The Economy Is a Giant Vending Machine

Employing people is only worth it when the benefits exceed the costs. Giving people money is never the right reason to create jobs. That’s what basic income is for.

By forcing everyone to “earn” a living through a job, not only do we waste people’s time and other resources, but we also damage the environment. Jobs are bad for the environment.

In an efficient labor market, jobs only exist because we want the product of the labor and the only purpose of wages is to provide an incentive for people to perform that labor.

No small number of economists are hard at work studying how to bring the economy to full employment. But what these economists are forgetting is that full employment is not the same thing as full output. Ideally, we’d want to maximize what we’re getting out of the economy rather than what we’re putting into it. Full employment just means we’re keep... See more

Workers are just inputs to the economic machine. When we create an identity around labor, we’re treating people as mere inputs. But people are more than just inputs. The economy is here to serve us, not the other way around. What matters is what we can get out of the machine. The people’s needs come first. Everything else is secondary. The economy ... See more

In this simple economy, people put money into the economic vending machine. The candy bars it spits out for them to consume are the economy’s products. To ensure consumers can buy all the candy bars, we provide them with a limited daily allowance of money to spend. That’s our basic income.Let’s say the vending machine restocks itself every morning,... See more

The right question to ask isn’t: Can we afford a basic income? The right question is: What’s the optimal level of basic income for our economy? How much basic income can our economy handle without causing inflation or other problems? To what extent will various taxes and other economic policies increase or decrease that amount?

It’s worth emphasizing that basic income does not have to be an amount of money that meets people’s basic needs. Such an amount may be both desirable and achievable, but it is not part of the definition. Basic income is “basic” only in the sense that everyone gets it. The income itself is basic — not what it buys.