Americans won't let the kids be taken away by CPS? Why do you think that? CPS already takes peoples' kids away if they abuse or neglect them. I don't see how it would be (or should be) any different under BI.
I do imagine there will be some people who can't figure out how to stay in an apartment even with the BI, and I'm sure there'll be something to help them out too (maybe some kind of shelter where they can live but their BI check automatically goes to the shelter first so they can take their cut?). Running a whole society is extremely complex, so there's no way to deal with every single corner case in a 3-paragraph post on a message forum.
I am quite sure the 1st Amendment was NOT created to protect shilling. The Founders were all for people getting on soapboxes on the street and loudly proclaiming their political views and trying to sway people to their cause. I have no problem with that at all. But I'm sorry, I can't imagine the Founders ever thinking it a good idea to protect shilling, false-flag attacks, or any other kind of lying.
What are you talking about? I wasn't even complaining about the delegate system, I was pointing out that, IMO, the Democratic Party would do better (using its own rules and system) to get the superdelegates to vote for Bernie, if it comes down to a near-tie between those candidates (to where the superdelegates' votes make the decision).
Maybe you meant to reply to the GP poster, who was the one who brought up how many total votes Bernie and Hillary got.
Yes, it does, because it's easy to lie, it's easy to distort facts, and it's hard to disprove false assertions, and it's easy for genuine opinions to be drowned out by paid shills.
By your logic, I should carefully read and critically analyze every pop-up ad I see while browsing the internet. Or, that I should carefully read and critically analyze every conspiracy theorist posting I read (including claims that the moon landings were a hoax, that FEMA is setting up concentration camps, that our political leaders are lizard people or aliens, that Bigfoot lives in Georgia, etc.). Sorry, but no. Not all opinions are valid: those that are just the result of someone being paid off to shape public opinion are not AFAIC.
Yeah, Manhattan is free to do so. I'm not sure why they'd want to, but I can't imagine why states or cities couldn't supplement the BI if they wanted to. I guess they could make an argument that they need to keep around more low-income creative types ("starving artists") or low-wage workers (janitors, cooks) and that they needed to boost the BI to keep them around. Personally, I think those people would probably rather stay if they could afford it, and the city would do a lot better working on their real estate/zoning policies to create affordable housing and their public transit instead of giving out more money to entice people to stay to provide a workforce for business that don't want to pay enough.
Exactly. I know several right-wingers who would vote for Bernie. They disagree with him on some policies (namely immigration), but they like that he's honest and has the interest of regular people at heart instead of Wall Street elites. They also (unlike a bunch of morons on both sides) understand that the President has no power to create laws and is limited to signing bills, proposing legislation, and vetoing, plus he has a huge amount of power in starting wars. These right-wingers are anti-war, so Bernie's anti-war positions resonate with them, unlike Hillary's blatant warmongering, and while they may disagree on other policy points, they understand that the President has to work with Congress to get things done so anything he wants that's too extreme just isn't going to get passed, though positive change can be made by pushing for more and compromising for less.
I've always felt it's kind of a good thing when politicians actually try to do what the public wants.
The problem is when you don't get that, and instead get a politician who tells you what you want to hear, and does something different. That's exactly what we saw with Obama, and it'll be exactly the same with Hillary: some nice talk about progressive issues, and then she'll push right-wing pro-corporate legislation and policies and tell us all the progressive stuff is "infeasible", even with Democrats controlling Congress and the White House. Sorry, we're not buying it any more.
Oh please. No astroturfer is going to spend 5+ years building up a post history before shilling. That's how you tell the astroturfers: their accounts are new.
In the end they have the opportunity to realize that they've dragged one candidate a bit left, and get that candidate elected over a far-right candidate.
Oh BS. Hillary is a proven liar, and will be much like Obama. Obama promised all kinds of things on the campaign trail too, and then as soon as he was elected adopted Bush's policies. Hillary will be exactly the same: nothing she says during the campaign can be trusted. She hasn't been "dragged" a bit left, she's simply adopted some more leftish stances to get votes, and as soon as she's elected she'll abandon those positions just like Obama did. The only thing you can accurately judge candidates on is their prior experience and actions. Hillary supported the Iraq War, DOMA, and the "super predators" bill. Bernie has always been on the right side of these things and hasn't changed his principles.
