Is anyone interested in comparing and contrasting Presidential candidates??
This is the thread to do it without fear of accusations of “hijacking” – so who are your top three choices and why???
To start things off:
I’m into Andrew Yang on account of the UBI.
I’m surprised anyone else can be against UBI so I was hope Bernie supporters can state in this thread why they’d still vote Bernie despite Andrew’s UBI.
If not a Bernie or Andrew support already, why not, please? What are your top goals that you don’t think the other candidates can accomplish (especially Andrew with UBI)??
I’ve been thinking about something I heard Kamala Harris say the other night on the Trevor Noah show. Starting around minute 12:20, Harris talks about her plan to give a tax credit of $500/mo to everyone making less than $100,000/year. If anyone else is talking about this, I’ve missed it.
In comparison to Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend of $1,000/mo, I don’t see people questioning Kamala Harris on where she would get the money or criticizing her far-out ideas. She says that this tax credit would be her first priority when she’s elected.
I’m skeptical of Kamala Harris actually making this happen because it’s not getting talked about enough as her platform.
I think Yang’s UBI is better than Harris’ tax credit because it creates a disincentive to make more than $100K, at which time you lose $500/mo. That’s why Yang chose to make the payment available to every citizen without conditions.
Which plan is better and why? Who would you believe more about it?
Thanks a bunch for the details on Harris’ plan! I only saw it mentioned once or twice somewhere and that’s it (didn’t even notice chatter on it in the Harris thread here on Dope!!) – and now to find out that it’s just a tax credit…definitely inferior by far in every way!
BTW, during yesterday’s Fox News interview Andrew stated that his UBI would not be taxed before disbursement – though still counted as income for annual filing purposes and thus may push one into a higher income bracket.
Still better than a tax credit!
Yeah, universal’s the way to go…
Anyway, would you ever be fore Bernie if not Andrew?? It seems like a no-brainer but many of the latter’s supporters are Trump people and would almost all revert to Trump if Andrew’s not available. Who would be your second and third choice?
I’m still waiting for Harris to put her policy positions and proposals on her campaign website. Then there’ll be a substantive basis for talking about them.
It’s fine in relatively small amounts as a general redistributive system, but I don’t think it accomplishes most of the goals that people have for it at that level. Particularly, it doesn’t let you get rid of all the means-tested aid that’s out there, so you don’t the get efficiency improvements of getting rid of all the “who deserves aid” bureaucracy.
At levels large enough were you could conceivably do so, I’m very worried about the incentives it creates. Yes, some people, given a subsistence-level income, will spend their time on self-improvement and go on to start businesses and create great art and so on. But, like, a lot of them will watch a lot of TV and play a lot of video games and waste a lot of time on the internet. I think it very unlikely that the societal gains due to the people in the first group will be offset by the losses from many able people deciding that the life they can live without working is good enough, and not contributing. And even a relatively short attempt at UBI could potentially be setting them up for a lifetime of failure.
Oh, thanks for the tip! I didn’t even realize that.
Geez, that’s really crazy, seeing all the media coverage and she hasn’t even gotten it together yet!
Andrew’s got 80+ proposals already – the most of any candidate at this stage of the election, according to the Iowa Democrat Party – though I’m just after UBI; I don’t care about statehood for Puerto Rico or marijuana legalization.
'Cause I wanna see all the pros and cons…and so far I haven’t come across any credible cons but maybe you’ve got a winner! So thanks a bunch!!
Well, it wouldn’t happen overnight, certainly (though how in heck is Andrew promising deposits come January 2021???), but with 126 welfare programs (Andrew’s also said “hundreds” recently – !!!), surely a good amount of them will be reduced, whether through elimination or downsizing…I mean, consider that many, if not most, folks on disability aren’t exactly disabled but using it as a kinda DIY UBI anyway!!
So could some reduction work for you, or must it be “all”?? 'Cause there are probably some types of care that probably should be left for government to handle, like with the severely handicapped or whatever, real costly and better to have oversight (private facilities are not usually subject to the same oversight).
And is $1,000/mo. “relatively small” enough for you?
Hey, I’m all for a Star Trek future but even I’m not saying to just fund people’s lives right now (sigh – born 500 years too early!)…but I think you underestimate the innate human drive for meaning – the Will to Pleasure and the Will to Power everyone understands but for some reason people discount the Will to Meaning despite all this religions we’ve got around us, including newfangled ones, and including internet religions like arguing on internet forums!!
maybe it was mentioned, but $12,000 a year amounts to over $3 trillion dollars. That’s not much less than the entire federal budget now. It will be very,very difficult to fund that .
I’m not sure if you get much of an improvement from a partial reduction. If we imagine that UBI is out there, but it doesn’t pay as much as disability, do you really get substantially fewer people applying for disability? Maybe a few at the margin, but unless UBI is pretty close to the amount you get for disability, the incentive is still there, and still quite large.
