Andrew Yang Announces Universal Basic Income Pilot Program At Debate (thehill.com) 379
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced at Thursday's primary debate that his campaign will use funds raised from his supporters for a pilot program meant to resemble his universal basic income proposal. The Hill reports: Under the Freedom Dividend Pilot Program, at least 10 American families will receive $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year. Participants can enter the giveaway on Yang's campaign website. Three people are already receiving the dividend, and his campaign said in a news release that they are "already noting the benefits of having an extra $1,000 per month -- from being able to make home improvements, to fixing a car needed for work, to affording medical care for family members." "The campaign is excited to work together with our supporters to help create more stories about what the Freedom Dividend means for American families. It will enable and empower citizens to pay their bills, switch jobs, take care of loved ones, and plan for the future," campaign manager Zach Graumann said in the Thursday night release.
Buy Votes (Score:5, Insightful)
He needs to be very careful here. One might take it that he is trying to buy votes.
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Buying votes with my money. Stay away.
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Well, it only eliminates one step, usually it's buying votes with corporate money, then fleecing you to repay the corporate master.
Energy crisis (Score:2, Insightful)
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The really big issue we face is not so much automation (which has been going on for two centuries already, without making us run out of jobs)
The 2~3 generations of people who died in grinding poverty after the industrial revolution would like to have a word with you.
the impending shortages of cheap energy sources.
Impending shortage of cheap energy sources? Just as renewables are surpassing subsidized fossil fuels as a cheap energy source? LOLWUT?
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Re: Buy Votes (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically thats a campaign promise. Had he somehow given everyone a tax rebate before the 2000 election it would have been buying a vote. Politicians promise shit all the time. Its a crapshoot if they make good on it. Like âoeif you like your doctor you can keep your doctorâ. That one didnt quite go the way it was planned.
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That one went fine, nobody lost their doctors. What you meant was "if you like your PLAN you can keep your PLAN", which you could not because a lot of plans didn't meet the minimum coverage standards required by the aca.
Re: Buy Votes (Score:5, Insightful)
they tried to eat an elephant in one bite... insanity at its finest. step 1 should have been measures to reduce costs. the biggest driver of doing something about healthcare was it was outpacing inflation 10:1. But instead they tried to do everything, and it just went to shit. Nobody is happy with a 3000 individual deductible.
That may not seem like a lot on the west coast, but in the midwest the avg gross income is around 45-60k. Thats before taxes. The official poverty level is 17k per year. So when the cost of coverage jumps to $250 per employee, $475 for parent and kids, $525 for member-spouse, and almost $900 for full family coverage; then couple that with a $3000 per member deductible and/or $9000 family deductible; I dont call that very _affordable_. It really pisses people off to call it the _Affordable_ Care Act..
Most employers dont even pay the full employee portion. They pay 60-70%. That means the employee making 60k a year shells out $825/mo or $9,900 a year for the privilege of having healthcare that still wont pay shit yet. Then you subtract taxes, so lets just say 25% for easy math to cover state, federal, social security, medicare, and local city taxes. Now your down to 37,575 annually or $3,131 monthly to do everything else on. But if you actually need healthcare you need to remember that the first 3000 per individual or 9k for the family needs to be met. So now you income drops to 34,575 before the first member of your household even begins to see the first dollar of benefits. There are a lot of single parents out there.. so their annual premiums are more like $4800. So the take home is $41k or $3,400 a month. You still have the 3000/9000 deductible before your insurance pays for shit. $3400 does not really cover rent, groceries, gas, kids school clothes, school lunches, all the damn fees they throw at you for various school things, or utilities like electric, water, gas, trash. How the hell are you going to find a way to spend another 3-9k a year just to get some of the benefits you paid $5k a year to get?
And to add insult to injury, while congress was busy trying to cover sex changes based on identity politics, and not lasik, they let the insurance companies get away with drug formularies. Its always great to pay all this money for insurance to have them put a drug into a $40 copay category instead of a $20 copay. You go to the counter to ring it up, it comes up as $26 because it costs less than $40. Or it rings up $41 and insurance pays $1 and you pay $40. How the hell is this better than the old friggen 80/20 plans that used to cost $400 for an entire family and had a whopping $250 deductible??
And they have the neve to label this smoking pile of shit AFFORDABLE Care Act
Re:Buy Votes (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you never analyze citizen happiness and freedom in Sweden? Or Norway? Or Finland? Or Canada?
Canada has universal healthcare, parental leave, a social safety net AND Canada is in the G7.
