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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

#691

Post by jacobr1 »

RockIslandLine wrote: post #520
jacobr1 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only keep the prices high with cartelization or true scarcity. Though removing subsidies (for things like public transport) can also raise prices. But our food supply is highly distributed. If one vendor charges higher-prices, others will take the opportunity to offer lower prices as long as they still can get the margin. We often debate various forms of market failure on this forum, but in the cases of funct…

"But our food supply is highly distributed." Not nearly as much as it needs to be. Indiana imports 90% of its calories. What does it take to get vegetables grown near Indianapolis?

If non-Indiana-carrots started to cost $40/lb, you bet some local farmers would switch to carrots. Right now they have existing investments and benefits of scale, but the right incentives switches that.

> our food supply is highly distributed.

I meant this in the sense of diversity if firms, not geographically. We've certainly seen consolidation with some of the bigger agri-conglomerates, and the trends are worrying, but we are nowhere near monopolization of the industry as a whole.

From Wikipedia:

> The 2012 US Census of Agriculture indicates that 5.06 percent of US farms are corporate farms. These include family corporations (4.51 percent) and non-family corporations (0.55 percent). Of the family farm corporations, 98 percent are small corporations, with 10 or fewer stockholders. Of the non-family farm corporations, 90 percent are small corporations, with 10 or fewer stockholders. Non-family corporate farms account for 1.36 percent of US farmland area. Family farms (including family corporate farms) account for 96.7 percent of US farms and 89 percent of US farmland area;[17] a USDA study estimated that family farms accounted for 85 percent of US gross farm income in 2011.

There are plenty of issues with our food supply system. But I don't think we need to worry about monopolies raising prices unilaterally. The OP thought we needed price controls to keep food costs low. I don't think this in the case. The problems are instead on the poverty side of the equation. Who has the money to pay for our (generally pretty cheap) food? The are too many that are food insecure, not because groceries are expensive, but because they are in poverty.

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

#692

Post by baby »

bt1a wrote: post #120
hadtodoit wrote: post #112

Earlier 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…

Mfa?

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

#693

Post by twblalock »

Frondo wrote: post #606
WalterBright wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you and Andrew Yang start giving Surfer Fred a cut of your paychecks every month. I bet the idea palls after you pass Fred hurrying to the beach with his surfboard as you drive to work.

Did your wife run off with a surfer? People are trying to express this idea that the "people will be lazy and content themselves with a meager UBI" is not an accurate one, and nearly every reply you've made has been a nonsequitor about how we should presumably be resentful at paying surfers to surf.

There are two kinds of people who need to be contented with UBI: those who choose not to work, and those who keep working.

Nothing I've seen in this thread would satisfy the people who keep working.

Most people feel a fundamental sense of moral injustice and outrage when people who work are forced to support people who could work but choose not to. That is why our current welfare systems have means testing.

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

#694

Post by bhupy »

sytelus wrote: post #658
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that you get the money back. You're sitting there in the middle saying, $150B/mo? I don't want to have to pay that in taxes. I'd have to pay like $1500/mo more in taxes! But then you'd receive $1500/mo. It cancels out, so it doesn't matter. You're really only making net transfers to the bottom half, and even most of those aren't for the entire amount. Someone at the 25th percentile gets $1500 but would be pa…

That looks like very bad math. If you are paying $1500/mo in taxes, you are not in majority. And if you get back that money then who is really paying government bills? The UBI is additional expense and needs to come from extra income to government. I can see the argument that top 1% should pay for it by taxing the hell out of them. Unfortunately that back fires as we have seen in heavily taxed countries and still I d…

A weird nit pick, the GP commenter was just using an easy-to-conceptualize number. Let's use real numbers:

In 2018, the household income quintiles were as follows[1]:

Lowest quintile mean: $13,775

Second quintile mean: $37,923

Third quintile mean: $63,572

Fourth quintile mean: $101,570

Highest quintile mean: $233,895

There were about 159M employed persons in the US in the most recent high[2], about 50% of the US population. We want our UBI to cover everybody.

To make this simple, because quintiles comprise an equally populated group of people, let's imagine that instead of there being ~32M people per quintile, that our nation has 10 people, where 5 people don't work, and each of the remaining 5 falls into one of the quintiles.

If we wanted to define a UBI of $18,000 per person, we need to somehow come up with $18,000 * 10 == $180,000 to distribute to everyone equally.

If we fund this progressively, each individual would have to pay:

Unemployed #1: 0

Unemployed #2: 0

Unemployed #3: 0

Unemployed #4: 0

Unemployed #5: 0

Lowest: $8,000

Second: $12,000

Third: $18,000

Fourth: $33,000

Highest: $103,000

Total revenue: $180,000

Then consider that everyone here is receiving back 18,000 under the UBI. The highest quintile earner’s net take-home is, thus 233,895-103,000+18,000 == $148,895, which effectively renders their net tax rate approx 36%. If you run this breakdown across all quintiles:

Lowest: $13,775 - $8,000 + $18,000 == $23,775 (effective tax -73%)

Second: $37,923 - $12,000 + $18,000 == $43,923 (effective tax -16%)

Third: $63,572 - $18,000 + $18,000 == $63,572 (effective tax 0%)

Fourth: $101,570 - $33,000 + $18,000 == $86,570 (effective tax 15%)

Highest: $233,895 - $103,000 + $18,000 == $148,895 (effective tax 36%)

You'll notice that the median worker pays nothing, net-net. They pay about $1,500/month, and get back $1,500/mo. The bottom 2 will get back more than they pay. The top 2 pay a tax rate that’s comparable to today’s.

