The Economy Is Infested With Toll Booths

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The middle class are becoming the working class. Wealth is getting transferred from the hands of the many into the hands of the few. But how?

The simplest way of explaining it is to point out that there are toll booths all over the economy. The people who own those toll booths become rich by having everyone else fork over their hard earned cash. You don't need to do any work to own a toll booth, so you can just kick back and watch the money roll right in.

Everyone's familiar with toll roads and toll bridges, but if you pay rent to a landlord, your home is also a toll booth. Do you pay parking fees? That's a toll booth. Do you pay interest on your credit card or loans? Toll booths! Are you paying for limited or unlimited Internet access on your mobile phone? Either way, that's a toll booth! Do you have insurance? You'd better believe that's a toll booth! And there are more.

Do you breathe air? There's a strong chance that you do, and there's also a chance that some polluter dumped carbon dioxide or some other emissions into your atmosphere. The atmosphere is a toll booth that belongs to everyone, rich and poor, but the rich get away with not having to pay your tolls. They're like the car in this video:

Would A UBI Solve This?

If everyone were to suddenly have more money in their pockets, the people who own the toll booths would see dollar signs and increase their tolls. The toll booth owners would benefit and no one else would. Inequality growth would be accelerated.

However, there is a solution to this...

If you tax the toll booths instead of taxing people for working to produce the goods and services that make our lives better, you'd end up with a system where collecting tolls doesn't benefit you all that much.

Taxing the toll booths is the only way that people would benefit from receiving a UBI. However, if you were to actually go ahead and do this, then everyone would become so much more prosperous that they wouldn't have any need of a UBI.

Of course, people would still want a UBI, anyway. I only say that because 99% of the people I've heard advocating for a UBI are already comfortably employed and want to muscle in on welfare.