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Y Combinator Announces Funding For UBI-Supporting Political Candidates (latimes.com)
Most people "feel like they have great potential that is being wasted," argues Y Combinator president Sam Altman -- a Stanford dropout whose company's investments are now worth $65 billion, including Airbnb, Reddit, and Dropbox. Now an anonymous reader quote the Los Angeles Times:
A wealthy young Silicon Valley venture capitalist hopes to recruit statewide and congressional candidates and launch an affordable-housing ballot measure in 2018 because he says California's leaders are failing to address flaws in the state's governance that are killing opportunities for future generations. Sam Altman, 32, will roll out an effort to enlist candidates around a shared set of policy priorities -- including tackling how automation is going to affect the economy and the cost of housing in California -- and is willing to put his own money behind the effort. "I think we have a fundamental breakdown of the American social contract and it's desperately important that we fix it," he said. "Even if we had a very well-functioning government, it would be a challenge, and our current government functions so badly it is an extra challenge..."
Altman lays out 10 principles including lowering the cost of housing, creating single-payer healthcare, increasing clean energy use, improving education, reforming taxes and rebuilding infrastructure. He has few specific policy edicts, and floats proposals that will generate controversy, such as creating a universal basic income for all Americans in an effort to equalize opportunity, public funding for the media and increasing taxes on property that is owned by foreigners, is unoccupied or has been "flipped" by investors seeking a quick return on an investment.
Altman argues that he wants to "ensure that everyone benefits from the coming changes," and specifically highlights the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Altman writes that "If it turns out to be a good policy, I could imagine passing a law that puts it into effect when the GDP per capita doubles. This could help cushion the transition to a post-automation world."
Altman lays out 10 principles including lowering the cost of housing, creating single-payer healthcare, increasing clean energy use, improving education, reforming taxes and rebuilding infrastructure. He has few specific policy edicts, and floats proposals that will generate controversy, such as creating a universal basic income for all Americans in an effort to equalize opportunity, public funding for the media and increasing taxes on property that is owned by foreigners, is unoccupied or has been "flipped" by investors seeking a quick return on an investment.
Altman argues that he wants to "ensure that everyone benefits from the coming changes," and specifically highlights the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Altman writes that "If it turns out to be a good policy, I could imagine passing a law that puts it into effect when the GDP per capita doubles. This could help cushion the transition to a post-automation world."
Giving people a free income makes the fat and lazy. It's a slippery slope to communism. Forget about it.
Much of what he wants is good and maybe possible. However holding back automation is 100% wrong headed. People have been trying to hold back automation for centuries. In fact automation can lower the price of housing in a huge way. And yes, we will have social unrest and some tribulations as humans become obsolete in employment situations. However that very same automation that provides homes and miraculous health care is also the same automation that will eliminate your jobs. In the past it was the guy who shoveled dirt or coal that became jobless due to automation. now it is book keepers, accountants, lawyers and even doctors and they tend to have far more social power to resist changes. But the very reason that automation will win is the same reason the crackpot notions about hiding cures for cancer exist. We are supposed to believe that a doctor can cure a cancer when he wants to but there is so much money that he will never do it. We are asked to believe that doctor will watch his parents, his kids his wife or even his own life to end from cancer when he has that secret cure at hand at all times. and that is exactly why doctors will yield to automated medical care. It is also the reason that lawyers will support automated medical care and you can bet your last penny that insurance companies love quick, easy and inexpensive cures for any problem. In other words there are huge numbers of people hitting the go fast button on automation and they tend to be the bright and highly paid people among us. The worst thing we are against is not exactly regulation but more of allowing a permissions based society. In other words you build a home and government and others will tell you just how you can build that home. The idea of permits or permissions allows so much abuse of individuals that absolutely everything turns into a money issue with a whole bunch of people feeding off the side effects of those permissions.
You mean like Harrison Bergeron?
Talk about billionaires corrupting politics.
...how corporate america keeps its war chests of money overseas in tax havens ... and suggest that maybe if they were paying their taxes like responsible citizens then maybe things wouldn't be so crappy.
If US corporate tax rates and other US corporate/business legal/regulatory-compliance costs were more on-par with foreign rates & costs, more of that money would stay in the US to be taxed for a net gain in revenue to public coffers and deposited in US financial institutions which provide capital for home loans, car loans, small business loans, etc etc.
The government is more focused on using taxation & regulation as social-engineering tools, not as *just* a tool to collect revenue to operate the government. The couldn't use tax & regulatory laws and policies to dis- or encourage societal behaviors if their taxes, etc were tied to sticking to the Laffer Curve.
"Revenue" is *not* the primary motivation behind federal tax & regulatory laws and policies. Control & manipulation of the population is what motivates and guides federal tax & regulatory laws & policies. Revenue generation is secondary at best.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
At others' expense. Apparently you're in the "idealogy supersedes evidence" camp.
> Those citizens who pay less in income tax benefit more. Welfare.
And those who pay more (such as those with $500k/year taxable incomes) pay more and benefit less.
That's the point.
Social Security and Medicaid are two of the greatest programs this country has. You won't find a senior who disagrees.
I guess you've never seen crushing poverty up close?