Let's have a more productive conversation, now that the election dust is starting to settle. Although you may have a few loonies saying it hasn't. I'll try to make my case for UBI, and I'm interested in hearing why you agree or disagree. I hope it's more eloquent than it's going to be, and it's probably going to be long winded, so hang with me. To me, UBI needs to be enacted ASAP, as it helps with many things and it can be a uniter for both sides. It is why I supported Andrew Yang. The guy is a true Patriot, and it's too bad more people don't listen to him. How many tech companies, especially, mine our data on the daily in order to profit off of us? Amazon, whether you consider them tech or not, may be the worst. These companies need to have their tax loopholes closed, and that tax should be redistributed to the people in the form of UBI. Closing those tax loopholes and charging them for the personal data they mine would generate billions a year, which would largely supply UBI. Let's use $1200 a month as an example. For every documenter citizen, working in America. That's $2400 a month for a family. Without a doubt, it's proven it's nettle during the pandemic. First, let's compare it to $15/hour minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage to $15/hr places strain on smaller business owners by cutting their margins. It could potentially price low skill laborers out of a job. Bigger fast food chains will compensate by just making everything orderable from a computer and have cooking processes automated. Small, independent restaurants can't do this, for instance. It screws over the middle class. Anyone making between $15-25/hr, and most Americans, in general, would feel some of their income marginalized by an increase in pay. I heard someone once say that the price of a hamburger has largely reflected minimum wage throughout the last century. I thought that was interesting. As a baseline, if you raise the price of a hamburger to $15, think about how that hurts the common man (don't take that literal), and go from there. Now, let's talk UBI and how that changes things. UBI from a mass perspective props everybody up. While the benefit over raising minimum wage can be debated, as I'm sure companies will raise profits to increase profit margins, at least you're raising that baseline for everyone and not just some. If you enact UBI for every working citizen, this does a few things: it encourages undocumented workers to become documented. As an undocumented individual, illegal or not, are you going to give up $14,400 a year? No. Largely, you're going to have people work to be documented. You're going to have people that are skirting by on welfare, or under disability, seeking jobs, in order to get that extra money every year. It gives incentive to work. It is also an immediate buffer to lack of universal healthcare. For instance, I have a baby due in a few weeks. I also have a torn meniscus that is preventing me from running more than a mile or two at a time. I was running 6-8 miles a day. I'm a healthcare worker, as well. I know how expensive a meniscus would be. I know how expensive a baby will be. I have money to cover it, but I can deal with the meniscus. It's not an emergency. I'm choosing to forgo getting the meniscus even looked at because I simply don't want to pay $2k out of pocket for it. As a healthcare worker. I'd rather pay that for my unborn. UBI would give that a buffer. I'd feel much more comfortable paying for that. These are just a couple of small things that I think UBI helps. There are plenty of others. I could probably make this much longer. I feel strongly about this, and I think it's time it takes the forefront in American discussion when it comes to politics. Obviously, ending tax loopholes raises a lot of these funds, but you'd probably have to enact a VAT on other luxury goods, and that opens a whole other can of worms. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
I have no problems with UBI...I think we should have enacted it months ago when the pandemic was getting worse as other countries have. I still believe we should enact it for the pandemic and then leave it going after it finishes. we have hit a point in our country where the national debt doesn’t matter, and manufacturing jobs are going by the way-side. Instead of letting people fall into poverty because they can’t find another job, or telling them to go code, a UBI would keep them afloat until they can find something else.
I have been following the emerging topic with great interest, but I'm not smart enough to forecast what all it might affect. Looking forward to what anti-UBI people have to say. Unlike others, I don't think it's something that will pass anytime soon because half this country will tune out as soon as it's labeled and marketed as communism by its opposers. You also have a part of the country that would rather hold others down than lift themselves (and others) up. Maybe I'm crazy. But If UBI becomes a thing I feel like a Republican is going to have to be the one to get it done.
I support it for several reasons. First you could eliminate all of the cumbersome TANF, SNAP, section 8 housing, EITC, etc welfare programs and just do UBI instead. Lots of savings to be had just in administration costs. Secondly we have done trickle down three times now and it’s lead to the same results. Huge increases in national debt, increases in debt as a % of GDP, and increases in wealth disparity. Time to try trickle up. Third I don’t believe job creation will keep up with population growth when you take into account automation. And there sure as hell won’t be enough STEM jobs especially if everyone follows the advice of go to school for STEM not cultural studies. We need to slowly accept that in a modern society with such technological advancements we don’t need everyone to work 40 hours or more a week. We should all be working less and having more family and leisure time which increases health and reduces violence and stress.
