When I say its "livible" I mean that's what the government calls it:
"The Federal Poverty Level (FPL), or the "poverty line" is an economic measure that is used to decide whether the income level of an individual or family qualifies them for certain federal benefits and programs. The FPL is the set minimum amount of income that a family needs for food, clothing, transportation, shelter, and other necessities.
"Note that poverty level is different from poverty threshold. The poverty threshold is another federal poverty measure that actually defines what poverty is and provides statistics on the number of Americans living in poverty. The data is created by the US Census Bureau which uses pre-tax income as a yardstick to measure poverty. The statistical report on poverty threshold is used by the HHS to determine the federal poverty level (FPL).
Put that into a few tax calculators. I got $250 federal income tax liability, a $37 EITC credit (no qualifying children). Add 6.2% FICA tax of $899. After the federal hit, it's $13,388. State taxes would be another chunk, but not $2300.
It may not be a fun living, but the poverty line is pretty much the very definition of "livable".
"It is universal because everyone in the control group gets it, regardless of their situation."
It's universal right up until people start bitching about rich people getting it and phase it out for people who "don't need it". Because, let's be real, that's what will happen.
A full-time minimum wage job is perfectly "livable" for a single person. Poverty line for a single person in the US is $12,140. Full-time minimum-wage (federal) is 2000 hours at $7.25 is $14,500.
It is not "livable" for a single parent with one or more children...the poverty line for parent+1 child is $16,460. In a very real sense, children CAUSE poverty.
A person living on minimum wage should never procreate, because they take one person who was not in poverty and put 2 people into poverty.
If it was money that won elections, Hillary would be president.
CNBC: Trump spent about half of what Clinton did on his way to the presidency
His campaign committee spent about $238.9 million through mid-October, compared with $450.6 million by Clinton's. That equals about $859,538 spent per Trump electoral vote, versus about $1.97 million spent per Clinton electoral vote.
[Those numbers do not include spending from Oct. 20 to Election Day due to when the article was written.]
While Trump's campaign increased its spending on television ads in its final election push, it still used the traditional outreach tool much less than Clinton's did. As of late October, Clinton spent's campaign spent about $141.7 million on ads, compared with $58.8 million for Trump's campaign, according to NBC News.
That disparity extended to campaign payrolls. For example, Clinton's campaign had about 800 people on payroll at the end of August, versus about 130 for Trump's. Democrats often have larger ground operations than Republicans.
Still, it wasn't just Clinton who heavily outspent Trump. He shelled out much less money than other recent nominees, as well.
Through mid-October 2012, the campaigns of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent $630.8 million and $360.7 million, respectively.
Obama's campaign also spent about $593.9 million through mid-October 2008. Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign actually spent less than Trump, about $216.8 million through mid-October.
Franken unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a combined machine malfunction and human error on Election Day that left 171 Maplewood ballots safe, secure but uncounted until Tuesday’s final day of recounting in Ramsey County. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office immediately asked county officials to explain what had happened, and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign said it sent its own experts to Ramsey County to review the situation and said it was “skeptical about [the ballots’] sudden appearance.”
----------
Stealing elections is an old game politicians play. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president, got to the U.S. Senate in 1948 by “winning” the closest race in Texas history by a margin of 87 votes out of more than a million cast. An election judge in tiny Alice, Texas, said he counted more than 200 names on the voting roll for Box 13 that were written in alphabetic succession in the same hand, same color of ink. When a federal court subpoenaed Box 13, it was discovered to be “lost.” LBJ took his seat in the Senate. Voting machines were supposed to put an end to such election-night chicanery, but Earl Long, the colorful governor of Louisiana, where fraud is the national sport, boasted that “I can make a voting machine play ‘Home on the Range’ all night long.”
