[Journalist's Notebook] How to Make the 'Basic Society' Bet Successful

Lee Jaemyung, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, has put forward economic growth as his banner, emphasizing policy pledges related to advanced technology industries and pragmatic messages. He is particularly interested in artificial intelligence (AI). As the first schedule of the party's presidential primary, he visited FuriosaAI, which develops neural processing units (NPU), and after being selected as the presidential candidate, his first schedule was to visit SK Hynix, a global semiconductor company.

Therefore, it is not surprising that candidate Lee mentions NVIDIA, the world's number one graphics processing unit (GPU) company. The issue lies in the statement he made while mentioning NVIDIA. In March, candidate Lee appeared on a YouTube broadcast, stating, "If a company like NVIDIA is created and 30% is owned by the public, there would be no need to rely on taxes," and "If the community had even a part of the productivity improvement results, the world would have changed," he said.

Immediately, criticisms of being 'anti-business' poured in. There was suspicion that the state would hold shares in companies and directly intervene. Even considering the election climate, it was difficult to understand at first glance. Why did he make such a statement while claiming to prioritize economic growth based on pragmatism, positioning himself as a centrist conservative? The question was only resolved in May.

On May 22, candidate Lee announced his basic society pledges, including policies with the nature of a basic income. In response to reporters' questions about funding sources, he explained, "In the future, the public will participate in large-scale corporate investments and share in the growth, and by doing so, we can enhance the public's share without relying solely on taxes." He also cited the example of Taiwan's semiconductor foundry company TSMC, which initially had a 48% government share. Specifically, he plans to form a public fund and secure public shares by participating in technology development or infrastructure investment of promising startup companies. In other words, he intends to 'bet' with taxes and public fund investments. The reason it is called a 'bet' is that there is no guarantee of success just because a company makes a large-scale investment. This is especially true when investing public funds, as it must be viewed conservatively. The National Pension Service avoids risky investments despite criticism of low returns because it is public money tied to the public's retirement.

Of course, there is a precedent for boldly investing taxes. In the past, the Lee Myung-bak administration poured as much as 40 trillion won into overseas resource development under the name of resource diplomacy. It was a massive project that was expected to yield enough profit to eliminate the need to collect taxes if successful, as candidate Lee mentioned. However, the result was a loss of more than 20 trillion won.

Last year, the managed fiscal balance, which shows the state of the nation's finances, was a deficit of 104 trillion won. To proceed smoothly according to candidate Lee's plan, more detailed planning, social consensus with companies and the public, and transparent execution and management are prerequisites.



uknow@fnnews.com Reporter Kim Yunho