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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?
Hey behind Medicare For All. That's real. UBI of still pie in the sky.
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65 billion imaginary dollars.
No one knows the true worth of a company until you go to sell it. How much would Reddit and Dropbox sell for if there were buyers? Not much. AirBnb? Not much more.
If he sold all his companies, right, now, he wouldn't get anything close to 65 billion.
Talk about billionaires corrupting politics.
Things are going to get very ugly before they get better. The investor class will not relinquish its power without a fight. These guys will fight to the bitter end. They have everything to lose. They will use their resources to keep the status quo in place. Expect the skirmishes between main street and wall street to escalate. The outcome is very hard to predict, but there will be a conflict. Best case: We are able to wrest control from the investor class, and restore democracy. Worst case: Think Second Civil War, Robots killing citizens en-masse, biological agents released, or US military thermonuclear bombs targeted intra-US.
The real issue isn't a housing shortage, the real issue here is there are no jobs where housing is cheap.
There is plenty of cheap housing in California if you're willing to live anywhere but the bay area. Modesto, Stockton, Hollister, Tracy come to mind first. Problem is guys like Sam Altman want to live in Woodside, Atherton, or Los Altos. People like Sam Altman do not want to commute any more than 12 minutes to work. People like Sam Altman would never lower themselves to live in any of the aforementioned cities, much less start a company with decent paying wages in them.
We always hear the excuse, "WELL THE GOOD TALENT DOESN'T LIVE IN THOSE CITIES!" Really? Because I could have sworn we have over 100k H1b visa holders that were willing to live anywhere but where they came from. I could have sworn a lot of these folks would think that Stockton, even with it's high crime rate is a much better, much more civilized city than where they came from.
I've been preaching this for a while, seems like it would solve so many issues. Less traffic, less economic depression, and a foot up for people living in those cities. It's not like Atherton, Los Altos, or Woodside need anymore money. Give people a job, they won't need UBI.
...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.
The ideology is that ppl are free to pursue their happiness. Should we have tested the Declaration of Independence before rashly committing so much blood and treasure? Emancipation is too risky; we must do experiments to see what will happen to the price of cotton before giving slaves freedom.
Why is the dollar now stronger after the Fed "printed" trillions to save world markets in 2008 and after? Why has Covered Interest Parity been consistently violated since 2008? Future dollars are worth more in world financial markets than today's dollars. The more dollars there are, the stronger the dollar gets.
We should fund a basic income on the Fed's balance sheet at zero taxpayer cost. Fix inflation the same way the private sector does: create more money. The rich put money in money-market funds that fund financial innovations that create money from thin air and return part of that created money to the money-market fund holders. Then they use that created money to buy houses ever-inflating in price. They sell the house to someone else who has created money in his money-market account, and the cycle continues. Housing price inflation is met with financial market money creation. We can use the same idea to index incomes to price rises and thus guarantee that real income purchasing power will not decrease.
At others' expense. Apparently you're in the "idealogy supersedes evidence" camp.
Rights supercede experimentation. It's only at others' expense in the sense that the banks' toxic assets were made good at the Fed's expense, which made the dollar stronger. Therefore, fund basic income entirely on the Fed's balance sheet and index all incomes to price rises to eliminate nominal inflation. Win-win.
We should be constructing simulations of a Fed-funded basic income and test out virtually indexation schemes. But the idea of a basic income is not testable because it relies on a judgment about how people choose to live their lives.
Funding for political candidates, really, that's what we call bribes now. At least lobbying and election contributions supposedly go towards specific issues or election funds, these bozos are just cutting the crap and funding politicians.
I don't want any collection of rich people basically buying out the entire candidate pool, at least right now we have our pick from rich people and even though they are further removed from our world than we care to admit, at least they are somewhat of a pick. Y Combinators is proposing the political system within Hunger Games.
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Get PAID for EXISTING!!
Yay socialism.... :-\
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Well i think a good start on that is getting a few people elected who will actually talk about that. Right now UBI is outside our political mainstream.
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> 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?
This may be the dumbest post I have seen in a few days.
I did the math on UBI and found scrapping existing welfare, EI and veteran payments in favour for one UBI program would not only supply more income to more people, it would actually save the government money.
