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2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

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Skeptic Ginger said:
Political opinions on UBI:

Commentary: Universal Basic Income: An Idea That's Already Been Tried And Failed

NYT Opinion: Universal Basic Income Didn’t Fail in Finland. Finland Failed It.

Daily Torch Opinion: Universal Basic Income fails in Finland, but will the left learn its lesson?

The Money Manifesto: Universal Basic Income: An Idea That’s Already Been Tried And Failed

Don't be so sure of yourself that the rest of us are just stupid, Mr Soba.
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I didn’t say you were stupid and never implied it. I just suggested that your reaction is knee-jerk and not based on an honest evaluation of what Andrew Yang is proposing. Having clicked the links you sent me, I’m even more convinced of that. Are you actually doing any reading at all or did you just Google “UBI was like a total failure in some country in Scandinavia or something” and post the first articles that appeared. Two of the “political opinions” are the exact same article. One of them is some hard-right libertarian blogpost from something called “the Daily Torch” (what the Hell is that? Is this the voice of the John Birch Society or what?). And one of the links, from the New York Times, argues that UBI is a good idea and it was only badly implemented. In other words it argues against your dogmatic opinion that it’s a failure.

Besides, I asked for evidence. You have no data to prove your claims because even the articles, from what I saw, have no data. The Finnish government hasn’t produced it yet.

What about your claimed knowledge of the Washington state program (which isn’t even UBI)? Why not tell us more about it, with data.
 
The_Animus said:
Did you actually read the links you posted?
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Nope. I looked for headlines that supported both sides.

I have investigated the UBI at length in the past. Why do you all believe you are the only ones that know anything?

Honestly, magical socialism is no more valid than magical capitalism. We need a mix of both. A UBI is a flakey idea.
 
angrysoba said:
I didn’t say you were stupid and never implied it. I just suggested that your reaction is knee-jerk and not based on an honest evaluation of what Andrew Yang is proposing.....
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Knee-jerk? Really?

Gawd, why do you guys think no one has looked at this issue before now? :mad:
 
angrysoba said:
I didn’t say you were stupid and never implied it. I just suggested that your reaction is knee-jerk and not based on an honest evaluation of what Andrew Yang is proposing. Having clicked the links you sent me, I’m even more convinced of that. Are you actually doing any reading at all or did you just Google “UBI was like a total failure in some country in Scandinavia or something” and post the first articles that appeared. Two of the “political opinions” are the exact same article. One of them is some hard-right libertarian blogpost from something called “the Daily Torch” (what the Hell is that? Is this the voice of the John Birch Society or what?). And one of the links, from the New York Times, argues that UBI is a good idea and it was only badly implemented. In other words it argues against your dogmatic opinion that it’s a failure.

Besides, I asked for evidence. You have no data to prove your claims because even the articles, from what I saw, have no data. The Finnish government hasn’t produced it yet.

What about your claimed knowledge of the Washington state program (which isn’t even UBI)? Why not tell us more about it, with data.
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It is funny that you mention libertarians, because Hayak talked about the the pros of the same idea. I'm pro UBI.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Nope. I looked for headlines that supported both sides.

I have investigated the UBI at length in the past. Why do you all believe you are the only ones that know anything?

Honestly, magical socialism is no more valid than magical capitalism. We need a mix of both. A UBI is a flakey idea.
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We need a mix of magical socialism and magical capitalism? ;)

Hang on, you really haven’t read or listened to Yang, have you? Yang himself is talking about a mixed economy as well - he is proposing a form of capitalism to replace “trickle down” economics and the idea of direct taxation of big companies such as Google and Amazon because they know how to avoid such taxation and can employ very few people. He calls it capitalism with a human face. Automation is, in his view, simply going to make massive amounts of jobs no longer necessary for humans - manufacturing, trucking, and even skilled jobs such as radiography and eventually coding - meaning that people are going to have to get by somehow. Besides, one thing overloooked by many here is parents who stay at home to look after their children. Wouldn’t it be a good thing for them to earn money as well?
 
angrysoba said:
We need a mix of magical socialism and magical capitalism? ;)

Hang on, you really haven’t read or listened to Yang, have you? Yang himself is talking about a mixed economy as well - he is proposing a form of capitalism to replace “trickle down” economics and the idea of direct taxation of big companies such as Google and Amazon because they know how to avoid such taxation and can employ very few people. He calls it capitalism with a human face. Automation is, in his view, simply going to make massive amounts of jobs no longer necessary for humans - manufacturing, trucking, and even skilled jobs such as radiography and eventually coding - meaning that people are going to have to get by somehow. Besides, one thing overloooked by many here is parents who stay at home to look after their children. Wouldn’t it be a good thing for them to earn money as well?
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Why not universal jobs instead of universal income? Work and fair pay for everyone unless you ABSOLUTELY can't work. I don't care how much automation takes over there will ALWAYS be things that NEED to be done. Donald Trump talked about being the infrastructure President Why can't we put unemployed people rebuilding infrastructure or working in parks or helping teachers etc etc etc?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Nope. I looked for headlines that supported both sides.
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You were just spamming us with links to articles you hadn’t even bothered reading?

