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Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

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Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#341

Post by kyledrake »

Reedx wrote: post #335
rustybelt wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

None of the stuff Yang is proposing will pass the current Senate, including and especially UBI. Why not drop UBI then as well?

The fact is that he is trying to call his fake health plan "Medicare for All" when it doesn't even have a public option and was recently called out on it, and frankly it makes him look more like a swindler than a serious candidate.

https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1211317868555423744

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#342

Post by skybrian »

e40 wrote: post #164
sethammons wrote: post #159

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.

The good thing is that it's very scalable. Maybe start at lower levels and see what happens?

Ideally we would see more and larger randomized controlled trials, too, but that tends to strike people as unfair.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#343

Post by carapace »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #326
carapace wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I have no idea how your comment connects with what I wrote.

It’s been tried before. Lots of times. The reality of “let’s form our own utopia town/city/commune” always loses out to reality of primal human interests.

Ah, no, that's exactly what I don't want to do, more-or-less for just that reason.

Just riffing...

It would be a kind of vertically-integrated real estate development company, along with some manufacturing and tech/software company-ish.

Essentially, it's a terraforming company and the eco-cities it makes are the product.

We have the technology: Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language" et. al.; Permaculture (applied ecology if you prefer), including carbon-neutral integrated alcohol fuel production (also, tug on this thread: "New Alchemy Institute" "living machines" [1] ); Bucky Fuller's "Design Science Revolution" for inspiration and large-scale efficiency[0]; etc... (Those are just my own "favorite hits".)

The idea is both 1) sell/lease cheaply ("affordable housing") to alleviate economic pressure, and 2) provide a steady income to members to offset economic obsolescence.

(I maintain that UBI makes sense only in the context of wide-spread inability for the "average person" to compete in the job market. And I think that's already happening. I mean, if I wasn't good at computers I don't know wtf I could do to make a living. I'd probably be homeless!)

I don't want this hypothetical company to be political or ideological (not even Hippie ideology) just economic (to the extent that that's realistic, eh?) We can work out the politics of everything once people have a place to live and a steady "three square meals a day", and it's ecologically harmonious, which is another way to say cheap and bountiful.

Frankly, I'm not qualified to run this sort of thing. I'm a recluse, with ways different than your own. But it seems to me that it would be sooooo easy, and that there are enough people and enough "free-floating" capital to make it happen.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project

> It is moon-crater-shaped: the crater's truncated cone top opening is a half-mile in diameter, rim-to-rim, while the truncated mountain itself is a mile in diameter at its base ring. The city has a one-mile (1.6 km)-diameter geodesic, quarter-sphere transparent umbrella mounted high above it to permit full, all-around viewing below the umbrella's bottom perimeter. The top of the dome roof is 1,000 feet (300 m) high. The bottom rim of the umbrella dome is 500 feet (150 m) above the surrounding terrain

Some more information and a couple of pictures of the model at: https://solutions.synearth.net/a-community-dwelling-machine/

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22New+Alchemy+Institute%22++%22li...

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#344

Post by banads »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #321
banads wrote: post #208

How can a US Dollar based UBI solve the problems of automation when the Super Admins of the US Dollar are explicitly pursuing the opposite goal? According to the Federal Reserve website, 2/3 of their main goals are: 1. Seeking to maximize employment 2. Maintaining stable prices https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/what-economic-goals-does... Automation and ephemeralization minimize employment and prices, but the money…

Simple proposition, but the Federal Reserve is not part of the US Government. Perhaps it’s time that system be re-evaluated?

Indeed, the Federal Reserve is over 100 years old. However, I fear the Fed is such a powerful and entrenched legacy system that it is extremely unlikely for it to be politically re-evaluated unless there were some sort of catastrophic system failure.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#345

Post by dragonwriter »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #338
dragonwriter wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 housi…

> 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.

California has several times as many unoccupied housing units as homeless people. California doesn't have a hard shortage of housing units, certain people that need housing in California have insufficient material means to convince the people that own existing unoccupied housing units to rent or sell to them.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#346

Post by skybrian »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #238
Aloha wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look at UBI as a replacement for a part time minimum wage job, not for working. Meaning it ought to give you about 250 dollars a week. I also view it as a replacement for having minimum wage too - but no one will work for 2.00 and hour either. UBI will free throws labor force, and make it easier for labor to be more mobile and move to where the jobs are - the other key about UBI is everyone gets it, no matter if we…

> " ...the other key about UBI is everyone gets it, no matter if wealthy or poor " Of course if you have anything above poverty level income, it gets snatched right back plus whole lot more though taxes to cover the other UBI recipients who don't. The "everybody gets UBI" rhetoric doesn't really fool anybody; money doesn't come out of thin air.