I'll happily vote for Trump over Hillary. He's flip-flopping just as much as her, but at least he isn't beholden to corporate interests like she is.
We already have limitations on the 1st Amendment, such as incitement to violence.
One thing I could probably support is a ban on shilling. Shilling is nothing more than a form of lying, and the real problem with PACs, as I see it, is that many of them pay for shilling (as seen in TFA here).
You're right, banning a PAC altogether is a violation of the 1A. If some PAC wants to pay for a TV ad, and says whatever but closes with "paid for by shittyPAC", that's really fine: the viewer knows that this "speech" was paid for, and they know who paid for it, and they can automatically suspect its authenticity accordingly.
But if a PAC pays for an army of mercenaries to spend their time on discussion forums spreading lies and FUD about opposition candidates, and they don't disclose that they're being paid to do this (and in fact many of their claims may be outright lies, something that's harder to get away with in a prominent televised advertisement), I think that should probably be banned. We already ban perjury; people go to prison for lying in court, so I think there's already a precedent for banning and criminalizing lying, so I think extending this to astroturfing is acceptable and doable.
The problem with forums like Slashdot is that they allow completely anonymous postings, rather than pseudo-anonymous posting (the "Anonymous Coward"). Anyone can post as AC here, any time. The system tries to limit this to an extent with time delays, but that only helps so much.
Any forum that allows anonymous posting has this problem: paid shills can post there any there's no way to tell they're a shill.
*True* pseudo-anonymous forums are a little different. They require you to have an account, and better ones allow you to see how old that account is. On Slashdot, we can infer this from the UID number: the lower it is, the older the account is. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you explicitly how old the account it, like some forums do. Over on HackerNews, there's two notifications for this: you can click on a username and see a page that says exactly how old that account is, and also if the account is new (I'm not sure what the threshold is), that username will show up in green in the comment section. With a system like that, you can tell quickly who's more likely to be a shill. Someone with a 6-year-old account is not likely to be a shill for some current political candidate or issue.
On a lot of more general forums (like Disqus forums powering many regular blogs and news sites), there doesn't appear to be any way to tell how old an account is, so those are likely filled with paid shills.
The only way Sanders could achieve a win would be for him to inspire the superdelegates to change their minds between now and the election.
Not necessarily; California still hasn't voted. But yeah, it's looking like it may very well come down to the superdelegates.
In that case, the superdelegates would be smart to choose Bernie. He polls much better overall than Hillary. This is the problem with these parties: they frequently choose the candidate that's better liked (for whatever reason, either they're most extreme or they're most well-liked by party insiders) by the people who bother to register as a member of that party and vote in that state's primaries (or worse, show up at a caucus), but who then doesn't do that well in the general election because they aren't that appealing to the population at large. There's nothing "democratic" about picking the person who wins votes among a self-selection portion of the population, rather than the population as a whole.
Bernie is the highest-polling of all 5 candidates, and has the lowest unfavorable scores: in short, fewer people despise Bernie than any other candidate running. If we were running the Presidential election the way it *should* be run, without this two-party first-past-the-post Electoral College bullshit system we have, but instead with some type of alternative voting system such as approval voting or a ranked voting system, and all 5 of these candidates running simultaneously, Bernie would easily win.
I wouldn't have so much of a problem with people like the Kochs buying political speech if the messages they published were clearly indicated to have been paid for by them.
To tie this back to "freedom of the press", when WaPo publishes some crappy opinion piece, I *know* where it's coming from, and that it's an editorial. It clearly says so when I read it.
If the Kochs want to buy ads on TV, and those ads clearly say "paid for by KochsPAC" or whatever, that's fine.
The problem is when they misrepresent themselves. When some pro-Hillary SuperPAC hires legions of internet shills to post anti-Bernie and pro-Hillary drivel on online forums, posing as regular people (a practice known as "astroturfing"), that's a problem, and IMO should be flatly illegal with huge penalties attached, including automatic disqualification for running for office if any ties can be found between the candidate and the PAC. We have plenty of limits on free speech today: incitements to violence are not legal, for instance, and the same should be true for shilling, because humans are especially vulnerable to it: we give more weight to opinions we think are honest than ones that we know were paid for.
