Our Next President?

[Chris Coles]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

That's an interesting map. I was not aware how consistent the divide is. There's no doubt that cultural attitudes are different. I just don't like the implication that somehow we are bound to accept huge numbers of immigrants because we have historically.

One of my big personal concerns is environmental. I live in Ohio. Just a few hundred years ago there would have been bison, elk, wolves, bears, and mountain lions in this area. Now there's a few isolated black bears and every once in a while someone claims to see a mountain lion. At one time there were tens of millions of bison across nearly the entire country. Now there's a few thousand wild and free in a few small areas. Maybe that doesn't matter to some people, but I think it's a devastating loss.

Why do we need more people in the US? It's one thing to accept huge numbers of immigrants when the country was relatively uninhabited, but we have 325 million people now and every day we have 2,500 more than the day before. Nothing against the people of India or Bangladesh, but I don't want that kind of population density here.

One minute I hear about how we need immigrants to grow the economy and then next minute we need UBI because the robots are going to take everyone's job. I'm not so dystopian about the robots but it's pretty clear already that we don't need the same quantity of labor to work the fields, mine, factories, etc.

The obvious answer is to enable an increase in prosperity within every other nation whose citizens keep trying to cross into your nation. Except that what you have is an administration determined to enact any and every possible means to ensure the slavery of every other nation to the needs of the US.

[geodrome]

Re: med costs

@DSpencer

I appreciate your commentary around here.

[DSpencer]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

My inclination is to be against UBI and in favor of slowing immigration flows at the present moment, so for once I really have little to argue with you about.

Hahaha! The elusive common ground. We did it!

Honestly, we might agree on more than you think. Most people, myself included, have a tendency to respond only when they disagree. It's like the saying that if you want to know something, don't ask a question, just give the wrong answer. Then everyone jumps out of the woodwork to say why it's wrong (or at least why they disagree).

@DSpencer

I appreciate your commentary around here.

Thanks!

[DSpencer]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

The obvious answer is to enable an increase in prosperity within every other nation whose citizens keep trying to cross into your nation. Except that what you have is an administration determined to enact any and every possible means to ensure the slavery of every other nation to the needs of the US.

The US needs to accept more people so that the countries they are emigrating from will have an increase in prosperity? If other countries are sending their "best and brightest" wouldn't the effect be the opposite? In any case, I have no idea why the benefit of other countries should be the main decision factor for the US.

I don't like Trump and I haven't voted for a two party candidate in a long time. America is far from perfect in its interactions with the world. But honestly, you need to get a grip. "...enact any and every possible means to ensure the slavery of every other nation..." That kind of hyperbole is just ridiculous.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

Hahaha! The elusive common ground. We did it!

Honestly, we might agree on more than you think. Most people, myself included, have a tendency to respond only when they disagree. It's like the saying that if you want to know something, don't ask a question, just give the wrong answer. Then everyone jumps out of the woodwork to say why it's wrong (or at least why they disagree).



Thanks!

It's one of the nice things about these old-style longer-term, slow forums. Get to get more of a sense of people and where they're coming from over time. Don't have to always just knee-jerk onto the topic-du-jour. And the lack of feeds and post-ranking algorithms takes a lot of the noise out of the equation. Internet's full of useless noise. Finding a useful signal in it is harder each passing year. I'm sure we probably do agree on more than we realize.

I honestly can't really fathom who finds UBI particularly attractive. Especially Yang's plan. It's bananas. It's not totally dissimilar from Nixon & Moynihan's old FAP in some respects, but in others it's uniquely strange. And it's not hard to see who benefits. But you have to follow along.

1. It basically supplants welfare and disability. So anyone receiving benefits now would get nothing out of it.

2. So the 10% VAT to fund it ends up being regressive and really screwing over poor and disabled people compared to the status quo.