You can have UBI (and all the other social safety nets). You can have a country of immigrants. You cannot have both (or you have strong rules preventing immigrants including possibly children from taking advantage of UBI/social safety nets, thereby potentially creating a life/lives-long second class citizen). Which one will it be? And don't tell me you can have both as long as we tax the rich people. The ugly truth to life is everyone feels like he or she is on the precipice of ruin, and even though you might think they don't NEED the extra $2 or $20 million, they'll fight you tooth and nail just like the average Joe will fight a $2000 tax hike like it's an existential threat. So yes, they might not need a new super yacht with two helipads, but they'll react the same way as you telling average Joe he doesn't need a new OLED TV and should pay more in taxes to help the less fortunate. The more in percentage and in absolutes the populace has to pay in taxes, the less legitimate the government becomes. But that's the topic of a different thread.
Before Yang dropped out of the race there were several polls that showed Yang would pull the most republican voters so his message does seem to resonate with certain republican voters. I've usually voted republican but didn't in 2016 or 2020. I was more excited about Yang than I have been for any republican candidate for president.
The average Joe is struggling to pay basic necessity bills like rent, healthcare student loans etc. It's a luxury for the average Joe to be upset they can only afford the Samsung QLED tvs instead of LG's OLED. That's luxury in America today for the middle class. The important thing here is the trend of the past 40 years. Even if you think we aren't at a point of massive economic resentment and social unrest, the tend says we will eventually be there if there isn't some serious shift.
A problem with implenting these programs is Gen X and older have been conditioned by the media to believe that sovereign debt is more scary than consumer debt. I think millennials and Gen Z are more critical of that paradigm. Not going to be successful in implenting these things until Gen Z and Millennials dominate the voting base which is mostly Boomers and Gen X currently.
I think you failed to mention that Min Wage increase involves a $0 tax increase. UBI at $1200/person/month for about 250 million adults = $3.6 Trillion / yr that you need to get from somewhere. That's not "closing tax loopholes" money. That's doubling the entire federal budget.
You already have a country of immigrants and a welfare system. Some immigrants go on welfare, and a lot don't. It's kind of the same principal... But let's say that you had both. Can you enact a law stating you're eligible for UBI five years after you become a legalized citizen? I'm not sure but it sounds like you could. Not PC, but you certainly could. My point still stands that you kind of have both now. The key, though, is that you have to be a citizen and have a job to get UBI.
This is exactly what I mean. We've been conditioned to believe that sovereign debt is some sort of pressing concern compared to actual debt held by our own citizens. This is a generational thing hence like I said before, it's only going to happen when Gen Z and Millennials outvote Boomers and Gen X. These ideas are so fundamentally entrenched in older generations, it's impossible to convince them now.
I don't recall the numbers but it's paid for with a VAT as well as people already receiving some other type of government payment (wellfare, SS) would have to choose between the two. Andrew Yang had a way to cover it.
We have a broken system that makes 71 million Americans hate both immigrants and welfare, so let’s make it worse. Is that really a winning argument?
I get your point, and I've raised the same point about universal healthcare (as in how do we get it done), but you can say technically that a min. wage hike does raise taxes. The "tax raise" is just spread as a burden on the middle class that doesn't also get that wage hike. The beauty of UBI is that, if we can figure out the finances of paying for it, that tax is burden by, in a large part, corporations that are profiting off of you, the average consumer, and it's also burdened by purchases of luxury goods, that people don't need. What I'm saying is, if Bill Gates wants to buy a luxury yacht, a special tax will be enacted to send some of that to the UBI pool. As that trickles down, it helps deepen the pool. You end up helping Average Joe pay for his medical care, in theory, by buying that slightly higher taxed big screen TV (that is a luxury item). I'm not trying to pretend I know how to pay for it here, because I don't. I'm ridding off of Yang's idea. It's a great one. It's a much better answer to a minimum wage hike. The biggest issue is that it's a socialist policy, and doesn't go over well with people that in now way want socialism (same crowd that doesn't want universal healthcare). You've got to sell the actual benefits for it. And there are benefits to the right and left. Kind of why @Ziggy was spot on.
It has nothing to do with conditioning - that money comes from *somewhere*. We can certainly rack up debt - that means investors are buying up $3.5T in extra government debt. Where does that money come from? It means that money is NOT being invested elsewhere - whether it's starting businesses or buying corporate debt or whatever else. That has to be accounted for somewhere in the process. It has nothing to do with conditioning - it's just basic math.
Sure - if you raise taxes on the poor (VAT is highly regressive) and take away their current government payments to pay for giving them UBI money, that's fine. But I'd ask what the net benefit is there in that scenario. If you're giving them $14k per year and taking away $10k per year, have you really accomplished much different than the minimum wage hike alternative, outside of funnelling all of the money through the government?
Another paradigm of the old. Investing in normal citizens isn't investing though economic theory proves otherwise with the velocity of money. When it comes to welfare, it's a handout. When it comes to subsidies for large corporations, it's investing.
This is like saying Marie Antoinette’s mistake was she didn’t actually hand out cakes. A government handing out cakes will only further delegitimize it.