UBI is not magic, the money doesn't just come from the air, it comes from taxes. To pay for UBI the government merely needs to shift taxes to apply to wherever the money currently is. In other words, people who are making profits end up footing the bill for the people they laid off to make those profits.
The national debt is likely to go down, not up, if UBI is implemented because it saves money in the long run. Not just by unifying programs, but by reducing social housing, medical and emergency responder costs which are a result of poverty.
Or maybe you dont have a strong grasp on what UBI is for or how it would work.
What it is for: a future where automation is cutting large numbers of people out of work. While there have always been people who have lost their jobs to automation the worry now is that robotics may be replacing manual labor almost entirely in the future. What are the manual laborers in this country going to do if that happens? Furthermore, advances in "ai" threaten many traditionally well paying jobs which makes the problems even worse.
How UBI works: UBI isnt as expensive as you make out. With UBI there's no unemployment payouts, food stamps, or any other number of social programs along with the large bureaucracies needed to make them work. While that money saved wont cover all the costs there's enough static wealth at the top even right now (let alone in a world so heavily automated) to make up the difference.
And really, I havent heard any viable solutions to what looks like a looming labor crises that isnt "let them all starve" or UBI
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So if welfare so far has failed the system in both cost and abuse without lifting anyone out of abject poverty, how well do you think UBI (basically welfare for the masses) will fare in the next 50 years? If we need such overhead managing current welfare funds that apply to 90% of the population?
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Just got back from another trip to Silicon Valley. Couldn't help but notice that the place has become a very expensive ghetto. Infrastructure is essentially what was there in the 70s. Everyone is stuck in traffic on the way there/back. Folks are busy flipping 40yr old poorly-designed one-two story houses to each other at staggering prices. Even the cell phone coverage sucks. Clearly, negligible amount of resources has gone into making the area as a whole better .. and this is the golden child of US as a whole and liberal-minded California...
First off, thanks for trotting out Karl Rove/Regan's tired old talking point about government. To which I'll say: A government agent paid for the life saving medicine for a family member of mine. While a capitalist declined to order some cat scans for said family member because they were afraid they wouldn't get paid if the scans came up negative and caused lots of complications. Google the phrase "Wallet Biopsy" sometime and be horrified.
Now on to the next point: I get it. You don't like Government. Well, tough titties. See, gov'ts are really, really useful. For everyone. If you try to do without one the rich and powerful won't. They'll make one for you. Well, not you per se. For themselves. And _only_ themselves.
And for Pete's sake pick a better sig. Sweden doesn't have a bloody police state. The USSR and China are not progressive. You do understand that people can lie, right? The folks who crammed your head full of those ideas did. Go read some of Liz Warren and Al Franklin's books. Then check their sources (they're all meticulously sourced) and then go read A People's History Of The United States. You've been had.
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banks' toxic assets were made good
We hear that a lot. If anyone ever received $1 in subsidy or service from government, they owe it back 10 million times over, payable mostly to non-workers and non-producers and the government workers who shepherd them. Meanwhile non-workers never owe anyone anything in return, not a dollar, not a thanks, not good civic behavior, not living a responsible life, not peace or domestic tranquillity, nothing, ever.
You just described a job.
to save you a Google:
The "copybook headings" to which the title refers were proverbs or maxims, extolling virtues such as honesty or fair dealing that were printed at the top of the pages of 19th-century British students' special notebooks, called copybooks. The school-children had to write them by hand repeatedly down the page.
It works until the cash runs out.
Germany attempted things like that in the 1920-early 1930's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Consider an average person from school to the old age pension in 2017.
Got so school and maybe the parents get a support payment from the gov.
When school is done a person has options? Mil, university study, scholarship, can pay or gets a loan for more education, vocational training, gov work, joins the private sector, looks for work, create some work or has to be looked after.
Stay at home? Rent? Move to anther city to study or find work? A government might help its citizens with such costs while they study or find work.
Each of the above options can be given no or some or full gov support. On average the gov is not paying everyone all the time and should be getting some tax payments in from the private sector workers. Or as students join the work force or create their own new private sector jobs and pay their taxes.
As the person who did vocational training joins the work force or stars they own company later and takes on new workers.
Some people may never get jobs and need more support for rent, housing, finding work.
