Of the total area that is used by humans (Agriculture, Urban and Built-up Land),
- urban and built-up land is 1m km²,
- agriculture is 48m km²,
so agriculture is 48 of 49 millions km² used, that’s 98%. The remaining 2% are all streets and housing and other infrastructure together.
A dividend that presumably pays out during tax returns at the end of the year (anything else would end up overly complicated) is a pipe dream for people living paycheck-to-paycheck, it’s still effectively a ban for people too poor to afford the price hikes. They can’t afford to pay a higher price now and then get a rebate later, they’re just going to be priced out of eating meat entirely.
It doesnt seem that complicated. The government gave people free money during covid just fine. Could be a monthly dividend
Do remember “paycheck-to-paycheck” is a reality for millions and millions of workers. It would need to be a weekly dividend, either directly added to everyone’s paychecks or direct deposit or just mailed directly. That didn’t happen during COVID, it’d be novel.
Then it has other problems: that pool of money is vulnerable to things like government shutdowns, every landlord would raise their rent by the exact amount that the meat rebate pays out, and every grocery store would raise the prices of meat alternatives since the demand would increase. You’d need price controls, rent controls, and fund the meat rebate in a way that couldn’t just be taken away.
I don’t hate it, but it’s more complicated than you’re giving credit. If the payout was weekly (and the other concerns were dealt with) it’d effectively be a way to pay people to not eat meat, rather than a way to ban poor people from eating meat. If you didn’t deal with those other problems, especially rent and prices, then it would still effectively be a ban on poor people eating meat because the only way they could afford their higher rents and higher prices is if they saved their meat rebate checks. Like I said, complicated.
I’ve only ever been paid monthly or bimonthly, ut whatever. This is a nuts and bolts issue, and doesnt impact the actual concept.
Don’t do that. No other country does that.
Fun fact - land value taxes are even better for prompting markets to build additional housing! I also have a whole spiel on urban land use reform, but that’s for another time.
Under reasonable market conditions, yes, there might be a brief price increase when the policy went into effect - especially if rollout were not handled appropriately. But the nice thing about markets is that high prices prompt more competition - if veggie burgers cost $0.15 to make and sell for $15 because there is a shortage, it won’t be long before competitors enter the market and flood it with cheaper alternatives.
Under reasonable market conditions. I’m aware that there is some reasonable suspicion of price collusion happeing between national grocery suppliers, and that should be dealt with. But it should be dealt with regardless of the policy I’m proposing.
Absolutely not. This would be taking a sound economic policy and then blowing up the economy with objectively bad economic policy. Markets only work when prices can change in response to market conditions. If you have a shortage of something like housing or veggie burgers which is distorting the market, you want to incentivize the creation of more of it (while identifying and elimiating - within reason - barriers to production). Price controls do the opposite, worsening shortages. You want high prices to bring more sellers to the market
I mean, this is true of everything, is it not?
Price controls and rent controls can also be accompanied by state intervention in the supply side, to prevent shortages. High prices are effectively a ban on the poor having access, and besides, markets are so 20th century. We have the computing power now to entirely replace them with central planning. Let’s use those data centers for something important, instead of generating slop.