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Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

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Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#331
post #164

I like the idea of freeing people to be able to quit and get a new job any time, where quitting today means a real threat of losing one's home, transportation, or ability to eat (never mind fueling the cycle of debt that keeps so many down). I think it would be a net benefit if people could tell oppressive employers to fuck off without fear. However, a welfare state is a real thing to be worried about. My sister work…

Any time such a huge change is introduced into a complex system, it is extremely hard to see all the unintended consequences. I like the idea of UBI, too. Taking that leap worries me, though, we might be in for a worse time because of it.

Technology is already introducing huge changes. We take huge leaps all the time without much of an ability to say yes or no.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you are saying about Native Americans is contradicted by every study that has been done so far. https://www.wired.com/story/free-money-the-surprising-effect... Yang also discusses this in his book. Please don't comment hyperbole if you're not able to support your thoughts with data.

> if you're not able to support your thoughts with data Likewise. That article is a highly anecdotal puff piece, focusing on a few exceptional inspirational stories from a single tribe. I could find all sorts of non-UBI rags-to-riches stories too. AFAIK, despite no end of UBI pontification, no real study has even been done about existing native UBI (correct me please). What we do know is that Native Americans consist…

Here is a study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1...

Their chosen highlights:

>Highlights >The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) has provided UBI averaging $6600 US (2015) dollars for a family of four since 1982.

>The PFD reduced the number of rural Alaska Indigenous people in poverty during 2011–2015 by 22%, down from 46% in 2000.

>The PFD reduced poverty among rural Alaska Indigenous seniors by more than 40%, to rates that are now relatively low.

>Child poverty rates have been increasing; however, the PFD reduced 2011–2015 rural Alaska Native child poverty rates by 25%.

>Errors in official statistics will cause them to understate the actual rise in poverty rates as future PFD amounts decline.

Note that the PFD amounts are about a quarter of what Yang suggests (assuming two parents; number of children is irrelevant to his plan).

The last line of the abstract is "Evidence has not appeared for commonly hypothesized potential adverse social and economic consequences of UBI."

I personally would be curious to know more about what kind of UBI-ish payments have been made, in what amounts, how it varies from group to group, and what are the differences in outcome. I imagine that a lot has to do with the actual amounts received and if there are conditions for receiving it (such as staying on the reservation) and what kind of restrictions might be in place for building up infrastructure or doing other economic activities in addition to surrounding oppressive attitudes. There would be a lot of interesting stuff that could be looked into.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent prices are still governed by supply and demand (modulo some rent control), not by how much money the tenants have.

> Rent prices are still governed by supply and demand This is not accurate. Rent prices have little to do with supply and demand, and are primarily driven by how much money tenants have (or more accurately, how much tenants can be bled for before they give up and leave). This is why rent rises even when supply is greater than demand, and why rents rise even in places where demand is falling dramatically.

Rent prices have everything to do with supply and demand. One of the reasons they're so high in San Francisco is that it's surrounded on three sides by water, which restricts outward supply expansion. And then zoning restricts upward supply expansion. You have much the same issue in Manhattan, which is an island.

How else do you explain housing costs being lower in Austin (available land, less restrictive zoning) than New York City despite Austin having a higher median income?

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#334

"Altman, who favors UBI, said in exchange for a floor, he’d like to see no ceiling on earnings, as some, like presidential hopeful Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have suggested. And like Friedman, Altman suggested tying the amount of the basic income to a fixed percentage of GDP. “Right now, because people are rightly angry that there's no floor, and that most people have no real chance to be super successful, we sort…

“A system that will concentrate that much power will be inherently evil” It’s always puzzling to me when people equate wealth with evil. Why the unnecessary moralizing? Just say “concentrated wealth in the hands of the few has the potential to cause systemic societal harm” No need to paint it as a battle of good vs evil, it severely diminishes the substance of your point.

Actually a lot of them do very bad things with their money that are very harmful to society, whether it's Bill Gates fraternizing with a convicted child sex trafficker, Peter Thiel platforming for racist demagogue Trump, Vinod Khosla spending unlimited amounts of money to carve out private access to beaches, or running for president and sinking a record setting amount of money on his campaign like Michael Bloomberg is doing. None of these clowns deserve to be billionaires and nothing bad will happen to them or us if a small chunk of their money is used to pay for things like single payer healthcare.

But my point is that no tiny handful of people should be allowed to have that kind of power, whether they're evil or not.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to free people from tyrannical employers, isn’t free healthcare step one? Perhaps some sort of more available food stamps step two? I would agree with a lot of the criticism of government should not target too closely etc, but those two programs seems pretty well run compared to the free market alternatives. At least when they are allowed to.

