转载：《万物摩尔定律》by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
关于 AI 思考角度很深的文章，作者是 Sam Altman，OpenAI CEO，分享出来。
原文链接：https://moores.samaltman.com/
作者简介：Samuel H. Altman （OpenAI 的首席执行官和 Y Combinator 的前总裁）
个人记录的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，社会经济变化的幅度比大多数人想象的要早。可以思考和学习的软件将完成人们现在所做的越来越多的工作。更多的权力将从劳动力转移到资本。如果公共政策没有相应地适应，那么大多数人最终将比今天变得更糟。
我们需要设计一个系统，将这个技术的未来包括在内，并对将构成世界上大部分价值的资产（公司和土地）征税，以便公平分配一些即将到来的财富。这样做可以减少未来社会的分裂，并使每个人都能参与其收益。
在接下来的五年中，可以思考的计算机程序将阅读法律文件并提供医疗建议。在接下来的十年中，他们将从事流水线工作，甚至可能成为同伴。在此之后的几十年中，他们将做几乎所有事情，包括做出新的科学发现，从而扩展我们的“一切”概念。
这项技术革命是不可阻挡的。由于这些智能机器本身可以帮助我们制造更智能的机器，因此创新的递归循环将加快革命的步伐。三个关键的后果如下：
- 这场革命将创造惊人的财富。一旦有足够强大的 AI“加入劳动力队伍”，多种劳动力的价格（拉动商品和服务的成本）将降至零。
- 世界将如此迅速而彻底地变化，以至于需要同样大刀阔斧地改变政策来分配这种财富，并使更多的人追求自己想要的生活。
- 如果我们做到这两个权利，我们将比以往任何时候都能够更好地改善人们的生活水平。
因为我们正处于这种构造转变的开始，所以我们有一个难得的机会转向未来。这个枢纽不能简单地解决当前的社会和政治问题。它必须针对不久的将来完全不同的社会而设计。没有考虑到这一迫在眉睫的转变的政策计划将以与农业前或封建社会的组织原则今天失败的同样原因而失败。
接下来是对即将发生的事情的描述，以及如何驾驭这一新形势的计划。
第 1 部分
The AI Revolution
在缩小的时间尺度上，技术进步遵循指数曲线。比较一下 15 年前（实际上没有智能手机），150 年前（没有内燃机，没有家庭用电），1500 年前（没有工业机械）和 15,000 年前（没有农业）的世界。
即将发生的变化将围绕我们最令人印象深刻的能力：思考，创造，理解和推理的非凡能力。除了三大技术革命（农业，工业和计算技术革命），我们还将增加第四次革命：人工智能革命。如果我们作为一个负责任的社会来管理，这场革命将为每个人创造足够的财富，满足他们的需求。
在接下来的 100 年中，我们的技术进步将远远超过自从我们首次控制火势和发明车轮以来所取得的成就。我们已经建立了可以学习和做有用的事情的 AI 系统。它们仍然很原始，但是趋势线很明确。
第 2 部分
摩尔定律
从广义上讲，提供良好生活的途径有两种：一个人获得更多的钱（这使该人变得更富有），或者价格下跌了（这使每个人都变得更富有）。财富就是购买力：利用我们拥有的资源可以得到多少。
增加社会财富的最好方法是降低从食品到电子游戏的商品成本。技术将在许多类别中迅速推动这种下降。以半导体和摩尔定律为例：几十年来，芯片以每两年大约相同的价格变得功能强大一倍。
在过去的几十年中，美国在电视，计算机和娱乐方面的成本有所下降。但是其他成本也已显着增加，最显着的是房屋，医疗保健和高等教育的成本。如果这些成本继续飙升，仅靠财富再分配是行不通的。
人工智能将降低商品和服务的成本，因为劳动力是供应链各个层面的驱动成本。如果机器人可以使用太阳能从现场开采和提炼的自然资源中拥有的土地上建造房屋，那么建造房屋的成本就接近租用机器人的成本。而且，如果这些机器人是由其他机器人制造的，那么租用它们的成本将比人类制造它们时要少得多。
同样，我们可以想象人工智能医生可以比任何人更好地诊断健康问题，而人工智能老师可以诊断并确切解释学生不了解的内容。
“摩尔定律适用于所有人”应该是一代世代相传的呐喊，他们的成员负担不起他们想要的东西。听起来像是乌托邦式的，但这是技术可以提供的（在某些情况下已经具备）。想象一下一个世界，几十年来，每两年房屋，教育，食物，衣服等所有物品的价格都变成一半。
我们将发现新的工作-在技术革命后我们总是会做-并且由于另一方面的丰富，我们将拥有令人难以置信的自由去创造自己的才华。
第三部分
所有人的资本主义
