Test Ok it seems I'm no longer blocked by Typepad. Wonder how long it will last this time.

Note this is made as a reply to my comment, but has nothing at all to do with my comment.

Yes, agreed (see some of my other posts arguing that the owners of certain types of patents should not be allowed to produce using them, but be required to license several genuinely competitive firms to produce them.

US exceptionalism is a real pain, and really has to stop. We all share one world.

One of the real problems that the US has with respect to taxes is that it tries to tax world wide (thus coming in to conflict with tax authorities in other countries). One of the first reforms should be to change to resident based taxation, like everybody else does. Then it should attack transfer pricing games.

Answer, probably not much (i.e. people claiming disability allowance were probably not going to be very productive anyway). And as we have seen, lots of people seem to get better when more jobs become available (or rather have a choice of jobs where their disability is not such an issue). When more people are complaining of overwork than are complaining they can't find good jobs, then I'll take notice.

An argument could be made of course for taxing the rents directly (for instance via taxes on patents after a certain number of years). But there is also the issue that lower corporate tax rates (and for instance the way costs and depreciation can be deducted from taxes) still makes incorporation a possible strategy for the rich to avoid taxes. Ask Trump about it.

Don't pick anyone. Ideal really a presidential election without a GOP candidate.=) But seriously, yes it is a potential concern and then you need an arbitrary rule of some sort (eliminate the one with the least first preferences and then re-iterate for instance). Note in any system you can still get a tie. The real problem is winner take all. The presidency as a concept is not really democratic, it is an autocratic hangover.

Test, test, test. Seems I can post again. Not sure what has happened for the last week.

Yes, I know. Personally, I wouldn't bother.

Why do you think they have messed it up. The Fed is not the ruler of the universe, there is only so much they can actually do. Besides which the argument that expert A failed, is the same as the argument idiot B will succeed. Look at the White House.

Sharing? Well I suppose there are even amongst consumption goods some potential public goods (washing machines for instance). But is this (or could it be) an increasing or a diminishing part of the whole economy. But Paine, I always thought you as being a straightforward materialist Marxist. Are you more complicated than I thought?

Yeah, ok there are remnants of gift economies about (the propaganda of economists against gift economies hasn't won yet), but gift economies are still exchange economies, just less explicit. Just wait for the resentment of people who feel they have been cheated in a gift economy. People still on net give up something to get something and think the deal works for them.

The "Trump Doctrine" - the only discernible Trump doctrine is "me first". He changes his tune as often as he changes his ties.

And he is even older than Trump is. Now I realize that the average age is rising. But seriously, are there no longer any talented younger people around? America is looking increasingly like the Soviet Union (and Liverpool FC) became in the 60s and 70s, a gerontocracy.

Anybody who writes "economies are zero sum" doesn't know what economies are or what zero sum means. Economies are about people producing things and exchanging them with other people. That is by it's very definition not zero sum (otherwise people wouldn't do the exchange). On the other hand there are aspects of the economy that are zero sum (like ownership for instance - what you own, I don't).

For German readers - an interview with somebody who won a raffle to receive a basic income: http://www.bento.de/future/bedingungsloses-grundeinkommen-mit-freunden-ein-jahr-lang-1-000-euro-bekommen-1540890/#ref=ressortblock

There is no such THING as "the state". The state is a collective noun - like a "flock". Sometimes it moves in one direction, sometime it pulls in different directions at the same time.

Daniel, I agree 100% and when thinking about the effect of specialization, it helps to explain why I think we cannot possibly move towards sustainability without a national dividend. (And the best way to start the process of introducing the national dividend is to distribute the proceeds of a carbon tax and other resource taxes).

The story you eloquently lay out above is why I think that a UBI should be called a "national dividend". Everybody needs to have a stake in the collective success of society. The problem in my view is not capitalism (the private ownership of the means of production) as such, the problem is deeper (and more pernicious) than that, the problem is specialization itself. Most people have all their eggs in one basket, and can't afford change.

I'm sort of wondering if Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias are secretly one and the same person. Like Clark Kent and Superman they never seem to post at the same time and their styles and attitude are remarkably similar.

Governments won't have to ban them. They just have to treat them like ordinary commodities. Any attempt to turn them into real currencies is taxable, and any transactions involving them are not enforceable by law. They will remain attractive only to criminals as vehicles for transactions, otherwise they will be just be collectables.

Trump has lost the Republican party! We live in interesting times. (I'm glad I can watch from far away, crazy times.) I'm still reading Debt and the Devil, it keeps getting better and better. Anybody who hasn't read it, MUST.

Actually, for once I agree with you. Tight labor markets are in fact good. It is accelerating inflation that is bad. Paul Krugman has in fact argued this. That history has shown we don't have to run in front of inflation, we know how to stop inflation if we have to, it is deflation that we don't know how to combat.

Don't know if we can believe this, but it is plausible: http://robertreich.org/post/163658444390 But my own view is that Trump suddenly gets ill (maybe a "heart attack" on the 10th Tee) and they fairly secretively move him out of the way. Less egg of everybody's face.