Yep, that's why Yang completely lost me when he dropped Medicare for All. Universal healthcare would dramatically reduce the dependance of workers on exploitative employers and it's way more feasible than UBI. Over 50% of healthcare today in the US is already funded by the government.

He supports healthcare for everyone, that's literally the goal[1]. He just has a different approach to get there. And some argue it's a more realistic approach than Medicare for All, which (at this point) doesn't seem terribly likely to get widespread support and pass.

1. https://www.yang2020.com/policies/medicare-for-all/

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles to imagine which of those words you found fancy Yang’s website says the plan will rely on poor people electing not to get other social safety net benefits. People will end up without healthcare and without food if there are not programs in place to address those problems specifically.

> found fancy I was giving you the benefit > without healthcare and without food What? I've never heard him say this and seens like something he wouldn't say given his stance on wellbeing. Also, you can use UBI for food. The only thing I've heard is people on welfare programs would be able to choose between continuing those or stopping them and switching to UBI. Nothing about healthcare and with these the people get…

From Yang’s campaign website: “Current welfare and social program beneficiaries would be given a choice between their current benefits or $1,000 cash unconditionally – most would prefer cash with no restriction.”

The point of public healthcare and food programs, among the other programs he’s talking about not having, is that even if you run out of money you can still buy food because the food stamps are reserved for doing so.

I know you all like to imagine everyone is rational like you, but what will you do when someone has spent everything and cannot feed themselves? Or has spent everything because of an emergency and their healthcare coverage lapses and they are ill?

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#337
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Try to actually settle down (without winning the startup/rich parents/literal lottery first) and see how it goes. If you haven't raised a nice safety fund and you get sick, you are screwed. If you dont want to live in the middle of nowhere, land owners are going to want a huge chunk of money for that priviledge. Also good luck finding a part time job that pays much better than minimum wage. I know a lot o…

100 years ago, you were screwed if you got the wrong infection no matter how rich you were. Now we cure that with a $30 course of antibiotics. Even just the limited healthcare you can get from free clinics and emergency treatment that hospitals are required to provide even if you aren't able to pay would be better than the best care money could buy 100 years ago.

Of course antibiotics and other things have improved since 100 years ago, nobody is arguing otherwise. The argument is that right now we could have cheap antibiotics and less working hours.

The counter argument was that the average person chooses luxury over less working hours, and my counter-counter argument was that this choice isn't actually available to most people. Also, that actually the choice most people have is to work less and live something like 100 years ago with reduced life span, etc, or work a lot and survive.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working homelessness is a thing in California because of outrageous housing costs. The problem there isn't insufficient wages, it's insufficient local housing. You can live a spartan life on $12,000/year in many places in the midwest and not die of poverty.

> The problem there isn't insufficient wages Yes it is. > it's insufficient local housing Insufficient housing given wages and insufficient wages given housing costs are the exact same thing . If you have one you, ipso facto , have the other. California has insufficient low-end wages (and poverty support programs) given the prices (not just for housing, though that's a particularly significant aspect of the issue) cr…

> Insufficient housing given wages and insufficient wages given housing costs are the exact same thing. If you have one you, ipso facto, have the other.

They're not. If you need housing for two million people and you have housing for one million, and you refuse to build any more housing, you don't have enough housing. It doesn't matter how much money people have because whoever has the most would just bid up housing prices so they can have it and there would be people left at the bottom without it.

Whereas if you had enough housing for twice as many people as actually live there then housing would be very inexpensive and even people not making very much money would be able to afford it, because getting a unit wouldn't require outbidding someone with a lot more money than you.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're not able to support your thoughts with data Likewise. That article is a highly anecdotal puff piece, focusing on a few exceptional inspirational stories from a single tribe. I could find all sorts of non-UBI rags-to-riches stories too. AFAIK, despite no end of UBI pontification, no real study has even been done about existing native UBI (correct me please). What we do know is that Native Americans consist…

Here is a study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1... Their chosen highlights: >Highlights >The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) has provided UBI averaging $6600 US (2015) dollars for a family of four since 1982. >The PFD reduced the number of rural Alaska Indigenous people in poverty during 2011–2015 by 22%, down from 46% in 2000. >The PFD reduced poverty among rural Alaska Indigenous…

Interesting, thanks.

The highlights are definitely select the best results; there are some less than great things in the body.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent prices are still governed by supply and demand (modulo some rent control), not by how much money the tenants have.

> Rent prices are still governed by supply and demand This is not accurate. Rent prices have little to do with supply and demand, and are primarily driven by how much money tenants have (or more accurately, how much tenants can be bled for before they give up and leave). This is why rent rises even when supply is greater than demand, and why rents rise even in places where demand is falling dramatically.

how much tenants can be bled for before they give up and leave

That's demand.

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