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Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

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Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#111

Post by Workaccount2 »

dagw wrote: post #86
Workaccount2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly economic theoretical speaking, inflation wouldn't happen if the money isn't "new" money, but instead is fully reallocated money. A likely picture would be less money going into assets (where wealthy people money tends to end up) and more money going into consumables (where poor people money tends to end up). However the money pile should stay the same all else being equal.

Inflation is generally defined by the price increase of a basket of goods. If you relocate money from things outside that basket to things inside that basket then inflation can increase without the money pile getting bigger.

Inflation is gauged by a basket of goods, not defined by it.

At heart, inflation is a mismatch between the real value of the economy and the currency placeholder used to represent that. This is why governments can (and need to) keep printing money as the economy grows.

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#112

Post by Gormo »

tivert wrote: post #107
Gormo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only individuals are allowed to donate to political campaigns, and the FEC sets maximum contribution limits per individual that are far below $100,000. For this election cycle, the maximum campaign donation is $3,300, the cap for a committee donation is $2,000, etc. See: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate... I'm curious as to where you are seeing unrestricted donations. I'm also curious as t…

>> Unrestricted campaign donations is a huge issue in US politics. It allows for the repeated undermining of democracy in favour of rich people's interests. It is anti-democratic to the core. > Only individuals are allowed to donate to political campaigns, and the FEC sets maximum contribution limits per individual that are far below $100,000. > For this election cycle, the maximum campaign donation is $3,300, the ca…

I don't know if that's obvious, and I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and explicitly state their positions before I presume that they are simply regurgitating erroneous media hype.

Despite much misinformation to the contrary, Citizens United had nothing whatsoever to do with campaign donations and was standard first-amendment jurisprudence striking down an attempt by a federal agency to exercise prior restraint on speech.

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#113

Post by bko »

tivert wrote: post #85
bko wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say the wealthy own too much, you mean they own productive assets. They run companies. Sure there are some that just have a pile of cash sitting in a vault but that's rare. So if you take away their wealth you're transferring ownership and control from one group of people (who have managed and grown that productive asset) to another (randomly chosen). Naturally you would expect the productive assets to stop…

> When you say the wealthy own too much, you mean they own productive assets. They run companies. Sure there are some that just have a pile of cash sitting in a vault but that's rare. > So if you take away their wealth you're transferring ownership and control from one group of people (who have managed and grown that productive asset) to another (randomly chosen). Naturally you would expect the productive assets to s…

You might have this idea that people just fall into great wealth through random happenstance and then just buy ETFs passively but that's not true. There are a lot fewer bill Gates types holding ETFs than there are 8 figure net worth guy that owns half a dozen car dealerships. Or doctors/lawyers that own their own practice. A lot of ceos also get paid huge amounts in stock. That's much more the norm

> Family businesses account for 64 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, generate 62 percent of the country's employment, and account for 78 percent of all new job creation.

https://www.familybusinesscenter.com/resources/family-busine...

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#114

Post by throwawa14223 »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #106
throwawa14223 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your proposal that the USA needs to import more people we don't have work for so we can put them on UBI?

There are more than enough jobs. If your deepest fear is that people with different cultural backgrounds will replace people like you, you don't want have an actual debate about policy. You just want to remain in your safe space.

You are leaving money on the table if you haven't used your mind reading skills to get the James Randi Educational Foundation million dollar prize.

The question was how do we deal with the coming lack of jobs without UBI. The answer is we peacefully reduce our population. This pre-supposes a lack of jobs. If you want to change the conditions of the question and say there will be more than enough jobs then we don't need UBI.

