I found this article fascinating. I don't think it has any hope of working at all, however.

Sci-fi writers and "Futurist Societies" have talked about an "End of Scarcity" which will occur when we can give every new baby it's own super-powerful robot, and the kid can tell the robot to make more robots, and if he wants a castle or spaceship he can tell his robot to make the robots that will make the robots that will make it, and just wait. Predicting a society of lazy slobs or a society of refined scientists is up the particular author's view of humanity.

In late-night bull sessions I have discussed the "End of Scarcity" thing [1], and in particular why it could not be done with investment money. You can immagine everyone having a robot, but if everyone where a trust fund baby, who would borrow the money from the funds and work hard in order to pay back interest ?

Given the current economic and political situation, there is a chance we will actually try this. The conservatives and financial industry love the 401k plans [2], and this could be sold to do them as another 401k plan, and sold to the left as a morally justified leveling of opportunity. It may not happen under the name "universal trust fund", but it could happen under the guise of various similar entitlement programs.

However, the money to put in those trust funds (however they are called) will be borrowed, they will not be funded on a balanced budget. They will therefore be accompanied inflation and mounting debt, and will by correspondingly less for their beneficiaries.

In addition, the proposals discussed in this article do not give the trust fund babies complete freedom in how to spend the money. The money is to be drawn for higher education and housing (both are bubbles, and Americans generally buy more of those than they need), and for "retirement", which is kind of insulting in my opinion -- is 65 the new age of majority ?

What kind of withdrawals are allowed from the funds will likely become an object of a huge amount of corrupt politicing and lobbying, similar to the mortage tax exemption. Rather than an opportunity, the funds might become like a bad inheiritance incumbered by some crazy grand uncle's will. They mention that the funds should hold $20,000 when the beneficiary is in their 20s -- will they beneficiary be allowed to withdraw all the money and attempt to start a business, making them into a kind of nationwide YC program ? It seems unlikely, although that might be the best use of the money for many people. Instead, the money will be used to make a down payment on a plaster board castle in some gaudy neighborhood, tossed into a black hole of college tuition, or used to bolster the social security program which will have been massively damaged by the inflation.

Of course, after all that, it is justified to ask "well, what would you do to address inequality and lack of opportunity ? Offer something constructive !"

I think the most important thing to do is generally assure we have a prosperous nation. That basic fundamental is in doubt. The federal budget should be balanced; those who lend their money to the government through bonds, will be forced to find other ways to spend and invest it anyway, creating a "stimulous" similar to what happened when Clinton/Grinrich last balanced the budget, but without the debt and inflation. This can probably only happen by pissing off conservatives by raising taxes and slashing "defense" spending and pissing off liberals by slashing "education" and "social" spending. For example, we might cancel the "future combat systems" program and also stop medicare / medicaid payments on all medical procedures not statistically shown to improve life expectancy, which would include many things people consider necessities, such as balloon angioplasty.

There are more positive things we can do, other than just halting certain things, and thankfully many of them can be done by individuals and carried out regardless of what bills pass congress. I think that we should revive the idea of apprenticeships, and adapt them to high-tech vocations. I think that making small amounts of credit available to entrepreneurs and business startups through sites like prosper.com is very promissing thing . . . or making more YC clones.

[1] My prediction is that humans couldn't handle the End of Scarcity, and to protect ourselves from it we would create fake needs that could not be adaquately met, and huge propaganda efforts would line the roads with signs and be interspersed into every form of entertainment to remind us that we needed something we couldn't quite afford, but a small subset of humans would see through the propaganda, and live quietly amid the chaos gleaning ample shelter from the packaging of robotically produced artificial-necessities and plenty of cast off over-produced food. I call my fantasy "The Present", and the smart subset are "hobos."

[2] 401k plans are a disaster. The main purpose they served was to increase the amount of money going into the stock market, which benefited the people who run the stock market and hurt the rest of the country and gave us a big bubble. By tying so many people's perception of their financial security to the stock market, the 401k plan also created a dangerous political situation, with the government feeling obligated to take unwise steps to prop up the market, and a possibility for political extremism when that inevitably fails.