I have no problem with political advertising, as long as it's plainly advertised as such. I do have a problem with shilling, just like any kind of intentional deception and dishonesty.
Basically. When they choose crappy Democrats like Hillary, they're attempting to choose the lesser of two evils. When they choose Republicans, they've been duped.
Proof: Trump.
The whole reason Trump is so popular now is because conservative, white, working-class voters have finally figured out that the Republican party has been duping them, by pandering to them on social issues like gay marriage and abortion, and on religion, and then screwing them over economically after they get elected by pursuing policies which work directly against those working-class voters in favor of large corporations. This is how Trump is destroying the Republican party from within, by pointing this out and offering himself as an alternative.
Sorry, I don't buy that argument at all. "Government" is not a singular monolithic entity. A BI would be a federal matter (though it'd help a lot if they passed a law forbidding state-level income taxes to simplify things). Property taxes have absolutely zero to do with the federal government, and very little to do with state government in fact, because they're levied locally. Setting up a BI wouldn't affect local taxation at all.
I like how you decided by yourself what quality of life others should have, like you've got it all figured out and everybody should trust you because you know best, and everybody else is wrong. How very Communist Party of you.
You sound just like Roman Mir and the other Ayn Rand cultists who think there should be any taxes. Or worse that somehow advanced nations like Denmark with high taxes on rich people are somehow "Communist". How very stupid of you.
I'll let you describe how somebody is supposed to make live like you described both in Phoenix Arizona (which happens to be only slightly below the national average cost of living) and in New York.
I've already explained in this thread that BI would not be indexed to local cost-of-living. If the BI isn't enough for you to afford to stay in Manhattan without working, then you'll have to move or get a job. This isn't hard.
#1 makes no sense. People survive in big cities now because they work for a living. That isn't going to magically change with a BI, but you probably can expect a bunch of non-working people to migrate out of the cities. I don't see that as a problem. Big cities aren't going to "come crashing down" because a bunch of non-working people decided to leave and spend their BI in a small town somewhere. If anything, this should be better for both places: big cities will have real estate freed up from people who'd rather live someplace cheaper because they aren't being enabled by some locally-administered social program to stay there, and small towns which are currently becoming ghost towns would become revitalized to an extent.
Sorry, not trying to insult you, only the Ayn Rand koolaid drinkers.
The way I see it, there's two kinds of libertarians. The reasonable ones, and the sociopathic assholes like Roman Mir who think things like roads should be all privatized.
You're right, BI does have a lot of support among the reasonable libertarians for the reasons you state. I also happen to agree with those reasons. Additionally, it gives people the *liberty* to live their life more how they please instead of being stuck as a wage slave, and not having to deal with government social engineering as you pointed out. However, as you can see with Roman Mir, BI does *not* have any support among that crowd, because they don't want any kind of taxation or government services at all.
Well, if you have no job at all and you only get a tiny BI check, you don't think you're going to want to trade some of your now abundant free time for more money?
I don't know about you, but I don't really like the idea of living with roommates in a crappy apartment and not being able to afford going out to eat let alone travel internationally, so I'd go get a job. If you're so lazy that you'd rather sit around and smoke pot all the time, well I don't know what to say.
Social Security (SSI) is not welfare, it's a retirement fund. You pay in while you earn, and you get paid out after you retire based on how much you put in. It's not going to get rid of SSI (for current recipients), though I guess it's arguable whether SSI should be phased out after BI is implemented.
Oh please. This isn't creating an "abundant supply" of new money, it's just moving around, largely by eliminating existing social programs and letting people manage their money themselves instead of being chased around to see if they're "cheating", and the balance being made up with progressive taxation. For people in the middle, it'll be a wash: they'll be taxed more than now, but then the BI will make up for it so the net will be the same. For people making a lot, boo hoo, they'll have to cut back and not buy a new Rolls every year. And finally, this is a ***BASIC*** income. I don't understand why I have to keep repeating this, but apparently I do. It's enough to squeak by on with a crappy apartment with roommates and some basics from the grocery store. If the economy can't handle people being able to live in crappy apartments and buy spaghetti in the pasta aisle, then we have really serious problems.
yet obviously that's not true at all because we're seeing people live there for very long periods without a job, relying solely on free money to get by.
