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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

#671

Post by HideousKojima »

paimoe wrote: post #573
demadog wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to see it play out in a smaller country for a few years. The U.S. is a big place to gamble on it. No one is saying flip the switch for 328.2 million, I know that, but at the same time it would be best to do an MVP on a smaller scale with, say, a population of 5 million and then learn and iterate from there. Even when testing with 5 million though, you often have countries of that size having more of a…

Even if it works brilliantly in other places, you'll still have a big part of the US saying "it'll never work here, we're too different" etc. Same arguments as the metric system that's been great everywhere for such a long time.

>Same arguments as the metric system that's been great everywhere for such a long time.

The biggest argument against the metric system is that it would cost trillions to retool all factories etc. to metric.

Secondarily, countries like Canada and the UK aren't 100% metric and use a weird sort of Frankenstein system (i.e. Brits measuring body weight in "stone"). And if anything that's worse than one or the other

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

#672

Post by d0100 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #623
d0100 wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is already food available in the market. Leave it to capitalism to inflate UBI out of usefulness. Let the market compete with the baseline, never replace it. > you don't get any of it and end up having to pay $18,000 Well, supply and demand should work here, right? Isn't the market the mythical machine of just prices? If the market won't pay taxes + $8,000 for private school, there will be no schools for that…

> Leave it to capitalism to inflate UBI out of usefulness. Let the market compete with the baseline, never replace it. Okay sure, but that's probably what would happen. So what do you do when the government tries to sell food and not enough people buy theirs for them to stay in the black? They'd have to raise prices to cover fixed costs and then have even fewer customers. Presumably once the price was so high they ha…

> They'd have to raise prices to cover fixed costs and then have even fewer customers.

That's the part where government officials do their job and figure the best way to solve this. Subsidize regional staple foods, community farms, fix prices for some type of foods... The government doesn't actually have to have the food in warehouses, it only has to guarantee that you'll be able to buy healthy X/calories a day with those $300.

Maybe put out a weekly menu, with sources of cheap food?

For UBI to work as intended the government has to act as a guarantor that you'll be able to buy everything that UBI was meant to buy. Or else big daddy capital man will just find a way to consume those pennies and UBI becomes UB-bye.

No matter the amount of taxes, profit will still exist. The rich will still be rich. The rich can still do what they do. The difference is that they can't take from the poor. They have to do what capitalism really is about: provide value so that the market will pay you.

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

#673

Post by st1ck »

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.

Even something like $1000/year for every citizen will be significant enough to affect lives of some people. Assuming over 20% of Americans have near-zero amount of savings, this can be just enough money to avoid eviction, or pay off credit card debt, have home internet, or travel to other city for job interview etc.

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

#674

Post by charlesu »

WalterBright wrote: post #645
charlesu wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compensation is a representation of bargaining power. If anything, compensation for labor has an inverse relationship with actual value. Teachers get paid little despite educating future generations, sanitation workers contribute more to the public health than doctors but make peanuts, and stay-at-home parents nurture children and are paid nothing at all. Bargaining power is not value of labor. We are paid what can d…

> compensation for labor has an inverse relationship with actual value. Value is what people are willing to freely pay for it. Any other definition of it is subjective and fairly useless.

You’re talking about price. Price is not value.

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

#675

Post by chii »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #615
chii wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you've cleverly argued in a way to make hidden the major point i wanted to make - which is that insurance companies making a profit is a loss to the payer. I'm purely talking about the insurance system, and not the medical provider system (hospitals/doctors etc). > The large majority of the money isn't going to the insurance company, it's going to healthcare providers. Any money going into insurance as profit is a lo…

> you've cleverly argued in a way to make hidden the major point i wanted to make - which is that insurance companies making a profit is a loss to the payer. I'm purely talking about the insurance system, and not the medical provider system (hospitals/doctors etc). But then you're not addressing the majority of the problem, because insurance company profits are only a single digit percentage of premiums. And even the…

> not using insurance for low cost routine care, which makes the patient price sensitive

i would argue the patient cannot be price sensitive. The utility of staying alive is infinite - therefore, a patient will pay _any_ price for a procedure that saves them.

I don't want to see a world where going to the GP for a cold is not free. But that's the world we live in today.

The insurance efficiency, if any, is just a drop in the bucket i suppose - because the main issue i'm talking about is socializing healthcare, so that even healthy people pay a cost. And insurance _doesn't_ help with that (and having an insurance industry certainly prevents it from existing as well).

