I think that a much worse idea. There is no evidence that sending more people to college will result in a better outcome. In fact the evidence in England was that it yielded a worse outcome. http://www.nber.org/papers/w23888 A college education primarily acts a signaling mechanism. The education in every subject, even engineering, is not that helpful. Free college just waters down the value of education.

As far as health care, anyone at the bottom already gets free health care.

With both college and health care, you need people with skin in the game to get the best result. You need people making their own decisions with money they control even if it subsidized.

Within two generations the population would double/triple, money/capital would make a quick exit and the gov would either rescind the program or go into default.

Of course you can. It goes against the **** for brains libertarian agenda but these attitudes change. ******s like Paul Ryan are losing traction in the Republican Party.

UBI seems obv at some point but current levels of wealth in society are still so far off from what will be there in the future. Seems like the way to go is to optimize for innovation first and then start optimizing for a good society later.

Maybe something needs to happen in US tho. I think ray dalio posted graphs that shows that the gap between the lower and upper class in US is at a all time high, and that purchase power/happiness have hardly increased at all for bottom 30% in that last decades. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-b...ies-ray-dalio/

But dunno, I live in the Netherlands which is optimizing more for social structure of society. This is clearly good for the happiness of the poulation (Living in a full capitalist society is detrimental for your happiness. ) However, my life gets a little bit better because I can use things like uber/whatsapp that could be more easily created in a less livable place like the US. If they start doing UBI there it would probably be bad for me.

By the way even if UBI isnt obviously good atm it seems really obvious to experiment with it. If its good/bad depends on how people will respond to it. We cant know for sure unless we try. Some chance people will start working less because they get have less reason too when they get free money. Some chance they will start working more or become more inclined to pursue innovative/risky paths ( More entrepeneurs would be really good),because they have less reason to be afraid of going broke. The question is if you can get reliable estimates of how it would play out by experimenting on a small scale. The cost of trying out UBI in one state or city is really low compared to the potential benefit if it turns out to be good so why arent more countries running small scale experiments?. Obv for the world as a whole it would be optimal if one country just went ahead and implemented if full-scale. Ofc it would be really minev for that particular country to be the first to try it so no1 is gonna do that.

If i was dictator over the world i would run it something like this. 75% of countries in the world are randomly assigned to get ruled by a variety of economic systems that are currently known as the best systems. 25% of the countries are randomly assigned to try out new systems. If such a new system crashes the society, the 75% will fully pay to rebuild the country.

I think some of you are focusing too much on the details of my proposal rather than the general ideas. For instance if I had simply said "keep the minimum wage low, make it easier to immigrate here, and subsidize American citizens who are affected by that" it would be pretty much the same thing.

that's fairly different from what you suggested. and most of my criticisms still apply.

opposition to immigration isn't mostly about jobs even if it's justified that way.

immigrants will work sub-minimum wage anyway.

how many americans are you going to subsidize? a huge number will want it. and who pays for it? taxing the top 1% or 5% won't be nearly enough.

jobs have left to automation far far more than mexico. china and "right to work" states too.

Bring in large numbers of a fast-breeding, race-proud, communist/dictator sympathetic, poorly educated serf underclass that are treated as second class/non citizens and paid a pittance, while the overclass gets paid by the government just to breathe, including from the taxes of the serfs. What could possibly go wrong with this idea?

Oh and do this at a time when we're maybe a decade away from automation wiping out most jobs below 100 IQ. What a genius idea.

Companies will have to start offering more benefits. Why would someone work a ****ty retail job when they could get UBI? I've thought about this and I think they should set up a system of payment for kids aged 18-21. Kids aged 18-21 can be paid below minimum wage, depending on your state. People over 21 have to get whatever min wage is or higher. This alleviates some stress on small businesses who depend on hiring in summertime and can't afford the rise to 15 an hour. This will not effect full timers as companies cannot discriminate based on age. So a scenario where companies refuse to hire people over age of 21 would never happen. This type of scenario works best in states where min wage is reaching 15+ and companies are complaining.

If UBI happens I think you need to establish some sort of accountability. Like for example, If someone is on UBI they still have a min amount of volunteer hours due towards their town. They pickup trash or fill pot holes a certain amount of hours per month or whatever the case may be.

Because they still get UBI anyway and without a job it's not enough to live comfortably

It worked for the Romans for like 600 years and that was without modern tech.

OK so what if we make a notation of which American citizens apply to compete with those people for the low paying jobs and deport THEM?

What stops people from continually voting to increase the UBI until the system breaks?

