知乎原文連結:
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/577620007?fbclid=IwAR0LKb0JFolEDGEoHVxx4p7442AwS6oKGVBBDrz18GlEnpKO7rUieFzrg40
關於 AI 思考角度很深的文章，作者是 Sam Altman，OpenAI CEO，分享出來。
原文連結：https://moores.samaltman.com/
作者簡介：Samuel H. Altman （OpenAI 的首席執行官和 Y Combinator 的前總裁）
個人記錄的Highlights:
1.The best way to increase societal wealth is to decrease
the cost of goods, from food to video games. Technology will rapidly drive that
decline in many categories. Consider the example of semiconductors and Moore’s Law: for
decades, chips became twice as powerful for the same price about every two
years.
2.Broadly speaking, there are two paths to affording a
good life: an individual acquires more money (which makes that person
wealthier), or prices fall (which makes everyone wealthier).
3.Imagine a world where, for decades, everything–housing,
education, food, clothing, etc.–became half as expensive every two years.
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我在 OpenAI 上的工作每天都在使我想起，社會經濟變化的幅度比大多數人想像的要早。可以思考和學習的軟體將完成人們現在所做的越來越多的工作。更多的權力將從勞動力轉移到資本。如果公共政策沒有相應地適應，那麼大多數人最終將比今天變得更糟。
我們需要設計一個系統，將這個技術的未來包括在內，並對將構成世界上大部分價值的資產（公司和土地）徵稅，以便公平分配一些即將到來的財富。這樣做可以減少未來社會的分裂，並使每個人都能參與其收益。
在接下來的五年中，可以思考的電腦程式將閱讀法律檔並提供醫療建議。在接下來的十年中，他們將從事流水線工作，甚至可能成為同伴。在此之後的幾十年中，他們將做幾乎所有事情，包括做出新的科學發現，從而擴展我們的“一切”概念。
這項技術革命是不可阻擋的。由於這些智慧型機器本身可以説明我們製造更智慧的機器，因此創新的遞迴迴圈將加快革命的步伐。三個關鍵的後果如下：
1. 這場革命將創造驚人的財富。一旦有足夠強大的 AI“加入勞動力隊伍”，多種勞動力的價格（拉動商品和服務的成本）將降至零。
2. 世界將如此迅速而徹底地變化，以至於需要同樣大刀闊斧地改變政策來分配這種財富，並使更多的人追求自己想要的生活。
3. 如果我們做到這兩個權利，我們將比以往任何時候都能夠更好地改善人們的生活水準。
因為我們正處於這種構造轉變的開始，所以我們有一個難得的機會轉向未來。這個樞紐不能簡單地解決當前的社會和政治問題。它必須針對不久的將來完全不同的社會而設計。沒有考慮到這一迫在眉睫的轉變的政策計畫將以與農業前或封建社會的組織原則今天失敗的同樣原因而失敗。
接下來是對即將發生的事情的描述，以及如何駕馭這一新形勢的計畫。
第 1 部分
The AI Revolution
在縮小的時間尺度上，技術進步遵循指數曲線。比較一下 15 年前（實際上沒有智慧手機），150 年前（沒有內燃機，沒有家庭用電），1500 年前（沒有工業機械）和 15,000 年前（沒有農業）的世界。
