Our Next President?

[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.

[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.

[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 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.

[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!

[geodrome]

Re: med costs

@DSpencer

I appreciate your commentary around here.

[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.

[dcarrigg]

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.

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.

[DSpencer]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

All that said, the citizenship convention in the western hemisphere is different. No, this doesn't mean citizens don't have a right to determine immigration policy. I agree with you there. At the same time, blood and soil are not the same here as in the old world.

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.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

There's all kinds of US born people whose parents immigration didn't stem from the "original immigration" in Virginia except in the broadest of senses. But putting that aside. Everyone is an immigrant, or the descendant of an immigrant, or the descendant of "native populations" that are basically only classified as such because they immigrated before modern countries or history.

What's your point? This kind of thing gets said all the time as if the United States is somehow totally unique in this regard. What place isn't made up of immigrants or the descendants of immigrants? Is there some time limit where you say "well, now that the US is 500 years old, we are no longer a nation of immigrants." Is the implication that the US has some different set of rules than the UK or Egypt or China that says we don't have a right to determine immigration policy as a country because our immigrants are too recent?

All that said, the citizenship convention in the western hemisphere is different. No, this doesn't mean citizens don't have a right to determine immigration policy. I agree with you there. At the same time, blood and soil are not the same here as in the old world.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

There's all kinds of US born people whose parents immigration didn't stem from the "original immigration" in Virginia except in the broadest of senses. But putting that aside. Everyone is an immigrant, or the descendant of an immigrant, or the descendant of "native populations" that are basically only classified as such because they immigrated before modern countries or history.

What's your point? This kind of thing gets said all the time as if the United States is somehow totally unique in this regard. What place isn't made up of immigrants or the descendants of immigrants? Is there some time limit where you say "well, now that the US is 500 years old, we are no longer a nation of immigrants." Is the implication that the US has some different set of rules than the UK or Egypt or China that says we don't have a right to determine immigration policy as a country because our immigrants are too recent?

Fair comment; point taken.

[DSpencer]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

But everybody in the United States is foreign-born, or stems from the original immigration started in Virginia; except of course, those native populations that were there already.

There's all kinds of US born people whose parents immigration didn't stem from the "original immigration" in Virginia except in the broadest of senses. But putting that aside. Everyone is an immigrant, or the descendant of an immigrant, or the descendant of "native populations" that are basically only classified as such because they immigrated before modern countries or history.

What's your point? This kind of thing gets said all the time as if the United States is somehow totally unique in this regard. What place isn't made up of immigrants or the descendants of immigrants? Is there some time limit where you say "well, now that the US is 500 years old, we are no longer a nation of immigrants." Is the implication that the US has some different set of rules than the UK or Egypt or China that says we don't have a right to determine immigration policy as a country because our immigrants are too recent?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

But everybody in the United States is foreign-born, or stems from the original immigration started in Virginia; except of course, those native populations that were there already.

Anglo-Saxon Protestants consider themselves the only true Americans. And it's very obvious to everyone else, especially tribal peoples. When someone like Sarah Palin was talking about "Real America" and the "Real Americans," that's what the dog heard. This isn't sour grapes or anything. It's just fact, glaring and obvious through American history, but uncouth to mention. The original Constitution, of course, was not signed by just WASPs, but most people presume it was. There were, in fact, a number of other folks, German, Irish, French, Scotch, Catholic, etc. But they were a minority of the signatories.

Ben Franklin spelled it all out quite clearly:

Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Atlantic says Immigration way up

This article matches my impression, that immigration is still very high, and could increase.



This may be mostly legal immigrants. The article did not spend a lot of time distinguishing legal from illegal. Wilton Ct, is close to lily white.

But in surrounding towns, (Norwalk) you almost think there are more immigrants than native born.

But everybody in the United States is foreign-born, or stems from the original immigration started in Virginia; except of course, those native populations that were there already.

[Polish_Silver]

Atlantic says Immigration way up

This article matches my impression, that immigration is still very high, and could increase.

By 2027, the foreign-born proportion of the U.S. population is projected to equal its previous all-time peak, in 1890: 14.8 percent. Under present policy, that percentage will keep rising to new records thereafter.

This may be mostly legal immigrants. The article did not spend a lot of time distinguishing legal from illegal. Wilton Ct, is close to lily white.

But in surrounding towns, (Norwalk) you almost think there are more immigrants than native born.