That's because they're getting *too much* free money right now, because it's indexed to location, and it treats people unequally. People on Section 8 can get a really ridiculous amount of money to go rent a house (not an apartment, a nice-sized house). The system is entirely unfair: some people are able to get a lot of largesse (like women with kids), while others can't get squat (like a 30yo guy with no kids).
Furthermore, if everybody is going to make as much as everybody who is retired or disabled
Which isn't very much; how many times do I have to point out that this is a *****BASIC***** income? Disabled people can usually work too, and retirement is a choice.
then what happens when the real estate cost is driven up above what people already living there on a fixed income can afford?
Then they move out, just like they do right now. Retired people are frequently forced out of places because either the rent is too high, or if they own their home outright, they can no longer afford the property taxes.
Remember, they passed an amendment to the California constitution to try to deal with people's property taxes forcing them out, and now we have the mess in the Bay Area.
Personally, I think the whole property tax issue is a mess and that it should probably be eliminated in favor of only income taxes, but it's a complicated issue. The point is, no one is guaranteed the right to stay someplace, even today. It sucks if you've lived there a long time and you're retired, but capping their taxes means everyone else gets shafted, or the property is put under corporate ownership so the corporation can be bought and sold.
Or let's say people don't move because they get so much more wellfare/etc that they don't leave New York.
I think this is the case. They get more benefits in NYC, and if they move to Wyoming, they'd likely get little to nothing. Different states run their social services very differently, after all. So I think part of it is the disparity in programs at different locations, and part due to "enablement" of policies helping them stay there, such as rent controls, Section 8 vouchers, etc.
What are the long term social, political and economic ramifications of that? Large cities are enormous engines of growth.
They are. But is it really helping the city by having a bunch of people who are doing the minimum occupy valuable space there? I don't think so. People who want to do more than the minimum so they can stay there will: they'll work so they can afford to remain there, for whatever reasons they have. People who want to collect the minimum and smoke pot and play video games all day long won't: they'll be forced to move out, and honestly I'm not too broken up about that. They'll still be taken care of with their BI, but somewhere else. Real estate is a limited, scarce resource and aside from building ever-taller buildings, there isn't anything that'll change that.
As for other long-term ramifications? There's no way to know that for sure without actually doing it, but I think it'll be a net positive. I think it'll free up room for people who will benefit from being in the city (or closer to work), and in turn benefit the city and others in it. And I think it'll benefit society overall by reducing stagnation, by getting some people to move around more. In addition to all the other BI benefits of course.
In reality, most likely all the poor people from NYC would not disperse into rural Nebraska or wherever. Most people don't like to move that far, especially if they have any family. But they'll probably disperse farther from the city center, maybe even go a few hours away. Someone in NYC, for instance, could probably live far more cheaply in upstate NY somewhere, and still be close enough to visit on the weekends. There might be more people moving to small towns because they don't absolutely need jobs to pay the rent any more, and can instead live someplace cheap and work part-time to make ends meet and live better than they did before.
So BMI is going to be less than they're making today and they won't be able to afford it tomorrow, either.
They'll be able to afford it tomorrow because they don't have to worry about losing their fucking paycheck!! Holy shit, are you really this stupid?
The VC analysis uses the number "10%" doing this. There aren't 10% doing it today, and there won't be 10% tomorrow, especially when it's only 10% who are working at all.
There's only 10% creating real wealth. Most people's "work" is just make-work, or will be automated away shortly.
And you pro-BMI people are insulting and rely on ad hominem too much.
Well maybe if you didn't spout such stupidity, I wouldn't have to point out what morons you people are.
You can live pretty well on $3k/month when everyone else is at $1k.
Not if you want to drive a Ferrari or live in an exclusive place like next to Central Park or in Hawaii. What makes you think rich people are going to give up on wanting those things and be happy with a measly $3k/month?
A guy with a million in the bank can go 41 YEARS without working another day on that "income",
So what's stopping that guy from doing that *right now*?
No, you're a fucking moron if you think Basic Income resembles a command economy with set pay levels. There's no talk in BI of having set pay levels. Are you really that fucking stupid?
And how the fuck is it "enslaving" people to keep people alive? Are you one of those fucking sociopathic morons who thinks taxes = theft? If so, go fuck off with your libertarian insanity and move to Somalia.