即將發生的變化將圍繞我們最令人印象深刻的能力：思考，創造，理解和推理的非凡能力。除了三大技術革命（農業，工業和計算技術革命），我們還將增加第四次革命：人工智慧革命。如果我們作為一個負責任的社會來管理，這場革命將為每個人創造足夠的財富，滿足他們的需求。
在接下來的 100 年中，我們的技術進步將遠遠超過自從我們首次控制火勢和發明車輪以來所取得的成就。我們已經建立了可以學習和做有用的事情的 AI 系統。它們仍然很原始，但是趨勢線很明確。
第 2 部分
摩爾定律
從廣義上講，提供良好生活的途徑有兩種：一個人獲得更多的錢（這使該人變得更富有），或者價格下跌了（這使每個人都變得更富有）。財富就是購買力：利用我們擁有的資源可以得到多少。
增加社會財富的最好方法是降低從食品到電子遊戲的商品成本。技術將在許多類別中迅速推動這種下降。以半導體和摩爾定律為例：幾十年來，晶片以每兩年大約相同的價格變得功能強大一倍。
在過去的幾十年中，美國在電視，電腦和娛樂方面的成本有所下降。但是其他成本也已顯著增加，最顯著的是房屋，醫療保健和高等教育的成本。如果這些成本繼續飆升，僅靠財富再分配是行不通的。
人工智慧將降低商品和服務的成本，因為勞動力是供應鏈各個層面的驅動成本。如果機器人可以使用太陽能從現場開採和提煉的自然資源中擁有的土地上建造房屋，那麼建造房屋的成本就接近租用機器人的成本。而且，如果這些機器人是由其他機器人製造的，那麼租用它們的成本將比人類製造它們時要少得多。
同樣，我們可以想像人工智慧醫生可以比任何人更好地診斷健康問題，而人工智慧老師可以診斷並確切解釋學生不瞭解的內容。
“摩爾定律適用於所有人”應該是一代世代相傳的呐喊，他們的成員負擔不起他們想要的東西。聽起來像是烏托邦式的，但這是技術可以提供的（在某些情況下已經具備）。想像一下一個世界，幾十年來，每兩年房屋，教育，食物，衣服等所有物品的價格都變成一半。
我們將發現新的工作-在技術革命後我們總是會做-並且由於另一方面的豐富，我們將擁有令人難以置信的自由去創造自己的才華。
第三部分
所有人的資本主義
穩定的經濟體系需要兩個組成部分：增長和包容性。經濟增長很重要，因為大多數人都希望自己的生活每年都在改善。在一個零和的世界（一個沒有增長或增長很少的世界）中，民主可能會變得對立，因為人們試圖將錢投給彼此。這種對抗導致的是不信任和兩極分化。在一個高增長的世界中，纏鬥可能會少得多，因為每個人都容易贏得勝利。
經濟上的包容性意味著每個人都有一個合理的機會來獲得他們所需的資源，過上他們想要的生活。經濟上的包容性很重要，因為它是公平的，可以創造一個穩定的社會，並且可以為大多數人創造最大的市場份額。作為附帶好處，它可以產生更多的增長。
資本主義是經濟增長的強大動力，因為它獎勵人們投資於隨著時間的推移產生價值的資產，這是創造和分配技術收益的有效激勵系統。但是，資本主義進步的代價是不平等。
某些不平等是可以接受的，實際上，這是至關重要的，正如所有試圖實現完全平等的制度所表明的那樣，但是，一個沒有為每個人提供充分的機會平等機會來發展的社會並不是一個持久的社會。
解決不平等問題的傳統方法是逐步對收入徵稅。由於種種原因，這種方法效果不佳。將來它會工作得越來越厲害。人們仍然可以找到工作，但其中許多工作不會像我們今天所認為的那樣創造大量的經濟價值。隨著 AI 生產世界上大多數的基本商品和服務，人們將有更多的時間與他們關心的人，關心人們，欣賞藝術和自然，或致力於社會公益的人們一起度過。
因此，我們應該集中精力對資本徵稅，而不是對勞動力徵稅，我們應該利用這些稅收作為將所有權和財富直接分配給公民的機會。換句話說，改善資本主義的最好方法是使每個人都能以所有者身份直接從中受益。這不是一個新主意，但是隨著 AI 變得越來越強大，它將變得新可行，因為將擁有更多的財富。財富的兩個主要來源將是：1）公司，尤其是利用 AI 的公司，以及 2）具有固定供給的土地。
實施這兩種稅種的方法有很多，對如何處理這兩種稅種也有很多想法。在很長一段時間內，也許大多數其他稅種都可以免除。接下來是本著對話開始精神的想法。
我們可以做些叫做美國股票基金的事情。美國股票基金的資本化是對每年估值超過其市值 2.5％的公司徵稅，應以轉讓給該基金的股票形式支付，並對所有私有土地的價值的 2.5％徵稅，應以美元支付。
所有 18 歲以上的公民都將以美元和公司股份的形式每年分配到他們的帳戶中。人們將被委託使用他們所需或想要的錢來獲得更好的教育，醫療保健，住房，創辦公司等等。隨著越來越多的人在競爭激烈的市場中選擇自己的服務，政府資助的行業中不斷上漲的成本將面臨真正的壓力。