Instead of looking at a corrupt, failed petro-state lead by an idiot populist, look at some real-world examples.
"The Swedish model is simply not sustainable" (Score:3)
Honest question: Why is it you anti-socialists always stampede to Venezuela or Cuba?
Why do you never analyze citizen happiness and freedom in Sweden? Or Norway? Or Finland? Or Canada?
Maybe because those first world countries have been rolling back their socialism for more than 20 years, embracing more and more capitalism after discovering that even politically liberal people don't like paying taxes so high that it makes building wealth for your family impossible? While Cuba and Venezuela remain true believers and third world sh#tholes?
Since 2002, a dozen studies have been written on the long-term survivability of the Swedish welfare state. In summary, they paint a bleak picture: The Swe [foreignpolicy.com]
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I suppose it is because reasonable people can disagree about the definition of 'socialsim', and so can reach different conclusions about what countries do and do not practice it.
To some socialism means the people / state owning the means of production, and so Venuzuala, etc. are spot on whereas the Scandi countries are not.
To others socialism simply mean a higher level of wealth redistribution and state involvement in markets, and so the Scandi countries are precisely that whereas the Latin American countri
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Honest question: Why is it you anti-socialists always stampede to Venezuela or Cuba? Why do you never analyze citizen happiness and freedom in Sweden? Or Norway? Or Finland? Or Canada?
Because, they are not really full on socialist. Plus, those with rose colored glasses don't want to admit that the social programs in these countries are hugely expensive, creating tax burdens that are hugely depressive to their economic life for very little gain. For instance, socialized medicine in the UK is universally condemned as delivering low standards of care for a huge investment. The same thing is true in Canada, socialized medicine is hugely expensive, largely seen as providing a low standard o
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Or rather the money he scammed off of someone to bank-roll such a stupid plan.
The plan is to scam it off of.... everyone with a real income... like you.
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As compared to? The main difference is who gets the money.
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But hey... I'll vote for him for $12K.
You don't have to vote for him. If he gives you the money you can still vote against him.
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$1000/month cash.
$10 billion in "slavery reparations."
Free U.S. treasury bonds for every newborn.
Free universal pre-K.
Free college tuition.
Medicare for all.
Free solar panels.
Free banking (at post offices!)
They also want to overturn Citizens United because.... "we have to get money out of politics"
Its all they got left.
Re:Buy Votes (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do you think this is unrealistic, when the deficit thanks to the recent tax reductions has risen to 1000 billion per year (it had come down to about 500 billion per year after huge deficits due to the 2008 financial crisis)?
This deficit at the moment is largely given away to those that already own property, i.e. the rich.
So the list you made is really peanuts compared to free stuff that was recently given to the 1%.
Why don't you talk about that?
Re:Buy Votes (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think this is unrealistic, when the deficit thanks to the recent tax reductions has risen to 1000 billion per year (it had come down to about 500 billion per year after huge deficits due to the 2008 financial crisis)?
This deficit at the moment is largely given away to those that already own property, i.e. the rich.
So the list you made is really peanuts compared to free stuff that was recently given to the 1%. Why don't you talk about that?
The deficit is hardly given away to the the rich - there's no handouts to them, and they pay most of the taxes. The argument you should be making is that the US is living far beyond its means, and that taxes need to be increased in order to pay for what is currently being consumed, as well as pay down on many years of spending too much when compared to income.. And the strongest shoulders should carry the heaviest burdens.
As a side node - the list referred to is hardly peanuts.. E.g. $1000/month cash - if we estimate 200 million US inhabitants to have a nice, round number this is the equivalent of 2.4 trillion USD each year - or 2.5 times the yearly deficit - so definitely not peanuts.
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None of the expensive promises will come true. At a government spending deficit at 1 trillion USD with no improvement in sight and an accumulated debt of around 100% of GDP there will be money for nothing but token gestures even with large tax raises. And you do realize that you are well on the way to the next bust. And when the shit hits the fan austerity and even more tax raises will be the only option...
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The rich pay far less than they have historically. That difference isn't something that can be made up by their charity, nor economic gain from low taxes, nor taxing the middle class.
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If you wanted to know if they rich were paying less, you'd want to look at the amount of taxes paid by the top 1%, 5%, etc. of tax pay
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Horse shit, tax cuts for the rich really did happen, and government revenue really went down.
Can you even math?!
Though partisan eyes you see what you want to see.
But the truth here is not as simple as you make it out to be.