The 5 unemployed persons all get $18,000, and because the lowest quintile still ends up with more than that after their taxes, there isn’t a disincentive to work.

We can play with different levels of progressivity and generosity, but the idea is the same. We can scale up from single-person quintiles to million-person quintiles, but the percentages don't change.

[1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-...

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons

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

#695

Post by somethoughts »

woah wrote: post #608
somethoughts wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree - it should be Universal Basic Stuff (UBS). Particularly if housing is in a low cost of living area, then everything should get cheaper through automation. High End Manufactured housing [1], MOOCs, Telemedicine, Consumer Products will all get cheaper. Entrepreneurs in SV can create robots to automate the production of these things so even more UBS categories can be added. UBS assurances will avoid the…

Housing has been made artificially scarce by the small property owners (homeowners) who have the most to gain from the situation. The government could make housing 3x-5x cheaper in the space of a decade by greatly curtailing the authority of local zoning boards.

I think the hope would be to avoid trying to build Universal Basic Stuff housing in areas of the high cost of living areas. Encourage everyone to not cram into the most expensive cities.

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

#696

Post by somethoughts »

foolinaround wrote: post #607
somethoughts wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree - it should be Universal Basic Stuff (UBS). Particularly if housing is in a low cost of living area, then everything should get cheaper through automation. High End Manufactured housing [1], MOOCs, Telemedicine, Consumer Products will all get cheaper. Entrepreneurs in SV can create robots to automate the production of these things so even more UBS categories can be added. UBS assurances will avoid the…

who gets to live in more attractive areas? How different will it be from the current 'projects' living which subsidizes as well?

The idea would be to spread people out and build new attractive areas.

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

#697

Post by klmadfejno »

3131s wrote: post #612
klmadfejno wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many reasons to think it wouldn't. For example, lots of people work two jobs. People work full time when they could work part time. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos etc all still work. The vast majority of people in a modern economy work more than they need to in order to earn what a UBI would pay. Bill Gates works, but he doesn't work as a janitor. Who is going to scrub the toilets for a meager supplement to a gua…

You almost understand. They'll have to raise the wage to get anyone to scrub those toilets, and that's the whole point. UBI reduces the power asymmetry between employer and employee, and gives the employee more leverage to negotiate better wages and conditions.

Ok, and if they raise wages, they'll need to raise prices.

The price level at which it's economical to pay someone wages that incentive them to work as a janitor rather than investing in themselves is the price level at which the janitor cannot afford to invest in themselves without work.

I'd buy that the janitor might be a bit better off in this situation, but you haven't solved any critical problems. Your basic income quickly becomes insufficient. Without controls for rent, debt, medical, schooling, etc. it's not hard to imagine that in real terms the poor become poorer.

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

#698

Post by eanzenberg »

osdiab wrote: post #484
eanzenberg wrote: post #202

Earlier 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. But probably less "meaningful" work, in however society defines meaningful. >>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. This is…

I think that the work that needs to be done, will still get done but it'll be better rewarded (ie it'll be more expensive) - jobs that people don't want to do need to get paid more because employers can't just rely on economic coercion of the poor to force them to do dangerous or boring jobs, they need to remunerate them accordingly - which IMO is how the system should work. Result would probably be that businesses w…

Awesome, so besides dilution of currency, common services will become more expensive as less people want to work.

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

#699

Post by JoeSmithson »

klmadfejno wrote: post #697
3131s wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You almost understand. They'll have to raise the wage to get anyone to scrub those toilets, and that's the whole point. UBI reduces the power asymmetry between employer and employee, and gives the employee more leverage to negotiate better wages and conditions.

Ok, and if they raise wages, they'll need to raise prices. The price level at which it's economical to pay someone wages that incentive them to work as a janitor rather than investing in themselves is the price level at which the janitor cannot afford to invest in themselves without work. I'd buy that the janitor might be a bit better off in this situation, but you haven't solved any critical problems. Your basic inc…

> Ok, and if they raise wages, they'll need to raise prices.

No, not necessarily. In fact if they were able raise prices, surely they would have done so already? What they would actually do is either go without a janitor, or go without something else - a coffee machine, or computer upgrades or something.

The point is, unskilled labour is currently priced against desperation on the part of the worker. With a UBI it's priced against the actual benefit to the consumer.

The question is, what value is having clean toilets? If a company in an office block doesn't value clean toilets more than anyone is willing to clean the toilets for, then they will just be dirty. In actual fact they are likely to value clean toilets highly - more than what someone is willing to clean them for.

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

#700

Post by xerox13ster »

wegs wrote: post #662
Barrin92 wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this whole school choice and insurance choice neoliberal mantra is what has gotten us into this mess to begin with. The entire insurance sector is a huge waste of manpower and essentially just huge dump for the surplus of white collar university graduates that have nowhere to go. There's not a single person on the planet who derives benefits from navigating the trade-offs of byzantine insurance plans, and school choi…

School choice and medical choice are very different. With school choice, parents do incredible amounts of research, and can send their kids to excellent schools wherever they live, or however bad their local school boards are. And yes, ALL parents invest in their kids' success, your (not OP's but generic reader's) stereotypes against minorities aside. It's a relatively efficient market. It benefits from choice + comp…

> And yes, ALL parents invest in their kids' success

Categorically false. Generic reader here, and I grew up in an abusive home with parents that could literally not have given two shits about my future, success or emotional well-being. For you to assert that they ALL do this is either an incredibly sheltered or willfully ignorant point of view.

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