只要該國的狀況持續好轉，每個公民每年都會從該基金獲得更多的錢（平均而言；仍然會有經濟週期）。因此，每個公民將越來越多地享有經濟自決所帶來的自由，權力，自治和機會。貧困將大大減少，更多的人會對他們想要的生活有所瞭解。
公司股份應繳稅款將使公司，投資者和公民之間的激勵措施保持一致，而利潤稅則不行—激勵措施是超級大國，這是一個關鍵的區別。公司利潤可能會被掩飾，遞延或離岸，並且常常與股價脫節。但是每個在亞馬遜擁有股份的人都希望股價上漲。當人們的個人資產與國家的資產一起增長時，他們看到自己的國家表現良好與他們息息相關。
美國政治經濟學家亨利·喬治（Henry George）提出了在 1800 年代後期徵收土地增值稅的想法。這個概念得到經濟學家的廣泛支援。土地的價值之所以升值，是因為周圍的工作社會：在一塊土地上運營的公司的網路效應，使土地變得可及的公共交通以及附近的餐館，咖啡店以及使其可取的接近自然的途徑。因為土地所有者沒有做所有的工作，所以與做大的社會分享這一價值是公平的。
如果每個人都擁有美國創造價值的一部分，那麼每個人都會希望美國做得更好：創新和國家成功中的集體公平將與我們的激勵措施保持一致。新的社會契約將成為所有人的底線，以換取最高限額，這是所有人的共同信念，即技術可以而且必須帶來社會財富的良性迴圈。（我們將繼續需要政府強有力的領導，以確保對股價上漲的渴望在保護環境，保護人權等方面保持平衡）
在所有人都從資本主義中受益的世界中，集體關注的焦點將是使世界“變得更好”，而不是“變得更糟”。這些方法與它們看上去的不同，並且在關注前者時，社會的表現要好得多。簡而言之，更多的好方法意味著為使餅盡可能大而進行優化，而更少的壞方法則意味著將餅盡可能地平均分配。兩者都可以一次提高人們的生活水準，但是只有當餅增長時，才能持續增長。
第 4 部分
實施和故障排除
可用於將美國股票基金資本化的財富數量將是巨大的。按市值衡量，僅美國公司的價值就約為 50 萬億美元。假設，正如過去一個世紀的平均水準，在接下來的十年中，這一數字至少會翻番。
在美國，還有大約 30 萬億美元的私有土地（不包括土地的改良）。假設在接下來的十年中，這個價值也將大約翻一番，這比歷史速度要快一些，但是隨著世界真正開始理解人工智慧將導致的變化，土地的價值是為數不多的真正有限的事物之一資產，應以更快的速度增長。
當然，如果我們增加持有土地的稅收負擔，其價值將相對於其他投資資產減少，這對社會來說是一件好事，因為它使基本資源更容易獲得，並鼓勵投資而不是投機。公司的價值在短期內也會下降，儘管隨著時間的推移它們將繼續表現良好。
有一個合理的假設，即這種稅會導致土地和公司資產的價值下降 15％（這將需要幾年的時間才能收回！）。
根據上述假設（當前價值，未來增長以及新稅收導致的價值減少），從現在開始的十年內，美國 2.5 億成年人中的每個人每年將獲得約 13,500 美元。如果 AI 加速增長，該股息可能會更高，但是即使不是這樣，13500 美元的購買力也將比現在更高，因為技術將大大降低商品和服務的成本。而且這種有效的購買力每年都會急劇上升。
對於公司而言，每年最容易通過發行代表其市值 2.5％的新股來繳稅。顯然，有一種鼓勵企業通過離岸逃稅來逃避美國股票基金稅的動機，但是一個簡單的測試（涉及一定比例的來自美國的收入）可以解決這個問題。這個想法的一個更大的問題是激勵企業向股東返還價值，而不是將其再投資用於增長。
如果我們僅對上市公司徵稅，也將激勵公司保持私有化。對於年收入超過 10 億美元的私人公司，我們可以讓它們的股權稅在一定（有限的）年內累計，直到它們上市。如果他們長期處於私人狀態，我們可以讓他們以現金結算稅收。
我們需要設計該系統，以防止人們持續投票給自己更多的錢。劃定稅收允許範圍的憲法修正案將是強有力的保障。重要的是，稅收不能太大以至於抑制增長-例如，對公司徵收的稅收必須比其平均增長率小得多。
我們還需要一個強大的系統來量化土地的實際價值。一種方法是與強大的聯邦評估人員組成的團隊。另一個辦法是讓地方政府像現在確定財產稅一樣進行評估。他們將繼續使用相同的評估值收取地方稅。但是，如果某個年份中某個轄區的某個銷售百分比過高或低於當地政府對該物業價值的估計，則將對該轄區中的所有其他物業進行重新評估。