------------
Logan announced on December 13 that 561 absentee ballots in the county had been wrongly rejected due to an administrative error.[14] The next day, workers retrieving voting machines from precinct storage found an additional 12 ballots, bringing the total to 572 newly discovered ballots. Logan admitted the lost ballots were an oversight on the part of his department, and insisted that the found ballots be counted. On December 15, the King County Canvassing Board voted 2-1 in favor of counting the discovered ballots.
Upon examination of the discovered ballots, it was further discovered that, with the exception of two ballots, none of the ballots had been cast by voters whose surnames began with the letters A, B, or C.[15] There was a further search for more ballots, and on December 17, county workers discovered a tray in a warehouse with an additional 162 previously uncounted ballots.[15] All together, 723 uncounted or improperly rejected ballots were discovered in King County during the manual hand recount.
After all other counties submitted their recount votes, it was revealed on December 20 that at least five other counties besides King County had included ballots that had been discovered after the initial count. For example, Snohomish County included 224 missed ballots that had been discovered underneath mail trays. The outcome of the State Supreme Court hearing regarding King County's votes could have potentially affected those counties' counts as well.
------------------
When election officials brought two master personal electronic ballots – or PEBs, small devices inserted into voting machines – back to the Franklin County Board of Elections from a Worthington polling location, one was uploaded into the final, unofficial total of a super-tight congressional race.
The other was not.
The next day, as bipartisan members of the board of elections were reviewing the race, they realized the PEB's results were missing.
That PEB and its 588 votes were found. The breakdown was 198 votes for Republican Troy Balderson, 388 votes for Democrat Danny O'Connor and two for Green Party candidate Joe Manchik.
The mistake is embarrassing for Franklin County election officials, but they caught it quickly and the PEB was always in a secure location. Those 588 votes will be included – along with additional absentee and provisional ballots across the district – in the final tally, which must be tabulated by Aug. 24.
If we're going to demand that ISPs just push bits around without throttling or special treatment, then demanding that they monitor all the data for copyright violations, spam, bogus ads, clickbait, fake news...that's a paradox, ain't it?
Young people haven't experienced taxation of any consequence. I'm assuming "young people" here is something like the 16-25-year-old cohort. Mommy and Daddy have been paying for everything their entire lives and probably will continue to pay their rent, car insurance, and cell phone bills until they are 30 or so (Obamacare infantilized young adults by telling them they should not be responsible for their own healthcare decisions until they are 27).
It's all well and good to expect that "rich" people be made to "pay their fair share" (a level which is never ever defined, except as "more than they're paying now") when that's someone else.
Let's ask them how they feel when they are 35 years old and working 40 hour jobs and pocketing pay for 28 hours (i.e., paying 30% in taxes) and are told that they need to pay more because "free college for everyone" or "gigabit broadband is a human right".
Many banks wanted nothing to do with the money, but were forced to take it by regulators so as to not paint the few other banks that may have "needed" it from looking like they were failing...if all the banks took money then they were all "equal". Most banks paid the money back as soon as they were allowed to.
Then it's a local restaurant. The fact that virtually zero people from off-campus are ever going to eat there shouldn't invalidate that. Or, if it's good enough, people will come from off-campus and effectively certify it as a local restaurant?
The poverty threshold, poverty limit or poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate to cover total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. In the US, this is presented as an income level based on household size (number of dependents). For a single person household, the poverty line is $12,060 (2017).
Perhaps worth noting is that a single person household working a full-time minimum-wage job exceeds the poverty line (50 weeks time 40 hours times $7.25 is $14,500), so by definition a full-time minimum wage worker is not living in poverty. But if that same person has a child, then both are living in poverty, as the poverty line for a two-person household is $16,240. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
An assumption of a UBI is that it provides sufficient income to survive on, so let's use the poverty line as the basis for the UBI. That is, a single person household would receive a UBI of $12,060; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $16,240; and so on. Note that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $12,060 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,880 in UBI), so at least some will avoid getting married, or even living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their free money.
