Has a living income been tried anywhere? The usual arguments - that it's inflationary and destabilises market signals (i.e. rich people can't exploit it) - may not apply in practice.

The more I think about these arguments, the more it seems the bottom line is whether collective wealth and intelligence are hoarded by a tiny minority or distributed more evenly.

There's plenty of evidence that distribution increases general wealth and prosperity, and also creates more innovation.

The hoarders are only interested in relative wealth- which is something else entirely.

It's astonishing - not at all - that most economics is about pin-level fairy stories of the 'If you do this, something else happens' type.

But there's been almost no interest in causal relationships between inequality, political instability, and the destruction of social intelligence - which in practice means limited ability to invent and innovate.