If you piss away $100/month, you're pissing away $1200/year. That's not the kind of money that allows you to buy real estate.
Luxuries are a lot cheaper than they were, and things like houses and college educations are much more expensive. Hence, people spend money on different things than when I was a kid.
Speaking personally, I wanted to be financially independent of my parents, and asked for financial help once (and paid it back ASAP). I did accept Mom's contribution towards a down payment, though.
I think that having 80% of new businesses fail in their first five years is a very positive thing about our economy. It means that five times as many people can try to start businesses and see if they can succeed than if we only allowed good ideas.
Also, any idea that turns into a really lucrative startup is, on first examination, dumb. If it were good, there'd be plenty of existing competition. Therefore, the only way to get sensational new successes that help people is to encourage people with seemingly dumb ideas to try them out.
No individual billionaire can do anything about UBI; they just don't have the money. Only if most people contribute is it going to work.
Zuckerberg is essentially asking for laws that tax him more, along with a lot of people with above average income. I assume he's willing to pay increased taxes (if not, *then* he's being a hypocrite).
Eligibility fraud would be massive, with people working for cash and not reporting it so their government check won't go down
You're missing the idea. Eligibility would be based on citizenship/legal residency and possibly age, nothing more. People who worked would still get the same government check, they'd just have more money than it provided. We'd have the same problems with people working for cash and failing to report it on their income tax filings as we do now.
You'd be a beneficiary also, although you might not net more money because of it.
In the 1930s, there were a lot of things relatively unskilled people could do productively. Fast forward to the 2010s, and there aren't that many jobs for unskilled people that can't be done better and cheaper by skilled people with readily available machinery.
I really don't think we want to try to make people feel better about themselves by giving them makework jobs.
Out of the top 10, all of their ancestors back 3 generations were dirt poor.
Care to substantiate that? I've met all my son's ancestors for three generations back, and none of them were dirt poor. I find it hard to believe that my son has a more privileged background than the richest people in the world.
Some people have made massive contributions. J.K. Rowling entertained a tremendous number of people with her books. (Don't read Casual Vacancy, though.) Celebrities thrive on their entertainment value. I don't understand what's so fascinating about the Kardashians, myself, but there's a lot of people interested enough in what's going on with them to pay for the news.
CEOs are a different matter, since their compensation is not normally set by supply and demand, but by interlocking board memberships. If shareholders had effective control of how corporations operate, I'd expect them to be paid a lot less.
I can be fucked over when I have to buy essentials, but a $40 million dollar house is not an essential. If I bought one, it would be because I valued the house more than I valued $40 million (and because I have a whole lot more money in this hypothetical than in the real world). As long as it's voluntary, without any coercion, all deals like this are win-win.
Athletes are, fundamentally, entertainers, and their pay is magnified by the fact that it's not possible to substitute quantity for quality. A software developer who is twice as productive as average can be replaced by two or three of lesser ability, while a shortstop who's slightly better than the rest can't be replaced by two shortstops.
Lots of welfare systems penalize the recipients for working. The most pernicious is reducing medical care assistance at a level where a worker can't get decent coverage: that keeps lots of people on welfare. Universal health care and a UBI would encourage people to work if they wanted more money.
Part of what makes a UBI work is that it doesn't penalize people for working, unlike some other plans. If people want more money, they can work for it. Given a UBI, we can drop the idea of a minimum wage, since we aren't starving the poor into working crap jobs for crap pay, so people become more employable.
You can't raise taxes on rich corporations as they simply raise the prices customers must pay to compensate, effectively shifting the taxes onto their customers.
If corporations could collect more money by raising their prices, they already would have. The optimum price to sell something before corporate income taxes have been raised is the optimum afterwards. Corporate income taxes shift costs onto shareholders.
When you don't trust what people say they want, look at what they're doing and the effects. Most people aren't actually stupid.
Murdering people and taking credit for it isn't going to make non-muslims like muslims more. I'd say they're trying to alienate non-muslims from moderate muslims.
FWIW, contractors currently pay both sides of FICA, although half is deductible on the income tax. Registering as a corporation does increase the paperwork significantly. I thought ACA subsidies went to low-income people without employer health care, no matter whether W-2 or 1099. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people being forced to work for peanuts in a gig economy because it's that or starve. A UBI would solve that problem.
BTC is currently too volatile to be a good store of value, and its usefulness for money transfer is directly dependent on what banks do. A BTC transfer is deliberately made to be expensive in computrons, while a bank transfer is simple. As long as banks insist on excess profit from money transfers and currency conversions, BTC will have an advantage, but not otherwise.
As a consumer, if bank transfers and conversions become cheaper, I benefit, even if I never have a BTC wallet and never use a BTC exchange to transfer money. I'm interested in seeing how this plays out.
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So, in a given field, when costs go up it absolutely has to be for the same reason in every individual case?
It could be that, when public school tuition went up, private schools found they could raise tuition to match.
That's where I went, and where my son went. In constant dollars, his education cost about four times what mine did.