The consequent is similar. You create an incentive for people to pile in so their children can realize the benefits. Even if the only benefits you extended were via government subsidies as they stand in terms of medicare/infrastructure/etc, the global demand for people to live in the US would be (is) enormous and open borders would jam the system with people who, as deserving as they may be of those benefits, will put an unsustainable pressure on the tax system. The US is already basically in a free fall in terms of debt. If you tried to compensate workers for how much their wages dipped by as a consequent of unlimited non-citizen workers it would be game over real fast.

Open access for non-citizens coupled with a robust social safety net / UBI for citizens could be made to be sustainable but it requires some changes in how we regulate peoples reproductive habits and being stingier with offering citizenship (ie: it's something you buy as opposed to being granted it on the basis of being born on US soil, and if you have children without the consent of the state, your children don't get citizenship).

Open borders has to be the dumbest thing I've heard in the last 10 years. Do you have any idea how many 10's of millions of people from China would immigrate if this happened. 10's of millions of Chinese make less then $5K a YEAR....and to earn that $5K, they go through way worse conditions then even the worst off American workers.

Many other countries have it just as bad, if not worse. There's a whole industry of women selling themselves to American men as basically sex slaves so they can have an opportunity at a better life and get their green card.

Our schools would be flooded with children, our utilities would be overwhelmed. Advocating for open borders is nothing more then screaming to the world that you don't understand how basic things like "electricity works" and "how the sewer system works."

(in before someone calls me racist...keep in mind my wife is chinese and my daughter is white/chinese...those are the 2 people I love the most in this world)

There's a podcast series called "Revolutions"....I recommend you listen to it.


What's the difference between what the Romans did and what Sklansky is recommending? hint: It's a pretty ****ing big difference, and starts with the letter s


The French tried this in reverse before the French revolution (you could "buy into" no longer having to pay taxes...which is like UBI in reverse sort of)...it led to france going busto and that whole pesky "revolution" thing.

I like this idea. Let's call it David's Unlimited Mass Migration & Keeping Our Poors Fed proposal, DUMMKOPF for short.

If you put morality aside, I'm in favor of deporting anyone with a low IQ and work ethic and importing anyone with a high IQ and work ethic.

A nation is its IQ (particularly tail IQ*), it's political/personal philosophy, its knowhow and its capital. Leftists would have you believe that ****holes are ****holes because of the last two. Given enough time, and there has been enough time, it's mostly the first two. Importing large numbers of people that have a sticky ****hole philosophy (i.e. one that doesn't change easily due to racial or religious ties or deep familial cultural practices) is a disaster. In terms of political philosophy, the US is ahead because it is has a higher degree of libertarianism/individualism (very sadly, nearly all white people, despite the tremendous benefits such philosophies would have on minority culture), lower attraction to socialism, and higher attraction to capitalism.

*In the US, this important tail bulge is mostly from Jews and German immigrants and their children, which are substantial, and more recently, skilled Asian migration.

If the US wants to start extracting a large tribute from most of the world like the Romans did, rather than PAY tribute to the rest of the world like it's doing now, I'd be more open to David's idea. Wealth is a precious thing and easily squandered.

It is my understanding that the petrodollar already functions as an indirect global tribute. If Nations want to purchase oil, which is something they all need to function at a basic level, then that oil must first be purchased in dollars. This creates a constant demand for dollars and so it is more convenient to invest and transact other things in dollars to avoid all the currency conversion fees. When Nations look to leave the petrodollar or stop paying indirect tribute they get Saddam'ed or Gaddaffi'ed by America's unstoppable military might, just like Rome.

Currency that is better to do oil related transactions in including futures trading is?

Interesting Article on the Petro-Yuan

you guys are so worried about paying for a UBI with income taxes, it should be wealth taxes. World is moving to a software and platform economy with effectively zero marginal cost once you own the IP. That world is set up for massive imbalances. so create wealth taxes, ie 1% on net worth a year, to pay for UBI.

its a better solution than not and eventually having the mob behead you.

If only asset values were clear cut. They're obviously not. To be fair, determining income isn't clear cut either.

I like it. Let's do a trial run, ship me 10 k and I'll let you know how it goes.

Seriously. The proles have to feel like they are getting something out of the established social order or they opt out. When they opt out en masse your property rights get violated en masse. Venezuela was a nice country once. I bet if the rich people in Venezuela had it all to do over again they would have done whatever it took to stop Hugo Chavez from being a viable candidate.

EDIT: But obviously nobody gets UBI until they've been a citizen for at least 5 years and are at least 18 years old. UBI also must substitute for pretty much the entire social safety net. Probably needs to be more like 18k per adult than 10k. Definitely think funding it with wealth taxes makes perfect sense. Obviously we should mirror the behavior of other first world countries wrt healthcare. They can't free ride off of us if we refuse to pay more than any of them.

Obv the wealth tax is just a tax on financial products like bank accounts, stocks, bonds, whole life policies, crypto, real estate, etc. Maybe exempt the first 100-200k or something.