What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?
&gt; Most jobs aren’t created by private, corporate investment, so raising taxes on corporate income won’t affect employment.<p>But won&#x27;t raising taxes on corporate income drive corporation to other jurisdiction? So employment in that company then won&#x27;t just slowly trail off, but will look like a cliff, dropping to 0.<p>So isn&#x27;t that idea ignoring the fact that companies don&#x27;t have to stick into one place and so we arbitrarily tax them and then provide basic income to everyone in that community?<p>It goes the other way as well. In some places like West Virginia they&#x27;ve bent backward to accommodate coal mines, easing EPA regulation, destroying the environment and so on. Just to keep companies around. It is like a bad abusive relationship.<p>Other states for example know the game so they would court and offer incentive for companies to move to their state. I&#x27;ve seen that happen and it was painful for the original community to lose all those jobs.<p>I agree that we need something like basic income and the accounting is not the only problem, the social and moral aspect is a just as big.<p>The pessimist in me says we couldn&#x27;t even meaningfully have a decent health insurance system like other civilized countries. We are a long way from any kind of distributism.<p>It is good there is talk and discussion about this. The ideological re-framing of this might have to be done very carefully.<p>One quick example I can think off the top of my head is how in Alaska there was redistribution of income from natural resources. People there probably don&#x27;t think in terms of &quot;socialism&quot; or &quot;handouts&quot;. Well at least the people I know there didn&#x27;t a few years ago...<p>Wonder if basic income can be advocated in those terms - &quot;You deserve this because we&#x27;ve created the automation &#x2F; robots to work for all of us...&quot; or &quot;We want to free people&#x27;s time so they can volunteer and help their own communities...&quot;. Some will play video games and consume drugs perhaps all day, some will decide maybe they want to visit some lonely elderly person in a nursing home or help in the hospital or soup kitchen some more.