That would be Portland, and the “prison” was the completely unused and never opened Wapato county jail facility. It sits on almost 20 acres and has bunk room for about 600 people, along with toilets, showers, a commercial grade laundry and kitchen, infirmary, gym, movie room and office spaces where service providers could have been set up quite easily for onsite use of the residents. TriMet, the local public transit department, was completely onboard to run shuttles to and from the facility to the nearest Max light rail line. Since it’s not perfect, it’s now going to be demolished after costing the residents of Portland millions of dollars since it was first proposed in the '90s. Epic fuckup, if you ask me.
Yeah. Unbelievable.
I generally support a pretty generous safety net. But the idea of folk having to put in SOME effort or inconvenience to benefit from it does not offend me.
I’ll read that primer this weekend, thanks. I also don’t believe theories “work” (are accurate) just because they are “a mathematical interpretation of observed functioning”, but perhaps that is a separate debate.
In the meantime, I am still of the opinion that expenditures should not exceed revenues in the long term.
~Max
I think that a UBI would be of questionable effectiveness without some sort of backstop like subsidized housing, because otherwise rents might just rise until they ate up all of the UBI, especially in any place where people actually want to live and has any sort of zoning or laws getting in the way of medium-to-low-priced housing. Creating new cheap housing in the boonies would be one way of resolving this. Better to at least start analyzing this now than after 25 more years of automation. Look at what happened when we did the same with the debt and global warming.
But first of all we need national health care. It’s a complete no brainer.
Nobody’s really addressed the effect on the various markets if UBI was implemented. I mean, if EVERYONE has another $1000/month in their pockets, are UBI proponents thinking that somehow the prices for EVERYTHING are not going to go up?
Remember, the price of most things is not related to the cost to produce, distribute, etc… but rather what people are willing to pay.
The real unfortunate part is that I suspect that prices would rise most in poorer areas because of the sudden and significant amount of extra income in the system- it’s like everyone got a $12k a year raise.
My basic understanding of MMT is that it’s a belief that governments can continuously accumulate debt without needing to pay it off from tax surpluses. Old debt will eventually be paid off by an expanding money supply and replaced by new debt. There does seem to be a real world basis to the theory as many prosperous countries have governments that have decades–old deficit histories and debts. However, I’m mindful that in 2007, many people believed that housing prices would only ever go up, so the size of their housing loan didn’t matter since they would pay it off from the future increase in their house’s value. It’s a great theory right up until it doesn’t work. Regarding MMT, it relies in the faith of the lenders, in other words the treasury bond purchasers, that the bonds they’re buying will maintain their value. That faith isn’t guaranteed. Indeed, if bond purchasers believe a government is engaging in inflationary monetary policy, they’re going to stop buying that government’s bonds unless the interest rate on the bonds is higher than the expected rate of inflation. If a country gets into an expanding inflation/interest rate spiral as the only way of continuing to make government payments, it’s economy is going to go down, and probably in a very harsh way.
Taking a quick look at the primer, I was struck by this sentence:
“It is apparent that if one sector is going to run a budget surplus, at least one other sector must run a budget deficit.”
That seems to be taking the idea that the amounts borrowed must be equal to the amounts lended, which is true, and then applying it to government deficits and surpluses, assuming it’s a zero-sum situation. That’s like saying that all the businesses in an economy must have a combined profit of zero, which isn’t true. It also goes against the whole idea of expansionary monetary policy making government debt irrelevant. Maybe I scanned too far past the introductory bits or stopped reading too early. But a quick look at their primer doesn’t encourage me that MMT theorists are equivalent to Isaac Newton.
I thought that too, but I read a few pieces earlier today saying MMT isn’t really into the idea of financing the government with bonds. Bonds are just there to take money out of the banking reserves, and even then I guess MMT economists prefer taxes and direct regulation to combat inflation and interest.
There’s also an upper limit to the deficit, after which point even MMT proponents must say there will be inflation, which is the point of maximum economic capacity. At that point any increase in money supply must necessarily increase the price instead of quantity of goods.