3. This should be obvious, but a 10% VAT on everything means it's not actually $1,000 extra per month. And by the point you hit a $10,000 per month spend (not figuring in any exemptions), you're back at square one. Go over, and it's a net negative.

4. $1,000 per month is not enough to live on, especially since he's proposing not to disburse it until age 18, so families with kids don't get as much out of it. Note: This is not universal since kids don't count. And since it supplants other benefits, the poor and disabled don't really get anything either. So we've already gone from universal to everyone but the poor, the disabled, and children.

5. It might be a slight net gain for moderate income people, but that would significantly depend on the details of how the VAT was applied to real estate & housing. I don't see how any serious plan could omit details on that. It could hit the mortgage markets like a sledgehammer. The income would compensate for some of it. There's a lot of devil in these details.

6. So it doesn't really provide freedom not to work. You can't even run a 2-income household with no kids on $24k gross annually in the US. Maybe you could eke it out in some of the poorest areas. But it's going to be tough and miserable. And $12k per year for an individual alone might buy a year's healthcare or a year's rent, but probably not both, and certainly not utilities and food and all. The freedom/automation argument just makes no sense at $12k per year.

7. It's clear that he intends on having this supplant disability insurance, less clear on whether he intends on having it supplant old age or survivor's portions of Social Security. He never comes out and says it. But he also never explicitly promises it won't, so far as I've heard. My guess is the math's not gonna work if he doesn't, but who knows. That's a HUGE fight, and a potential huge cut for elderly people and middle aged workers who've paid in so long.

8. So now I've narrowed down who benefits, I suppose. Young, able-bodied moderate income people who rent relatively cheaply with low-wage jobs but without children. And even then, if they have a $5k monthly spend, they're only benefitting to the tune of $6k per year thanks to the VAT. Guess it's perfect for pandering to students. But it generates a lot of pain for everyone else in the process.

9. It's literally much cheaper and easier to just make public college free (~$75 billion / yr) and have a student debt jubilee (~$1.6 trillion one time), than to make these payments (~$2.8 trillion annually), and the drag of a new VAT tax (he's estimating ~$800 billion/yr).

10. To make up the difference, he's proposing ~$600 billion/yr in cuts to current welfare and social insurance programs, projecting ~$200 billion/yr in unproven reductions in imprisonments and hospitalizations, and projecting ~$600 billion/yr in new revenue growth concomitant with a highly unlikely 13% GDP bump, and I guess the other $600 billion per year would just be debt financed. But I suspect the plan would is probably coming up a trillion or so annually short. And I have a sneaking suspicion that trillion, if he gains any traction (which I doubt), will suddenly come out of Social Security old age insurance.

I feel for kids just starting out. You know I do. I think the $75 billion to make public college tuition free is easy and totally possible within the realm of existing fiscal constraints, and probably only held back by private schools protesting it. And I think student debt is hurting the prospects for homeownership and raising families for a whole generation unnecessarily, especially when the gap between the interest rates the government charges banks and the interest rates it charges students is so wide (it's not like it's unsecured, since it's secured by the fact there's no bankruptcy and there's wage and benefit garnishments). But I think this is a stupid and expensive solution to the problem.

More than that, I think the whole automation argument is a farce. It's super easy to blame non-human things and non-policy decisions for stagnant wages. It's markets! or it's robots! just means it's inevitable! Which is absurd. People have agency in resource distribution decisions. It's the whole basis of the social contract. Blaming anyone other than decision-makers for the fact wages have been stagnant for 40 years is absurd. There's plenty of money and resources to go around. And there's plenty of work that needs doing. If capital isn't allocated to the work that needs doing and the people who need to be doing that work, then that's a policy failure. Not the magic of technology or markets. And you don't solve that policy failure by leaving the existing power structure in tact, adding a new tax, stripping old benefits, and replacing it with poverty subsidies.

Like everything else coming out of Silicon Valley these days, it's a solution just begging for a problem, and a deflection from the real problems that exist.