理論上最佳的系統將是僅對土地的價值徵稅，而不是對土地的基礎徵稅。在實踐中，該價值可能很難評估，因此我們可能需要對土地的價值和土地改良徵稅（稅率較低，因為合併後的價值會更高）。
最後，我們不能讓人們借，賣或以其他方式抵押他們未來的基金分配，或者我們不能真正解決隨著時間的推移公平分配財富的問題。政府可以簡單地使此類交易無法執行。
第 5 部分
轉向新系統
美好的未來並不複雜：我們需要技術來創造更多的財富，還需要制定政策來公平地分配財富。一切必需的東西都會便宜，每個人都有足夠的錢買得起。由於該系統將非常受歡迎，因此早日採用該系統的決策者將獲得獎勵：他們自己將變得非常受歡迎。
在大蕭條時期，佛蘭克林·羅斯福得以制定龐大的社會安全網，五年前沒人能想到。我們現在處於類似的時刻。因此，既有利於企業又有利於人民的運動將團結一個非常廣泛的支持者。
在政治上可行的方式啟動美國股票基金，並減少過渡衝擊，將是通過立法逐步將我們轉換為 2.5％的利率。只有當法律通過後 GDP 增長 50％時，完整的 2.5％稅率才會成立。從小規模發行開始，將使人們對新的未來感到滿意，這既有激勵作用，也有幫助。實現 50％的 GDP 增長似乎需要很長時間（經濟增長 50％達到 2019 年水準需要 13 年）。但是，一旦 AI 開始出現，增長將非常迅速。順便說一句，當我們對這兩種基本資產類別徵稅時，我們可能能夠減少很多其他稅項。
即將發生的變化是不可阻擋的。如果我們擁抱他們並為他們計畫，我們可以使用它們來創建一個更加公平，快樂和更加繁榮的社會。未來幾乎是不可思議的。
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附英文原文
Moore's Law for Everything
by Sam Altman · March 16, 2021
My work at OpenAI reminds me every day about the
magnitude of the socioeconomic change that is coming sooner than most people
believe. Software that can think and learn will do more and
more of the work that people now do. Even more power will shift from labor to
capital. If public policy doesn’t adapt accordingly, most people will end up worse off
than they are today.
We need to design a system that embraces this
technological future and taxes the assets that will make up most of the value
in that world–companies and land–in order to fairly distribute some of the coming wealth.
Doing so can make the society of the future much less divisive and enable
everyone to participate in its gains.
In the next five years, computer programs that can think
will read legal documents and give medical advice.
In the next decade, they will do assembly-line work and maybe
even become companions. And in the decades after that, they will do
almost everything, including making new scientific discoveries that will expand
our concept of “everything.”