Using census data, there are 124.5 million households. The average household size is 2.54 people. Let's interpolate the poverty table to get an average expected UBI of about $18,497. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.303 trillion.
Coincidentally, that is almost exactly the amount of money we currently spend on all social welfare benefits programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, foodstamps, etc. A reasonable idea--indeed, this was put forward in a WSJ essay by Charles Murray--would be to eliminate all those programs in favor of the UBI. Of course, this ignores the howls that would arise from a populace deprived of their SS checks and foodstamps.
Exploring the notion of replacing the most basic welfare programs, e.g. foodstamps, section 8 housing, while not disrupting the SS and Medicare that the elderly view as an earned right. After all, the UBI based on poverty level should by definition cover those sorts of expenses. There will still be screams from people concerned about drug addicts not buying food for their kids and that sort of thing. So it seems unlikely that the overhead of those programs, let alone the programs, would be completely done away with.
So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare. Those totaled about $1.473T of the welfare expenditures, so add the $2.303 to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.776T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in an either-or situation reduces this a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the existing programs, for a total cost of about $5T. Or perhaps the UBI in lieu of all other programs can actually be rammed through so that the cost remains a minimum of $2.303T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.27 trillion. So UBI would consume somewhere north of 70% of all federal revenues. And the math here assumes that no one receive UBI drops out of the workforce or reduces their taxable income at all--i.e., that revenues stay constant.
We had $1T deficits under Obama, too, you know, and the White House under Obama was projecting $1T deficits well into the 2020's.
Current tax revenues are at all time record highs, but sadly so is spending. Spending increases are accelerating faster than revenue increases.
I've notice a fairly consistent pattern of revenue vs spending. The revenue from year X is usually sufficient or nearly so to cover the spending levels of year X - 5.
" how many people can go onto UBI without society collapsing?"
If it's Universal Basic Income, isn't *everyone* receiving it? Regardless of your other income, status, medical status, etc. you get the UBI. Rich, wealthy, poor, homeless or whatever, you get UBI. If not, then it's hardly Universal, is it? Once you begin excluding people who "don't need it", then it's just back to the plain welfare, isn't it?
California passes legislation that allows the governor to simply appoint the state's electors. Perfectly Constitutional..."Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,..."
Had this been in effect this election, we can assume Jerry Brown would have appointed 55 Democrats for Sec. Clinton.
The EC remains unchanged, but the "popular vote" swings to Trump by about 1M. Without popular votes from California, Sec. Clinton would have 8.7M fewer popular votes and Mr. Trump would have 4.4M fewer popular votes. So the final tally would be Clinton with 57M and Trump with 58.5M.
I notice that Democrats have no problems with Sec. Clinton winning only 3/5ths of the California vote but getting 100% of the 55 of the state's electoral votes...
In 2016 there was no "popular vote". There never has been. What we're talking about is the aggregate vote of the different states, votes which were cast under the rules in place at the time, which was not a "popular vote". If we had a "popular vote" it is almost a certainty that the tally would have come out differently. Some conservatives who stayed home in California, knowing that their state was overwhelmingly in the bag for Sec. Clinton, likely come out and vote. Some Democrats in Alabama might have done the same. Personally, I have voted Libertarian for years in Georgia confident that my L votes would never crack the Republican lock and accidentally elect a Democrat for Senate or President.
But the campaigns and elections were based on the rules of the Electoral College as they have for 200+ years. Everyone planned (or should have planned) their strategy for campaigning based on garnering EC votes, not on amassing run-up-the-score votes in red or blue states. At least some voters in locked-in red or blue states made their Election Day decisions to perhaps stay home knowing their candidate had basically already won (or lost) their state. At least some voters voted for Libertarian or Green candidates, perhaps thinking their votes were not going to matter.
Based on the final score of, say, a football game played under the current rules it is impossible to say who'd have won if 2 points were also awarded based on each first down gained, because team strategies would change based on the different rules in effect at the time of the game. If fouls in a basketball game resulted in 2 points being deducted from your team score rather than allowing the other team the chance to shoot 1+1 or 2 free throws, think the game would be played differently?
