Andrew Yang seems pretty awesome

Quote: AZDuffman

It is not going to change.

In 1949 Mao made it the death penalty
for anyone caught selling or using
opium. It changed overnight and remains
changed to this day.

You see these people on Live PD get
stopped with 90 pounds of heroin
hidden in the door panels. They go to
jail for a few years and are back out
dealing again. What you can't see is the
40 times they got away with it before
they were caught.

Quote: kenarman

The math simply doesn't work Padre. The GDP of the US is about $60K per capita, $12K is 20% of the GDP. There is no way any country can give away 20% of it's GDP with no return for it.

I don’t understand your point.

UBI money isn’t going into a black hole. It will be spent and put back into the economy.

Quote: gamerfreak

UBI money isn’t going into a black hole. It will be spent and put back into the economy.

Making it sound like a perpetual
motion machine doesn't work.
Peter can only borrow from Paul
for so long until both are broke.

UBI is a consumption tax. How many rude posts about welfare queens and the 47% by resentful right-wing people on here have we slogged through for years? All the stuff about EBD users with iPhone and bling buying steak while sponging off the "rest of us".

But here's a guy saying, don't finance those people any more. Charge them a VAT on the cell phone, the bling, the steaks, and everything else they buy. Charge you at the SAME percentage of your purchases. Send everyone a check for 1k/mo, regardless of income. Everyone. 100%, not 47%.

No more welfare queens. No more 47%. No more income tax paying for entitlements. No more working people paying for retirements of others or non-workers.

But, no. Those same people reject that approach without even looking at it, just because it's being proposed by a Democratic candidate. Tag it as "Socialist" and dismiss it when it actually provides the parity that right-wingers claim the current system doesn't. It's the flattest tax ever. It's supremely Capitalistic. Make or sell a product people want. They now have the funds to buy it. Part of the cost replenishes their (and your) funds. Rinse and repeat.

I'm not saying it's THE answer. But the math makes sense, even if there are flaws to be worked out in implementation.

Entitlements are 21% of the federal budget for FY2018. To call it a "budget" is a joke, since this Administration is totally ignoring spending almost a TRILLION more a year than their revenue. But that budget would nearly balance, even with the reprehensible tax cuts from last year, without entitlements coming out of it.

Yes, you'd pay a small percentage more on everything you buy. But so would EVERYONE else at the same rate. Isn't that exactly what all the whining has been about?

Andrew Yang is not my guy. Amy Klobuchar is. But Andrew is a force for good, and change that would fix some problems. I'd be happy to support him if it comes to that.

Quote: beachbumbabs

UBI is a consumption tax. How many rude posts about welfare queens and the 47% by resentful right-wing people on here have we slogged through for years? All the stuff about EBD users with iPhone and bling buying steak while sponging off the "rest of us".

But here's a guy saying, don't finance those people any more. Charge them a VAT on the cell phone, the bling, the steaks, and everything else they buy. Charge you at the SAME percentage of your purchases. Send everyone a check for 1k/mo, regardless of income. Everyone. 100%, not 47%.

No more welfare queens. No more 47%. No more income tax paying for entitlements. No more working people paying for retirements of others or non-workers.

But, no. Those same people reject that approach without even looking at it, just because it's being proposed by a Democratic candidate. Tag it as "Socialist" and dismiss it when it actually provides the parity that right-wingers claim the current system doesn't. It's the flattest tax ever. It's supremely Capitalistic. Make or sell a product people want. They now have the funds to buy it. Part of the cost replenishes their (and your) funds. Rinse and repeat.

I'm not saying it's THE answer. But the math makes sense, even if there are flaws to be worked out in implementation.

Entitlements are 21% of the federal budget for FY2018. To call it a "budget" is a joke, since this Administration is totally ignoring spending almost a TRILLION more a year than their revenue. But that budget would nearly balance, even with the reprehensible tax cuts from last year, without entitlements coming out of it.

Yes, you'd pay a small percentage more on everything you buy. But so would EVERYONE else at the same rate. Isn't that exactly what all the whining has been about?

Andrew Yang is not my guy. Amy Klobuchar is. But Andrew is a force for good, and change that would fix some problems. I'd be happy to support him if it comes to that.

That is a pretty good summary the goal of UBI is to get people off of entitlements (with the obvious exceptions being disability and SS and state level entitlements).

I actually learned about UBI for the first time years back from libertarian friends. It is popular in some libertarian circles for exactly those reasons.

Quote: beachbumbabs

I'm not saying it's THE answer. But the math makes sense,

If it's workable and makes sense,
make it $10k a month. It will work
just as well for that amount, right?
Like minimum wage, if $15 an
hour is workable, why not make
it $25 an hour.

Quote: Gandler

Can you do a video explaining the Freedom Dividend? ...

Thanks for asking. I appreciate you remembering my background as a government actuary. My area was limited to just Social Security, but my calculations were often in the trillions of dollars when it came to changes in Social Security law. Let me get my hands dirty with some numbers and bounce them off here first. I make no mistake that there would be a HUGE increase in taxes to pay for it. My hope is the average middle class family comes out around even or a little ahead.

As I've said before, my main motive is to eliminate welfare. Not just the freeing up more people to perform productive work in the economy (both people on welfare and those who work for the agencies paying it) but to eliminate the moral hazard of welfare of rewarding for making mistakes.

Why not propose a ridiculous strawman argument, and point out how how ridiculous it is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Quote: Evenbob

If it's workable and makes sense,
make it $10k a month. It will work
just as well for that amount, right?
Like minimum wage, if $15 an
hour is workable, why not make
it $25 an hour.

Nobody is saying that it is workable at any level. The level proposed is carefully formulated.

Also, for what it is worth, UBI is an alternative to raining the min wage, taking the burden off of employers. Yang wants to leave min wage up to the states.

Those are two separate arguments which impose separate burdens (private employers vs tax dollars), UBI will allow private employers more flexibility.

Quote: Gandler

Nobody is saying that it is workable at any level. The level proposed is carefully formulated.

What does that mean. That $1000 is
the only amount it will work with?
That can't be correct. It doesn't
matter, it's a ridiculous idea for
any amount. You aren't creating
wealth, you're just moving already
existing wealth around on a game
board. Without creating new wealth
to pay for this, it's doomed to fail.