UBI experiments are mostly pointless until they reach a national level. Otherwise you end up giving people a bunch of extra cash from the working economy, and surprise surprise, people are generally happier and better off with more free cash. The question is what happens when you do this on a large enough scale to affect economic production.
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
#22UBI'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.
The US handed out $1.8 trillion to individuals and families and $1.7 trillion to businesses during COVID. And then a few years later began experiencing the highest inflation rate in 40 years.
And that wasn't even enough money for anyone to live on.
I think this needs to be solved before UBI has any chance of working.
Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
#23[flagged]
If only the folks who said eat the rich did just that.
Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
#24UBI'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.
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Do you know anybody who is financially struggling? Would you tell them to their face that you consider them to be human pigeons?
One problem with UBI is that it would go to millions of people and surely there will be tens of thousands that fulfill the stereotype that poor people just waste their money and a layabouts. That 5% or whatever will be provided as evidence ad nauseam that UBI is a boondoggle, entirely dismissing the 95% who are helped by it.
Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
#25UBI'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.
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In other words, it's pure ideology and not rooted in any scientific evidence.
Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 3 party political system. Wonder if having 3 senators per state would help this along.
To fix the Senate, you need to make it more proportional to the number of people in the states. The other option would be to get rid of the Senate all together, as it’s undemocratic to begin with. North Dakota should not get the same power as all of CA. ND is the same population as San Francisco, it’s hard to imagine the original writers of the constitution would have thought that a 50x imbalance of representation wo…
I thought that was the whole point - if you make California all powerful in the house and Senate, smaller states get trampled on. It's no longer a union of states at that point, might as well rename the country California.
Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
#27UBI'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.
The US handed out $1.8 trillion to individuals and families and $1.7 trillion to businesses during COVID. And then a few years later began experiencing the highest inflation rate in 40 years. And that wasn't even enough money for anyone to live on. I think this needs to be solved before UBI has any chance of working.
Correlation vs causation is a helluva drug
Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
#28Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
#29UBI'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.
The US handed out $1.8 trillion to individuals and families and $1.7 trillion to businesses during COVID. And then a few years later began experiencing the highest inflation rate in 40 years. And that wasn't even enough money for anyone to live on. I think this needs to be solved before UBI has any chance of working.
It's mainly wealth distribution. The top percent owns too much while the bottom 80% owns too little.
There won't be inflation if you take money from the top and give it to the bottom. The total amount of money stays the same.
Re: Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
#30Unrestricted 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.
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://fortune.com/2024/02/26/ken-griffin-koch-brothers-rep.... But he’s going to win the primary.
More generally, the donor money in US politics supports globalization/free trade, and mass immigration (for cheap labor). The money is losing that battle not just in the US, but in Europe too.
The problem in U.S. politics right now is that Internet-based donor networks have eliminated the ability of large donors (and institutions) to control the candidates.
As to gerrymandering, what makes you think it has any real effect? Do you have a numerical estimatr in your head of what the party split would look like in Congress if there was no gerrymandering?