If we elected the President based on elections allocated by Congressional district one vote per district plus 2 statewide votes, think the campaigns and votes would be different? So the same is true of saying "popular vote". We don't have a "popular vote", so saying Clinton (or Gore) won the "popular vote" is not true.
It is true that when aggregating the votes across all states, that they had pluralities. But that's like saying Clinton had 658 yards of total offense (she had 65.8M votes) and Trump had 629 yards of total offense (62.9M votes), and saying she should have won the football game. But the fact is, that despite moving the ball up and down the field somewhat better than Trump, she essentially turned the ball over 5 times (lost 5 state that Obama carried twice) and failed to score points when it counted.
If someone wants to play "what if" for ex post facto results, imagine "what if" we had had instant run-off, where the people who voted for Gary Johnson (4+M) and Jill Stein (1+M) and the 800k "other" voters had selected a 2nd-choice vote? How many Libertarians and Greens would have selected Trump and Clinton as their second choice? How many of those L and G votes were "protest" votes in "safe" states.
Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact on US Presidential elections.
Unless one considers state borders to be gerrymandered. Because 48 states use a winner-takes-all method for allocating electoral college votes. That is, the person receiving the most presidential votes within a state gets all the EC votes from the state. Maine and Nebraska have different rules that are impacted somewhat by district lines, but they have so few districts that its hard to figured gerrymandering has much impact. Maine has all of two districts, with Augusta and Portland and the section of the state between them comprising one district, and the rest of Maine the other, and Nebraska has 3 and their map is hardly what I'd consider gerrymandered, with the tow countries comprising Omaha in one, the suburbs of Omaha in another, and the rest of the state comprising the 3rd.
Further, gerrymandering does not impact Senate seats either. Senate seats are at-large within each state (no districts, only state borders).
Gerrymandering does impact the House of Representatives. It also impacts State legislature seats.
But please stop throwing gerrymandering around as a problem for Presidential elections...
The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”
The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.
But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.
Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.
September 2005
Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier, wins a major uranium deal in Kazakhstan for his company, UrAsia, days after visiting the country with former President Bill Clinton.
2006
Mr. Giustra donates $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.
February 2007
UrAsia merges with a South African mining company and assumes the name Uranium One. In the next two months, the company expands into the United States.
June 2008
Negotations begin for an investment in Uranium One by the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom.
2008-2010
Uranium One and former UrAsia investors make $8.65 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One investors stand to profit on a Rosatom deal.
June 2009
Rosatom subsidiary ARMZ takes a 17 percent ownership stake in Uranium One.
2010-2011
Investors give millions more in donations to the Clinton Foundation.
June 2010
Rosatom seeks majority ownership of Uranium One, pending approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, of which the State Department is a member.
Rosatom says it does not plan to increase its stake in Uranium One or to take the company private.
June 29, 2010
Bill Clinton is paid $500,000 for a speech in Moscow by a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin that assigned a buy rating to Uranium One stock.
October 2010
Rosatom’s majority ownership approved by Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
January 2013
Rosatom takes full control of Uranium One and takes it private.
Slashdot Mirror
You're an order of magnitude off. $60,000 is "60 grand" is not "600 grand". 60 grand is quite far from "half a million".
When I say its "livible" I mean that's what the government calls it:
"The Federal Poverty Level (FPL), or the "poverty line" is an economic measure that is used to decide whether the income level of an individual or family qualifies them for certain federal benefits and programs. The FPL is the set minimum amount of income that a family needs for food, clothing, transportation, shelter, and other necessities.
"Note that poverty level is different from poverty threshold. The poverty threshold is another federal poverty measure that actually defines what poverty is and provides statistics on the number of Americans living in poverty. The data is created by the US Census Bureau which uses pre-tax income as a yardstick to measure poverty. The statistical report on poverty threshold is used by the HHS to determine the federal poverty level (FPL).