稳定的经济体系需要两个组成部分：增长和包容性。经济增长很重要，因为大多数人都希望自己的生活每年都在改善。在一个零和的世界（一个没有增长或增长很少的世界）中，民主可能会变得对立，因为人们试图将钱投给彼此。这种对抗导致的是不信任和两极分化。在一个高增长的世界中，缠斗可能会少得多，因为每个人都容易赢得胜利。
经济上的包容性意味着每个人都有一个合理的机会来获得他们所需的资源，过上他们想要的生活。经济上的包容性很重要，因为它是公平的，可以创造一个稳定的社会，并且可以为大多数人创造最大的市场份额。作为附带好处，它可以产生更多的增长。
资本主义是经济增长的强大动力，因为它奖励人们投资于随着时间的推移产生价值的资产，这是创造和分配技术收益的有效激励系统。但是，资本主义进步的代价是不平等。
某些不平等是可以接受的，实际上，这是至关重要的，正如所有试图实现完全平等的制度所表明的那样，但是，一个没有为每个人提供充分的机会平等机会来发展的社会并不是一个持久的社会。
解决不平等问题的传统方法是逐步对收入征税。由于种种原因，这种方法效果不佳。将来它会工作得越来越厉害。人们仍然可以找到工作，但其中许多工作不会像我们今天所认为的那样创造大量的经济价值。随着 AI 生产世界上大多数的基本商品和服务，人们将有更多的时间与他们关心的人，关心人们，欣赏艺术和自然，或致力于社会公益的人们一起度过。
因此，我们应该集中精力对资本征税，而不是对劳动力征税，我们应该利用这些税收作为将所有权和财富直接分配给公民的机会。换句话说，改善资本主义的最好方法是使每个人都能以所有者身份直接从中受益。这不是一个新主意，但是随着 AI 变得越来越强大，它将变得新可行，因为将拥有更多的财富。财富的两个主要来源将是：1）公司，尤其是利用 AI 的公司，以及 2）具有固定供给的土地。
实施这两种税种的方法有很多，对如何处理这两种税种也有很多想法。在很长一段时间内，也许大多数其他税种都可以免除。接下来是本着对话开始精神的想法。
我们可以做些叫做美国股票基金的事情。美国股票基金的资本化是对每年估值超过其市值 2.5％的公司征税，应以转让给该基金的股票形式支付，并对所有私有土地的价值的 2.5％征税，应以美元支付。
所有 18 岁以上的公民都将以美元和公司股份的形式每年分配到他们的帐户中。人们将被委托使用他们所需或想要的钱来获得更好的教育，医疗保健，住房，创办公司等等。随着越来越多的人在竞争激烈的市场中选择自己的服务，政府资助的行业中不断上涨的成本将面临真正的压力。
只要该国的状况持续好转，每个公民每年都会从该基金获得更多的钱（平均而言；仍然会有经济周期）。因此，每个公民将越来越多地享有经济自决所带来的自由，权力，自治和机会。贫困将大大减少，更多的人会对他们想要的生活有所了解。
公司股份应缴税款将使公司，投资者和公民之间的激励措施保持一致，而利润税则不行—激励措施是超级大国，这是一个关键的区别。公司利润可能会被掩饰，递延或离岸，并且常常与股价脱节。但是每个在亚马逊拥有股份的人都希望股价上涨。当人们的个人资产与国家的资产一起增长时，他们看到自己的国家表现良好与他们息息相关。
美国政治经济学家亨利·乔治（Henry George）提出了在 1800 年代后期征收土地增值税的想法。这个概念得到经济学家的广泛支持。土地的价值之所以升值，是因为周围的工作社会：在一块土地上运营的公司的网络效应，使土地变得可及的公共交通以及附近的餐馆，咖啡店以及使其可取的接近自然的途径。因为土地所有者没有做所有的工作，所以与做大的社会分享这一价值是公平的。
如果每个人都拥有美国创造价值的一部分，那么每个人都会希望美国做得更好：创新和国家成功中的集体公平将与我们的激励措施保持一致。新的社会契约将成为所有人的底线，以换取最高限额，这是所有人的共同信念，即技术可以而且必须带来社会财富的良性循环。（我们将继续需要政府强有力的领导，以确保对股价上涨的渴望在保护环境，保护人权等方面保持平衡）
在所有人都从资本主义中受益的世界中，集体关注的焦点将是使世界“变得更好”，而不是“变得更糟”。这些方法与它们看上去的不同，并且在关注前者时，社会的表现要好得多。简而言之，更多的好方法意味着为使饼尽可能大而进行优化，而更少的坏方法则意味着将饼尽可能地平均分配。两者都可以一次提高人们的生活水平，但是只有当饼增长时，才能持续增长。
第 4 部分
实施和故障排除
可用于将美国股票基金资本化的财富数量将是巨大的。按市值衡量，仅美国公司的价值就约为 50 万亿美元。假设，正如过去一个世纪的平均水平，在接下来的十年中，这一数字至少会翻番。