This technological revolution is unstoppable. And a
recursive loop of innovation, as these smart machines themselves help us make
smarter machines, will accelerate the revolution’s pace. Three
crucial consequences follow:
1. This revolution will create phenomenal wealth.
The price of many kinds of labor (which drives the costs of goods and services)
will fall toward zero once sufficiently powerful AI “joins the
workforce.”
2. The world will change so rapidly and drastically that an
equally drastic change in policy will be needed to distribute this wealth and
enable more people to pursue the life they want.
3. If we get both of these right, we can improve the
standard of living for people more than we ever have before.
Because we are at the beginning of this tectonic（構造的建築的） shift, we have a
rare opportunity to pivot toward the future. That pivot can’t simply address
current social and political problems; it must be designed for the radically
different society of the near future. Policy plans that don’t account for this
imminent transformation will fail for the same reason that the organizing
principles of pre-agrarian or feudal societies would fail today.
What follows is a description of what’s coming and a
plan for how to navigate this new landscape.
Part 1
The AI Revolution
On a zoomed-out time scale, technological progress
follows an exponential curve. Compare how the world looked 15 years ago
(no smartphones, really), 150 years ago (no combustion engine, no home
electricity), 1,500 years ago (no industrial machines), and 15,000 years ago
(no agriculture).
The coming change will center around the most impressive
of our capabilities: the phenomenal ability to think, create, understand, and
reason. To the three great technological revolutions–the agricultural,
the industrial, and the computational–we will add a fourth: the AI revolution. This revolution will generate enough wealth for
everyone to have what they need, if we as a society manage it responsibly.
The technological progress we make in the next 100 years
will be far larger than all we’ve made since we first controlled fire and invented the
wheel. We have already built AI systems that
can learn and do useful things. They are still primitive, but the
trendlines are clear.
Part 2
Moore's Law for Everything
Broadly speaking, there are two paths to
affording a good life: an individual acquires more money (which makes that
person wealthier), or prices fall (which makes everyone wealthier). Wealth
is buying power: how much we can get with the resources we have.
The best way to increase societal wealth is to
decrease the cost of goods, from food to video games. Technology will
rapidly drive that decline in many categories. Consider the example of
semiconductors and Moore’s Law: for decades, chips became twice as
powerful for the same price about every two years.
In the last couple of decades, costs in the US for TVs,
computers, and entertainment have dropped. But other costs have risen
significantly, most notably those for housing, healthcare, and higher education.
Redistribution of wealth alone won’t work if these costs continue to soar.
AI will lower the cost of goods and services, because
labor is the driving cost at many levels of the supply chain. If robots can build a house on land you already own from
natural resources mined and refined onsite, using solar power, the cost of
building that house is close to the cost to rent the robots. And if those
robots are made by other robots, the cost to rent them will be much less than
it was when humans made them.
Similarly, we can imagine AI doctors that can diagnose
health problems better than any human, and AI teachers that can diagnose and
explain exactly what a student doesn’t understand.
“Moore’s Law for
everything” should be the rallying cry of a generation whose members
can’t afford
what they want. It sounds utopian, but it’s something technology can deliver (and in some cases
already has). Imagine a world where, for decades, everything–housing,
education, food, clothing, etc.–became half as expensive every two years.
We will discover new jobs–we always do
after a technological revolution–and because of the abundance on the other side, we will
have incredible freedom to be creative about what they are.
Part 3
Capitalism for Everyone
A stable economic system requires two components: growth
and inclusivity. Economic growth matters because most people want their lives
to improve every year. In a zero-sum world, one with no or very little growth,
democracy can become antagonistic（敵對的） as people seek to vote money away from each other. What
follows from that antagonism is distrust and polarization. In a high-growth
world the dogfights can be far fewer, because it’s much easier for
everyone to win.
Economic inclusivity means everyone having a reasonable
opportunity to get the resources they need to live the life they want. Economic
inclusivity matters because it’s fair, produces a stable society, and can create the
largest slices of pie for the most people. As a side benefit, it produces more
growth.
Capitalism is a powerful engine of economic growth
because it rewards people for investing in assets that generate value over
time, which is an effective incentive system for creating and distributing
technological gains. But the price of progress in capitalism is inequality.