Put that into a few tax calculators. I got $250 federal income tax liability, a $37 EITC credit (no qualifying children). Add 6.2% FICA tax of $899. After the federal hit, it's $13,388. State taxes would be another chunk, but not $2300.
It may not be a fun living, but the poverty line is pretty much the very definition of "livable".
"It is universal because everyone in the control group gets it, regardless of their situation."
It's universal right up until people start bitching about rich people getting it and phase it out for people who "don't need it". Because, let's be real, that's what will happen.
A full-time minimum wage job is perfectly "livable" for a single person. Poverty line for a single person in the US is $12,140. Full-time minimum-wage (federal) is 2000 hours at $7.25 is $14,500.
It is not "livable" for a single parent with one or more children...the poverty line for parent+1 child is $16,460. In a very real sense, children CAUSE poverty.
A person living on minimum wage should never procreate, because they take one person who was not in poverty and put 2 people into poverty.
Terrific. I was dreaming of playing professional basketball, but was afraid to take the risk! Now I'll be able to seek out my dream!
If it was money that won elections, Hillary would be president.
CNBC: Trump spent about half of what Clinton did on his way to the presidency
His campaign committee spent about $238.9 million through mid-October, compared with $450.6 million by Clinton's. That equals about $859,538 spent per Trump electoral vote, versus about $1.97 million spent per Clinton electoral vote.
[Those numbers do not include spending from Oct. 20 to Election Day due to when the article was written.]
While Trump's campaign increased its spending on television ads in its final election push, it still used the traditional outreach tool much less than Clinton's did. As of late October, Clinton spent's campaign spent about $141.7 million on ads, compared with $58.8 million for Trump's campaign, according to NBC News.
That disparity extended to campaign payrolls. For example, Clinton's campaign had about 800 people on payroll at the end of August, versus about 130 for Trump's. Democrats often have larger ground operations than Republicans.
Still, it wasn't just Clinton who heavily outspent Trump. He shelled out much less money than other recent nominees, as well.
Through mid-October 2012, the campaigns of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent $630.8 million and $360.7 million, respectively.
Obama's campaign also spent about $593.9 million through mid-October 2008. Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign actually spent less than Trump, about $216.8 million through mid-October.
Franken unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a combined machine malfunction and human error on Election Day that left 171 Maplewood ballots safe, secure but uncounted until Tuesday’s final day of recounting in Ramsey County. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office immediately asked county officials to explain what had happened, and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign said it sent its own experts to Ramsey County to review the situation and said it was “skeptical about [the ballots’] sudden appearance.”
----------
Stealing elections is an old game politicians play. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president, got to the U.S. Senate in 1948 by “winning” the closest race in Texas history by a margin of 87 votes out of more than a million cast. An election judge in tiny Alice, Texas, said he counted more than 200 names on the voting roll for Box 13 that were written in alphabetic succession in the same hand, same color of ink. When a federal court subpoenaed Box 13, it was discovered to be “lost.” LBJ took his seat in the Senate. Voting machines were supposed to put an end to such election-night chicanery, but Earl Long, the colorful governor of Louisiana, where fraud is the national sport, boasted that “I can make a voting machine play ‘Home on the Range’ all night long.”
------------
Logan announced on December 13 that 561 absentee ballots in the county had been wrongly rejected due to an administrative error.[14] The next day, workers retrieving voting machines from precinct storage found an additional 12 ballots, bringing the total to 572 newly discovered ballots. Logan admitted the lost ballots were an oversight on the part of his department, and insisted that the found ballots be counted. On December 15, the King County Canvassing Board voted 2-1 in favor of counting the discovered ballots.