The truth is, Corporate taxes got cut and EVERYBODY'S income taxes got cut with some rearranging of the deduction deck chairs. So yes, the rich got a tax cut, the same one you got. But that's just income... What most folks forget to mention, choose to ignore, or flat just don't understand is that MOST of the folks who you consider "rich" really don't have "income" anyway. Sure, they have capital
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That's just blatant bullshit, don't be a stupid asshole.
All you said is that you have an anecdote, therefore up is down and left is right.
You even admit that your anecdote doesn't show what you want, because it is just numbers somebody gamed year to year.
No, cutting taxes does not, as a general rule, increase revenue. Simple math shows that. Having a crap anecdote does not automatically make unicorns fly and shit rainbow sherbet.
Nor does a limit on how large an increase in taxes can result in increased reve
Re:Buy Votes (Score:5, Insightful)
The deficit is caused by the government not collecting as much in taxes as it spends money. Trump cut the taxes while not cutting spending, making the deficit worse. The bulk of the cuts targeted the richest Americans. So the rich now make even more money, while the state collects even less taxes and spends more money that it doesn't have so it has to take more debt.
This focus on 'handouts' in american economic discussion has always baffled me as a European leftist. Why is it that the government using money to make sure American citizens have their basic needs met and do not die in the streets or from preventable illnesses (something no-one living in a first world civilized country should have to face) is deemed a 'handout' or 'socialism', while at the same time the government allowing some of the richest people and corporations [itep.org] on the planet to pay next to no taxes is deemed A-OK?
I mean hell, worker productivity has gone up by like 70 % since the 70s, while wages have gone up only 9 %. The american (and in the larger picture Western) worker in general is more productive than ever thanks to technological advancements, but they're not getting compensated for that efficiency. Instead, CEO compensation and bonuses are through the roof, while at the same time the US still remains the only first world country where medical bankruptcies are still a major thing because you guys lack universal health care, something which has been standard in most of the West for half a century now. You're also the only first world country that offers no mandatory paid leave and no paid maternal leave. And what's the argument used against these systems? 'We can't afford them".
Yes, yes you can. You have more money than any country in the history of human civilization. This notion that you couldn't put in place systems that the rest of the West already has in place to improve the lives of everyday americans without crashing the economy is entirely bullshit, and is manufactured by the same group of greedy asshats who've been spouting BS about 'trickle down economics' for decades now.
Weirdly enough, Trump is a logical conclusion of this chain of behavior: people, everyday people, workers, the backbone of any economy, instinctively understand that they're being fed lies and bullshit by the status quo. There's an understanding that politicians by an large serve not their voters, but their donors, most of whom belong to the richest few % of the economy. Thus when presented with a choice of 'more of the same old BS' (Hillary) and something entirely new and radical (Trump), it makes a lot of sense to me that people would gravitate towards Trump. Remember, he promised to deliver universal health care to americans, among a number of things. Trump's rhetoric during his campaign was waaay to the left of the republican baseline: he even talked about taxing the rich more,
Now has he actually delivered on any of his grand promises? Obviously not, because he's a semi-demented reality tv-star and a conman who knows how to sell ideas to people and take his audience, but he doesn't have any principles that he wouldn't sell to the highest bidder, and he's so incompetent of a leader he's managed to bankrupt casinos of all things, which is pretty damn hard to do when you're allowed to run games where the odds are rigged. But the point is that Donald is what happens when you have a system in place that churns out immense amounts of wealth and funnels the bulk of it to the wealthiest fraction in their mansions, while the workers' situation is stagnant or declining, and the middle-class is shrinking [pewresearch.org] from both sides.
If this development ke
Re:Buy Votes (Score:5, Insightful)
The deficit is caused by the government not collecting as much in taxes as it spends money.
You mention both causes of deficit, but your angle focuses on collection rather than reining in spending. Abuse of either/both these angles is a huge problem, but tax cuts do ignite further economic activity. A lot of gov't spending is little more than a wealth incinerator. But yes, both are a problem.
So the rich now make even more money, while the state collects even less taxes and spends more money that it doesn't have so it has to take more debt.
Let's be clear: paying less taxes is not "making more money" - it is being shaken down for less. Viewing taxation or lack of taxation as "making money" is fundamentally wrong because there is no wealth creation occurring, only wealth redistribution.
This focus on 'handouts' in american economic discussion has always baffled me as a European leftist. Why is it that the government using money to make sure American citizens have their basic needs met and do not die in the streets or from preventable illnesses (something no-one living in a first world civilized country should have to face) is deemed a 'handout' or 'socialism', while at the same time the government allowing some of the richest people and corporations [itep.org] on the planet to pay next to no taxes is deemed A-OK?