Farms that have a lot of wealth in buildings and machinery but are very cash poor for years might need extra support for a few years depending on conditions.
Not having a UBI gives a government flexibility to ramp up unexpected payments in any area that needs support one decade or for a year.
People who are not totally poor but are not in the lower working class and are stuck paying tax and get getting any support?
That can be understood and some help provided in the tax system for the working poor or with more direct payments.
Lots of older people are stuck between the old age pension and trying to find work due to imports and they jobs going to other nations? They can be looked after, helped to find new skills or just supported. Finally people get their old age pension.
The only funding trick is to keep the above system for your citizens only and to collect tax. No illegal migrants get any payments, no accepting decades of unskilled refugees, no hiding all profits in some other nation.
No health payments to generations of guest workers, illegal migrants. No tax refunds for illegal migrants.
Over a generation every illegal migrant is asked to return to their own nation.
The problem is that all has to be means tested, tracked by a gov and citizenship proven at every stage of life. That soon discovers big trusted brands not paying and tax and using low wage illegal workers.
Wealthy people want a UBI so their illegal migrants, poor workers, guest workers or working poor get covered with feee new gov cash without any new questions or investigations.
No wage pressure to pay more as the gov is giving "everyone" in a nation free money. Less union power and no new tax questions about the legal status of workers.
Just pay the UBI and keep the really low wages. So expect to see a lot of very different groups been very well funded to push for a no questions asked UBI policy.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Crushing poverty is an absolute disgrace for a modern nation. There is no need at all for it economically either, because it is _expensive_ to have people live in poverty. The only thing it serves is to keep the middle-class in fear and timid. No other use.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The thing you UBI-detractors do not understand is that the UBI is Universal. It has minimal overhead, quite unlikely the system in place now. That is the whole point. It just distributes mostly the same money as is distributed now, but with almost no bureaucracy and nobody falling through the cracks. It eliminates a lot of value-destruction the current system does and fosters.
However, there are certainly problems with an UBI. For example, many people will find it really difficult to live without work and not because of financial aspects. That is the real killer here. With an UBI, all the make-work things currently done will fall away and that is going to hit hard. Just look at how many people run into massive issues when they retire or how many dies soon afterwards. People need something to do and many cannot create that by and for themselves.
That said, an UBI will happen, there is no way around that. The numbers just do not add up any other way, unless the whole world agrees to go back to a non-tech model of society. That is not going to happen.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That era of the human race is over. We are now moving into post-industrialism. Many people have not noticed or are in denial, but there is no stopping it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Tax the corporations something insane like 80% of their profits
You would quickly see massive capital flight and job losses, as corporations moved assets overseas. You might think that with enough totalitarian restrictions and secret police survelliance you could stop that, but China has lost $3.8 trillion over the last decade, despite severe capital controls.
Historically, capital controls have been about as effective as grabbing smoke.
He broke into camps and stole what he needed.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Right, so you can just go secure yourself a solid spot on that preppers tv show for the looming blood bath that will surely follow your ordained collapse.
The rest of us will keep looking for and talking about viable solutions to future problems.
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I'm going to go ahead and say that you're a moron and a rationalist. Things like ideals are more real to you thank actual observed reality. If your economics God says one thing, well then that's true even if the actual supporting evidence has yet to come around. In this case, I assume that you're waiting on the imminent collapse of western social democracies, based on the idea that all collectivism is bad.
Keep arguing exactly like this. You and APK make a great team.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I had used the > and < and Slashdot ate my comment.
The whole procedure for current welfare comes down to "Check income level, give money". We are currently giving 1 Trillion dollar per year to less than 10% of the population. That is $20,000 per poor person in the US, $80,000 for a family of 4 and according to at least one left wing instiution there is less than 5% overhead on that.
We are giving poor people a UBI already and the poor are not getting any better off.
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No, that's not why UBI wouldn't work, you and your friends apparently do not understand how it's supposed to work.
It would be neutral in terms of income for the middle class. The concept isn't "We add UBI to the current system", but "We replace all forms of welfare and even the tiered taxation model with UBI and a flat tax". The savings that pay for it come from:
1. Everyone on the same tax rate. So you pay 25% on every dollar, you don't get the first $X thousand free of tax, then the next $Y thousand at a lower rate, etc.