Huh? Why would you do that? Because it is clearly not evidence of having “investigated UBI at length”.

Again, I want to be clear that I have not come to a firm conclusion on UBI yet but want to see the issue debated. Why are you acting like the gatekeeper who gets to say whether it should even be a part of the debate? I think a debate about ideas and policies would make a refreshing change from the usual slanging matches.
 
acbytesla said:
Why not universal jobs instead of universal income? Work and fair pay for everyone unless you ABSOLUTELY can't work. I don't care how much automation takes over there will ALWAYS be things that NEED to be done. Donald Trump talked about being the infrastructure President Why can't we put unemployed people rebuilding infrastructure or working in parks or helping teachers etc etc etc?
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You mean public works? Getting people to build the wall on the Mexican border, for example? Are any candidates putting this idea forward?
 
Anyway, no, public works involves state decisions about what work is necessary, whereas UBI gives people more choice about what work they do or whether they would prefer to pursue further education, their own research or interests and maybe dedicate themselves to projects that public works would deprive them of.
 
Mayor Pete just made me sick.

He just said that "his marriage has moved me closer to God". Nothing makes me puke about politics more than politicians invoking the imaginary being. Now he's not any different than others of his tribe. Pretty much every politician who wants to be elected whether they believe it or not does this.

Because as we all know, you can be anything other than an intelligent human being who doesn't believe in nonsensical mythological deity.
 
Give it up angrysoba, stop cherry picking my comments. There are multiple opinions about a UBI. It is not new. The idea has been around for decades.

Yang does not have magical answers. You remind me of the Bernie Bros in 2016, believing in an idealistic government as if it were all new ideas.

Pure socialism just like claiming the free market is some magical system are naive beliefs.


The thing which works the best is a mix. What we need is to get rid of the cronyism and corruption which sadly, Trump accelerated exponentially. Going for magical socialism gives the GOP fear-mongering talking points which they are very good at using and the Democrats are very bad at countering.

Sanders, Yang, Warren and the like are very attractive candidates to a certain group of people. But that group, as wonderful as it looks, cannot get the middle voters. Given how good the GOP is at marketing their candidates, it will doom us to 4 more years of Trump.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Give it up angrysoba, stop cherry picking my comments. There are multiple opinions about a UBI. It is not new. The idea has been around for decades.

Yang does not have magical answers. You remind me of the Bernie Bros in 2016, believing in an idealistic government as if it were all new ideas.

Pure socialism just like claiming the free market is some magical system are naive beliefs.


The thing which works the best is a mix. What we need is to get rid of the cronyism and corruption which sadly, Trump accelerated exponentially. Going for magical socialism gives the GOP fear-mongering talking points which they are very good at using and the Democrats are very bad at countering.

Sanders, Yang, Warren and the like are very attractive candidates to a certain group of people. But that group, as wonderful as it looks, cannot get the middle voters. Given how good the GOP is at marketing their candidates, it will doom us to 4 more years of Trump.
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Along with not reading articles you link, you now add not reading the posts you reply to.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Give it up angrysoba, stop cherry picking my comments. There are multiple opinions about a UBI. It is not new. The idea has been around for decades.
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Yang cites Thomas Paine, at the Founding of our country, for that matter, with his "Citizen's Dividend."

Incidentally, later in that wikipedia article -

This concept is a form of basic income guarantee, where the citizen's dividend depends upon the value of natural resources or what could be titled as common goods like location values, seignorage, the electromagnetic spectrum, the industrial use of air (CO2 production), etc.[4]

The state of Alaska dispenses a form of citizen's dividend in its Permanent Fund dividend, which holds investments initially seeded by the state's revenue from mineral resources, particularly petroleum. In 2005, every eligible Alaskan resident (including children) received a check for $845.76. Over the 24-year history of the fund, it has paid out a total of $24,775.45 to every resident.[5] Some believe this dividend as the reason why Alaska has one of the lowest rates of inequality and relatively low levels of poverty compared to other US states.[6][dubious – discuss] However, a 2018 paper found that the Alaska Permanent Fund "dividend had no effect on employment, and increased part-time work by 1.8 percentage points (17 percent)... our results suggest that a universal and permanent cash transfer does not significantly decrease aggregate employment.
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angrysoba said:
Anyway, no, public works involves state decisions about what work is necessary, whereas UBI gives people more choice about what work they do or whether they would prefer to pursue further education, their own research or interests and maybe dedicate themselves to projects that public works would deprive them of.
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IMV, they need to choose or have someone else do it for them.I strongly believe that people should be able to make a decent income, I'm highly skeptical about this idea though. There are though thousand of works that need to be done.
 
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