Tool box for a positive scenario

The We-economy should be a scenario of increasing wealth and convenience for everyone. However, it could also lead to an extremely un-equal society.

There are number of tools, which we could use to ensure a mostly positive development:

 

·      Shifting taxation away from labor towards capital gains to redistribute the gains from increased productivity, and to make harmful types of consumption more costly.

·      A small tax on financial transactions (The Tobin tax) - dampening the creation of money that is grounded in actual value.

·      A more flexible educational system building life-long competence

·      A Universal Basic Income, for instance in the form of a negative income tax. If there’s not enough jobs anyway, a guaranted minimum income would remove stigma and allow those who want to to pursue less commercially viable ways of contributing to society.

·      Shortening the standard work-week. With more robots and a more productive economy, we should be able to reduce the working hours pr. week.

·      Cooperatively owned platforms could give those who perform the work more influence and a greater share of the gains.

·      “Portable” social benefits, de-coupled from full-time employment. Currently, social benefits, such as the right to unemployments benefits, healthcare, pension, training etc. depend on having a conventional full time job. Such rights should be possible to accumulate through a portfolio of part time jobs.

·      Labelling of decent businesses - a way to see that a company pays a living wage and pays its taxes

·      A currency for “peanuts" - Ways of accounting for the favors we can do each other in our local community through the sharing economy platforms.

·      Transferable and acredited ratings. Ratings will be a much more important part of our status and possibilities in a digital economy. Ratings should be portable, not tied to a specific platform. They should also be more consistently defined.