It's a handout if you take wealth from people who've created it and hand it to people who did not. Also, no one likes watching Google, Amazon, etc pay little or no taxes - no working class people, at least. It's a problem that we do not expect to see fixed.
That said, if a huge corporation gets a tax break to come to town and create some jobs, the people receiving those jobs are curiously okay with that particular tax break for the wealthy.
I mean hell, worker productivity has gone up by like 70 % since the 70s, while wages have gone up only 9 %. The american (and in the larger picture Western) worker in general is more productive than ever thanks to technological advancements, but they're not getting compensated for that efficiency.
So if I hire you to shuck corn by hand and pay you an agreed upon wage we're good. Then I invest in a corn shucking apparatus and allow you to operate that instead of do the job manually, increasing production by 70%, now you should get a 70% pay increase? Sorry, bro. Maybe if you'd invented the machine. Maybe if there weren't plenty of honest workers looking to do the same job, which requires little training. Maybe if you'd invested in half the outlay for the apparatus. See how that works?
...what's the argument used against these systems? 'We can't afford them".
Yes, yes you can. You have more money than any country in the history of human civilization. This notion that you couldn't put in place systems that the rest of the West already has in place to improve the lives of everyday americans without crashing the economy is entirely bullshit...
False. The US has more debt than any entity in the history of human civilization. That you could breezily ignore the inter-generational theft that our budget has become is a serious red flag about your economic judgment. These "systems" the rest of the West put in place happened during a decades long military welfare system that guaranteed recipient nations' safety from the red menace, allowing them to spend huge sums of money on elaborate programs. It doesn't mean all social programs are bad, or not viable - there's probably a reasonable middle ground - but let's not ignore a huge international welfare factor that contributed to their success.
Weirdly enough, Trump is a
Re:Buy Votes (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple, that is not one of the limited, enumerated powers or responsibilities that the US Federal government is charged with by the US Constitution.
Proportional pain (Score:5, Insightful)
The deficit is hardly given away to the the rich - there's no handouts to them, and they pay most of the taxes.
"No handouts" to the rich? Are you f***** serious? The rich pay LESS in taxes as a percent than the middle class does. Guys like Jeff Bezos pay the substantially lower capital gains rates which are 15 or 20% and the companies they own often pay nothing at all. And the rich pay the most in INCOME tax but that's far from the only tax. They don't pay the most for Medicare or Social Security which together account for over half the federal budget. The deficit is absolutely a handhout to the rich because they aren't being asked to shoulder the same level of pain as the rest of us. And let's not pretend that a lot of those tax breaks don't disproportionately benefit the rich. Tax breaks don't help you much if you don't have much to be taxed to begin with.
The argument you should be making is that the US is living far beyond its means, and that taxes need to be increased in order to pay for what is currently being consumed, as well as pay down on many years of spending too much when compared to income.. And the strongest shoulders should carry the heaviest burdens.
Quite correct. I would add that any discussion of reducing taxation that does not also involve substantial reductions in defense, medicare, medicaid or social security is pure uncut political bullshit not worth listening to. Really we need to raise taxes to a level proportionate to our spending. Right now we are literally borrowing the entire defense budget every single year. That cannot go on indefinitely.
Re:Buy Votes (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that this comment will likely be seen as valuable - go ahead and downvote me to oblivion ... but there are several points that are raised that are completely overlooked.
With 95% of human work completely automated, who stands to gain from the benefit of such automation? Presently, the system will only reward the elite investors for this whereas the other 95% will simply not have anything. Furthermore, the concept of "wealth" also needs to be redefined. There is an asteroid in the asteroid belt that is worth more than all the money on the planet. If it were brought here and park offshore of San Fransisco, the monetary system would be completely destroyed.
What UBI and other economic indicators of today simply show is that the system needs to be re-engineer. Of all people, I would expect that the engineers of Slashdot would be more welcoming of a challenge to redefine how the economic systems of today operate. After all, it is simply a matter of observing inputs and outputs and perhaps a few transforms here and there. If the Slashdot engineers can devise such amazing systems as the internet, ecommerce and so on, why not a better economic system as well?
Andrew Yang is simply pointing out a bug in the system that UBI basically toys with but does not fix. How can we devise a better economic system that allows for automation and the distribution of wealth from the solar system? That is the real question that can and must be answered if we are to survive as a species.
