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Kind of sort of - but why would I pay taxes? If I have an opportunity to be one of the paid-but-not-working people - then I'm going to take it. So is everyone else.
Then what?
I would not. I would rather build a large fortune and pay for those people than just barely scrape by as one of those folks.
Look, we have to subsidize and support people in the bottom rung of the economy in some way, so UBI might be the most effective method, I'm not sure. But, in the case of Andrew Yang's proposal, it is to be paid for from the profits of companies who effectively use technology to reduce the number of jobs/workforce they support, then it does seem sensible.
Again, no argument in the narrowest sense. But we've had something between overwhelming and excessive implementation of that mantra - a mantra being a single, exclusive idea that dispels all others - for several decades now, and it's passed into dogma and pseudoscience. The R's can think of nothing else. At all. And more or less trumpet that these days. I don't see the D's as any less committed to a strong business infrastructure... they just aren't obsessed to the point of frenzy and blindness over it.
Trickle-down and all its incontinent kin are nonsense... and that is something clearly proven by economic history. But, guess who clings to it like the last N95 mask in DC.
If we don't address the reality we've developed over the last forty years - massive erosion of jobs that are NOT going to return in any fashion - and our immediate future, which has been starkly previewed for us by the current crisis - a "strong business sector" won't matter nearly as much as you insist on.
A nation is not businesses. But no one following the right's bluster for the last decades would get that.
A free nation does not function without businesses. Without a strong business core - in short order there would be something akin to anarchy........no way to pay for the .gov sponsored items you love so much being problem 1.
Trickle-down was a fantastic success. If you'd like to argue that point I'm capable of being very specific.
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Right now you are playing the high brow left wing poet angle. Stow that.
What you did is just another dodge. Accidentally or not the other guy's points you rebutted with the Strawman charge were solid.
At the very minimum his point must be answered by people on your side and you didn't even try.
UBI is not a partisan issue. Conservative economists like Milton Friedman support it. Thomas Paine at the founding of our country supported it called it a citizens dividend.
UBI is not a partisan issue. Conservative economists like Milton Friedman support it. Thomas Paine at the founding of our country supported it called it a citizens dividend.
I'm the one who mentioned Friedman and UBI. For the record he wasn't especially for government largess. He's points about UBI were that the costs would be more easily trackable and controllable.
Paine was a socialist. He's figuratively on the masthead of most socialist groups around the world.
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The problems would be myriad.
1. What's the $ threshold? Would that be a federalized number or vary per state.....as NY has by far the worst per $ buying power metrics in the country would you pay NY UBI users more than Texas? Tennessee?
2. Is there a time horizon? Pay someone for 1 year, 5?, life?
3. How precisely would your side manage the negative bits. Like the work disincentives?
4. Would you force drug testing?
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I could be persuaded that a UBI as a replacement for nearly all federal, state and local social welfare spending might be worth consideration.
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