Slashdot Mirror
Americans won't let the kids be taken away by CPS? Why do you think that? CPS already takes peoples' kids away if they abuse or neglect them. I don't see how it would be (or should be) any different under BI.
I do imagine there will be some people who can't figure out how to stay in an apartment even with the BI, and I'm sure there'll be something to help them out too (maybe some kind of shelter where they can live but their BI check automatically goes to the shelter first so they can take their cut?). Running a whole society is extremely complex, so there's no way to deal with every single corner case in a 3-paragraph post on a message forum.
I am quite sure the 1st Amendment was NOT created to protect shilling. The Founders were all for people getting on soapboxes on the street and loudly proclaiming their political views and trying to sway people to their cause. I have no problem with that at all. But I'm sorry, I can't imagine the Founders ever thinking it a good idea to protect shilling, false-flag attacks, or any other kind of lying.
What are you talking about? I wasn't even complaining about the delegate system, I was pointing out that, IMO, the Democratic Party would do better (using its own rules and system) to get the superdelegates to vote for Bernie, if it comes down to a near-tie between those candidates (to where the superdelegates' votes make the decision).
Maybe you meant to reply to the GP poster, who was the one who brought up how many total votes Bernie and Hillary got.
Yes, it does, because it's easy to lie, it's easy to distort facts, and it's hard to disprove false assertions, and it's easy for genuine opinions to be drowned out by paid shills.
By your logic, I should carefully read and critically analyze every pop-up ad I see while browsing the internet. Or, that I should carefully read and critically analyze every conspiracy theorist posting I read (including claims that the moon landings were a hoax, that FEMA is setting up concentration camps, that our political leaders are lizard people or aliens, that Bigfoot lives in Georgia, etc.). Sorry, but no. Not all opinions are valid: those that are just the result of someone being paid off to shape public opinion are not AFAIC.
Yeah, Manhattan is free to do so. I'm not sure why they'd want to, but I can't imagine why states or cities couldn't supplement the BI if they wanted to. I guess they could make an argument that they need to keep around more low-income creative types ("starving artists") or low-wage workers (janitors, cooks) and that they needed to boost the BI to keep them around. Personally, I think those people would probably rather stay if they could afford it, and the city would do a lot better working on their real estate/zoning policies to create affordable housing and their public transit instead of giving out more money to entice people to stay to provide a workforce for business that don't want to pay enough.
Exactly. I know several right-wingers who would vote for Bernie. They disagree with him on some policies (namely immigration), but they like that he's honest and has the interest of regular people at heart instead of Wall Street elites. They also (unlike a bunch of morons on both sides) understand that the President has no power to create laws and is limited to signing bills, proposing legislation, and vetoing, plus he has a huge amount of power in starting wars. These right-wingers are anti-war, so Bernie's anti-war positions resonate with them, unlike Hillary's blatant warmongering, and while they may disagree on other policy points, they understand that the President has to work with Congress to get things done so anything he wants that's too extreme just isn't going to get passed, though positive change can be made by pushing for more and compromising for less.
I've always felt it's kind of a good thing when politicians actually try to do what the public wants.
The problem is when you don't get that, and instead get a politician who tells you what you want to hear, and does something different. That's exactly what we saw with Obama, and it'll be exactly the same with Hillary: some nice talk about progressive issues, and then she'll push right-wing pro-corporate legislation and policies and tell us all the progressive stuff is "infeasible", even with Democrats controlling Congress and the White House. Sorry, we're not buying it any more.
Oh please. No astroturfer is going to spend 5+ years building up a post history before shilling. That's how you tell the astroturfers: their accounts are new.
In the end they have the opportunity to realize that they've dragged one candidate a bit left, and get that candidate elected over a far-right candidate.
Oh BS. Hillary is a proven liar, and will be much like Obama. Obama promised all kinds of things on the campaign trail too, and then as soon as he was elected adopted Bush's policies. Hillary will be exactly the same: nothing she says during the campaign can be trusted. She hasn't been "dragged" a bit left, she's simply adopted some more leftish stances to get votes, and as soon as she's elected she'll abandon those positions just like Obama did. The only thing you can accurately judge candidates on is their prior experience and actions. Hillary supported the Iraq War, DOMA, and the "super predators" bill. Bernie has always been on the right side of these things and hasn't changed his principles.