Some inequality is ok–in fact, it’s critical, as shown by all systems that have tried to be
perfectly equal–but a society that does not offer sufficient equality of
opportunity for everyone to advance is not a society that will last.
The traditional way to address inequality has been by
progressively taxing income. For a variety of reasons, that hasn’t worked very
well. It will work much, much worse in the future. While people will still have
jobs, many of those jobs won’t be ones that create a lot of economic value in the way
we think of value today. As AI produces most of the world’s basic goods and
services, people will be freed up to spend more time with people they care
about, care for people, appreciate art and nature, or work toward social good.
We should therefore focus on taxing capital
rather than labor, and we should use these taxes as an opportunity to
directly distribute ownership and wealth to citizens. In other words, the
best way to improve capitalism is to enable everyone to benefit from it
directly as an equity owner. This is not a new idea, but it will be
newly feasible as AI grows more powerful, because there will be dramatically
more wealth to go around. The two dominant sources of wealth will be 1) companies,
particularly ones that make use of AI, and 2) land, which has a fixed supply.
There are many ways to implement these two taxes, and
many thoughts about what to do with them. Over a long period of time, perhaps
most other taxes could be eliminated. What follows is an idea in the spirit of
a conversation starter.
We could do something called the American Equity Fund.
The American Equity Fund would be capitalized by taxing companies above a
certain valuation 2.5% of their market value each year, payable in shares
transferred to the fund, and by taxing 2.5% of the value of all privately-held
land, payable in dollars.
All citizens over 18 would get an annual distribution, in
dollars and company shares, into their accounts. People would be entrusted to
use the money however they needed or wanted—for better education, healthcare, housing, starting a
company, whatever. Rising costs in government-funded industries would face real
pressure as more people chose their own services in a competitive marketplace.
As long as the country keeps doing better, every citizen
would get more money from the Fund every year (on average; there will still be
economic cycles). Every citizen would therefore increasingly partake of the
freedoms, powers, autonomies, and opportunities that come with economic
self-determination. Poverty would be greatly reduced and many more
people would have a shot at the life they want.
A tax payable in company shares will align incentives
between companies, investors, and citizens, whereas a tax on profits does not–incentives are
superpowers, and this is a critical difference. Corporate profits can be
disguised or deferred or offshored, and are often disconnected from share
price. But everyone who owns a share in Amazon wants the share price to rise.
As people’s individual assets rise in tandem with the country’s, they have a
literal stake in seeing their country do well.\
Henry George, an American political economist, proposed
the idea of a land-value tax in the late 1800s. The concept is widely supported
by economists. The value of land appreciates because of the work society does
around it: the network effects of the companies operating around a piece of
land, the public transportation that makes it accessible, and the nearby
restaurants, coffeeshops, and access to nature that makes it desirable. Because
the landowner didn’t do all that work, it’s fair for that value to be shared with the larger
society that did.
If everyone owns a slice of American value creation,
everyone will want America to do better: collective equity in innovation and in
the success of the country will align our incentives. The new social contract
will be a floor for everyone in exchange for a ceiling for no one, and a shared
belief that technology can and must deliver a virtuous circle of societal
wealth. (We will continue to need strong leadership from our government to make
sure that the desire for stock prices to go up remains balanced with protecting
the environment, human rights, etc.)
In a world where everyone benefits from capitalism as an
owner, the collective focus will be on making the world “more good” instead of “less bad.” These
approaches are more different than they seem, and society does much better when
it focuses on the former. Simply put, more good means optimizing for making the
pie as large as possible, and less bad means dividing the pie up as fairly as
possible. Both can increase people’s standard of living once, but continuous growth only
happens when the pie grows.
Part 4
Implementation and Troubleshooting
The amount of wealth available to capitalize the American
Equity Fund would be significant. There is about $50 trillion worth of value,
as measured by market capitalization, in US companies alone. Assume that, as it
has on average over the past century, this will at least double over the next
decade.