I did read through that (second) article, but I’m not sure what you disagree with. Given a static money supply all businesses in an economy do have a combined financial profit of zero. An isolated economy as a whole cannot grow, just as the energy in an isolated thermodynamic system is constant. It’s like if four people were standing in a room with exactly forty dollars between them. No matter how they redistribute the money, there will always be exactly forty dollars distributed among the whole group. The amount one man loses after a round of transactions is exactly equal to the amount the rest of the group gains in aggregate.
And so, assuming a static money supply, if the government spends $10bn on the private sector then the private sector gains exactly what the government lost: $10bn.
~Max
One of the big drawbacks of Yang’s UBI, imo, is that it’s structured in a way in which those in the most need end up getting the very least. Namely, the disabled among us who cannot participate in the work force in much of any way, due to that disability, thus surviving on meager scraps from the government in the form of SSI or even SSDI payments.
These payments would count against Yang’s $1000, so if they receive 800/month in disability payments, then Yang’s UBI for that person would be $200/month. If the disability payments happened to be $1000 a month, they get nothing from Yang. So Donald Trump gets a check for a $1000/month but the woman with cerebral palsy living in a trailer gets nothing? That doesnt sound “Universal” to me.
Thing about a UBI is that it needs a federal jobs guarantee to go along with. So you have a floor below which you can’t fall but the option is always there to work to whatever amount is possible/desirable to make up any shortfalls. A JG is a de facto rise in minimum wage (and of all other wages too because if you can get a JG job for $15/hour your employer is going to have to add to your salary to keep you from bailing and going elsewhere) and it improves mobility–how many of us would move from our current locations like a shot if we knew we could get another job in the community we prefer? With a guaranteed job, rent covered and no indenture to an employer for your health insurance the majority of us would be healthier, happier, and living where it best suits us and the need for a safety net would decrease. Add in putting a shit ton of people to work in the green sector generating renewable energy and maintaining the electrical grid and you remove the need to pay a ton of money every month for power too for the majority of people.
Implement these changes and see how much better everyone feels about life. Everybody talks about money and how do we pay for things but the fact is that the only currency there actually IS is work–productivity is what we use instead of gold to peg the worth of our currency to and if the majority of people are working and producing productivity the economy is kept healthy and busy. As it stands we have a huge number of people working way too hard just to keep from starving and going homeless, a huge number of people who’re starving and going homeless and a very small number of people who’re raking in the products of the labor of the first group and the labor generated by dealing with the second group and that third group produces nothing and adds no value. This is a problem–but that third group is “rich” so we think they’re perfectly okay but they’re nothing more nor less than parasites that are causing the overall organism to die like ticks on a moose. Not good.
No. While everyone has an extra $1,000 UBI check only the lower income bracket will have a net increase in their income after taxes. Those in the middle income bracket will about break even and the upper income will be worse off–they will be paying more than $1,000 extra each month in taxes.
A federal jobs guarantee would be a horrendous bureaucratic mess to implement.
Sure if you just look at the outlay. On the other hand Trump’s taxes go up say $24,000 per year while the person on disability continues to get the money from the government they need to survive. Sure the person on disability doesn’t have their life improve but the goal of UBI is to create a floor that people can’t fall through not improve the life of people that are currently secured by the current safety net.
If you want to argue that the UBI should be more than $1000 that is a separate argument but creating a floor for society that you have to try to break through is a good thing.
I just think the program is being disingenuously marketed. Using language such as that found here in his UBI mission statement: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/ strikes me as a bit deceptive…
[Quote/]
Andrew would implement the Freedom Dividend, a universal basic income of $1,000/month, $12,000 a year, for every American adult over the age of 18. This is independent of one’s work status or any other factor. This would enable all Americans to pay their bills, educate themselves, start businesses, be more creative, stay healthy, relocate for work, spend time with their children, take care of loved ones, and have a real stake in the future.
