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Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

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Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#111

Post by wonderwonder »

jimbob45 wrote: post #98
throwaway_jobs wrote: post #5

I don’t think there is any good way to test UBI at any small scale, I think there needs to be a critical mass of people who can pay their housing and food costs how society and economic activity would be reshaped under such a system.

Were the US Coronavirus payouts not a small-scale test of UBI in themselves?

Not really, the central premise of UBI is that its recurring allowing you to plan for and adapt to the income. This was just a bandaid for a financial disaster.

What is interesting about the payouts is that we magically made the money for them while also magically making the money for a ton of other stuff. Obviously the scale of one time vs recurring is vastly different but I feel like this does go a ways towards proving its possible.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#112

Post by hadtodoit »

bt1a wrote: post #89

Trickle up, baby. Man I love Andrew Yang and what his mission is with Humanity Forward. Good move, Jack.

Same here but I really wish he wouldn't kowtow every time some wackjob group is screaming at him. He took a very moderate and reasonable stance on a lot of contentious topics during his campaign then rolled them back within a day of getting lit up by twitter trolls. I think he lost a large section of centrist voters by appearing spineless.

He took the best policies from the left and right, but also seemed obligated to tow party lines a lot of the time rather than offer up better alternatives. I wish he would have run third party, he could have taken a lot of moderate votes from President Trump. The democrats didn't stand a chance of winning this election, at the very least he would have sent a message to the next generation that there are other options.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#113

Post by jdc »

Press2forEN wrote: post #110

Years ago, proponents of UBI claimed that it was a replacement for all other forms of social welfare. Now it appears by most proposals to be yet another means-tested add-on. What happened?

Yep and as a replacement, it was supposed to drastically cut administrative costs.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#114

Post by snarf21 »

mberning wrote: post #100

I seriously don’t know why people believe this will work and unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe. As far as I have read most experiments have had mixed results, and we don’t really know what the full impact will be if implemented in a nation of 350MM people. My suspicion is in a couple years people will notice that housing, food, and transportation has gone up commensurate with their “basic income…

I agree, there is just no way for it to work. We'd be better off with less overhead versions of existing programs and higher tax breaks for the poor, maybe no federal taxes under 200% of poverty. Add in Medicare for all in the same bracket and we meet most of the "upside" in a simpler and sustainable plan.

I've spent some time trying to envision the goals of UBI from the other side. Could you supplement volunteers and artists using a closed loop rewards program? My thinking caused me to create The Good Loop, http://thegoodloop.org, it isn't implemented yet but hopefully someday.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#115

Post by renewiltord »

chrisseaton wrote: post #49
toomuchtodo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is policy and PR hacking in lieu of having incredibly deep pockets. Sorry to tell you that real life is messy. Think of it as growth hacking. This is a sales endeavor. You must sell that the current form of capitalism is fundamentally broken. This is no different than contributing to the "right" Congressional candidates with few dollars so they control hundreds of billions of dollars of policy (or in this case,…

But you can’t prove anything about universal income without the universal part. As without it it’s not the same thing and we don’t know if it’ll have the same effects.

So your posterior probabilities on most things will shift zero post intervention? Interesting.

I'm a UBI opponent, a short term HM proponent, but I think my posterior probabilities would shift depending on the size of the effect and the duration over which the experiment was performed.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#116

Post by gist »

dang wrote: post #81
Pfhreak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a leftist person who isn't an opponent of ubi, but is an opponent of Yang's ubi. I have no problem with raising taxes, but I do have other concerns. Namely, if everyone got $x,xxx a month, how do we ensure that rents don't just go up by that amount or wages don't go down by that amount? I worry that without a well thought out plan, UBI just ends up funneling money directly back to the wealthy (eg, landlords and b…

What's Yang's answer about that? If he had a FAQ that would certainly be on it.

As a landlord [1] I can answer that question. Btw, I have not found any UBI proponent addressing it either (they tend to avoid that with economic speak if at all) [2]

Rent will go up. All you have to do is look what happens in 'hot' markets (SFO/NYC/Bay Area) where there are so many dollars floating around.

[1] Both commercial and residential but not in a hot market a 'normal' market.

[2] Including Yang

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#118

Post by meddlepal »

daenz wrote: post #91
Pfhreak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a leftist person who isn't an opponent of ubi, but is an opponent of Yang's ubi. I have no problem with raising taxes, but I do have other concerns. Namely, if everyone got $x,xxx a month, how do we ensure that rents don't just go up by that amount or wages don't go down by that amount? I worry that without a well thought out plan, UBI just ends up funneling money directly back to the wealthy (eg, landlords and b…

>how do we ensure that rents don't just go up by that amount or wages don't go down by that amount That's a feature of the plan. Rents will go up, and wages will go down, but by that point, people will be committed to UBI, and the only solution will be the gov to step in and control the prices.

> will be the gov to step in and control the prices.

Because that will work out so well.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#119

Post by jason5543 »

mberning wrote: post #100

I seriously don’t know why people believe this will work and unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe. As far as I have read most experiments have had mixed results, and we don’t really know what the full impact will be if implemented in a nation of 350MM people. My suspicion is in a couple years people will notice that housing, food, and transportation has gone up commensurate with their “basic income…

>I don't know why people believe this will unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe.

Great perspective. Before the industrial revolution, most people were serfs. Speaking broadly, our genetics and our blood have not risen above our essential serfdom. I haven't done my homework on UBI; that said, I distrust the concept of radical economic schemes to help poor people, because poor people can't be helped, they are born slaves and they will die slaves, and the current amount of social mobility that the nations of the world provide is probably enough to help out those of the slave class destined for greater things.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#120

Post by bt1a »

hadtodoit wrote: post #112
bt1a wrote: post #89

Trickle up, baby. Man I love Andrew Yang and what his mission is with Humanity Forward. Good move, Jack.

Same here but I really wish he wouldn't kowtow every time some wackjob group is screaming at him. He took a very moderate and reasonable stance on a lot of contentious topics during his campaign then rolled them back within a day of getting lit up by twitter trolls. I think he lost a large section of centrist voters by appearing spineless. He took the best policies from the left and right, but also seemed obligated t…

Yang definitely waffled on MFA and appeared to not support it towards the end. That was something of him that I was disappointed - I couldn't understand why he didn't realize that MFA is the way to go. I do wonder if he waffled on it to retain support from people further to the right.

That said, I actually think Yang's ideas are going to reverberate throughout political discourse over the next decade. Similar to how Bernie pushed the base range of the Democratic party to the left, Yang shed light on some great issues that will plague us. For example, what are going to do about the massive loss of employment due to automation? Are we going to attempt to retrain these people? That's historically not been very successful.

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