Upon examination of the discovered ballots, it was further discovered that, with the exception of two ballots, none of the ballots had been cast by voters whose surnames began with the letters A, B, or C.[15] There was a further search for more ballots, and on December 17, county workers discovered a tray in a warehouse with an additional 162 previously uncounted ballots.[15] All together, 723 uncounted or improperly rejected ballots were discovered in King County during the manual hand recount.
After all other counties submitted their recount votes, it was revealed on December 20 that at least five other counties besides King County had included ballots that had been discovered after the initial count. For example, Snohomish County included 224 missed ballots that had been discovered underneath mail trays. The outcome of the State Supreme Court hearing regarding King County's votes could have potentially affected those counties' counts as well.
------------------
When election officials brought two master personal electronic ballots – or PEBs, small devices inserted into voting machines – back to the Franklin County Board of Elections from a Worthington polling location, one was uploaded into the final, unofficial total of a super-tight congressional race.
The other was not.
The next day, as bipartisan members of the board of elections were reviewing the race, they realized the PEB's results were missing.
That PEB and its 588 votes were found. The breakdown was 198 votes for Republican Troy Balderson, 388 votes for Democrat Danny O'Connor and two for Green Party candidate Joe Manchik.
The mistake is embarrassing for Franklin County election officials, but they caught it quickly and the PEB was always in a secure location. Those 588 votes will be included – along with additional absentee and provisional ballots across the district – in the final tally, which must be tabulated by Aug. 24.
If we're going to demand that ISPs just push bits around without throttling or special treatment, then demanding that they monitor all the data for copyright violations, spam, bogus ads, clickbait, fake news...that's a paradox, ain't it?
It's not like they can raise the rent, since they're most likely rent-controlled buildings.
It's never lupus.
Young people haven't experienced taxation of any consequence. I'm assuming "young people" here is something like the 16-25-year-old cohort. Mommy and Daddy have been paying for everything their entire lives and probably will continue to pay their rent, car insurance, and cell phone bills until they are 30 or so (Obamacare infantilized young adults by telling them they should not be responsible for their own healthcare decisions until they are 27).
It's all well and good to expect that "rich" people be made to "pay their fair share" (a level which is never ever defined, except as "more than they're paying now") when that's someone else.
Let's ask them how they feel when they are 35 years old and working 40 hour jobs and pocketing pay for 28 hours (i.e., paying 30% in taxes) and are told that they need to pay more because "free college for everyone" or "gigabit broadband is a human right".
Many banks wanted nothing to do with the money, but were forced to take it by regulators so as to not paint the few other banks that may have "needed" it from looking like they were failing...if all the banks took money then they were all "equal". Most banks paid the money back as soon as they were allowed to.
do not extend to the internet? Or an e-book you might publish for Kindle? Or a digital sign in front of your house? Interesting.
Then it's a local restaurant. The fact that virtually zero people from off-campus are ever going to eat there shouldn't invalidate that. Or, if it's good enough, people will come from off-campus and effectively certify it as a local restaurant?
The poverty threshold, poverty limit or poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate to cover total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. In the US, this is presented as an income level based on household size (number of dependents). For a single person household, the poverty line is $12,060 (2017).
Perhaps worth noting is that a single person household working a full-time minimum-wage job exceeds the poverty line (50 weeks time 40 hours times $7.25 is $14,500), so by definition a full-time minimum wage worker is not living in poverty. But if that same person has a child, then both are living in poverty, as the poverty line for a two-person household is $16,240. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
An assumption of a UBI is that it provides sufficient income to survive on, so let's use the poverty line as the basis for the UBI. That is, a single person household would receive a UBI of $12,060; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $16,240; and so on. Note that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $12,060 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,880 in UBI), so at least some will avoid getting married, or even living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their free money.
Using census data, there are 124.5 million households. The average household size is 2.54 people. Let's interpolate the poverty table to get an average expected UBI of about $18,497. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.303 trillion.
