It did come out in July according to the dateline. But there are so many dumb technocrats, barely-crypto-fascists, and """classical liberals""" out there that Current Affairs has its plate full roasting all of them.
Yang seems like SSC/Rationalists prefect candidate. Dumb plans that
are based on “math” that fall apart like wet TP as soon as you take a
second look at them
The best part is that Yang's catastrophic 10% VAT on top of existing taxes would probably only raise about half the price of his UBI. It's a revolutionary program being discussed as if it were a manageable technocratic evolution of the status quo.
I am not an economist, but I’d also be interested in knowing how much
we could expect to see landlords hike poor people’s rents to gobble up
as much as possible of people’s new incomes.
This same point could be made against any policy be it tax cuts, food
stamps(the stores will just raise their prices) ect.
Not too surprising that the sexually-deprived men of 4chan have
gotten behind the “government program for you to meet single moms”
candidate!)
Well this is the first time I’m hearing about it. I don’t think many
men, even those on 4chan, are gonna be exited about that.
I am more concerned with this “overrule local regulations” part,
which sounds as if Yang wants to make his Legion Of Ex-Gamers the
dictatorial power to veto city council decisions.
That’s the point of the program.
Yang appears to be saying that it is not actually
objectionable to be a parasitic landlord who squeezes as much money as
possible out of the poor residents of trailer parks, threatening them
with eviction the moment they fall a day behind on their rent and
knowing you can be harsh because they have no place else to go. He
doesn’t judge his friend at all. He says that the “innovators” are not
responsible for what they do—their job is merely to “innovate.” Then our
job is to make up for the disastrous social consequences of their purely
self-interested actions.
If you actually read the context of the business, they have “no place
else to go” because they are providing the cheapest housing option
in town. If it wasn’t around, they’d be paying even more, or on the
street.
Yang’s view of capitalism, then, is that it is unstoppably selfish
and destructive, but that capitalists should not be blamed for this.
Instead, we should simply ameliorate the worst effects by giving poor
people enough to subsist on (if they’re willing to give up the
benefits they already receive). While Yang says that he wants to move to
a “human capitalism” that puts people over profits and measures value in
means other than money (a part of the book that I really liked), he also
doesn’t think to say to his friend: “Hey, maybe you should cut those
poor trailer park residents a break instead of trying to raise prices as
much as you can.”
If everyone who did business with the poor was required to “cut them
a break,” people would stop doing business with the poor. Keep their
conscious clean by building golf courses for millionaires.
So while Yang is acutely sensitive to the way profit-seeking can
destroy the lives of innocent people, he’s not a leftist. A leftist
fundamentally wants to shift power and ownership. We do not want to give
people a check that they can immediately sign over to their Wall Street
landlord.
This is just economical illiteracy to compare market payments to
transfers. The UBI recipient is getting something(in this case a place
to live) out of the deal.
We want them to be the lord of their own land, and to eliminate the
divide between the working class and the ownership class. We think
it’s everyone’s job to “figure out the social implications of
what they do,” and if a thing has horrendous social
implications, then you shouldn’t do it.
Sure, you don’t work for your own selfish interests, but for the good
of the world. We all know how well that works.
A candidate who has seemingly spent more time coming up with a fun
name for his public works agency than he has thinking about
Israel/Palestine is not a candidate worth taking very seriously.
The 95% of Americans who aren’t Jewish or Arab are sick of hearing
about Israel/Palestine.
> This same point could be made against any policy be it tax cuts, food stamps(the stores will just raise their prices) ect.
Won't bother nitpicking all your criticisms, but it's worth correcting this one. Policies like food stamps don't cause substantial inflation because they do not affect the entire class of consumers for any given product. Most people buying staple foods have no extra ability to purchase them when food stamps are distributed, so retailers cannot expect to hike prices without losing customers.
Rental vouchers make for an instructive counterexample. In jurisdictions where landlords are allowed to discriminate against voucher holders (i.e., nearly all Republican-controlled jurisdictions and a few Democratic ones for good measure), there is no overlap between voucher holders and the general pool of renters; landlords will not let normal rental units to voucher holders, and normal renters have no interest in the substandard properties offered by the slumlords who do accept vouchers. The result is, effectively, extreme inflation, but only for one good and only among one minority class.
In any event, [the Yang campaign freely acknowledges](https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/) that the policy will cause substantial (albeit not "rampant," i.e., runaway) inflation, simply promising that the invisible hand of the market and the magic of automation will somehow counter this…eventually:
> It is likely that some companies will increase their prices in response to people having more buying power, and a VAT would also increase prices marginally. However, there will still be competition between firms that will keep prices in check. Over time, technology will continue to decrease the prices of most goods where it is allowed to do so (e.g., clothing, media, consumer electronics, etc.). The main inflation we currently experience is in sectors where automation has not been applied due to government regulation or inapplicability – primarily housing, education, and healthcare. The real issue isn’t universal basic income, it’s whether technology and automation will be allowed to reduce prices in different sectors.
Pure flim-flam, and that's even before we look at how inadequate their plans to fund it are.
> Most people buying staple foods have no extra ability to purchase them when food stamps are distributed, so retailers cannot expect to hike prices without losing customers.
It's strange that you understand that sellers can't hike prices without losing consumers yet think that if *everybody* got more money, consumers would "have no choice" but to give all the extra money to sellers. In fact sellers are in competition with each other not just within industries but across sectors. If you like Hershey bars and want to buy more with your newfound wealth and Hershey hikes the price of a single bar by 1,000$, and all other candy makers coordinate to do the same, you could still spend it on some other non-candy good.
> The result is, effectively, extreme inflation, but only for one good and only among one minority class.
I'd like to see some evidence that this is true. It should not be true in areas where housing supply is elastic.
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/sneersneerclub] ["The 95% of Americans who aren't Jewish or Arab are sick of hearing about Israel\/Palestine."](https://www.reddit.com/r/sneersneerclub/comments/dxugx1/the_95_of_americans_who_arent_jewish_or_arab_are/)
*^(If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.) ^\([Info](/r/TotesMessenger) ^/ ^[Contact](/message/compose?to=/r/TotesMessenger))*
>[There's an interesting article in Counter-Currents](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/d822fo/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_september_23/f1l6z5x/?context=3)
Ewwwww
Yeah, snaily is just doing the centrist thing, 'Ha! I'm taking sneerclub out of context and using non-central examples of their sub! Ha, I'm so smart'.
I genuinely can’t believe it’s taken this long for this article to come out.
Yang seems like SSC/Rationalists prefect candidate. Dumb plans that are based on “math” that fall apart like wet TP as soon as you take a second look at them
I really thought the UBI stuff was a bit unfair (only a bit tho) but then I read on and HOLY shit his other ideas are really really stupid.
so much for universal smh
This same point could be made against any policy be it tax cuts, food stamps(the stores will just raise their prices) ect.
Well this is the first time I’m hearing about it. I don’t think many men, even those on 4chan, are gonna be exited about that.
That’s the point of the program.
If you actually read the context of the business, they have “no place else to go” because they are providing the cheapest housing option in town. If it wasn’t around, they’d be paying even more, or on the street.
If everyone who did business with the poor was required to “cut them a break,” people would stop doing business with the poor. Keep their conscious clean by building golf courses for millionaires.
This is just economical illiteracy to compare market payments to transfers. The UBI recipient is getting something(in this case a place to live) out of the deal.
Sure, you don’t work for your own selfish interests, but for the good of the world. We all know how well that works.
The 95% of Americans who aren’t Jewish or Arab are sick of hearing about Israel/Palestine.