Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

“47 percent” (the fraction of the population who currently pay no federal income tax).

it would be better to set up a centrally managed sovereign wealth fund (similar to the Alaska fund) and then use the resulting returns to help fund a basic income.

A basic, or guaranteed minimum, income is far from a new idea. In the context of the contemporary American political landscape, a guaranteed income is likely to be disparaged as “socialism” and a massive expansion of the welfare state.

The most important factor in designing a workable guaranteed income scheme is getting the incentives right. The objective should be to provide a universal safety net as well as a supplement to low incomes—but without creating a disincentive to work and to be as productive as possible. The income provided should be relatively minimal: enough to get

compensated for the perceived increase in safety by taking more risks.14 This “Peltzman effect”

“All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines,”

The conservative argument for a basic income centers on the fact that it provides a safety net coupled with individual freedom of choice. Rather than having government intrude into personal economic decisions, or get into the business of directly providing products and services, the idea is to give everyone the means to go out and participate in th

Overall, about 20 percent of US college graduates are considered overeducated for their current occupation, and average incomes for new college graduates have been in decline for more than a decade.

Rather than simply raising taxes across the board or on the highest existing tax bracket, a better strategy would be to introduce several new higher tax brackets designed to capture more revenue from those taxpayers with very high incomes—perhaps a million or more dollars per year.