Coincidentally, that is almost exactly the amount of money we currently spend on all social welfare benefits programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, foodstamps, etc. A reasonable idea--indeed, this was put forward in a WSJ essay by Charles Murray--would be to eliminate all those programs in favor of the UBI. Of course, this ignores the howls that would arise from a populace deprived of their SS checks and foodstamps.
Exploring the notion of replacing the most basic welfare programs, e.g. foodstamps, section 8 housing, while not disrupting the SS and Medicare that the elderly view as an earned right. After all, the UBI based on poverty level should by definition cover those sorts of expenses. There will still be screams from people concerned about drug addicts not buying food for their kids and that sort of thing. So it seems unlikely that the overhead of those programs, let alone the programs, would be completely done away with.
So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare. Those totaled about $1.473T of the welfare expenditures, so add the $2.303 to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.776T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in an either-or situation reduces this a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the existing programs, for a total cost of about $5T. Or perhaps the UBI in lieu of all other programs can actually be rammed through so that the cost remains a minimum of $2.303T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.27 trillion. So UBI would consume somewhere north of 70% of all federal revenues. And the math here assumes that no one receive UBI drops out of the workforce or reduces their taxable income at all--i.e., that revenues stay constant.
We had $1T deficits under Obama, too, you know, and the White House under Obama was projecting $1T deficits well into the 2020's.
Current tax revenues are at all time record highs, but sadly so is spending. Spending increases are accelerating faster than revenue increases.
I've notice a fairly consistent pattern of revenue vs spending. The revenue from year X is usually sufficient or nearly so to cover the spending levels of year X - 5.
E.g.:
2004 revenues $1.880T 1999 spending $1.701T
2005 revenues $2.153T 2000 spending $1.789T
2006 revenues $2.406T 2001 spending $1.862T
2007 revenues $2.568T 2002 spending $2.010T
2008 revenues $2.524T 2003 spending $2.159T
2009 revenues $2.105T 2004 spending $2.292T
2010 revenues $2.162T 2005 spending $2.472T
2011 revenues $2.303T 2006 spending $2.655T
2012 revenues $2.450T 2007 spending $2.728T
2013 revenues $2.775T 2008 spending $2.982T
2014 revenues $3.021T 2009 spending $3.517T
2015 revenues $3.249T 2010 spending $3.457T
2016 revenues $3.335T 2011 spending $3.603T
But year-over-year spending increases are almost always larger than year-over-year revenue increases.
" how many people can go onto UBI without society collapsing?"
If it's Universal Basic Income, isn't *everyone* receiving it? Regardless of your other income, status, medical status, etc. you get the UBI. Rich, wealthy, poor, homeless or whatever, you get UBI. If not, then it's hardly Universal, is it? Once you begin excluding people who "don't need it", then it's just back to the plain welfare, isn't it?
California passes legislation that allows the governor to simply appoint the state's electors. Perfectly Constitutional..."Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,..."
Had this been in effect this election, we can assume Jerry Brown would have appointed 55 Democrats for Sec. Clinton.
The EC remains unchanged, but the "popular vote" swings to Trump by about 1M. Without popular votes from California, Sec. Clinton would have 8.7M fewer popular votes and Mr. Trump would have 4.4M fewer popular votes. So the final tally would be Clinton with 57M and Trump with 58.5M.
I notice that Democrats have no problems with Sec. Clinton winning only 3/5ths of the California vote but getting 100% of the 55 of the state's electoral votes...
In 2016 there was no "popular vote". There never has been. What we're talking about is the aggregate vote of the different states, votes which were cast under the rules in place at the time, which was not a "popular vote". If we had a "popular vote" it is almost a certainty that the tally would have come out differently. Some conservatives who stayed home in California, knowing that their state was overwhelmingly in the bag for Sec. Clinton, likely come out and vote. Some Democrats in Alabama might have done the same. Personally, I have voted Libertarian for years in Georgia confident that my L votes would never crack the Republican lock and accidentally elect a Democrat for Senate or President.