There is also about $30 trillion worth of privately-held
land in the US (not counting improvements on top of the land). Assume that this
value will roughly double, too, over the next decade–this is somewhat
faster than the historical rate, but as the world really starts to understand
the shifts AI will cause, the value of land, as one of the few truly finite
assets, should increase at a faster rate.
Of course, if we increase the tax burden on holding land,
its value will diminish relative to other investment assets, which is a good
thing for society because it makes a fundamental resource more accessible and
encourages investment instead of speculation. The value of companies will
diminish in the short-term, too, though they will continue to perform quite
well over time.
It’s a reasonable assumption that such a tax causes a drop
in value of land and corporate assets of 15% (which only will take a few years
to recover!).
Under the above set of assumptions (current values,
future growth, and the reduction in value from the new tax), a decade from now
each of the 250 million adults in America would get about $13,500 every year.
That dividend could be much higher if AI accelerates growth, but even if it’s not, $13,500
will have much greater purchasing power than it does now because technology
will have greatly reduced the cost of goods and services. And that effective
purchasing power will go up dramatically every year.
It would be easiest for companies to pay the tax each
year by issuing new shares representing 2.5% of their value. There would
obviously be an incentive for companies to escape the American Equity Fund tax
by off-shoring themselves, but a simple test involving a percentage of revenue
derived from America could address this concern. A larger problem with this
idea is the incentive for companies to return value to shareholders instead of
reinvesting it in growth.
If we tax only public companies, there would also be an
incentive for companies to stay private. For private companies that have annual
revenue in excess of $1 billion, we could let their tax in equity accrue for a
certain (limited) number of years until they go public. If they remain private
for a long time, we could let them settle the tax in cash.
We’d need to design the system to prevent people from
consistently voting themselves more money. A constitutional amendment
delineating the allowable ranges of the tax would be a strong safeguard. It is
important that the tax not be so large that it stifles growth–for example, the
tax on companies must be much smaller than their average growth rate.
We’d also need a robust system for quantifying the actual
value of land. One way would be with a corps of powerful federal assessors.
Another would be to let local governments do the assessing, as they now do to
determine property taxes. They would continue to receive local taxes using the
same assessed value. However, if a certain percentage of sales in a
jurisdiction in any given year falls too far above or below the local
government’s estimate of the property’s values, then
all the other properties in their jurisdiction would be reassessed up or down.
The theoretically optimal system would be to tax the
value of the land only, and not the improvements built on top of it. In
practice, this value may turn out to be too difficult to assess, so we may need
to tax the value of the land and the improvements on it (at a lower rate, as
the combined value would be higher).
Finally, we couldn’t let people borrow against, sell, or otherwise pledge
their future Fund distributions, or we won’t really solve the problem of fairly distributing wealth
over time. The government can simply make such transactions unenforceable.
Part 5
Shifting to the New System
A great future isn’t complicated: we need technology to create more wealth,
and policy to fairly distribute it. Everything necessary will be cheap, and
everyone will have enough money to be able to afford it. As this system will be
enormously popular, policymakers who embrace it early will be rewarded: they
will themselves become enormously popular.
In the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt was able to
enact a huge social safety net that no one would have thought possible five
years earlier. We are in a similar moment now. So a movement that is both
pro-business and pro-people will unite a remarkably broad constituency.
A politically feasible way to launch the American Equity
Fund, and one that would reduce the transitional shock, would be with
legislation that transitions us gradually to the 2.5% rates. The full 2.5% rate
would only take hold once GDP increases by 50% from the time the law is passed.
Starting with small distributions soon will be both motivating and helpful in
getting people comfortable with a new future. Achieving 50% GDP growth sounds
like it would take a long time (it took 13 years for the economy to grow 50% to
its 2019 level). But once AI starts to arrive, growth will be extremely rapid.
Down the line, we will probably be able to reduce a lot of other taxes as we
tax these two fundamental asset classes.
The changes coming are unstoppable. If we embrace them
and plan for them, we can use them to create a much fairer, happier,
and more prosperous society. The future can be almost unimaginably great.