I'll happily vote for Trump over Hillary. He's flip-flopping just as much as her, but at least he isn't beholden to corporate interests like she is.
We already have limitations on the 1st Amendment, such as incitement to violence.
One thing I could probably support is a ban on shilling. Shilling is nothing more than a form of lying, and the real problem with PACs, as I see it, is that many of them pay for shilling (as seen in TFA here).
You're right, banning a PAC altogether is a violation of the 1A. If some PAC wants to pay for a TV ad, and says whatever but closes with "paid for by shittyPAC", that's really fine: the viewer knows that this "speech" was paid for, and they know who paid for it, and they can automatically suspect its authenticity accordingly.
But if a PAC pays for an army of mercenaries to spend their time on discussion forums spreading lies and FUD about opposition candidates, and they don't disclose that they're being paid to do this (and in fact many of their claims may be outright lies, something that's harder to get away with in a prominent televised advertisement), I think that should probably be banned. We already ban perjury; people go to prison for lying in court, so I think there's already a precedent for banning and criminalizing lying, so I think extending this to astroturfing is acceptable and doable.
I completely disagree, but with caveats.
The problem with forums like Slashdot is that they allow completely anonymous postings, rather than pseudo-anonymous posting (the "Anonymous Coward"). Anyone can post as AC here, any time. The system tries to limit this to an extent with time delays, but that only helps so much.
Any forum that allows anonymous posting has this problem: paid shills can post there any there's no way to tell they're a shill.
*True* pseudo-anonymous forums are a little different. They require you to have an account, and better ones allow you to see how old that account is. On Slashdot, we can infer this from the UID number: the lower it is, the older the account is. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you explicitly how old the account it, like some forums do. Over on HackerNews, there's two notifications for this: you can click on a username and see a page that says exactly how old that account is, and also if the account is new (I'm not sure what the threshold is), that username will show up in green in the comment section. With a system like that, you can tell quickly who's more likely to be a shill. Someone with a 6-year-old account is not likely to be a shill for some current political candidate or issue.
On a lot of more general forums (like Disqus forums powering many regular blogs and news sites), there doesn't appear to be any way to tell how old an account is, so those are likely filled with paid shills.
The only way Sanders could achieve a win would be for him to inspire the superdelegates to change their minds between now and the election.
Not necessarily; California still hasn't voted. But yeah, it's looking like it may very well come down to the superdelegates.
In that case, the superdelegates would be smart to choose Bernie. He polls much better overall than Hillary. This is the problem with these parties: they frequently choose the candidate that's better liked (for whatever reason, either they're most extreme or they're most well-liked by party insiders) by the people who bother to register as a member of that party and vote in that state's primaries (or worse, show up at a caucus), but who then doesn't do that well in the general election because they aren't that appealing to the population at large. There's nothing "democratic" about picking the person who wins votes among a self-selection portion of the population, rather than the population as a whole.
Bernie is the highest-polling of all 5 candidates, and has the lowest unfavorable scores: in short, fewer people despise Bernie than any other candidate running. If we were running the Presidential election the way it *should* be run, without this two-party first-past-the-post Electoral College bullshit system we have, but instead with some type of alternative voting system such as approval voting or a ranked voting system, and all 5 of these candidates running simultaneously, Bernie would easily win.
I wouldn't have so much of a problem with people like the Kochs buying political speech if the messages they published were clearly indicated to have been paid for by them.
To tie this back to "freedom of the press", when WaPo publishes some crappy opinion piece, I *know* where it's coming from, and that it's an editorial. It clearly says so when I read it.
If the Kochs want to buy ads on TV, and those ads clearly say "paid for by KochsPAC" or whatever, that's fine.
The problem is when they misrepresent themselves. When some pro-Hillary SuperPAC hires legions of internet shills to post anti-Bernie and pro-Hillary drivel on online forums, posing as regular people (a practice known as "astroturfing"), that's a problem, and IMO should be flatly illegal with huge penalties attached, including automatic disqualification for running for office if any ties can be found between the candidate and the PAC. We have plenty of limits on free speech today: incitements to violence are not legal, for instance, and the same should be true for shilling, because humans are especially vulnerable to it: we give more weight to opinions we think are honest than ones that we know were paid for.
