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2020 Democratic Challengers

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Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

if it doesn't work, what is the alternative?

Figure 1 out of 50 right now is human. 0.02 x 7.8 billion = 156 million global population.

156 million artists, writers, scientists, dancers, theorists, mathematicians, explorers, musicians, doctors, philosophers, poets, historians, singers, care givers, and just plain hedonists.

Sounds like a really good world.
 
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Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

if it doesn't work, what is the alternative? AI and automation are going to remove more and more people from the workforce.
someday trucks, airplanes, and even forklifts will drive themselves, structures will be 3D printed, a robot will cook your Big Mac, deliver your mail. The numbers of unemployed will explode.

I dont know but again how do you plan to have enough money to pay everyone a living wage? We cant tax enough to make it feasible for the government to do it.

Lets say there are 250 million work eligible people in the country. You would need to pay each of them since it is universal. Lets say, just for funsies that everyone is to make 52k a year. (well below what will be needed in many places but go with it) That is what $13 trillion dollars a year in UBI? Where the heck is that coming from? You wont be able to tax the citizens enough and we know the rich and corporations will never cover that kind of tax burden ON TOP of the other taxes they will have to pay. Where is the country going to get that kind of money?

Hell lets say you only have to pay half of them (the rest are employed) that is still $6.5 trillion. Hell even half that it is still over $3 trillion per year. There is no chance that is possible and as cost of living rises it will only get worse.

If we werent a free market capitalist society you could implement this stuff and make it work...but we are way too far gone for anything like this to happen. It makes a great soundbyte and hypothetical in classrooms but we would crater hard and fast. We are way better off just making income go farther by paying for the essentials like college and health care.
 
I dont know but again how do you plan to have enough money to pay everyone a living wage? We cant tax enough to make it feasible for the government to do it.

Lets say there are 250 million work eligible people in the country. You would need to pay each of them since it is universal. Lets say, just for funsies that everyone is to make 52k a year. (well below what will be needed in many places but go with it) That is what $13 trillion dollars a year in UBI? Where the heck is that coming from? You wont be able to tax the citizens enough and we know the rich and corporations will never cover that kind of tax burden ON TOP of the other taxes they will have to pay. Where is the country going to get that kind of money?

Hell lets say you only have to pay half of them (the rest are employed) that is still $6.5 trillion. Hell even half that it is still over $3 trillion per year. There is no chance that is possible and as cost of living rises it will only get worse.

If we werent a free market capitalist society you could implement this stuff and make it work...but we are way too far gone for anything like this to happen. It makes a great soundbyte and hypothetical in classrooms but we would crater hard and fast. We are way better off just making income go farther by paying for the essentials like college and health care.

How much gets transferred via social security right now? Because UBI is essentially an extension of that to all Americans, so you don't need to double count. Likewise current welfare programs would, in theory, get rolled into it as well. Same with the EITC, child tax credits, etc.

Expensive, sure, but not as much as you'd think.

It's like the canard that universal healthcare will cost trillions every year. Never mind that we already spend trillions every year. Since universal health care would replace much of that spending, it wouldn't actually cost any given individual much extra. You'd just be paying the government instead of BCBS or Aetna or whoever.
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

I dont know but again how do you plan to have enough money to pay everyone a living wage?

It happens when the cost of food, clothing, energy, and housing becomes essentially free, and that happens when there is no longer a labor element in production.

Eventually the only contributors to cost will be human labor by workers and the hoarding of property surplus by owners. When we make the first one disappear by our technology, the entire moral underpinning of the second one will no longer exist, and people will no longer stand for it. The wealthy will no longer "deserve" any more than anyone else when value is being generated by computer programs and robots, and they just happen to accidentally "own" the programs or the robots. This is already true of finance, but people's minds haven't caught up with it yet. It used to make sense that someone deserved to be rich while someone else was starving to death, if they had cleared and plowed and harvested a field, or invented the equipment that better did those jobs. But we are already a long, long way from that kind of "deserving," which is why the 1% so desperately and fraudulently analogizes their privilege back to people who do actual work.

Some day, nobody will do actual work for 99% of the tasks that support our needs. Right now in fact that number is probably already above 50%. At some tipping point people will realize that in a world where everyone is doing nothing but what is enjoyable to them, whether that is art for the very smartest, or science for the middling smart, or drinking and screwing for the dummies, then everyone is equally entitled to the goods generated by technology. That's the inevitable future of technological progress. Wealth is an intermediary stage of economics, like monarchy was in politics.
 
