Thread on UBI

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/4...?highlight=ubi

yeah sure we could give a couple of bucks a month for food and some basic needs to keep someone alive even if they are completely unwilling to work and are 100% taking advantage of the system.

Okay. You made your point. I recommend you don't bring it up again.

Mason

I guessed right. But it looks like Nixon wanted to do it as welfare reform. Hmm. Guess if done right though you would not need a safety net because it would be one.

I think it was George McGovern:

Most radically, McGovern united welfare reform and tax reform by proposing a “Demogrant” of $1,000 per year for every adult, regardless of income, as an alternative to Nixon’s complicated means-tested welfare overhaul plan.

https://newrepublic.com/article/1307...eorge-mcgovern

Best wishes,
Mason

Implementation


Ah. He did it as President.

Hi batair:

Isn't this interesting. We have a well known liberal proposing giving money to those unwilling to work, a well known conservative proposing giving money to those unwilling to work, and a well known libertarian/conservative proposing giving money to those unwilling to work. Of course, it has to be done in the right way, but perhaps it's not such a bad idea.

Which brings up another point. Why did AOC/staff, whoever wrote the NGD proposal, remove it from the draft of their proposal?

Best wishes,
Mason

No. They should starve until they are willing to work. Are we to be defeated by them holding themselves hostage like a scene from Blazing Saddles?

Don't think many people here would disagree with that but we will end up doing neither and I expect giving it to Americans is more likely to pass in the future than giving it to Africans.

Because a super complicated, economically changing proposal goes through many, many drafts. If you remember obamacare (we remember you remembering it!), it was very different from start to finish. The Green New Deal would look drastically different by the time any legislation passed from what has been proposed so far.

Can you get to the point so this discussion becomes in good faith? Your tone and "oh, no idea about this just asking questions" way of meandering do not provide for good discussion.

only read the title so far but hellz ya let's get this mother****ing party started up in here

Id guess someone told them they would get killed on it if they left it in. Which is right because they would of. Though if she framed it as Nixon's welfare reform...

Mason,

Decades, of anti-poor thinly (if at all) veiled racist rhetoric about welfare queens living it up on "your" tax dollars has poisoned any legitimate discussion along the lines of a negative income tax. The Republican Party's southern strategy made the demonisation of any government money allocated to black people a core tenant of conservative thought for nearly 50 years. The wealthy donors to both parties (but mostly republicans) use government payments to minorities as a wedge issue to get poor white americans to vote against their own financial interest and in the interests of those wealthy people.

An incentive not to work is a bad idea because it will push many who are ok with working into a situation where it's better not to work in the short term.

Give the money to everyone. Then those who don't want to work wont and everyone, particularly employers, will be better off.

I'll start worrying about how we're going to keep those who simply refuse to work from starving after we've pushed education, infrastructure, and basic research funding to diminishing returns. All of those programs have positive ROI's both for government revenue and for the economy more generally.

Also we already have a negative income tax for people who earn some but not much money and have kids.

There is a very real question about what to do if we ever get to a place where there aren't enough jobs to go around for people who actually want them. I guess we'll see when we get there.

They didn't remove it. It was never part of the GND.

However, we could ask why are right wingers so heavily pushing such a falsehood? Bc it would be about the same answer.

Is the Green New Deal good for poker?

If you take that free paycheck and get a sweet deposit bonus you are pretty much set.

I thought JAQ threads (especially with misleading or outright false OPs) were bannable offenses? Just asking so I know for future reference.

It seems odd to judge a proposal by one phrase in a draft that was already walked back before the final draft was released.

Mason isn't doing that? He's wanting to discuss the very policy that was walked back, not the green new deal.

Also, how do we establish which people are “unwilling to work” and which are simply unemployed? How many people in the US are unwilling to work? Isn’t it really a function of what the wages are? It seems like conservatives are just pouncing on a misstatement and using it to shame the unemployed.

It has become clear over the course of this thread that Mason's first paragraph (of two) in his OP was a non-sequitur which was antithetical to his overall point which seems to have been 'Hey guys watch this cool youtubez plx'

Yes.

I've watched numerous Friedman videos. I always enjoy them even when I don't agree with him.

Going further, Friedman is a name I often drop when talking/arguing with conservatives. It usually does not go over well. They either think I'm using a cheat code or refuse to believe Friedman actually held many of the views he did.

If that last sentence gets to the heart of what you're wondering, that is, why modern conservatism seems to have a cruel streak running through it, to the point when conservative scholars like Friedman are dismissed as SJW cucks, to use the parlance of our times, well, I don't rightly know the answer to that. My best guess would be because these are the last days.

I’m liberal and support an improved social safety net, but the best way to implement is a tough question IMO because there is some subset of people who are unwilling to work for the rational reason that wages at jobs they are qualified for wouldn’t improve their standard of living much compared to the benefits they currently qualify for. Many of these folks are “disabled” but ultimately are for economic reasons, not medical. Increasing minimum wage to extent would help but obviously significant unintended consequences arise after a point.

UBI is enticing in many ways, but not entirely sure if giving folks with poor financial literacy a lump sum of cash seems like a better plan than providing healthcare/food/housing/etc directly.