I have no problem with political advertising, as long as it's plainly advertised as such. I do have a problem with shilling, just like any kind of intentional deception and dishonesty.
Basically. When they choose crappy Democrats like Hillary, they're attempting to choose the lesser of two evils. When they choose Republicans, they've been duped.
Proof: Trump.
The whole reason Trump is so popular now is because conservative, white, working-class voters have finally figured out that the Republican party has been duping them, by pandering to them on social issues like gay marriage and abortion, and on religion, and then screwing them over economically after they get elected by pursuing policies which work directly against those working-class voters in favor of large corporations. This is how Trump is destroying the Republican party from within, by pointing this out and offering himself as an alternative.
Sorry, I don't buy that argument at all. "Government" is not a singular monolithic entity. A BI would be a federal matter (though it'd help a lot if they passed a law forbidding state-level income taxes to simplify things). Property taxes have absolutely zero to do with the federal government, and very little to do with state government in fact, because they're levied locally. Setting up a BI wouldn't affect local taxation at all.
I like how you decided by yourself what quality of life others should have, like you've got it all figured out and everybody should trust you because you know best, and everybody else is wrong. How very Communist Party of you.
You sound just like Roman Mir and the other Ayn Rand cultists who think there should be any taxes. Or worse that somehow advanced nations like Denmark with high taxes on rich people are somehow "Communist". How very stupid of you.
I'll let you describe how somebody is supposed to make live like you described both in Phoenix Arizona (which happens to be only slightly below the national average cost of living) and in New York.
I've already explained in this thread that BI would not be indexed to local cost-of-living. If the BI isn't enough for you to afford to stay in Manhattan without working, then you'll have to move or get a job. This isn't hard.
#1 makes no sense. People survive in big cities now because they work for a living. That isn't going to magically change with a BI, but you probably can expect a bunch of non-working people to migrate out of the cities. I don't see that as a problem. Big cities aren't going to "come crashing down" because a bunch of non-working people decided to leave and spend their BI in a small town somewhere. If anything, this should be better for both places: big cities will have real estate freed up from people who'd rather live someplace cheaper because they aren't being enabled by some locally-administered social program to stay there, and small towns which are currently becoming ghost towns would become revitalized to an extent.
Sorry, not trying to insult you, only the Ayn Rand koolaid drinkers.
The way I see it, there's two kinds of libertarians. The reasonable ones, and the sociopathic assholes like Roman Mir who think things like roads should be all privatized.
You're right, BI does have a lot of support among the reasonable libertarians for the reasons you state. I also happen to agree with those reasons. Additionally, it gives people the *liberty* to live their life more how they please instead of being stuck as a wage slave, and not having to deal with government social engineering as you pointed out. However, as you can see with Roman Mir, BI does *not* have any support among that crowd, because they don't want any kind of taxation or government services at all.
Well, if you have no job at all and you only get a tiny BI check, you don't think you're going to want to trade some of your now abundant free time for more money?
I don't know about you, but I don't really like the idea of living with roommates in a crappy apartment and not being able to afford going out to eat let alone travel internationally, so I'd go get a job. If you're so lazy that you'd rather sit around and smoke pot all the time, well I don't know what to say.
Social Security (SSI) is not welfare, it's a retirement fund. You pay in while you earn, and you get paid out after you retire based on how much you put in. It's not going to get rid of SSI (for current recipients), though I guess it's arguable whether SSI should be phased out after BI is implemented.
Oh please. This isn't creating an "abundant supply" of new money, it's just moving around, largely by eliminating existing social programs and letting people manage their money themselves instead of being chased around to see if they're "cheating", and the balance being made up with progressive taxation. For people in the middle, it'll be a wash: they'll be taxed more than now, but then the BI will make up for it so the net will be the same. For people making a lot, boo hoo, they'll have to cut back and not buy a new Rolls every year. And finally, this is a ***BASIC*** income. I don't understand why I have to keep repeating this, but apparently I do. It's enough to squeak by on with a crappy apartment with roommates and some basics from the grocery store. If the economy can't handle people being able to live in crappy apartments and buy spaghetti in the pasta aisle, then we have really serious problems.
yet obviously that's not true at all because we're seeing people live there for very long periods without a job, relying solely on free money to get by.