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Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

Gotta agree with Handy and Fade here. Universal Income is an idea that came out of a Bernie Sanders supporters circle jerk, and I'm pretty sure hallucinogenic drugs were involved.

First, as Handy points out, the math doesn't work. There's no mechanism for raising the tax revenue that this would require. Even if you doubled everybody's taxes, from corporations to individuals, that gets you what? maybe 6T in revenue when you need $13T?

Even worse politically is everybody out here probably has a shiftless and lazy relative or in-law who hasn't worked a day in their life who will now be the beneficiary of this largesse, paid for by a quadrupling of the current tax rates. So while Kep envisions more poets and painters, more people will also see more stoners and burnouts doing nothing all day but getting paid for it! That's doom politically, unless the assumption is that those nice and fair minded Republicans would neeeeever launch a campaign like that, right. Right? :eek:

Rather have something like universal college tuition which is much more merit based.
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

UBI has been talked about before anyone (outside of VT) knew who Bernie was so no... that's not accurate.

As far as it being some type of priority or having a serious conversation about it, I think we're a ways off.
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

How much gets transferred via social security right now? Because UBI is essentially an extension of that to all Americans, so you don't need to double count. Likewise current welfare programs would, in theory, get rolled into it as well. Same with the EITC, child tax credits, etc.

Expensive, sure, but not as much as you'd think.

It's like the canard that universal healthcare will cost trillions every year. Never mind that we already spend trillions every year. Since universal health care would replace much of that spending, it wouldn't actually cost any given individual much extra. You'd just be paying the government instead of BCBS or Aetna or whoever.

Social Security is paid for through taxes. Who are you going to tax to make this work? You are adding trillions to the budget with no added method of bringing in cash. It doesnt work that way especially if people arent working. Universal Health Care (something I support wholeheartedly) is much less expensive and can be paid for via taxes on people working.

If you pay for UBI by taxing the people on UBI (really the only way to make it work) the law of diminishing returns will kill you every time. And you cant just tax the rich to high heaven to pay for it because they wont be able to handle it either.

UBI is great in theory, but much like everything Bernie Sanders said (again someone I supported going back to 2012) you need more than just ideas you have to have a method in place to pay for it.
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

UBI has been talked about before anyone (outside of VT) knew who Bernie was so no... that's not accurate.

As far as it being some type of priority or having a serious conversation about it, I think we're a ways off.

Unless you have a magic wand that generates free money, what kind of serious discussion is there to have? I agree with one of Kep's points, which is we shouldn't allow opposition from plutes and knucks' to get in the way of good ideas. This isn't one of them, and there's something to be said for not walking into a punch with your eyes closed and chin up.
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

It happens when the cost of food, clothing, energy, and housing becomes essentially free, and that happens when there is no longer a labor element in production.

Eventually the only contributors to cost will be human labor by workers and the hoarding of property surplus by owners. When we make the first one disappear by our technology, the entire moral underpinning of the second one will no longer exist, and people will no longer stand for it. The wealthy will no longer "deserve" any more than anyone else when value is being generated by computer programs and robots, and they just happen to accidentally "own" the programs or the robots. This is already true of finance, but people's minds haven't caught up with it yet. It used to make sense that someone deserved to be rich while someone else was starving to death, if they had cleared and plowed and harvested a field, or invented the equipment that better did those jobs. But we are already a long, long way from that kind of "deserving," which is why the 1% so desperately and fraudulently analogizes their privilege back to people who do actual work.

Some day, nobody will do actual work for 99% of the tasks that support our needs. Right now in fact that number is probably already above 50%. At some tipping point people will realize that in a world where everyone is doing nothing but what is enjoyable to them, whether that is art for the very smartest, or science for the middling smart, or drinking and screwing for the dummies, then everyone is equally entitled to the goods generated by technology. That's the inevitable future of technological progress. Wealth is an intermediary stage of economics, like monarchy was in politics.

That is great if you are taking "Political Philosophy 301" but in the real world none of that is happening in America in any of our lifetimes unless the entire system collapses. You are completely out to lunch on this and you sound like the academics I know that still talk about how in theory Communism can and will work. Unless you can find a way to account for the greed of the average person (something that wont be quelched by UBI or any of your theories) you might as well just forget about it.

