care about inequality, and not eg the absolute livings standards of the least well off?

The two are connected. You can either transfer more wealth to the poorer people without taxing the rich (lets say by helicopter money), or transfer it from the rich to the poor. In both cases the rich become less rich in relative terms. It should also make intuitive sense - if the rich (lets say top 5%) hold 95% of wealth it means there is less for everyone else - less wealth that is because the resources like land, apartments and good education are finite and not abundant.

You can of course create wealth in such a way that inequality stays the same. Not all types of wealth are finite for practical purposes.

But, if empirically our current system for net wealth creation tends to also produce wealth concentration, it makes sense to consider ways of modifying the system to mitigate some of the wealth concentration while maintaining as much of the wealth creation as possible.

The target you should look for is how much wealth gets created for the least well-off (or for some low percentile representative person). Just don't worry about what the rich people doing at all. No need to punish them.

Where is the "wealth created for the least well off" going to come from?

Necessarily, that must be wealth that did' go to the rich instead (it could have!). So, necessarily, you are "punishing" them by doing so.

You mainly seem to be against some kind of hypothetical robinhoodesque style redistribution because you worry it's unfair to the rich. Any solution, though, will have to take this shape, whether it targets the existing wealth or wealth generated going forward. It's all about redistribution of access no matter how you slice

You don't need to be so protective of the rich. They are doing just fine and they have plenty of resource and mechanisms in place to protect themselves. If the world's wealthiest people were made even just a tiny bit less wealth by redistribution of assets they would still be living like absolute kings.

> Where is the "wealth created for the least well off" going to come from?

Well, mostly where everyone's wealth is coming from: from the fruits of their own labour.

> You mainly seem to be against some kind of hypothetical robinhoodesque style redistribution because you worry it's unfair to the rich.

No, I haven't started worrying about fairness, yet. No, I'm afraid that a tax system designed by what sounds good instead of what works will leave the poor even worse off.

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence for an example: who you officially levy the taxes on isn't necessarily the person shouldering the economic burden.

Only tiny fraction of a billionaire's wealth tends to be the fruit of their personal labor. It's the labor of their employees and machines that create the wealth. To my understanding, this is broadly accepted.

Now, billionaires do supply a different key ingredient to the wealth creation - risk. Without investment and risk, wealth cannot be created. In terms of $ investment, billionaires take on the vast majority of the risk and deserve the bulk of the rewards, the argument goes. Workers take on far less risk with their guaranteed* paycheck .

But which is the bigger risk? A billionaire's $100,000,000? Or your home, your health, and your retirement savings were you to lose your job in a bad market?

I'm interested in company structures that incentivize distributing risk, profit, and power across a larger group than we tend to see in modern companies.