Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

scottsantens.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 192 posts

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

#91

Post by boringg »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #7
boringg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that no one stays clean anywhere. Humanity is messy.

I don't like when wrong is made to seem tolerable by calling it merely messy. The world is of course actually messy and not b&w, but that fact doesn't change that. It's like saying that killing is wrong, but sometimes we still have to kill. Yes we do, and killing is still wrong. If you kill someone, it's not because "humans are messy". Oh humans are just imperfect and sometmes you just kill your neighbor, it just hap…

My point is the line 'no one stays clean in the beltway' is and very much greater than thou attitude. We all like to rip on k-street and politicos however I don't think tech is on some great white horse that we can speak down on everyone else.

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

#92

Post by Workaccount2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #73
Workaccount2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "corporate profiteering drove inflation" narrative is/was entirely driven by click farming economically distressed people. It never was the case and even mild understanding of economics/finance quickly unravels the narrative. Inflation was driven primarily by low interest rates, very generous financial support/relief(rent moratorium, student loan pause, bolstered and extended unemployment), and the ability…

> The whole "corporate profiteering drove inflation" narrative is/was entirely driven by click farming economically distressed people. It never was the case and even mild understanding of economics/finance quickly unravels the narrative. My citation is the Kansas City Fed in case you missed it.

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...

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

#93

Post by rightbyte »

throwawa14223 wrote: post #38
rightbyte wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you implying. You can just print the money, like the system does today, but benefit the poor more than today.

We're living through proof you cannot right now.

Sure. My main point is that the economic system is so perverted, that it is silly to refute UBI on common sense grounds. I don't think I am an advocate.

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

#94

Post by drcongo »

throwawa14223 wrote: post #87
drcongo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaaaand there it is.

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

I'm not proposing anything. It's just inevitable that when a right wing throwaway account posts about anything, it's just so they can steer around to their favourite topic of The Foreigns.

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

#95

Post by dagw »

aurareturn wrote: post #29
pton_xd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The 'bottom' spend a much large proportion of the income on 'stuff' that counts towards inflation than the the 'top'. If you take money out of rich peoples art and private jet budget and add it to poor peoples food and heating budget, then that can drive up inflation since food and heating make up a bigger part of the inflation calculation than art and private jets.

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

#96

Post by mindcandy »

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…

> the evidence shows money isn’t buying results.

There are different kinds of results.

There’s “Money spent on campaigns gets my favored politicians into office” which apparently isn’t working out too well.

There’s “Money spent on campaigns gets politicians to give me favors at the expense of their constituents” which unfortunately works very well.

And, there’s “Money being spent on campaigns gets politicians to favor laws that encourage donatory competition between big donators even if it is at great expense to everyone including their constituents” which is also going just swimmingly.

All of this is because politicians know that if they don’t play the asshole here, their competition will and they’ll end up with a large multiple of their campaign budget. And, that will put them out of office. A small difference like 2x might not work so well, but 10x certainly does.

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

#97

Post by dragonwriter »

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'm curious as to where you are seeing unrestricted donations.

SuperPACs, one of the main engines of US spending on politics.

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

#98

Post by mamonster »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #82
mamonster wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the exact same thing in the majority of European countries.

Why do you think so?

> Moving towards an autocracy at a rapid pace

Can be said for UK, France at least. Current UK prime minister is basically a guy who was parachuted in after the previous nominee was couped by her own party, France massively reformed the pension system last year by using a legal hack. Germany we'll see where it is in a year.

> Large part of electorate to cheer it on

When parties that are "far-right" (as labelled by mainstream media) are above 20% in most countries sure seems like we are getting there (given that most of these parties like RN, AfD, Vox, etc are branded as anti-democratic/autoritarian).

>Gerrymandering and propaganda

I mean in France 2 of the biggest TV stations (BFM/Cnews) are billionaire owned and run a certain line. Same can be said in UK(Skynews). Germany has dark money campaigns exactly like the US, only you don't hear about them(because all the money goes to CDU/CSU).

>Two party system

I guess this is the European innovation, but with the concept of Brandmauer/Cordon Sanitaire you effectively have that any opposition party can be frozen out of government by the "establishment" parties.. I don't care that CDU/CSU and SPD are 2 different parties when they basically switch between each other for the last 20 years. Same thing was the case with PS/LR in France.

I am not familiar with Nordic countries, they are probably fine, but in the heartland stuff is not going in the democratic direction. And I didn't even mention countries like Poland, Hungary, etc.

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

#99

Post by bhickey »

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…

> 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.

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

#100

Post by bluecalm »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #40
endisneigh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really have any horse in the race but the experiments I’ve seen are hardly universal nor sufficiently guaranteed. It’s basically just a one time payment spread over some period, so it’s not surprising people would use money they know won’t be around forever for essentials. On the other hand it would be nice to know what happened with all of the Covid checks since that also was given to many, but again hardly…

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.

Money supply has little to do with inflation. You can print like crazy and have about 0 inflation (a decade before Covid) or you can raise rates and have huge inflation. It's because inflation happens when supply of goods is limited. Covid messed up the supply chain -> inflation happened.

Some printing may even lower prices because it allows production at scale to happen.

If you just print and just helicopter money you will have some inflation but this doesn't happen at scale significant enough to matter in any civilized country.

Post reply on HN