Yes, the equality of everyone getting the same amount with UBI is symbolic since you need to look at the overall effect combined with taxes. It's better thought of as a redistribution and insurance program. Most people with average or above income will be getting back their own money, like an income tax refund that happens throughout the year. (Not accounting for this makes the cost look a lot higher than it is.)

Financial security is important though. Paying more in taxes in normal times so you know you'll be okay between jobs would make everyone more secure.

The tends to worry people who think their fellow citizens can't handle financial security and will do crazy things unless forced to worry about money all the time. I think more bad stuff happens due to poverty than due to having some money.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#347

Post by manfredo »

hacknat wrote: post #100
kyledrake wrote: post #50

"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…

I agree with you that VAT by itself is regressive, but coupled with UBI it is not even close. Relative to their wealth, Rich people, effectively, do not even pay income tax. The bulk of income tax is paid by the middle class. Does that seem fair to you? I agree with you that money is power, but you are not going to stop the existence of Billionaires and Trillionaires. That would need to be a coordinated global effort…

> Relative to their wealth, Rich people, effectively, do not even pay income tax. The bulk of income tax is paid by the middle class. Does that seem fair to you?

Where are you getting this information? From what I can find, the top 20% of Americans pay 87% of income taxes: https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-americans-will-pay-87...

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#348

Post by carapace »

nixpulvis wrote: post #329
carapace wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no such thing as a free lunch. Sure there is. In fact, all lunch was free until we invented money and farming. The Sun is a free lunch . "It's raining soup, grab a bucket!"

The sun still requires space to harvest, much like anything.

Well if we can't agree that each person gets enough [space for enough] sunlight for free just because of birth and gravity, then what is there to talk about?

Keep in mind that, if we can beat gravity just a little bit, there's a lot of space, eh? I mean, nothing but, really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#349

Post by echelon »

hanniabu wrote: post #202
jostylr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Native American example with UBI (North Carolina, casino-based UBI) and it sounds like it immediately improved outcomes and did not impact working: https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-... Also, would you stop working if you got 12k a year for free? How much do the wealthy make in dividends a year? Do they stop working? Maybe to ensure that the wealthy continue to work, we should pre…

As a personal anecdote, I would love volunteering with building homes, helping elderly, or helping animal conservation and rehabilitation efforts. I would also like to work on some inventions (I'm a mechanical engineer). However, volunteering doesn't pay anything and inventing something is really risky, so as a result I can't contribute in such ways to society and instead am working at a job I hate contributing to my…

> However, volunteering doesn't pay anything and inventing something is really risky, so as a result I can't contribute in such ways to society and instead am working at a job I hate contributing to my deteriorating quality of life and mental health (i feel like a slave working towards having enough money to buy myself from my owner).

I often wonder how many people feel this.

I don't feel quite as dire about it, but I absolutely agree that my best contributions to society will be those I initiate and see to fruition on my own accord. Unfortunately, I too have many ideas, yet so little time to work on them.

It's too risky to quit work and embark on my own, so I only get 1/10th of my vision done during the evening and weekend hours I can spare. And even then I'm burning the last remaining cycles of effort I have during the day. It's a slow, painful slog. But I am making progress.

If I were in the flip side position of being a CEO with a product vision and lots of workers to see my ideas through to fruition, how many of my employees would be stuck in the same trough of apparent underutilization and under-fulfillment? If I empowered them to follow their own path and dreams, wouldn't they quit and leave me with nobody to work on my vision?

If you get rid of the perhaps boring and mundane "keeping the lights on" jobs, which are ever so important, then the product dies.

This is a hard problem.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#350

Post by Reedx »

kyledrake wrote: post #341
Reedx wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

None of the stuff Yang is proposing will pass the current Senate, including and especially UBI. Why not drop UBI then as well? The fact is that he is trying to call his fake health plan "Medicare for All" when it doesn't even have a public option and was recently called out on it, and frankly it makes him look more like a swindler than a serious candidate. https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1211317868555423744

Aye, that is disappointing. It's oddly out of character for him and I think he made a big mistake using that label. Not sure what's going on there and hope they revise that.

As for UBI, I have the same concern and worry he's too far ahead of the zeitgeist for it. Though he makes a strong case when you hear him talk about it and answer questions in depth, even to many across the aisle. And generally I think he'd have a good shot of at least bringing people together enough that they could have a good faith debate. Outside of UBI I suspect he'd make a surprising amount of progress.

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