The poorest people today live in countries that have achieved no economic growth. This stagnation of the world’s poorest economies is one of the largest problems of our time. Unless this changes, hundreds of millions of people will continue to live in extreme poverty.

It's easy to understand this sentiment, but it's incorrect. Growth won't save us. To understand why, I recommend reading this:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

The median household income in Lafayette is $41,000. With the wealth that has been created by all this infrastructure investment, a median family living in the median house would need to have their city taxes go from $1,500 per year to $9,200 per year. To just take care of what they now have, one out of every five dollars this family makes would need to go to fixing roads, ditches and pipes. That will never happen.

Thus, Lafayette has a predicament. Infrastructure was supposed to serve them. Now they serve it.

To use the US as an example, cities are overbuilt by a factor of perhaps 5:1. Yet they continue spending more and more tax revenue on new infrastructure to chase growth. I believe that this is where the political right wing's feeling that taxes are too high comes from. I also believe that it's where the political left wing's feeling that there isn't enough tax revenue comes from.

IMHO the solution to all of this is to stop chasing new revenue from growth. Wealthy people already have more money than they can spend. And poor people spend the entirety of their time working to make rent. This is mostly the fault of the wealthy, because they have the resources to address fundamental problems in our economy through innovation or by paying their taxes, but choose not too. They get rich and say "I got mine" and no longer see the plight of those struggling around them.

The biggest bang for the buck would come from raising tax brackets post-inflation and to stop charging income tax for about the bottom half of the country, which has no wealth to speak of. Which might look like raising the minimum income before taxes begin for single filing status from $12,950 to perhaps $50,000. Then raise taxes substantially on people earning more than about $250,000 per year. The additional funds should go to UBI and paying down the national debt to free up revenue that we used to have for education, defense, etc. Yes this negatively incentivizes high incomes, but it also incentivizes countless millions of underemployed people to work hard and finally enjoy the fruits of their labors, especially young people who have never known life beyond subsisting month to month. If we don't do this, we'll condemn another generation to lost decades, just like what happened to my generation - Gen X.

I believe that young people will use the investment in their generation to pay it forward and solve the multifaceted crises facing humanity and the planet. Loosely that looks like moving to a libertarian self-sufficiency to counter corporate price gouging, in the form of off-grid energy and local food production. And adopting a progressive culture at large that works counter to trickle-down economics, having the primary goal of alleviating suffering. This is the only way that I see to get more people self-actualized with their basic needs automated, so that the global average individual income of $10,000 per year can go to a higher quality of life instead of bills.

I'm sure there are holes in this plan and admittedly it closely aligns with the midlife feelings of anxiety/exhaustion/failure that I struggle with personally. But I'm not the only one.