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

#676

Post by vinceguidry »

chrisco255 wrote: post #460
vinceguidry wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would LOVE to see more US experiments with UBI. The economics have already been tested. The federal government has these enormous funded installations where the people living there don't have to worry about the economy at all . These gov-funded individuals then go and spend their largesse in the local economy, in many cases propping them up all by themselves. This happens on a massive scale, right here, right now.…

Bullshit jobs? Like which ones exactly? Who determines which ones are bullshit and which ones are not? We don't just create jobs for nothing. Companies that hire excess employees tend to go out of business or shed workers during a downturn like we're experiencing now. In the meantime, no, we had a thriving restaurant and travel industry 2 months ago but the fact those people have been laid off or furloughed doesn't m…

> Like which ones exactly? Who determines which ones are bullshit and which ones are not?

The market would, once one gets empowered to be created. Right now the market is tipped on the side of those offering money for work. If you truly flipped the tables around, then those offering money have to offer more and more and more. I'm not just talking money here but all those intangibles that make one job better than another.

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

#677

Post by scared2 »

I really don't understand the hype behind ubi as a new concept. If one wants to explore it's effect or anything like so - it is just enough to see Arab countries and other places who have been doing it already. Other than that it should be obvious to anyone that this is not scalable and it doesn't work. in the end basic income will translate into an artificially induced inflation.

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

#678

Post by dlkf »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #552
d0100 wrote: post #477

UBI should cover government-regulated and government-provided essentials to living. Ex.: * Government housing: $500 * Government basic food package - daily (1500kcal): $300 * x kJ electricity, x m3 water, x m3 gas, x bps internet connection: $500 * Clothing, hygiene, cleaning supplies: $50 * Universal healthcare: free (and free condoms) * Free education (from abc to PHD) This is not a comprehensive list, or even the…

> UBI should cover government-regulated and government-provided essentials to living. The reason you don't do this is that the government is not better at making diapers and laundry detergent than Procter & Gamble nor better at manufacturing Tylenol than Johnson & Johnson nor better at growing tomatoes than local farmers. If you give people $300 then they can buy $300 worth of food. if you give people $300 worth of "…

The cliche that total scientific socialism sounds great in theory but doesn't work in practice actually applies far better to laissez-faire capitalism (scientific socialism doesn't even look good on paper). Your arguments against free education and universal healthcare sound clever apriori, but they are completely at odds with the evidence. Countries with universal healthcare and robust public school systems invariably have better outcomes on both fronts.

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

#679

Post by kerkeslager »

jpindar wrote: post #446
kerkeslager wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please define the "poverty problem" in the US. Ugh. That's way too complex, and you know it. But I'll try to give you some bullet points: 1. Homelessness 2. Inability to afford healthcare 3. Home ownership being inaccessible to most people 4. Inability to afford childcare 5. Inability to afford education Note how 1, 4, and 5 aren't solvable by providing jobs--these are problems that prevent you from entering the wo…

>since companies will have to pay significantly more than UBI. They would only have to do that if people had to choose between taking the job and getting UBI.

Ehh, not exactly.

My personal situation is an example: if UBI were implemented I would quit working immediately to pursue a graduate degree. Granted, that graduate degree would lead me back into the workforce eventually, but at least in the short run, it would take significant incentives to keep me in the workforce if pursuing education instead were an option.

I also know someone who works for $20/hour, and pays $12/hour for childcare. $8/hour isn't worth anyone's time in 2020, but they do it because government assistance doesn't pay their bills. If they were receiving a livable UBI, I have no doubt that they would choose to raise their children full time rather than work for an absurdly low wage.

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

#680

Post by fastball »

luckylion wrote: post #659
fastball wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really supposed to say very much. It's just a data point that directly contradicts your assertion.

But it really doesn't in that extract. Do they have the option to work more to make more? Is more work available? Are they already working close to or at maximum capacity and their current level of wealth is the result? Without the contextual information available, that's hardly useful. I'm sure somebody that's unemployed and wants to work would work more than they currently are, but can't, because, well, they don't…

> Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future.

It really does contradict the above statement. This "random singular statistic" is a broad survey of the American populace which concludes that 58% of Americans do not have savings worth mentioning. Those people are clearly not working more than they need to because the "future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial", otherwise they'd have savings. And 58% is in fact a majority, so the "most people" in the above statement makes it unequivocally false.

If you have "better" stats that don't falsify your premise, I'm happy to look at them.

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