2. Reduced bureaucracy due to qualifications testing for existing benefits being eliminated.
The problem, of course, is that the latter isn't really going to work. You can't replace disability with UBI because the average person on disability has much higher medical costs, and they can't exactly solve the discrepancy by finding a part time job.
That is the real problem with UBI. It ignores why we only provide certain benefits to certain people and assumes that everyone covered can just get a job if UBI doesn't cover their needs. So in practice, it wouldn't solve the bureaucracy issue. The best you can hope for is to combine it with a general improvement in public services - making healthcare free, for example, would at least reduce the problems for someone whose disability benefits are replaced by UBI - but that wouldn't solve the whole problem.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The Social Security system is one of the most-successful anti-poverty systems in the world, if not the most-successful. I've been targeting a Universal Social Security, and I figure it will fare rather well. Unfortunately I'm bad at Web design and communicating in general.
Also the argument about the welfare system sucking down tons of money in either overhead or abuse is a red herring. That's not a real thing; most such systems are actually quite efficient, and nearly all of the so-called abuse is bureaucratic--caseworkers tend to see that you technically don't qualify for food stamps, but that you're exactly the type of case for which we have SNAP and WIC, and so they approve applications which later fail bureaucratic review and get flagged as inappropriate disbursements.
Most UBI advocates have a distorted view of welfare, of economics, and of the dynamics of government. They have no idea what they're talking about and are easily-dismissed. That's a big problem, because a universal social security is a good policy if implemented properly, and the loud voice of the public is a ridiculous ass-dance that ties itself to the idea. Sort of a giant well-poisoning attack against any such thing.
Other things UBI advocates imagine that don't line up with reality are corporate-supplied welfare (bullshit jobs, make-work, any idea of a job existing because people need jobs instead of because corporations need labor); the end of work thanks to automation; and a great need to tax the rich, either because they have too much or because of a lack of capacity to figure out how to finance a UBI.
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What a pathetic group we get to vote for. Could you imagine any of the candidates being one of your circle of friends. Not Me.
Challenge: I have better access to my Video, Music, Pics and Text than anyone on Earth.
There are plenty of welfare success stories. We wouldn't have Harry Potter without welfare.
Cheap storage VM.
I'm not sure if I believe that 100% of knowledge worker jobs will be replaced in a timescale short enough to cause upheaval. However it is possible, and I think a basic income is a good option to bridge the gap. It's not because I'm lazy and don't want to work; it's because I can see a time when people won't have to work in some of the crappier knowledge worker jobs, and almost no one will be doing manual labor jobs.
The root of the problem is that our entire society is organized around educating people to take jobs, working at those jobs, selling labor for money, consuming, and repeating the cycle to continue consuming. Money is the key thing that stratifies everyone, and in a perfect scenario how much you have is proportional to how valuable your labor is. (Yes, I know that we don't live in an ideal world - there are plenty of scammers, trust fund kids, criminals and corrupt individuals.) If you suddenly introduce changes into society that make it impossible for people to sell their labor, and impossible for most of them to retrain for something else, then you have to rethink the whole idea of work. If people aren't working in the traditional society we live in, they're consuming less, and companies won't have as many customers for their products. They'll respond by producing less, making less money and therefore hiring fewer people. Once the majority of society is unemployed, you have a big problem on your hands. If you want to keep the old monetary system of valuing things in place, then how do you prevent them from turning to crime or revolting en masse?
I have worked in a lot of big companies, and most corporate jobs are lightweight "knowledge worker" positions that could easily be eliminated by machine learning and automation. There are millions of people who have these jobs and maintain a pretty decent lifestyle while paying taxes into the system and consuming. They're also people who aren't exactly geniuses -- most are typical "C students" who graduated with some random business degree from various state universities. I doubt you're going to retrain someone who's been routing reports around forever to be a big data scientist.
Corporations hide as much of their profits as possible.
You'd mostly see increases in indirect unemployment. When the economy shifts, jobs are lost and gained. You lose 0.1%, gain 0.1%, everything is fine. These movements of jobs come from consumer demand: the new jobs are created by consumers buying from new companies, buying new products, and so forth.
What happens when consumer demand moves, and the businesses don't have the cash to outlay for changes necessary to provide for that demand?