The rich get a mountain of hand outs (Score:3)
Then there's the entire Military Industrial Complex, there's billions in various direct subsidies (oil being the most popular one), there's the money our military spends protecting their assets overseas (remember when the cold war meant you couldn't just ship jobs overseas because you had to be
Re: Huge giveaway to the rich (Score:3)
Reducing your tax burden isn't giving you anything. It's demanding less of you. There is a huge difference. The old tax rate is not the natural state.
Re:Buy Votes (Score:5, Insightful)
*And yes, I know it is not truly free, it is paid in taxes, everyone knows that, point still stands.
Re: Buy Votes (Score:2)
I think what he's saying is that they're pandering to people like Peggy the Moocher. Oh, and how did that turn out?
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I'd prefer a doctor that had to be the best and brightest because he had to battle 2000 others for his slot because they all could afford to study, to having one that was the only one who could afford to actually study medicine.
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Re: Buy Votes (Score:3)
And republicans insist on cutting taxes and increasing spending. No matter who wins we all lose.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Buy Votes (Score:4, Informative)
The social democracies of western Europe do not in general have much higher tax rates on the rich than on the middle class. The tax rates on the middle and lower classes are quite high. Here in Denmark we have a total tax pressure of around 46%. But even the middle class pay a combined direct marginal (on the last earned dollar) tax of 55.9% and if we count sales tax on top of that it is closer to 67%. Rich people have the means to avoid this kind of taxation but the middle class does not.
Without these high taxes on the middle class the welfare state is simply not possible. If you tax the rich more they avoid the taxes, ultimately by moving to other countries. And you kill the economic engine of your country and end up like France with a PPP corrected GDP per capita which is 30% less than if you had kept a free economy (the 30% is the current difference between France and USA).
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We pay about those same rates here in the US. Federal tax rate of about 26%, State tax rate of 13%, SSI/FICA of 15%, sales tax rate of 9%. About 62-65% of every dollar earned going back into taxes. I know when I worked in Belgium for a few years, my total taxation was about the same as back in the US.
The difference is, in Denmark you're considered a good citizen. Here in the US you're called scum and a taker and that you need to pay more taxes (note that low income earners in the US actually get PAID ba
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im not against either of those being free, only the dumbass moronic way I keep seeing the left suggest we get there. Handing the provider of these services a blank check is a horrible, horrible, idea. Thats how the government ends up paying $400 for a damn hammer. You have to gut the existing system entirely. Education has a easier chance of achieving this goal than healthcare simply because there is less to gut. Education's biggest obstacle is their rediculous overhead to justify rediculous tuitions. take
Subsidizing Sloth and Gluttony (Score:5, Interesting)
"Free Healthcare" can't come without personal responsibility. 95% of people with diabetes have Type 2 which means the vast majority have an issue with diet and exercise, not a health problem that tax payers should be forced to pay for. If we ignored all diet and exercise related health problems, there would be plenty of money to cover health care for those who aren't deliberately killing themselves.
Free "Pre-K" will soon enough turn into mandatory "Pre-K" which is absurd. Kids have from birth to 5 years old to just be a kid. Once they start school, they're in for 13 years mandated, then they will probably do 4+ years of college and then it's into the work force for 40-50 years. Zero studies have shown that pre-k is a benefit. By 3rd grade, any perceived benefits of pre-k have been eliminated and the students are just as educated as any other student.
"education" is fine if it's effective. The reason reason for "pre-k" is childcare. It's just parents looking for free babysitting. So if you're not willing to pay taxes to pay for babysitting of other people's children, then there's no reason to support government paying for Pre-K.
Hey, at least he didn't say (Score:5, Funny)
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They haven't even eaten their wall yet, no desert for them!
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Re:Buy Votes (Score:4, Interesting)
Yang's right. He seems to be the only one really looking toward the future, but that's coming.
Ehm, no. Politicians from left to right, economists and sociologists, corporate strategists: there are many, many people who have thought about this possibility. And most people agree that we'd need to have some form of UBI if there no longer are any jobs for the majority of people. The real problems with UBI are:
1) Where is the money going to come from? Not from income tax, since there's no meaningful income anymore. Salex tax? That tends to shift the burden to consumers rather than manufacturers. Maybe a tax on production or on robots? Possible, if you can prevent production from moving abroad to tax havens. I'm not saying this is unsolvable, but it needs some serious thought. If Yang is really looking towards the future, this is what he needs to address.
