Okay, I guess I’ll read up on how Sanders’ platform matches MMT.
So who’re you rooting for?
Look there are people on food stamps with hungry children. Why? Personal choices. UBI does not make someone a good decision maker, or even an adequate one. Are you going to step into individuals’ personal lives? Make sure they feed their children?
It is easier to fulfill the basic needs than it has been in the history of the human race. There’s no need to engage in massive transfers to make it a little easier.
Anyone who will make a good antiwar case.
There are no candidates which approximate it, considering my ideal is “the workers should seize the means of production.”
Oops:
- Income tax from increased employment from businesses experienced increased business!
Though Andrew has said on Iowa TV that if economic conditions are right, he’s interested in abolishing the (presumably federal) income tax sometime in the future!!
So President Eisenhower was wrong?
Making good decisions, they say, comes from experience.
Experience comes from making bad decisions.
We already do – by law one has to feed one’s children.
The problem is one of distribution systems.
VOX POPVLI VOX DEI
If the people vote for it, then DEVS VULT.
Okay…what would be a “good antiwar case” to you?
So what do you want here?
I’m serious (not being “snarky”).
So where do you work?
I mean, I don’t expect any candidate to support this, but I would like it to come more into the line of acceptable discourse. I’m part of the IWW though, so there’s always the veritable pipe dream of “we hit critical mass someday and the one big union organizes the one big strike.”
I’m a graduate research assistant at a university.
Got a cite for this claim?
What’s the “this”?? You want to revive the union movement?
So what would it mean for you to “seize the means of production” at your workplace?
I mean, literally, how would your duties change, your routine, et cetera?
What would you consider a citation?
The conversation would make more sense if Andrew Yang were talked about as “a man with ideas worth debating who has chosen a Presidential campaign as a path to publicity” rather than speaking of a Yang Presidency as though it were possible or desirable. I will be dismayed if energy is wasted on Yang’s campaign that could be better spent ensuring victory against Trump and the R’s.
Frankly, the ideas of the Democratic Presidential contenders are of absolutely no interest to me except as they affect electability. For example, I’m vetoing Kamala Harris because of her strong anti-gun stance. Gun control is an issue of no interest to me … but a strong stance may make it hard to get support from many voters.
I might also avoid means testing for other reasons. But the “cliff” problem with Harris’ program is a problem with many programs and can easily be avoided.
Instead of a flat $500 monthly rebate all the way up to $99,999 of annual income after which it drops to zero, simply set the rebate amount to, for example,
the Larger of {Zero, the Smaller of {$500, f(annual_income/1000) } }
where f(x) = 500 - x - x^2÷25
I’m not sure whether it is the innumeracy of citizens, innumeracy of legislators, or the presumed innumeracy of accountants and programmers which means such useful formulae are avoided in “preference” to simplistic disincentivizing cliffs.
The very same spirit which propels the idea of UBI should also propel us toward
(1) free single-payer health care for Americans, and
(2) improvements to public schools that don’t mutate into opportunities for Betsy DeVos’ criminal friends, or taxpayer funding for anti-science propaganda.
These relatively simple goals would go a long way toward the goals of UBI. Let’s start by seeing if America is up to these tasks.
I’m at least theoretically in favor of UBI, though I’d really like to see some smaller-scale experiments before rolling it out in a nation of a third of a billion people, because theory doesn’t always match reality.
That said, even if I were 100% gung-ho on UBI, I’d still support Sanders over Yang, because Sanders is actually running for President and Yang isn’t. There’s a chance that Sanders might decide to support UBI, and a larger chance that he’d take steps that move in that general direction, but there’s no chance that Yang will run for President, at least this cycle, and no indications that he’ll even start making moves in the direction of running for President.
Collecting this would be challenging.
I don’t get this one. If a UBI is less than SSDI and SSI, then we will save money. If it isn’t, we don’t.
Also don’t get this. If we give people money, their health care needs decrease? Or they stop dealing drugs/shooting each other/robbing liquor stores because the UBI pays better than crime?
I don’t see why business overall would experience increased sales. Every dollar that someone receiving the UBI spends replaces a dollar spent by the taxpayer funding UBI. If the UBI is funding by borrowing, that is inflationary.
Again, not clear. People are going to start up businesses because they don’t have to work? Or they won’t care if their businesses turn a profit because they have outside income? What receipts would you tax in that case?
Regards,
Shodan
Let’s start with wherever you got the idea that “many, if not most, folks on disability aren’t exactly disabled but using it as a kinda DIY UBI anyway!!”
UBI would, overall, be a transfer (“redistribution”, if you prefer that word) of wealth from the richer to the poorer, and the poorer, on average, spend a greater proportion of their wealth. So one would, in fact, expect UBI to increase consumer spending.
What’s a ticking time bomb?
I disagree that a bad plan is “worth a try”. The existence of a problem doesn’t imply that a particular solution is worth trying.
Sure, waste exists. But we shouldn’t pursue a policy that leads to more of it. Just like we should try to build cars that are more efficient, not less efficient.
I don’t understand what this means, or how it relates to the part of my post you quoted just before it.
First of all, this is totally wrong. People’s jobs are not harder today than they were in the past. It’s just that non-productive ways to spend your time are so much more plentiful and engaging. But also this misses the point. I’m not talking about people who work and also waste time on the internet. I’m talking about people who don’t work and waste time on the internet. They’re not resting up from the hardships of their employment. They’re just being unproductive.
True. But unless it also increases production, the result will be inflation. So far I don’t see much to support the idea that UBI is going to increase the supply of anything societally useful.
I am interesting in seeing some more UBI experiments as well, but I am very skeptical of the ones I’ve seen so far, which tend to be short-term. I think that such experiments tell you nothing useful about how people will really respond to UBI. If you go to someone and say “we’re going to give you this guaranteed income for a 3-year study”, they’re mostly going to take the money and keep making their normal life plans. Because obviously the money is going away and what are you going to do after three years?
But what we need to know is what they do when the offer is “we’re going to give you this guaranteed income for the rest of your life”. Do they live a productive life?
That particular study would take quite a long time, but we have some natural experiments that we could draw from. How do moderate lottery winners fare? A family of four, say, that wins $1 million paid out over 20 years is pretty close to the $1000/mo. 20 years isn’t forever, but it’s long enough that I think it’s going to tell us something useful. Are lottery winners more productive members of society than their cohort?
Here’s the problem: the population of people who can’t work won’t really be changed by policy. Either you are able to work or you aren’t. But the population of people who won’t work is very flexible.
There are a few people who could work but won’t, and not much is going to change that. And there are a few people who get great satisfaction out of working and will do so regardless of whether they need the money.
But in between, lots of people won’t work if they have enough money not to. A policy that gives a bunch of people who could work, who would do work useful work in the absence of that policy, an incentive not to do so is a really bad policy!