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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

#141

Post by azemetre »

Gormo wrote: post #90
bhouston wrote: post #3

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. And I do not mean rich people who are in the upper 10% of income, it favours the ultra rich for whom a $100,000 political donation is pocket change.

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 believe the answer is “What are Super PACs” Alex.

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

#142

Post by Gormo »

tivert wrote: post #120
Gormo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Well, I don't agree that it's both in the slightest. The FEC attempted to justify prior restraint on speech by making a spurious argument that speech is equivalent to money and is therefore within the scope of its power to regulate campaign contributions. The court ruled that no, speech remains speech regardless of whether money is spent to facilitate it, and is always under first amendment protection.

Further, the problem with unlimited campaign donations -- i.e. actual transfers of funds into the hands of candidates -- is that it creates a situation in which a given candidate might become materially dependent on a specific individual or organization to the point that it creates an entrenched quid-pro-quo relationship that would control the exercise of their duties in office.

But in this case, the complaint of "billionaires spending unlimited money on politics" doesn't describe an instance of that problem at all, because the money is being spent in an attempt to persuade voters, not create patronage relationships with the candidates themselves.

The elections are still up to the voters, and to describe people using their resources to publish their opinions in open discourse as "anti-democratic" is exactly backwards -- creating an apparatus that can preemptively restrict what political information voters are allowed to see is about as anti-democratic as it gets.

> (in a similar, but less extreme, way as total one-party control of the media is)

The closest thing to "one-party control of the media" being threatened here is a situation in which a state body (ultimately under the control of incumbent politicians) is allowed to preemptively curate what information may be distributed by the media. This is the exact thing that the Citizens United ruling put a stop to.

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

#143

Post by Workaccount2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #125
Workaccount2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So you admit that inflation is caused by corporations that can raise prices and keep them high? Because, in this thread, you've gone from "this narrative is/was entirely driven by click farming economically distressed people" to "of course they did this, they clearly can" as we've worked our way down to here from my top level comment.

Corporations didn't discover that they can raise prices in 2021. They need headroom in order to do it.

You are confusing the manifestation of inflation (rising prices) with the cause of inflation (more money on the table than hard value underneath it). Yes, rising prices perpetuate inflation (a price-price spiral as mentioned in the research), but the root cause of inflation was not corporations suddenly learning of this new tool called "raising prices". It was a reaction to the unrivaled level of economic stimulus pumped into the economy.

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

#144

Post by Gormo »

tivert wrote: post #130
Gormo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Nevertheless, they coordinate: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/10-ways...

An that's already illegal, so there's already a basis for legal action against SuperPACs that engage directly as part of candidates campaigns. So what else are you proposing?

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

#145

Post by Workaccount2 »

tivert wrote: post #79
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.

> Strictly economic theoretical speaking, inflation wouldn't happen if the money isn't "new" money, but instead is fully reallocated money. Wouldn't that be in aggregate? So maybe some inflation for food and deflation for luxury yachts.

There probably would be while the market adjusts to the new demand levels and reallocates resources accordingly. But it would level itself out.

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

#146

Post by chabes »

leereeves wrote: post #132
bhickey wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As to gerrymandering, what makes you think it has any real effect? Without gerrymandering the Republican party would have last controlled the House in 2007.

False. Republicans won the popular vote in 2022, 54M to 51M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Re...

> Without gerrymandering

Emphasis on this part

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

#147

Post by rayiner »

bhickey wrote: post #99
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> As to gerrymandering, what makes you think it has any real effect? Without gerrymandering the Republican party would have last controlled the House in 2007.

Republicans won the Congressional Popular vote exactly half the time since then: 2010 (by almost 7 points), 2014 (by almost 6), 2016, and 2022.

As long as we are talking about counter-factual political systems: If the US had a parliamentary system like most democracies, Republicans would have controlled the presidency for 8 of the last 16 years. Given their coalition of disaffected minorities and recent immigrants, Democrats benefit tremendously from the quirks of the US Presidential system, which lends itself to nationwide machine politics.

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

#148

Post by Gormo »

jareklupinski wrote: post #136
Gormo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI's critics expected these programs to have terrible outcomes, where recipients would spend their money on trivialities (or worse: drugs). The worst possible outcome is the intended one: where UBI recipients spend it on essentials, and society adapts over time such that a large swath of the population becomes dependent on state-issued subsidies for basic sustenance. This would create an entrenched concentration o…

> an unprecedented level of top-down control over society wouldn't the people that the article is accusing of being against UBI, want this outcome? sounds like if they want more control, they should be for UBI

I'm not sure the article itself is an unbiased source, given that it is published by a pro-UBI website.

It seems likely that the article's assumptions about who is opposing UBI and why they are opposing it are erroneous. I personally oppose UBI for the reasons I described above, by my motivations have nothing to do with anything the article is talking about.

It's also possible that various factions are using positioning around UBI proposals as a proxy or as a tactic to advance other, more complex, political aims.

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

#149

Post by rayiner »

chabes wrote: post #146
leereeves wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. Republicans won the popular vote in 2022, 54M to 51M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Re...

> Without gerrymandering Emphasis on this part

Yes, that’s why OP cited the Congressional popular vote. What’s happening is that both parties gerrymander, so it largely cancels out. For example in Maryland, democrats won 65% of the 2022 Congressional popular vote, but hold 87.5% of the House seats. The 450,000 or so excess Republican votes—votes for republicans which didn’t contribute to a Republican house seat—cancels out some excess Democratic votes in Montana or Wyoming.

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

#150

Post by Gormo »

lenerdenator wrote: post #121
Gormo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI's critics expected these programs to have terrible outcomes, where recipients would spend their money on trivialities (or worse: drugs). The worst possible outcome is the intended one: where UBI recipients spend it on essentials, and society adapts over time such that a large swath of the population becomes dependent on state-issued subsidies for basic sustenance. This would create an entrenched concentration o…

The problem is, we already have that.

To some extent, but I don't think it's anywhere near as entrenched and pervasive as a large-scale UBI program would make it.
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