2) How is distribution of UBI controlled? Are our current democratic mechanisms (with all their issues) adequate? Remember that if all of your income comes from a single entity and you have zero options to obtain an income elsewhere, that entity has the power to control 100% of your life. You do not want UBI to turn into a needs based system like the 20th Century Motor Company's "basic pittance" [fandom.com], or have the state go from providing UBI to providing housing as well, which might be increasingly crappy TerraFoam buildings [marshallbrain.com] (Do read the second book for 2 possible outcomes of a zero labour market and UBI).
3) (somewhat related to 2), How do we transition to UBI, and how do we deal with the resulting shift in power balance? If we replace everyone with robots overnight, implement UBI and pay for it woth a corporate tax, do we really think that the political landscape will remain the same? Or will corporations be calling the shots even more than they are now?
Re:Buy Votes (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone campaigning on a promise of lowering taxes is effectively trying to buy votes.
Ridiculous (Score:3)
It's not the government's money so giving me a tax cut is not "buying my vote". It was never the government's to begin with.
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How many billionaires are there? You know there are 1,000 billions in a trillion, right? So if you confiscate ALL the money from 1,000 billionaires you'll only get $1 trillion.
They have to cut spending, not increase it by giving handouts to everyone.
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You do know, that if you were to magically confiscate ALL of the wealth of the top 1% ya'll keep on about....that it would not make much of a dent in the US debt, it could not pay it off.
SO, how do you think taking them more is going to make a dent it in, much less with you adding on all the 'free' stuff you want to give away.
To balance the budget, you have to CU
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He needs to be very careful here. One might take it that he is trying to buy votes.
Please feel free to define campaign contributions for me. That's not just buying votes. It's fucking bribery.
Yang is a tiny fish on that sea, and has a rather obvious defense.
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Mod Correction: This should be modded as "Insightful +1." I actually like Andrew Young and wish he would be one of the one to actually get the democratic nod. You know instead of Groopy, Liar, and Loon.
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The socialist combines loose fiscal policy and dictatorship.
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The socialist combines loose fiscal policy and dictatorship.
The fiscal policy is looser than ever now, outside of war. And Trump can hardly been seen acting as a democratic ideal...
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Re: Buy Votes (Score:2)
Grain Dole (Score:2)
Nobody is doubting that an extra $1k/month would be of benefit to nearly all Americans. The real questions is if it's worth the associated $2.4k trillion in taxes, which would mostly be payed by these same Americans. As such, this program achieves just about nothing - the participants aren't getting taxed more and having income re-distributed if they're already fairly wealthy - they're just getting free money.
It makes one cynical about Yang, that he's just playing up the "vote for me for free money" aspec
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Erh... maybe I'm a bit confused on how you Americans deal with millions and billions, but last I checked 1,000 * 330,000,000 = 330,000,000,000. I thought you call that 330 billions? Afaik, the US GDP is around 19,500 billions. The US budget is 3,650 billions. Social security amounts to about 850 billions, military another 600 billions, medicare and other health related expenses another 1,000 billions.
I have a hunch that this could actually be doable, if you want to.
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This isn’t a UBI... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a game show competition. Enter to win? 10 lucky families?
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This is what I came here to say. This isn't quite a UBI pilot, lol.
Would be really funny if Trump entered it and won.
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"already noting the benefits of having an extra $1,000 per month -- from being able to make home improvements, to fixing
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Just like capitalism. Anyone can win. Just not everyone.
Minimum wage... (Score:2)
Because raising the minimum wage & providing better employee protections is just too old-fashioned, right?
But that would be forcing rich people to pay a fairer share of the money to the workers who make it for them. That's not the 'Murican way.
Re:Minimum wage... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because raising the minimum wage & providing better employee protections is just too old-fashioned, right?
Raising the minimum wage doesn't work when there are robots waiting on the sidelines to replace the human workers.
But that would be forcing rich people to pay a fairer share of the money to the workers who make it for them. That's not the 'Murican way.
How is UBI not forcing rich people to pay?
Re:Minimum wage... (Score:4, Insightful)
How is UBI not forcing rich people to pay?
OK, I'll bite: because there already is a universal basic income for large companies. I don't know the situation in the US, but I believe it is about the same as in Europe. The European Central Bank buys financial constructs ("value papers") from large companies. Those constructs are just a half-legal form of gambling, but the central bank does not fulfil the contract of those constructs, as that might yield a return, and the whole purpose was to inject money into the system. This is called "Quantitative Easing". I know the feds have done basically the same in the last crisis, but I only know that the European Central Bank has done that for a really long time.
