Julian Jacobs and Alex Imas argue for economic policy for AGI in their SSRN paper

Julian Jacobs and Alex Imas argue for economic policy for AGI in their SSRN paper

On September 16, 2026, Julian Jacobs and Alex Imas argue in their paper, “Economic Policy for AGI,” that the potential for structural displacement of human labour calls for re-evaluating macroeconomic stabilisers and redistributive frameworks. They assess labour, welfare and taxation interventions across scenarios ranging from mild frictional shocks to a theoretical post-labour asymptote, using an automated, multi-agent evaluation methodology. The authors advocate a phased, “least regret” strategy anchored by a Negative Income Tax and supported by targeted industrial policy. They say this approach would provide a resilient and adaptable foundation to secure consumer welfare and democratise the gains of technological progress. The abstract does not explain how the evaluation compares interventions across scenarios or report results showing how the recommended approach performs. The authors’ proposal therefore rests, in this abstract, on an evaluation whose comparisons and results are not described.

Publication: 0c0a6b2a-d668-c0f8-c733-c1797e00436d

attribution — pass: The page names Julian Jacobs and Alex Imas as authors and SSRN as the venue. The reading attributes the argument and the recommendation to them and keeps the proposal as their advocacy rather than presenting it as established fact. The DeepMind publication page is a single piece, not a listing.

Authors Julian Jacobs, Alex Imas Venue SSRN

summary — uncertain: The reading tracks the abstract faithfully, but its central terms are left unexplained. Only AGI is defined. A general reader would not know what a Negative Income Tax is, which is the core recommendation. 'Macroeconomic stabilisers', a 'least regret' strategy, 'post-labour asymptote' and 'automated, multi-agent evaluation methodology' are also unexplained. The title is vague: 'argue for economic policy for AGI' does not say what they argue. Smallest repair: add tooltip definitions, at minimum for Negative Income Tax and least regret, and name the recommendation in the title.

We advocate for a phased, 'least regret' strategy anchored by a Negative Income Tax

date — uncertain: The page dateline, September 16, 2026, matches evidence.originalPublished, and the reading states the date at day precision. There is no hindsight framing, and the paper's proposal is not presented as an outcome. However, evidence.editedAfterPublication is true: the page was modified on 2026-09-30 according to json-ld dateModified. It cannot be confirmed that the abstract text as retrieved is unchanged from the original publication.

September 16, 2026 Economic Policy for AGI

support — uncertain: Each claim is source-stated, and its excerpt matches the abstract. The reading correctly notes that the abstract reports no comparisons or results, and it does not turn the advocacy into a demonstrated benefit. Because the page was edited after publication (dateModified 2026-09-30), the cited abstract text is not plainly confirmed as original, so the support dimension is marked uncertain rather than pass.

This paper assesses twenty-four labour, welfare, and taxation interventions across a spectrum of technological disruption

media — pass: No media was selected, and no verified media candidates were supplied. Selecting none is appropriate.