[Quote/]
It is simply untrue that Yang’s UBI provides $12,000 a year for every American adult, regardless of one’s work status or any other factor.
“This would enable all Americans to pay their bills, educate themselves, start businesses, be more creative, stay healthy, relocate for work, spend time with their children, take care of loved ones, and have a real stake in the future”.
This part is also untrue. Unless the argument is that those disabled people currently existing on $1,000 a month in disability payments are also able to educate themselves, stay healthy, relocate, start businesses and have a real stake in the future, all dependent on that same original $1000 that up to this point, hasn’t seemed to afford them much more than mere survival.
Right, like i said, those in most need of assistance get the least. Because by his very own words, the goal of a UBI is to lift up every American and improve their lives by providing more security and life options. So i guess a valid interpretation of his words are that disabled people arent True Americans? Only half-kidding but thr truth must be that simply not dying is the most they can hope for.
Do EBT cards also count against Yang’s UBI? What about veteran’s benefits?
No one should go without food, housing, educational opportunities, or medical care. There are enough resources to guarantee these things to everyone.
Ambivalid: There is a separate thread for Yang’s proposal:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=872849
I am not familiar with this proposal, but I expect Food Stamps would go away while Veteran’s Benefits would remain–but be somewhat modified.
In some systems the doctors get a certain amount for each insured party. That reduces the incentive to order unnecessary tests, since it comes out of the bottom line. More openness to providing price lists will help also. Single payer systems wouldn’t have as complex price lists as the current system.
And providing feedback based on data would help also - if a doctor gets a statement saying that 70% of the tests prescribed were not called for based on evidence, it would help. With penalties if there was no good reason.
I doubt many patients demand anything that a doctor couldn’t dissuade them from. The power balance is still on the doctor’s side. That’s why we have prescription drugs, after all.
An example - during my recent bout of prostate cancer (now cured, hurray for technology) my urologist tried to get me to take something that he claimed would help improve my chances (which were good anyway) but which had side effects. I asked him for the data on how much it would help. He didn’t have any and I said no thanks.
I subscribe to something I once read (in a book by Mario Cuomo, if I recall correctly): the question isn’t whether government or the private sector is better. The question is, what needs to be done, and who is the best to do it?
I subscribe to a belief that there are certain areas of society where the government is best suited to ensure that our needs are met:
Health
Education
Infrastructure, and
Safety
With this as a framework, I definitely agree that the social safety net should include universal access to healthcare and comprehensive education (publicly available from pre-kindergarten through graduate school). Effective healthcare would, of course, include ensuring people are properly fed (instead of food stamps, why not give everybody access to doctors, and let those doctors prescribe food vouchers as they deem necessary in furtherance of a medically appropriate nutrition plan?)
And - while it’s not something I’m clear about how to implement - infrastructure can certainly include housing. I don’t know if that should be through subsidies or actual government homes, but I have sometimes thought that (were money no object) I’d love to build neighborhoods full of “tiny houses” for the homeless/underclass.
During the worst of the last recession the estimate was that there were six or more empty foreclosed houses for every homeless person in the country. A conservative estimate is that 40% of all food grown in the country ends up being thrown out and wasted. We don’t have a resource problem, we have an allocation problem. An endless cycle of deciding who “owns” things and who “deserves” things is what we do instead of just taking care of people.
Look i don’t know anything about yang’s proposal and I come at this from a libertarian point of view as it is the way to provide safety net with the least possible government intervention.
It seems to me that your complaint is that Yang’s UBI proposal isn’t a large enough number you want 48k per year or something. I guess a debate can be had about what the right number is but I don’t think you’re going about it the right way if that’s what you’re trying to argue.
On the other hand if your complaint is that the person who is not physically or mentally capable of work should be treaded better than the drug addict who was too stoned to go to work or the guys who was too lazy to get off his couch. I’m not sure if i agree with you but that could be a really interesting debate.
I’m not really sure what you’re talking about so I’ll stop there.