Off course the central bank rewards the makers of the crisis, and puts money into the system at the wrong end. They should be injecting money into the real economy instead. But you can imagine what happens if they do. Suppose they would spend their vast sums on bread, cars, houses, roads or anything else. Can you imagine the warehouses they would need? Or would they have to give them away then? To whom?
So instead they give free money to the companies that already pay no taxes. But for some reason, a Universal Basic Income for real people still sounds absurd in some people's ears.
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Giving government more power won't suddenly change it's nature into serving the people.
It just means more power gets used to serve the ruling class.
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I like Yang, and while I'm not sure I'm sold that UBI is feasible right now, he is right about the fact that the future is coming. If we ignore it, that could create a lot of social problems. He's thinking about getting ahead of the curve socially now, rather than waiting for technologi
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If everyone gets $1000 (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you just degraded the value of $1000 to 0.
If $1000, why not $10,000; I could live very well with $10,000/month. If any left-leaning liberal wants to make the case for $1000, then make the case for not $2000 or not $10,000 or hell, make everyone a millionaire.
The problem is that there is only ~$80,000/y to go around for everyone, if you set everyone's income to $80,000, there is no driver for me to invest in education or making a better widget, hiring anyone and then the power of the money goes down the drain, very fast. Next year it will be $70,000, then $50,000 and within 3-5 years you'll be poorer than the average African country.
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Welcome to a global market. You would actually be right if everyone on the planet got 1000 bucks a month. But they don't. Instead, the US would that way get an increase in purchasing power and resource accumulation.
Wait... you're right, that's a horrible idea!
Everyone has pants. Are pants worth $0? (Score:3)
Your argument is incorrect. There are multiple dimensions of money. The value of something can be related to the scarcity of that something, but the relationship isn't a direct relationship like you imply.
Classical economics believes that, but everyone except slashdot posters knows that classical economics is valid for only a small subset of reality.
or .. (Score:2)
You could just buy a lotto/powerball or Publishers Clearing House ticket. You'd have a better chance of winning.
debate takeaway (Score:2)
Warren is polished, she was on-point and practiced, and proposed a wealth tax.
Andrew Yang was wild and entertaining.
Kamala Harris looked relaxed and happy. Was she high?
I wish Buttigieg would win because his name is pure happiness for comedians.
Biden is a strong competitor.
Yang, Warren, and Biden are top competitors, and Warren is going to win the nomination. That's my predi
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Warren is polished, she was on-point and practiced, and proposed a wealth tax.
She's a lawyer, right? Where in the constitution is the federal government allowed a wealth tax? If she thinks this comes from a constitutional amendment then where in the process is the president involved? If she wants a wealth tax then she'd have greater ability to get that by remaining a US senator.
Kamala Harris looked relaxed and happy. Was she high?
I'm pretty sure they all are. That reminds me. Did marijuana legalization come up?
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Great, then you have an election with a guy named Buttigieg and one looking like one.
Comedians will love it.
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Even if you don't, if it made all your neighbors' jobs obsolete and their jobs scarce, you might also reconsider.
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More in our timescale, accountancy departments have gone from entire floors in large companies to just a dozen or so people because of the spreadsheet, no company has a typing pool these days because of the word processor, and modularised containers have put countless dockworkers and labourers out of work.
And yet none of those resulted in huge unemployment today.
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And every time in the past some new sector emerged that would hoover up that free labor force. When agriculture was automated, factories took up the workers. When factories automated, the emerging service industry did.
Who will this time? Because I don't see any emerging new industry where these people will be needed. Yes, we do need people in certain fields, but unfortunately in areas that require a really high level of education and aptitude. It was trivial to retrain a farm hand to work at a conveyor belt
Publishers Clearing House... (Score:2)
I'd vote for Yang (Score:3)
I'm not a fan of any kind of universal basic income but Yang appears to be the only one running that supports nuclear power as part of America's future energy policy.
https://www.yang2020.com/polic... [yang2020.com]
https://www.yang2020.com/blog/... [yang2020.com]
Not that I expect any Democrat to win against Trump. This has got to be the saddest set of Democrat candidates in a very long time. Is this they best they got? A bunch of socialists all trying to win votes by promising to hand out money while taking everyone's firearms? Socialism only works until the government runs out of everyone else's money. They all promise a very high burn rate and I'm not seeing any real plans to make up for this in efforts to grow the economy. A big spending plan on infrastructure and energy projects is not an economy, that's just more spending other's money.