That's because they're getting *too much* free money right now, because it's indexed to location, and it treats people unequally. People on Section 8 can get a really ridiculous amount of money to go rent a house (not an apartment, a nice-sized house). The system is entirely unfair: some people are able to get a lot of largesse (like women with kids), while others can't get squat (like a 30yo guy with no kids).
Furthermore, if everybody is going to make as much as everybody who is retired or disabled
Which isn't very much; how many times do I have to point out that this is a *****BASIC***** income? Disabled people can usually work too, and retirement is a choice.
then what happens when the real estate cost is driven up above what people already living there on a fixed income can afford?
Then they move out, just like they do right now. Retired people are frequently forced out of places because either the rent is too high, or if they own their home outright, they can no longer afford the property taxes.
Remember, they passed an amendment to the California constitution to try to deal with people's property taxes forcing them out, and now we have the mess in the Bay Area.
Personally, I think the whole property tax issue is a mess and that it should probably be eliminated in favor of only income taxes, but it's a complicated issue. The point is, no one is guaranteed the right to stay someplace, even today. It sucks if you've lived there a long time and you're retired, but capping their taxes means everyone else gets shafted, or the property is put under corporate ownership so the corporation can be bought and sold.
Or let's say people don't move because they get so much more wellfare/etc that they don't leave New York.
I think this is the case. They get more benefits in NYC, and if they move to Wyoming, they'd likely get little to nothing. Different states run their social services very differently, after all. So I think part of it is the disparity in programs at different locations, and part due to "enablement" of policies helping them stay there, such as rent controls, Section 8 vouchers, etc.
What are the long term social, political and economic ramifications of that? Large cities are enormous engines of growth.
They are. But is it really helping the city by having a bunch of people who are doing the minimum occupy valuable space there? I don't think so. People who want to do more than the minimum so they can stay there will: they'll work so they can afford to remain there, for whatever reasons they have. People who want to collect the minimum and smoke pot and play video games all day long won't: they'll be forced to move out, and honestly I'm not too broken up about that. They'll still be taken care of with their BI, but somewhere else. Real estate is a limited, scarce resource and aside from building ever-taller buildings, there isn't anything that'll change that.
As for other long-term ramifications? There's no way to know that for sure without actually doing it, but I think it'll be a net positive. I think it'll free up room for people who will benefit from being in the city (or closer to work), and in turn benefit the city and others in it. And I think it'll benefit society overall by reducing stagnation, by getting some people to move around more. In addition to all the other BI benefits of course.
In reality, most likely all the poor people from NYC would not disperse into rural Nebraska or wherever. Most people don't like to move that far, especially if they have any family. But they'll probably disperse farther from the city center, maybe even go a few hours away. Someone in NYC, for instance, could probably live far more cheaply in upstate NY somewhere, and still be close enough to visit on the weekends. There might be more people moving to small towns because they don't absolutely need jobs to pay the rent any more, and can instead live someplace cheap and work part-time to make ends meet and live better than they did before.
So BMI is going to be less than they're making today and they won't be able to afford it tomorrow, either.
They'll be able to afford it tomorrow because they don't have to worry about losing their fucking paycheck!! Holy shit, are you really this stupid?
The VC analysis uses the number "10%" doing this. There aren't 10% doing it today, and there won't be 10% tomorrow, especially when it's only 10% who are working at all.
There's only 10% creating real wealth. Most people's "work" is just make-work, or will be automated away shortly.
And you pro-BMI people are insulting and rely on ad hominem too much.
Well maybe if you didn't spout such stupidity, I wouldn't have to point out what morons you people are.
You can live pretty well on $3k/month when everyone else is at $1k.
Not if you want to drive a Ferrari or live in an exclusive place like next to Central Park or in Hawaii. What makes you think rich people are going to give up on wanting those things and be happy with a measly $3k/month?
A guy with a million in the bank can go 41 YEARS without working another day on that "income",
So what's stopping that guy from doing that *right now*?
No, you're a fucking moron if you think Basic Income resembles a command economy with set pay levels. There's no talk in BI of having set pay levels. Are you really that fucking stupid?
And how the fuck is it "enslaving" people to keep people alive? Are you one of those fucking sociopathic morons who thinks taxes = theft? If so, go fuck off with your libertarian insanity and move to Somalia.