When the pipes in your house malfunction causing gallons of water and feces to spray out of the toilet onto the nice wood floor you just installed in your newly government granted free time. But, you can't call a plumber because they're all on UBI watching Bob Ross howto videos and painting beautiful landscapes, remember the name Andrew Yang.
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
#262If the government starts giving me enough money each month to subsist while drastically raising taxes on my earnings from employment then I'll simply stop working. I would imagine most people would do the same.
Every experiment in UBI says otherwise. Direct cash grants usually lead people to do more work, because now they can do the work they enjoy. Also, look around groups of wealthy people. The ones who don't have to work anymore. Sure, some of them live a life of leisure, but many of them still work, because they get bored otherwise.
>Every experiment in UBI says otherwise.
There has never been a test on a scale which would lead people to do it though. If you know you're part of a short lived experiment you're not quitting your job.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every experiment in UBI says otherwise. Direct cash grants usually lead people to do more work, because now they can do the work they enjoy. Also, look around groups of wealthy people. The ones who don't have to work anymore. Sure, some of them live a life of leisure, but many of them still work, because they get bored otherwise.
People will always to things they enjoy. No one questions that. We have paid employment to get people to do things that need to be done !
How many jobs exist for things that don’t “need to be done” though?
I’m aware the definition of “need” is a can of worms - but as an example, I know plenty of people who started doing call-center work in their early-20s while they “figure out what I want to do with their life” and by the time they know what they want to do (and it’s definitely not call-center work!) they’re trapped in their jobs, especially as after a few years they will have moved-out of their parents’ home - so having to pay rent and cover their cost-of-living while they’re getting started or experimenting with their own personal life projects (e.g. doing art, etc) is unfeasible - and don’t suggest getting a loan either. Meanwhile people with wealthier and accommodating parents can afford to take their time living off their parents - I see this as an example of the inequality of opportunity in our society.
Another example is the unseen and underreported unpaid work that exists, such as when a family has a child and the child has a disability that requires extra care: if they’re a married couple then one of them would drop-out of their career to become a full-time - unpaid - caregiver. If it’s a single—parent situation then the outcomes are often heartbreaking. This isn’t the society I want to live in.
UBI would mean the cost of labor for “McJob”s would rise - probably significantly (UBI would mean the end of the minimum wage, however) - but having fewer people doing jobs they don’t want to do means greater net happiness and we’d see further rises in automation - which further raises GDP. I see employers using human labor for unrewarding work because it’s cheaper than automation as a terrible local-maxima in our system. We just need to push past it to get to an even bigger maxima.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>I couldn't understand why he didn't realize that MFA is the way to go.
Maybe because that's not a fact. MFA might not be the way to go. This isn't a simple binary issue.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#265Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#266When the pipes in your house malfunction causing gallons of water and feces to spray out of the toilet onto the nice wood floor you just installed in your newly government granted free time. But, you can't call a plumber because they're all on UBI watching Bob Ross howto videos and painting beautiful landscapes, remember the name Andrew Yang.
Man, you're so right! Plumbers are all lazy pieces of shit that would all stop working immediately if they could feed their family.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But probably less "meaningful" work, in however society defines meaningful. Typically in these experiments the people start small businesses. When the risk of failure has a floor it makes you more likely to take on the risk. > At some point, if enough income is withheld at that level, what's the point? Most UBI proposals are VAT taxes. The more you consume the more you pay. So if you're a wealthy person, you will s…
Why would the tax be regressive?
Also, how can it be funded by vat anyways? We’re talking about trillions per year to fund. Are you taxing cars 1000%? It doesn’t add up.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it's regressive? Even better..
Direct from yangs site ( https://www.yang2020.com/policies/value-added-tax/ ) > This VAT would vary based on the good to which it's applied, with staples having a lower rate or being excluded, and luxury goods having a higher rate. That's the beauty of a VAT. It can be tuned to reach the desired result.
> That's the beauty of a VAT. It can be tuned to reach the desired result.
But who will do the tuning? My guess, as a former corporate tax lawyer, is that it would be done by industry lobbyists, seeking preferential treatment for their clients' products.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#269>> Yang says Humanity Forward plans to immediately distribute Dorsey’s contribution in the form of small cash grants of $250 to nearly 20,000 people who’ve lost their jobs or taken an economic hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic So money based on certain non-universal conditions? Isn't this one of the root problems? People cannot accept a truly universal system - you've already got too much; that guy lives in th…
So... basically people who lost their jobs to COVID are winners in your mind?
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#270While I think UBI is one of the better solutions to the poverty problem in the US, I think almost any solution to poverty will fall prey to inflation if we don't address income inequality. One way to do this is pay ratio caps at companies. It's pretty hard to argue against this: if you really believe that wealth trickles down, then you should have no problem trusting but verifying that.
> While I think UBI is one of the better solutions to the poverty problem in the US, I think almost any solution to poverty will fall prey to inflation if we don't address income inequality.
Please define the "poverty problem" in the US.
How is an increase in the money supply related to income inequality?