But the campaigns and elections were based on the rules of the Electoral College as they have for 200+ years. Everyone planned (or should have planned) their strategy for campaigning based on garnering EC votes, not on amassing run-up-the-score votes in red or blue states. At least some voters in locked-in red or blue states made their Election Day decisions to perhaps stay home knowing their candidate had basically already won (or lost) their state. At least some voters voted for Libertarian or Green candidates, perhaps thinking their votes were not going to matter.
Based on the final score of, say, a football game played under the current rules it is impossible to say who'd have won if 2 points were also awarded based on each first down gained, because team strategies would change based on the different rules in effect at the time of the game. If fouls in a basketball game resulted in 2 points being deducted from your team score rather than allowing the other team the chance to shoot 1+1 or 2 free throws, think the game would be played differently?
If we elected the President based on elections allocated by Congressional district one vote per district plus 2 statewide votes, think the campaigns and votes would be different? So the same is true of saying "popular vote". We don't have a "popular vote", so saying Clinton (or Gore) won the "popular vote" is not true.
It is true that when aggregating the votes across all states, that they had pluralities. But that's like saying Clinton had 658 yards of total offense (she had 65.8M votes) and Trump had 629 yards of total offense (62.9M votes), and saying she should have won the football game. But the fact is, that despite moving the ball up and down the field somewhat better than Trump, she essentially turned the ball over 5 times (lost 5 state that Obama carried twice) and failed to score points when it counted.
If someone wants to play "what if" for ex post facto results, imagine "what if" we had had instant run-off, where the people who voted for Gary Johnson (4+M) and Jill Stein (1+M) and the 800k "other" voters had selected a 2nd-choice vote? How many Libertarians and Greens would have selected Trump and Clinton as their second choice? How many of those L and G votes were "protest" votes in "safe" states.
Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact on US Presidential elections.
Unless one considers state borders to be gerrymandered. Because 48 states use a winner-takes-all method for allocating electoral college votes. That is, the person receiving the most presidential votes within a state gets all the EC votes from the state. Maine and Nebraska have different rules that are impacted somewhat by district lines, but they have so few districts that its hard to figured gerrymandering has much impact. Maine has all of two districts, with Augusta and Portland and the section of the state between them comprising one district, and the rest of Maine the other, and Nebraska has 3 and their map is hardly what I'd consider gerrymandered, with the tow countries comprising Omaha in one, the suburbs of Omaha in another, and the rest of the state comprising the 3rd.
Further, gerrymandering does not impact Senate seats either. Senate seats are at-large within each state (no districts, only state borders).
Gerrymandering does impact the House of Representatives. It also impacts State legislature seats.
But please stop throwing gerrymandering around as a problem for Presidential elections...
No. A thousand times no.
NY Times:
The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”
The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.
But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.
Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.
September 2005
Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier, wins a major uranium deal in Kazakhstan for his company, UrAsia, days after visiting the country with former President Bill Clinton.
2006
Mr. Giustra donates $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.
February 2007
UrAsia merges with a South African mining company and assumes the name Uranium One. In the next two months, the company expands into the United States.
June 2008
Negotations begin for an investment in Uranium One by the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom.
2008-2010
Uranium One and former UrAsia investors make $8.65 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One investors stand to profit on a Rosatom deal.
June 2009
Rosatom subsidiary ARMZ takes a 17 percent ownership stake in Uranium One.
2010-2011
Investors give millions more in donations to the Clinton Foundation.
June 2010
Rosatom seeks majority ownership of Uranium One, pending approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, of which the State Department is a member.
Rosatom says it does not plan to increase its stake in Uranium One or to take the company private.
June 29, 2010
Bill Clinton is paid $500,000 for a speech in Moscow by a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin that assigned a buy rating to Uranium One stock.
October 2010
Rosatom’s majority ownership approved by Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
January 2013
Rosatom takes full control of Uranium One and takes it private.
Is there really any other kind?
"I 'member."