[DSpencer]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

The basic premise of UBI is somewhat disingenuous. It implies that somehow everyone can get extra money. In reality it's not much more than a redistribution scheme. Then the question just becomes who is going to pay and who is going to benefit. Using a VAT to pay for it muddies the waters a bit, but ultimately the tax has to be paid by someone (or by everyone who uses money through inflation for the MMT sticklers).

If we are the point where the best or only solution to inequality is to have a sliding scale of welfare not just for the poor but all the way up to people making 6 figures, then let's at least be honest about what we are doing and why.

I think the question of whether lots of individual welfare/benefit programs should be replaced by just giving money is one worth considering. I think there's good arguments on both sides, but at least it could greatly reduce the bureaucratic overhead expenses. That's really not a central part of UBI though. It's just an optional twist on it. We could do that without UBI or could do UBI without changing existing benefits. In fact, Yang's plan seems to give people the option which seems like the worst idea of all because then you have to keep all the benefits administration in place for every program.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

The US needs to accept more people so that the countries they are emigrating from will have an increase in prosperity? If other countries are sending their "best and brightest" wouldn't the effect be the opposite? In any case, I have no idea why the benefit of other countries should be the main decision factor for the US.

I don't like Trump and I haven't voted for a two party candidate in a long time. America is far from perfect in its interactions with the world. But honestly, you need to get a grip. "...enact any and every possible means to ensure the slavery of every other nation..." That kind of hyperbole is just ridiculous.

What you see below is an excellent example of what I am describing and I have to say the sight of this turning up on my home PC, makes me very sad indeed. You see, this occurred this week, not twenty years ago, two days ago. It is the result of perhaps the most honest medical doctor on the internet, Dr. Joseph Mercola, www.mercola.com being silenced; I am no longer permitted to read his criticism of US government agencies and pharmaceutical industrial practices. And no, the action to prevent access was taken by my UK government, not yours. Our government will have been asked to do this by yours. Apart from a very brief news item on BBC TV news, nothing in any newspaper; total silence.

Now you may well believe, quite honestly, that I am ridiculous. But take my word for it, this is just another example, I could give much more, of the pernicious nature of the lack of any real intent to deliver freedom; by the leader of the free world. Certainly not freedom as I understand the word.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

The basic premise of UBI is somewhat disingenuous. It implies that somehow everyone can get extra money. In reality it's not much more than a redistribution scheme. Then the question just becomes who is going to pay and who is going to benefit. Using a VAT to pay for it muddies the waters a bit, but ultimately the tax has to be paid by someone (or by everyone who uses money through inflation for the MMT sticklers).

If we are the point where the best or only solution to inequality is to have a sliding scale of welfare not just for the poor but all the way up to people making 6 figures, then let's at least be honest about what we are doing and why.

I think the question of whether lots of individual welfare/benefit programs should be replaced by just giving money is one worth considering. I think there's good arguments on both sides, but at least it could greatly reduce the bureaucratic overhead expenses. That's really not a central part of UBI though. It's just an optional twist on it. We could do that without UBI or could do UBI without changing existing benefits. In fact, Yang's plan seems to give people the option which seems like the worst idea of all because then you have to keep all the benefits administration in place for every program.

Once again, nothing I disagree with. +1

[Chris Coles]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

There is one other aspect of UBI that is not discussed, loss of work ethic. Here in the UK we have so many on welfare, now including the new Universal Credit, that adds payments to people already in work; that we have to have immigration to provide a work force. Our own young have no concept of work ethic and thus no long term aiming point, other than to get their hands on as much welfare as possible. It is work ethic that has driven the concept of the freedom to make your own way in life; do your own thing; create greater prosperity within your local community; create better opportunity for your young people; give them a better future. UBI completely, silently, removes work ethic; why work when someone will pay you to keep you silent?