There's an option "C", right? Tell me I can vote for someone other than Trump or one of these fools.
Re:I'd vote for Yang (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an option "C", right? Tell me I can vote for someone other than Trump or one of these fools.
You can vote 3rd party.
That is my current plan.
Amazing discovery! (Score:2)
$1000 a month extra makes people's life easier; did anybody ever doubt this?
I'm a proponent of some sort of UBI, but this is not UBI.
Dumping money is just going to rebalance the market until all of it was just a big inflation.
1000 is too much (Score:2)
So far as I've heard every test of a universal basic income system has failed to show that it would be practical when scaled up. So why start so high? I realize that 1000/month is hard to survive on in the US at least in most places, but I think that just isn't going to work. It would be too expensive. At least that is what I would bet.
I hate when someone takes a potentially good idea and ruins it by being overly ambitious or too optimistic. Instead of starting so high try starting low. More like 400-600 pe
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Also maybe try building government housing to keep rents low.
We already tried that [wikipedia.org].
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The Finnish trial didn't fail. And I'm not aware that there have actually been that many others of that scale in the first place.
WHat's that? A politician promising free stuff? (Score:2)
Yang? Oh, Andrew Yang? (Score:2)
I thought maybe it's Jerry Yang! Of Yahoo IPO fame. Then we're talking.
Pointless (Score:2)
Having a pilot program with so few people will prove nothing. Apart from the painfully obvious "having more money is nice". It wont address any of the concerns about incentives or overall economic impact. So really, he's just giving away money in a sort of lottery.
Small scale UBI is not a test of UBI (Score:3)
The same thing applies to a UBI. Moving the money around between people doesn't change its value. But changing the productivity of the population does. So a small scale test of the UBI doesn't prove anything. If it works in a test of 1% of the population, all you've shown is that you can shift some of the productivity of 99% of the population to support that 1%. Even if you test it with 50% of the population, all it'll show is whether or not the other 50% can support your test 50%. It's like testing whether an oxygen generation system is working while your instruments are exposed to the atmosphere. To be a valid test of a UBI, it has to be done on an isolated, financially self-sufficient population in its entirety.
Will a UBI work? Against a UBI is that if it causes people to quit their jobs or work fewer hours, then their productivity will be lower. Lower productivity means the value of money decreases, standard of living drops, and the $1000 you're giving as a UBI won't buy as much as it used to when you started the program. If you succumb to the temptation to raise the UBI to compensate, all you're doing is shifting more productivity from the people who are generating it to the people who aren't. That'll create an incentive for even more people to work less, resulting in less productivity, and continuing the cycle towards lower and lower productivity.
For a UBI is that it could add stability and reduce crime. Financial instability results in wasted productivity (e.g. unable to get to work because you can't afford to fix your car, causing your workplace to be an employee short and lose productivity). And crime is a net destroyer of value. The goods the criminal steals are zero sum - the criminal gains what you lose. But usually there's incidental damage or injury which turns it into a net loss of productivity. This is the opposite of legitimate economic activity, where both the buyer and seller benefit from the transaction.
Personally, I suspect the former will dominate and a UBI won't work. But I honestly don't know, so an experiment is worth trying. But an experiment where you give just 1% of families $1000 a month isn't really an experiment. All that "proves" is that if the other 99% each donate $10.10/mo apiece, they can support one family at $1000/mo. That's trivial to do successfully. To prove a UBI works, you have to get it to the point where every family is donating $1000/mo to pay for the $1000/mo UBI.
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Because people will still spend their money based on what they can afford?
Then again, who cares? If that money is spent, what we see is a boost to the economy, so it's all good.
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But not if the prices are raised due to inflation.
You're not boosting the economy by stealing from some (on average higher quality people) and givng to others (on average lower quality people).
Turns out the maffia isn't a good thing.
In 1776 Adam Smith proved that government action can never be a benefit to the economy: https://www.ibiblio.org/ml/lib... [ibiblio.org]
Thereby proving socialism wrong.
Ever since the data has been piling up against gov
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Funny. When I look at Europe, I have to say they made it through the economy troubles a lot easier than the US did. Probably because more people had more money to buy more goods (and even more services) to keep the economy running even in a downturn.
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But that's not visible when you do an experiment with only 10 people.
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We spend that much on our military because of our obligation to NATO, which you guys contribute almost nothing to comparatively. I don't like it either, but you'd like it alot less if we hadn't done it.