We Need VAT and UBI

The author argues that automation has fundamentally disrupted labor markets, making work an inefficient mechanism for distributing income and enabling economic participation. They propose implementing both a Value Added Tax (VAT) and Universal Basic Income (UBI) together to address this structural problem, rather than relying solely on continuously creating new jobs that may not be socially valuable. The piece presents this as a mechanical economic fix needed to handle decades of declining global labor participation rates, not as a political statement about wealth redistribution.