Step 1: Eliminate disincentives to work.
Step 2: More people produce things of value.
Step 3: We have more things of value that can be distributed.
Do you believe that there is no additional productive labor to be done? I.e., it would be completely useless to build more community gardens, fix our "crumbling infrastructure" or provide free daycare for working mothers? (I'm being naughty, by stealing common left wing tropes as examples of things the idle could produce.)
You can do those things I guess. But folks don't want to pay for them. In the end its an efficient market, right?
Clearly we'd all increase our standard of living if folks created more. Its just an equation involving what people are willing to do vs what folks with money will pay. Labor-intensive things have pretty much been priced out of a market. And our service economy means everything involves labor.
Imagine McD's and friends automate the whole store. What do those millions working there for minimum wage do then? Gardening, daycare etc don't pay even that well.
Back up. Currently we pay people to produce nothing. There exist things with positive value. So why not just have the people producing nothing produce those things instead? We can just make it a condition of receiving pay.