If you piss away $100/month, you're pissing away $1200/year. That's not the kind of money that allows you to buy real estate.
Luxuries are a lot cheaper than they were, and things like houses and college educations are much more expensive. Hence, people spend money on different things than when I was a kid.
In other words, you're willing to sacrifice people's futures because they had unlucky or unwise parents?
My parents did support me through my undergrad education, and we did the same for our son. It seemed fair.
Speaking personally, I wanted to be financially independent of my parents, and asked for financial help once (and paid it back ASAP). I did accept Mom's contribution towards a down payment, though.
Man, you snowflakes get upset by other people complaining. You need to find a safe space.
I think that having 80% of new businesses fail in their first five years is a very positive thing about our economy. It means that five times as many people can try to start businesses and see if they can succeed than if we only allowed good ideas.
Also, any idea that turns into a really lucrative startup is, on first examination, dumb. If it were good, there'd be plenty of existing competition. Therefore, the only way to get sensational new successes that help people is to encourage people with seemingly dumb ideas to try them out.
No individual billionaire can do anything about UBI; they just don't have the money. Only if most people contribute is it going to work.
Zuckerberg is essentially asking for laws that tax him more, along with a lot of people with above average income. I assume he's willing to pay increased taxes (if not, *then* he's being a hypocrite).
In other words, you don't think we can do it. I dislike such defeatist thinking.
You're missing the idea. Eligibility would be based on citizenship/legal residency and possibly age, nothing more. People who worked would still get the same government check, they'd just have more money than it provided. We'd have the same problems with people working for cash and failing to report it on their income tax filings as we do now.
You'd be a beneficiary also, although you might not net more money because of it.
In the 1930s, there were a lot of things relatively unskilled people could do productively. Fast forward to the 2010s, and there aren't that many jobs for unskilled people that can't be done better and cheaper by skilled people with readily available machinery.
I really don't think we want to try to make people feel better about themselves by giving them makework jobs.
Man, you can make a mountain out of a missing word. If the quote added in "health care" rather than "health", everything you say is nonsense.
Care to substantiate that? I've met all my son's ancestors for three generations back, and none of them were dirt poor. I find it hard to believe that my son has a more privileged background than the richest people in the world.
Some people have made massive contributions. J.K. Rowling entertained a tremendous number of people with her books. (Don't read Casual Vacancy, though.) Celebrities thrive on their entertainment value. I don't understand what's so fascinating about the Kardashians, myself, but there's a lot of people interested enough in what's going on with them to pay for the news.
CEOs are a different matter, since their compensation is not normally set by supply and demand, but by interlocking board memberships. If shareholders had effective control of how corporations operate, I'd expect them to be paid a lot less.
I can be fucked over when I have to buy essentials, but a $40 million dollar house is not an essential. If I bought one, it would be because I valued the house more than I valued $40 million (and because I have a whole lot more money in this hypothetical than in the real world). As long as it's voluntary, without any coercion, all deals like this are win-win.
Athletes are, fundamentally, entertainers, and their pay is magnified by the fact that it's not possible to substitute quantity for quality. A software developer who is twice as productive as average can be replaced by two or three of lesser ability, while a shortstop who's slightly better than the rest can't be replaced by two shortstops.
Lots of welfare systems penalize the recipients for working. The most pernicious is reducing medical care assistance at a level where a worker can't get decent coverage: that keeps lots of people on welfare. Universal health care and a UBI would encourage people to work if they wanted more money.
Part of what makes a UBI work is that it doesn't penalize people for working, unlike some other plans. If people want more money, they can work for it. Given a UBI, we can drop the idea of a minimum wage, since we aren't starving the poor into working crap jobs for crap pay, so people become more employable.
If corporations could collect more money by raising their prices, they already would have. The optimum price to sell something before corporate income taxes have been raised is the optimum afterwards. Corporate income taxes shift costs onto shareholders.
Everybody knows that one. Of course, even if you deny someone refugee status who was born and raised in your country, they're still there.
When you don't trust what people say they want, look at what they're doing and the effects. Most people aren't actually stupid.
Murdering people and taking credit for it isn't going to make non-muslims like muslims more. I'd say they're trying to alienate non-muslims from moderate muslims.
However, lots of less wealthy countries have good universal health care. It's more complicated than just extending Medicare, but it can be done.
FWIW, contractors currently pay both sides of FICA, although half is deductible on the income tax. Registering as a corporation does increase the paperwork significantly. I thought ACA subsidies went to low-income people without employer health care, no matter whether W-2 or 1099. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
The problem is people being forced to work for peanuts in a gig economy because it's that or starve. A UBI would solve that problem.
BTC is currently too volatile to be a good store of value, and its usefulness for money transfer is directly dependent on what banks do. A BTC transfer is deliberately made to be expensive in computrons, while a bank transfer is simple. As long as banks insist on excess profit from money transfers and currency conversions, BTC will have an advantage, but not otherwise.
As a consumer, if bank transfers and conversions become cheaper, I benefit, even if I never have a BTC wallet and never use a BTC exchange to transfer money. I'm interested in seeing how this plays out.