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#115

Post by felixgallo »

rayiner wrote: post #30
spiderfarmer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European I already think there is not much democracy left in the USA. At a federal level it's moving towards an autocracy at a rapid pace, and a large part of the electorate seems keen to cheer it on. At a local level money, gerrymandering and propaganda make it impossible to elect politicians who give a fair representation of people's interests. And with a two party system, it's more than likely that both of th…

> money, gerrymandering Let’s take these two separately. As to money: the evidence shows money isn’t buying results. Wall Street and Silicon Valley strongly supported Clinton in 2016. She outspent Donald Trump by 70%: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/09/trump-and-cl... ($340m to $581m). But Clinton lost. Within the Republican Party, billionaires billionaires wanted someone other than Trump: https://fortun…

'wall street and silicon valley', as if there weren't hundreds of millions of dark money billionaire slush funds and the world's biggest and most effective propaganda network in play.

Gerrymandering absolutely has an effect, and this has been well documented. Here, for example: https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2024/01/analysis-of-pr...

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#116

Post by Gormo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #97
Gormo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only individuals are allowed to donate to political campaigns, and the FEC sets maximum contribution limits per individual that are far below $100,000. For this election cycle, the maximum campaign donation is $3,300, the cap for a committee donation is $2,000, etc. See: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate... I'm curious as to where you are seeing unrestricted donations. I'm also curious as t…

> I'm curious as to where you are seeing unrestricted donations. SuperPACs, one of the main engines of US spending on politics.

"SuperPAC" is a loaded term used to refer to independent advocacy groups that spend money to publicize their own political positions; direct coordination or transfers of funds to any actual political campaign is prohibited to them, so referring to these as campaign donations is not really accurate.

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#117

Post by throwawa14223 »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #74
throwawa14223 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue UBI is in the latter category.

So, let's hear some arguments instead of ad hominems.

Do you consider "utopian" an ad hominem, but not "danger to democracy?"

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#118

Post by Workaccount2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #105
Workaccount2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read their research you will see that the reason corporations raised prices was because of future anticipation of costs rising - inflation. https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-review/how-m...

I have read it. Have they lowered prices? Or have they held them high because they can? https://www.ippr.org/media-office/revealed-how-powerful-comp... https://www.axios.com/2023/05/18/once-a-fringe-theory-greedf... ("In March, the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, Paul Donovan, published a note on "profit margin-led inflation," describing how in late 2022 and into this year, companies — particularly r…

Why would they lower prices if the market easily bore the cost of those goods?

Yeah of course corporations were racking in cash, so were consumers.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLN40059

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2REAL

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#119

Post by ceejayoz »

bluecalm wrote: post #109
spamizbad wrote: post #8

UBI's critics expected these programs to have terrible outcomes, where recipients would spend their money on trivialities (or worse: drugs). Instead, what we find is that UBI recipients either spend it on essentials, stuff for their kids children or paying down debt.

Yeah and if you get a blowjob for free every morning your life is going to be better as well. The problem is someone needs to be forced to provide it. That's about how much those experiments are worth.

To extend the already really tortured analogy, we've got people who've managed to hoard many billions of... willing blowjob givers? And we've got people who... die from lack of blowjobs.

Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

#120

Post by tivert »

Gormo wrote: post #112
tivert wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Unrestricted campaign donations is a huge issue in US politics. It allows for the repeated undermining of democracy in favour of rich people's interests. It is anti-democratic to the core. > Only individuals are allowed to donate to political campaigns, and the FEC sets maximum contribution limits per individual that are far below $100,000. > For this election cycle, the maximum campaign donation is $3,300, the ca…

I don't know if that's obvious, and I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and explicitly state their positions before I presume that they are simply regurgitating erroneous media hype. Despite much misinformation to the contrary, Citizens United had nothing whatsoever to do with campaign donations and was standard first-amendment jurisprudence striking down an attempt by a federal agency to exercise prior…

> Despite much misinformation to the contrary, Citizens United had nothing whatsoever to do with campaign donations and was standard first-amendment jurisprudence striking down an attempt by a federal agency to exercise prior restraint on speech.

Only when viewed over-literally. If you take a perspective akin to "duck typing," it's both.

But even if you're totally right, this whole digression on the term "campaign donations" is a nitpick that doesn't undermine the OP's point. Which was billionaires spending unlimited money on politics is anti-democratic (in a similar, but less extreme, way as total one-party control of the media is).

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