But in order to get there, you effectively have to pay everyone something close to what people on disability would get. Which is ruinously expensive.
It’s large enough that I think it would cause major issues. It’s enough of an incentive to inaction. Lots of people can live on $1000/mo or so, especially groups. It’s also probably very difficult to live on if you are many kinds of disabled (obviously it’s going to vary a lot in individual cases).
I tend to think about UBI as something that a sufficiently rich society will likely implement. And I think we are nowhere near sufficiently rich. Do you agree with that? If so, should we be electing someone to national office next year based on a policy that shouldn’t be implemented for decades or more?
As far as meaning… the problem is that people find meaning in all sorts of societally and literally unproductive ways. They increasingly find it in the Skinner boxes of online entertainment. Which is fine for what it is. I like playing video games. I like watching movies. I like wasting time on the internet. Those are all fun things. But as a society, we shouldn’t subsidize them.
You’re thinking in terms of individual achievement, not in terms of macroeconomic demand. Giving real money to folks who won’t or can’t work enables them to participate in the market as purchasers. By feeding demand for things that “normal people” need, it will actually increase hiring in jobs that serve their needs. That’s better for the material culture than the hockey-stick distribution of purchasing power we have now, in which poor people live in houses literally falling apart while businesses chase the money from the super-rich.
So Andrew’s funding mechanism makes it in effect 1.3 trillion (1.5, something like that):
Tech VAT capturing the value created by tech companies such as every robo-truck mile logged and every Google search served
Savings through folks leaving many welfare programs such as SSDI/SSI which has become a de facto DIY UBI
Savings through decreased prison populations and healthcare needs, including substance abuse
Receipts from businesses experiencing increased sales due to UBI
Receipts from the entrepreneurial startups many would create with UBI
He has an Economics degree from Brown, a corporate law degree from Columbia, sold his successful startup to the Washington Post for millions, then started a successful non-profit that staffs “Forgotten America” startups with business grads.
I’m not a huge fan of UBI but that’s because I’m not a huge fan of markets in general.
That said, it’s probably better than nothing, but I have to question some of these plans where every part needs to work for any part to work. Passing legislation is really hard, and it’s incredibly likely we could pass one or two pieces, and then other necessary pieces get held up or actively sabotaged and the whole thing falls down. For instance, instating UBI but failing to pass any prison reforms, passing UBI but it being politically infeasible to also reduce/remove SSI/SSDI (which to be honest I think could co exist, especially SSDI). Hell, removing SSI/SSDI in preparation for UBI but UBI never coming or getting immediately gutted the next time there’s a republican congress+president would be the worst of it.
Well, what percentage of slackers at any given moment could you tolerate? Because there’s always “waste” – 80% of your gasoline doesn’t actually move the car forward; did you know that?
No – a $20 trillion economy with only revenue of $4 trillion…um, something’s not right there. Like very deeply seriously wrong.
The robo-apocalypse is already upon us. Do you disagree with the fact that four million manufacturing jobs have been automated – and retail, fast-food, trucking, and call center and clerical jobs are next within five to ten years?? Have you not experienced Google’s automated phone attendant yet?
Um, as a former personal fitness trainer, I can tell you that proper rest and recuperation is exactly as important as working out hard.
The reason you see so much slacking today is because people’s jobs are so hard, whether physically or otherwise…so they don’t want to deal with anything else at the end of the day. It’s like a loveless marriage where folks go through the motions – they may even have sex every night of the week but the sex is actually a desperate attempt at clawing for the intimacy and union that’s otherwise missing…
Not that UBI will suddenly result in an explosion of Maslowian self-fulfilled citizens but it will start the process.
Thanks for pointing that out. My personal problem is that if I think broadly, I tend to wind up with long-winded posts – but if I focus, I wind up missing out on other equally important points and angles.
Curious, then – what would you have, ideally, and which candidate best approximates it?
Well, everything’s a system, after all, meaning nothing works “on its own”…baseball isn’t just rules but requires players and umps and fans and hot dogs, etc., and national finances means a, b, c through x, y, and z.
INDEED!!! I’m almost of a mind to go to Andrew’s March Washington, NJ even to ask him myself about oh-so-many policy “nuances”…like how the heck he’s supposed to actually achieve this shit!!! XD
His site promises to start depositing money January 2021 – I was like, WTF??? Will he just do an Executive Order???
He has 80+ policy proposals on his site – the most by far of anyone at this stage of any campaign they’d ever seen, said the Iowa Democrat Party – check it out.
But regarding coexistence: he’s not arguing to eliminate any welfare program in particular, only noting that many would get more money with UBI and so not use, say, SSI (though wouldn’t that constitute fraud, since SSI’s about being disabled???)…
Hmm, now I gotta see if I can get to his Washington, NJ event!
So thanks a bunch!!