Where We're Going
By 2050, we’ll mostly be living in free, liberal societies with low, flat taxes and universal basic income. Technology will have greatly advanced, and deflation will finally have hit stubborn sectors like health and education. Imagine a society with per capita GDP of $100,000 and a 25% flat tax on income. Breaking down the typical person’s contribution to common services, 1% would go to administration, 4% to defense, and 20% to a universal basic income. Interestingly, this is a similar split as exists in the US federal budget today. Only 12% of the federal budget is for defense. About three quarters is spent on redistribution. 8% is spent on interest!
This would be basically trading slow growth and an overgrown bureaucratic state for rapid growth and a minimal state with simple, no-strings-attached wealth redistribution. A range of estimates have been given on what the US economy would look like if regulation hadn’t exploded in the last 50 years. J Storrs Hall supposes it might be $185,000 today. This essay concludes it would be more like $117,000. https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/anti-growth-safetyism/ So we could be here today, but we still can make sure we get there, and beyond in the next few decades.
This claim of the inevitable triumph of liberalism echoes Fukuyama’s End of History idea from 30 years ago. Thirty years on, though, we have learned from this particular age. There is one problem with the universal triumph of liberalism: it is universal and universalizing. Liberalism gets attacked from both the left and right for flattening the world, making everybody a mere market participant in a world of global hyper-efficient corporations run by a global elite. This is an understandable concern.
The problem is in how this concern is addressed, with radical attempts to reshape society from the left and hesitancy to move forward from the right. The left has been especially dangerous in the modern liberal era. Fundamentally, both of these groups want to impose a particular vision on the blank canvas of liberalism. This is understandable, too. And fortunately, these efforts to shape society from the top down are much tamer and more civilized in the past. A left that causes the deaths of thousands with an insane anti-police movement and an insane anti-energy movement is much better than a left that causes the deaths of a hundred million with an insane anti-bourgeouis movement.