There are two parts to this idea.
Government has a habit of spending a lot of money very fast.
Without much benefit for citizens.
Technological advances has created unprecedented growth in
productivity since 1970. Productivity has increased and climbed
while employee wages has stagnated.
Something has to change.
Part One
I propose a solution: a proportion of tax is returned to citizens
as
unconditional basic income.
it doesn't matter how small the amount is collected, as long as
there is a funnel that can collect money from all the pies that
government has collectors in and return it back to citizens.
At the moment, with the exception of Alaska, and Iran (where
there amounts are a couple of dollars) there isn't a universal
basic
income that amounts to anything significant and is a line item
that is special cased. In Alaska it's Oil dividend and in Iran it's
also
only $1.50 from oil.
In essence, there is no mechanism for government to spend
money directly - by giving money to citizens as part as income.
What exists is through changes to taxation. For example, the
UK
has personal allowances which can increase in a year to "let"
you
keep more of your income.
There isn't a mechanism for giving money to citizens that isn't
expensive. Such as the Trump bucks scheme in the USA. I'm
proposing it shouldn't be special cased but should be part of
government functions.
Here's the second piece to the idea: government spending
should
be reactive to the times we live in. One year we should decide
to
not invest in any *new* hospitals, new roads, new
infrastructure
spending, we should instead return what we would have spent
back to citizens in the form of the universal basic income.
It's not even a surplus, it's what we would have spent anyway
but
instead of being spent on wild projects, is being returned
directly
to citizens.
Part Two - the reactive bit
One year the government can decide to divide prosperity by
returning it back to citizens rather than investing in "things".
The government should be able to freeze all existing
"additional
investments" such as pay rises for public sector staff, additional
road maintenance men and take all this money that WOULD
have
been spent and instead direct it to citizens directly.
This way everyone gets the benefit of what would have
otherwise
been reckless government growth. Governments are large
enough
already and every country can still claim to be non-socialist.
Governments grow inefficiently large through everybody
demanding a piece of the pie to keep society running. I doubt
it's
truly necessary.
I dare say there's some effectiveness in borrowing to pay
citizens
directly due to the massive use of money after giving people
money to spend. Market places tend to place assets efficiently,
so
giving people money to spend removes dislocations of asset
allocations. The government can get a much better interest
rate on borrowed money from the private markets than
citizens.
Currently the government and central banks borrow money out
of
existence and pump them into markets to increase liquidity.
The
completely wrong way to go about improving the money supply.
You need individuals, not financial institutions making financial
decisions in the wider market that is society.
If people want the benefit of increased spending on road
maintenance, they can choose to do so, nothing is stopping
them
from placing their assets on this social benefit.
This idea is a valve to allow government to become smaller, not
bigger.
The idea is a valve for equality.
The valve is an alternative way of increasing prosperity of
citizens. An alternative rebalancing of wealth.