Taxing business income at 0% is probably a bad idea; taxing it at 80% is also a bad idea. I favor lower business income taxes, where it makes rational sense; and I favor them in the context above. Prosperity doesn't trickle down; prosperity drives its way upwards. It's not a matter of taking away money for jobs--we deduct wages paid from a business's incomes, after all--but rather a matter of reducing the agility of our economy. The question, thus, is simple: How much agility do we need?
Payroll taxes, on the other hand, directly increase wages without transferring those wages to the worker. If you pay a worker $100/hr and have a 10% payroll tax, then you pay that worker $110/hr, but he receives $100/hr, on which he pays his own income taxes. To sell the output of his work, you must charge enough to bring in $110/hr of revenue. I cannot eliminate all payroll taxes in some policies I would like to deploy, as it would be economically disruptive; I would argue heavily against any new payroll taxes, however.
Sales taxes are even worse.
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Sorry to see that the trolls and morons have mod points, and used them on you. I, for one, know that you don't deserve that.
Well, we don't outright ban it. But we do tax the hell out of it. Ever heard of the Estate Tax? You should look it up because it's relevant to your argument.
This.
Humans need to have a purpose to be individually happy.
Humans need to be productive to have a happy society.
Society needs the production of goods and services to avoid scarcity of resources, and thus survive.
UBI, as currently pitched, is mostly billionaires trying to foist their nouveau-riche guilt off onto society, so they don't have to take personal responsibility for anything.
Once technology gets to the point of creating a post-scarcity society, then the rules will change. For now, it's a recipe for a decaying society and must be avoided, so that we can get to that vision.
These Silicon Valley rich-guys are exactly the worst people to listen to about this, as they have personal reasons to put this particular cart before the horse.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't see why you'd use a flat tax and not stick with a progressive tiered system (obviously you'd have to adjust the value and rates of those tiers to make it work)
horror vacui
This presents UBI and welfare as either/or, which is not necessarily the case. We can still replace many means-tested welfare programs with UBI, without touching others. And this still presents a net reduction in bureaucracy.
The problem with your argument is that humans can be productive and thereby find a purpose to be happy, without being paid for that purpose.
While we're at it, how many people who are working for a living are actually happy with what they do at work? Especially once you look at those earning less than median?
One could easily argue that UBI is exactly what would enable more people to find a purpose and be productive at it, instead of doing shitty work that they hate for shitty pay.
I'm going to go ahead and say that you're a moron and a rationalist.
A natural reaction from somebody who has no knowledge of history or human nature, or ignores such for political/ideological reasons. Nothing but ad hominem attacks. All this talk of "supporting evidence" and not one citation/link.
Before you go spouting off about others being morons you need to do a great deal of self-reflection.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Uh, I'm not even characterizing UBI proponents as 'right' or 'left', rather as 'lazy' and 'dumb'. I'm sure there are just as many 'right wing' types that want free money to live on so they can party and be lazy as 'left wing' types. All it takes is being bad at math and not having anything resembling a work ethic.
So the truth was modded "Troll" and thus Western Civilization collapsed.
Not because it was attacked and invaded by barbarians (though that was occurring at the time as well) but because of the self-righteous greed of the mob.
In other words, people who are making profits end up footing the bill for the people they laid off to make those profits.
If they were laid off then by definition they aren't helping to make those profits.
The rest of your post may be correct or incorrect-- I haven't "done the math" myself-- but since your reasoning is obviously tainted by socialist ideology then I don't have much confidence in the rest of your analysis.
The onus is on you, cretin, and will remain that way so long as social democracies exist. There's no real need to argue with you, your beliefs won't outlive you. Do feel free to hasten that day, however.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Please tell me how any social plans so far have worked. We are currently giving ~$20,000 per poor person (that's $80k/year for a "poor" 4 person family) in the US in welfare and they continue to be poor.
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The United States Social Security Administration provides Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance pensions. Like all of our welfare systems, it experiences an incredibly-low degree of recipient abuse, largely thanks to the Office of the Inspector General's effectiveness in identifying fraudulent applicants by a broad array of investigatory means including simple spot-checks. Largely, however, OASDI is practically-immune to fraud in the Old-Age and Survivorship pensions services, as it's hard to fake a dead person being alive for very long, especially with public records of death; only Disability Insurance experiences direct fraud to any significant degree, and that's caught in surprisingly short order.