在美国，还有大约 30 万亿美元的私有土地（不包括土地的改良）。假设在接下来的十年中，这个价值也将大约翻一番，这比历史速度要快一些，但是随着世界真正开始理解人工智能将导致的变化，土地的价值是为数不多的真正有限的事物之一资产，应以更快的速度增长。
当然，如果我们增加持有土地的税收负担，其价值将相对于其他投资资产减少，这对社会来说是一件好事，因为它使基本资源更容易获得，并鼓励投资而不是投机。公司的价值在短期内也会下降，尽管随着时间的推移它们将继续表现良好。
有一个合理的假设，即这种税会导致土地和公司资产的价值下降 15％（这将需要几年的时间才能收回！）。
根据上述假设（当前价值，未来增长以及新税收导致的价值减少），从现在开始的十年内，美国 2.5 亿成年人中的每个人每年将获得约 13,500 美元。如果 AI 加速增长，该股息可能会更高，但是即使不是这样，13500 美元的购买力也将比现在更高，因为技术将大大降低商品和服务的成本。而且这种有效的购买力每年都会急剧上升。
对于公司而言，每年最容易通过发行代表其市值 2.5％的新股来缴税。显然，有一种鼓励企业通过离岸逃税来逃避美国股票基金税的动机，但是一个简单的测试（涉及一定比例的来自美国的收入）可以解决这个问题。这个想法的一个更大的问题是激励企业向股东返还价值，而不是将其再投资用于增长。
如果我们仅对上市公司征税，也将激励公司保持私有化。对于年收入超过 10 亿美元的私人公司，我们可以让它们的股权税在一定（有限的）年内累计，直到它们上市。如果他们长期处于私人状态，我们可以让他们以现金结算税收。
我们需要设计该系统，以防止人们持续投票给自己更多的钱。划定税收允许范围的宪法修正案将是强有力的保障。重要的是，税收不能太大以至于抑制增长-例如，对公司征收的税收必须比其平均增长率小得多。
我们还需要一个强大的系统来量化土地的实际价值。一种方法是与强大的联邦评估人员组成的团队。另一个办法是让地方政府像现在确定财产税一样进行评估。他们将继续使用相同的评估值收取地方税。但是，如果某个年份中某个辖区的某个销售百分比过高或低于当地政府对该物业价值的估计，则将对该辖区中的所有其他物业进行重新评估。
理论上最佳的系统将是仅对土地的价值征税，而不是对土地的基础征税。在实践中，该价值可能很难评估，因此我们可能需要对土地的价值和土地改良征税（税率较低，因为合并后的价值会更高）。
最后，我们不能让人们借，卖或以其他方式抵押他们未来的基金分配，或者我们不能真正解决随着时间的推移公平分配财富的问题。政府可以简单地使此类交易无法执行。
第 5 部分
转向新系统
美好的未来并不复杂：我们需要技术来创造更多的财富，还需要制定政策来公平地分配财富。一切必需的东西都会便宜，每个人都有足够的钱买得起。由于该系统将非常受欢迎，因此早日采用该系统的决策者将获得奖励：他们自己将变得非常受欢迎。
在大萧条时期，富兰克林·罗斯福得以制定庞大的社会安全网，五年前没人能想到。我们现在处于类似的时刻。因此，既有利于企业又有利于人民的运动将团结一个非常广泛的支持者。
在政治上可行的方式启动美国股票基金，并减少过渡冲击，将是通过立法逐步将我们转换为 2.5％的利率。只有当法律通过后 GDP 增长 50％时，完整的 2.5％税率才会成立。从小规模发行开始，将使人们对新的未来感到满意，这既有激励作用，也有帮助。实现 50％的 GDP 增长似乎需要很长时间（经济增长 50％达到 2019 年水平需要 13 年）。但是，一旦 AI 开始出现，增长将非常迅速。顺便说一句，当我们对这两种基本资产类别征税时，我们可能能够减少很多其他税项。
即将发生的变化是不可阻挡的。如果我们拥抱他们并为他们计划，我们可以使用它们来创建一个更加公平，快乐和更加繁荣的社会。未来几乎是不可思议的。
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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:
- 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.”
- 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.
- 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（构造的建筑的） 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（敌对的） 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.