And again, where is the trillions yearly going to come from? Do you really think you can tax the rich and corporations so high when they dont need American workers anymore? So tax the average person? They dont like paying what they pay now you think they are going to accept that meteoric rise it would take to offset between 3 and 12 trillion dollars annually? (and that will rise by the time this is even an option probably 3-5 times) And remember that is just to pay off the UBI that doesnt cover any of the other crap our Government already pays for. I mean sure...but before that I got a sweet *** bridge to sell you in San Francisco...I will give you an awesome deal pennies on the dollar!

tl;dr: unless America gets rid of Capitalism and greed gets wiped from our minds UBI doesnt have a leg to stand on.
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

Unless you have a magic wand that generates free money, what kind of serious discussion is there to have? I agree with one of Kep's points, which is we shouldn't allow opposition from plutes and knucks' to get in the way of good ideas. This isn't one of them, and there's something to be said for not walking into a punch with your eyes closed and chin up.
We can borrow/print money, though IDK if it's possible to get the amount needed for UBI.

But with automation being a thing and productivity at an all time high I think at some point there's gonna need to be a conversation on how to handle that.
 
Social Security is paid for through taxes. Who are you going to tax to make this work? You are adding trillions to the budget with no added method of bringing in cash. It doesnt work that way especially if people arent working. Universal Health Care (something I support wholeheartedly) is much less expensive and can be paid for via taxes on people working.

If you pay for UBI by taxing the people on UBI (really the only way to make it work) the law of diminishing returns will kill you every time. And you cant just tax the rich to high heaven to pay for it because they wont be able to handle it either.

UBI is great in theory, but much like everything Bernie Sanders said (again someone I supported going back to 2012) you need more than just ideas you have to have a method in place to pay for it.

It's not 13 trillion. The poverty line is something like 25k. So start there. So that takes us down to 6 trillion. Then subtract out social security (because you won't get both UBI and social security since they serve the same purpose). That takes another trillion off. Subtract out other welfare programs that are made extraneous, and that's another.5 trillion (excluding Medicaid). Assume universal healthcare passes first and you could save another half trillion by no longer needing Medicaid.

That puts us at 4 trillion or so. Again, expensive, but a far cry from 13 trillion. It's doable with political will.

With UBI, you also can tax all other non UBI from dollar one, without personal exemptions and the like. I don't know how much that would raise immediately, but presumably a substantial sum.
 
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You dont do UBI at the poverty level. Come on man...

UBI isn't meant to give everyone a middle class lifestyle, it's meant to keep everyone from starving or freezing to death. That's absolutely where you start.

It's in the name: universal BASIC income.
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

Right but if people legitimately can't find work to support themselves, hence the need for UBI, having a country where everyone who can't find a job is in poverty isn't really an acceptable answer especially if you're cutting all the other programs as well.
 
Even worse politically is everybody out here probably has a shiftless and lazy relative or in-law who hasn't worked a day in their life who will now be the beneficiary of this largesse, paid for by a quadrupling of the current tax rates. So while Kep envisions more poets and painters, more people will also see more stoners and burnouts doing nothing all day but getting paid for it!..

Your stoner is kep’s poet :D
 
UBI isn't meant to give everyone a middle class lifestyle, it's meant to keep everyone from starving or freezing to death. That's absolutely where you start.

It's in the name: universal BASIC income.

So welfare

That’s already here
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

UBI isn't meant to give everyone a middle class lifestyle, it's meant to keep everyone from starving or freezing to death. That's absolutely where you start.

It's in the name: universal BASIC income.

If they cant get jobs how can they live on 25k? It is a nonstarter. You might as well just put everyone on welfare with food stamps.

UBI is supposed to replace income as jobs disappear. If UBI just puts people at the poverty line people end up worse off so what is the point?
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

If they cant get jobs how can they live on 25k? It is a nonstarter. You might as well just put everyone on welfare with food stamps.

UBI is supposed to replace income as jobs disappear. If UBI just puts people at the poverty line people end up worse off so what is the point?

Exactly.
 
It happens when the cost of food, clothing, energy, and housing becomes essentially free, and that happens when there is no longer a labor element in production....

Labor is already dirty cheap.
Your polo shirt is made 3rd world for pennies and costs $100
Dr mrs kep’s Gucci and Louis Vuitton bags cost how much to make of that $1,950 kep paid?

Mrs Ho Chi Minh is taking home $0.03/hr
 
Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers

That is great if you are taking "Political Philosophy 301" but in the real world none of that is happening in America in any of our lifetimes unless the entire system collapses.

Of course none of this will happen in our lifetimes. The premise is what happens once nobody works anymore, not what to run on in 2018. The point is the whole cluster of ideas of what is economically feasible and what is morally desirable will be as unrecognizable to us as our time would be to somebody from 1018 AD.
 
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