I am reminded of a young man, a bus driver in Brazil who had commented on BBC TV Newsnight now several years ago; "We are all slaves now, except that now they pay us".

[Polish_Silver]

Third parties Must Lose!

I disagree. An excellent third party candidate can win. Perot showed the possibilities.

.

Perot did NOT win, not even close.

He got about 19% of popular votes, the highest 3rd party performance in more than one century.
He would have to get 3X that to win.

T Roosevelt did not win as a 3rd party candidate, even after being president.

How many congressional seats are held by 3rd parties?

And of those, how many are not former members of Repocrats?

The Major party candidates get worse and worse, because there is no alternative.
It is "race to the bottom " in a two party system.
People vote based on party loyalty. The parties have no moral or intellectual integrity.

[DSpencer]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

What you see below is an excellent example of what I am describing and I have to say the sight of this turning up on my home PC, makes me very sad indeed. You see, this occurred this week, not twenty years ago, two days ago. It is the result of perhaps the most honest medical doctor on the internet, Dr. Joseph Mercola, www.mercola.com being silenced; I am no longer permitted to read his criticism of US government agencies and pharmaceutical industrial practices. And no, the action to prevent access was taken by my UK government, not yours. Our government will have been asked to do this by yours. Apart from a very brief news item on BBC TV news, nothing in any newspaper; total silence.

Now you may well believe, quite honestly, that I am ridiculous. But take my word for it, this is just another example, I could give much more, of the pernicious nature of the lack of any real intent to deliver freedom; by the leader of the free world. Certainly not freedom as I understand the word.

Dr. Mercola is a fraud who preys on the ignorant and desperate to make a fortune for himself. Your government choosing to censor his site (if that's even true) is a policy question that has nothing to do with the government of the US. It's certainly not evidence of the US government trying to enslave the world.

We've been through this before. I hate these interactions. You need help and I hope you get it. Best wishes.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

Dr. Mercola is a fraud who preys on the ignorant and desperate to make a fortune for himself. Your government choosing to censor his site is a policy question that has nothing to do with the government of the US. It's certainly not evidence of the US government trying to enslave the world.

We've been through this before. I hate these interactions. You need help and I hope you get it. Best wishes.

I really don't want to wade in on this one, but is anybody certain any government censored anything here? Looks like it could much more easily be a simple server error--DNS settings mistake made by some IT person somewhere.

[DSpencer]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

I really don't want to wade in on this one, but is anybody certain any government censored anything here? Looks like it could much more easily be a simple server error--DNS settings mistake made by some IT person somewhere.

I edited my post to clarify that I don't know if it's true. It wouldn't surprise me though given the BS that Mercola puts on his site. Maybe the UK is less tolerant of people peddling products with claims they "help to virtually eliminate your risk of developing cancer in the future."

[vt]

Re: Third parties Must Lose!

A third party candidate can win with 35% of the vote in a three way race. Perot polled at 30% plus in the summer of 1992.

Bernie Sanders is an independent. Angus King was elected as independent to the Senate from Maine in 2012

From June 11, 1992 NYT:


"In the telephone poll of 815 registered voters nationwide, conducted June 4 to 8, Mr. Perot was supported by 39 percent, Mr. Bush by 31 percent, and Mr. Clinton by 25 percent. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.
In a previous Gallup matchup in late May, Mr. Bush and Mr. Perot were tied at 35 percent each, while Mr. Clinton was supported by 25 percent."

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

I really don't want to wade in on this one, but is anybody certain any government censored anything here? Looks like it could much more easily be a simple server error--DNS settings mistake made by some IT person somewhere.

That is the most likely explanation. I notice from the error message that Cloudflare's DNS is being used. I've used Cloudflare's DNS before and its reliability is poor. How poor is it? I find that Comcast, a cable television company, seems to have more reliable DNS. If Chris isn't too concerned about privacy issues, he can use Google's DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4). Barring that, he should also be able to access the web site through a VPN or Tor.