What sets OAS in particular apart from TANF, WIC, SNAP, unemployment insurance, and especially HUD is its sheer effectiveness. Only 10% of Americans above retirement age live below the Federal old-age poverty line. Social Security's Old-Age and Survivors pension program would completely-eliminate old-age poverty if it restructured around a flatter (or flat) benefit using the same total disbursal. This would also address the recent problem of eligibility: because many of today's low-income workers are in and out of employment, they don't even qualify for OAS; a flat benefit would address that.
Compare that to TANF and WIC, which don't adequately reach all recipients; SNAP, which frequently provides an inadequate benefit; Unemployment Insurance, which creates a disincentive to work by both discounting itself from any offered wage and placing a large risk of not qualifying for unemployment again if the job doesn't work out; and HUD Housing Assistance, which provides benefits to 1/4 of qualified applicants, and places the other 3/4 on a waiting list from which they never graduate, effectively denying benefits to 75% of qualified households while telling them they legally are owed benefits.
As you can see, the OASDI program is wildly-successful, and still has room for improvement. A program of universal social security can provide similar success, both by stabilizing the economy at large, all individual households, and other aspects of our welfare system, all while reducing the tax burden on America's citizens and businesses.
Restructuring TANF, WIC, SNAP, unemployment, and HUD housing assistance around a universal social security program with supplemental assistance (largely childcare support services--Cash for Kids is a really, really bad idea) would provide more-effective welfare while reducing taxes on every taxpaying individual in the United States, immediately lowering payroll taxes by 0.9%, and reducing the business income taxes from 35% to 32.5%. This would include retaining OASDI as a supplemental service which fills the gap between the universal benefit and the OASDI benefits of today.
This system stabilizes OASDI and takes a large amount of load off WIC, SNAP, and HUD. It completely-obviates unemployment insurance. HUD housing assistance can ignore the 3/4 of applicants currently not receiving, or it can attempt to address them; in either case, the benchmark number for HUD to use from the universal benefit is 45% of the benefit's payout, and HUD can discount its annual subsidy by that much (plus any received OASDI, for households receiving OASDI) for recipient households. Most two-adult households will exceed their HUD benefit by this calculation, and thus become ineligible. Note that HUD housing assistance today only costs $60 billion annually, or $39/month per taxpaying household.
So yes, our Social Security system provides the most-successful anti-poverty system ever seen; it can be improved; and we can design a better service based around it. Our current total crop of welfare plans has severe defects and doesn't accomplish its mission; we need to re-orient that mission to something achievable by providing an effective baseline service from which to build.
As for numbers, that $20,000 per person number is
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I don't understand this line of thought (which I place in the same vein as "everyone will become fat and lazy"). I agree that make-work jobs will disappear, but charities and hobbies will not evaporate along with them. A lot of the human-dedicated charities might dwindle, as UBI replaces any need for them, but there are plenty of charities that are not focused on basic human welfare and many of these other groups will expand as more people have time to volunteer for them.
People already donate time beyond their standard 40 hours (or more) at their paying job. My day job is data management and translation, but I also volunteer at a feline rescue/shelter, doing not only shift management and visitor "greeting", but also involved in a lot of their tech-related needs. President Jimmy Carter collapsed building free homes for people this past weekend.
When you're in retirement you don't necessarily have the energy or ability to go out to such places, but I expect even geriatrics might find new opportunities in such a system. UBI means that cash will move around more freely within communities, which will lead to more entrepreneurship; they might get a gig that is both low-hour and low-pay (as low as $1/hour) where they just say "hello" to people who walk into a store and tell them where to find various departments (think Wal-mart greeters, but everywhere.) Go in one day a week, sit on a chair for 6-8 hours, and they get a little extra money on top of their UBI.
I think that UBI would lead to a lot more community efforts as well, to make those UBI dollars stretch for people who want to do something but can't stomach any jobs offered. Community gardens, simplistic tailoring, various trades of services. Many of these would spring from hobbies and personal interests (how many people maintain a small garden in their backyard or quilt/knit on their own time and dime?). Re-using or re-purposing stuff would also take on an extra amount of focus, so someone who can fix up an old laptop could do so in exchange for a few tomatoes or a warm hat.