California city to experiment with 'universal basic income'

I thought that's what you were attempting. I don't think that's a bad idea. Someone is going to have to manage it. I'm so cynical, I don't trust anyone to be honest. Maybe the biggest issue we have in the country is waste and mismanagement? Maybe we need to find waste, mismanagement, and corruption and use the laws on the books to remove them, fine and or imprison them, including loss of pension?

 

Amen.

The victim mentality seeks to absolve people from any personal responsibility for their own bad decisions, and also makes them less likely to change their behavior and make better choices in the future. It's much easier to just say "but it's not my fault!!!"

 

The criminal justice system is a total failure. Justice delayed is justice denied. It will take very radical reforms to fix it.
Limiting the power of judges and lawyers to tamper with juries would be a good start.

Diverting the revenue tsunami from Big Government to individual productive workers would be an easier political task.

 

Who would manage all of that money? That's a great big pile that is tempting to anyone who has any say in how it is used.

 

The Big Pile is already in DC. It needs to be transformed into about 150 million little piles ASAP.
Create individual vested accounts that can only be used to meet specific needs - for instance healthcare or education.
Manage them with the law. Use for any other purpose should be illegal for anyone involved in the illegal transaction.

 

Since the amount for education is so high, will those who do not go to college get the money to invest in a house for them and their family or will they be refused it?

 

That could be another vested individual account for productive workers. Voters would like that better than most of the government programs that would have to be eliminated to pay for it.

As revenue continues to flow from government to individual accounts they may become far larger than necessary to meet the designated needs.
Whenever that happens account holders should be able to transfer the surplus to discretionary accounts. Voters will really like that.

 

Maybe some will have no need to continue receiving those revenues?

 

That would be a political calculation, but I would certainly favor redirecting the surplus to paying down the debt.

 

MAGA = getting all of the able bodied leeches off the dole draining productivity and economic development.

Let's talk facts instead of platitudes. Let's see if you are actually interested in defending your postion with logic.

You feel sorry for everybody. You overlook their life decisions and blame others. You make them victims.

That's your problem. I CAN say without a doubt that the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with me and support capitalism, because they know most people who can't sustain themselves is a result of their own life choices.

You are in the minority here. You can continue to spend time in la la land to validate your perspectives, or you can face the realization that not everybody is a victim simply becuase you have made capitalism out to be some demon.

 

Don't presume to tell me what I think. I have little sympathy for most people, and I find it hilarious you're using vast generalizations to support your sinking argument.

As far as life choices; yes, some people make poor life choices. Laissez faire says they live in the richest country on earth but should die of starvation in the streets. Those people who don't make bad choices and are victims of circumstance are more victimized by a system we knowingly invested in, knowing it would create disparity and winners and losers.

So you say this:

And immediately go ahead and use platitudes to justify your position.

My position is simple. We knowingly implemented a system that requires systemic losers to function and by default cannot function without it; we have a moral obligation and ethical duty to seek to correct that disparity because we willing chose to implement it.

Your position is that I am a bleeding heart lib and I care too much about other people and I don't care about the winners.

Once you dare to post some facts to support your argument, I'll do the same; until then, you can keep stinking the room up with your foul smelling gusts of hot air.

 

1. Venezuela does not have a universal basic income

2. A universal basic income does not abolish or alter having an economy that functions primarily on the private sector

3. The universal basic income is actually an idea originally dished up by right wing economists to replace most of our existing welfare programs. The idea has been supported by nobel prize winning economists Maurice Allais, James Tobin, Friedrich Hayek, Herbert A. Simon, James Meade, Robert Solow, Angus Deaton and Milton Friedman. Friedman first proposed the idea in his book "Capitalism and Freedom"

 

Make stupid choices, win stupid prizes.

Oh, now you are going to spin this. "Yes people make bad choices. But we live in a rich country. And other people are victims. So let's just focus on the rich country and victim part."

We do? We systematically PREVENT people from being self sustaining? Please do explain how that works.

You are free to contribute all the dollars of your own in which you feel is necessary to meet the moral obligations you have established. What you don't have a right to do is tell me that I have to comply with satisfying your self defined moralities. News flash Aphotic, nobody made you King. Your opinions are like everybody else's. You are not intellectually superior. Your agenda is not better, so stop trying to tell everybody else what they need to do to satisfy your agenda.

No really, my position is that you are short sighted. We have far more social safety nets in place than at any time in our history, yet our dependency on those programs seems to be ever increasing. Most everybody else is capable of seeing that the empathetic positions you hold, and desire to support these victims, only encourages more of the same. For some reason, you can't seem to understand that.

My office, where I currently sit, in which I work 80 hours a week to be profitable for the benefit of my family, not your victims, smells quite nice. Thanks though.

 

Beyond the rhetoric and opinion above, I'll kindly wait for those "facts."

 

Nonissue, that's what our growth industry, for profit, private corporate prison industry is for. Corporations can’t turn much of a profit on the poor unless they’re incarcerated. With convict labor leasing which is “legalized” slavery, the system can turn $40-50K per year, per hominid, and offload the labor costs onto the public, that’s why we demonize poverty. This slavery industry has the usual think tanks cranking out legislation, and their lobbying efforts troll congress in pursuit of their vested interests in higher societal rates of poverty and criminalized poverty, crime, violence, recidivism, joblessness and homelessness. As the world’s leader in citizenry incarceration, corporate enslavement of human beings, profiteering from bondage, and mass surveillance of the citizenry, my view is we have this all well in hand; our impoverished have always been society’s scape goats and whipping boys.


Besides, it’s not like the states are the laboratories of democracy.

 

Venezuela must be demonized like any other nation that interfered with US corporate business interests, it's just Pavlovian. Any foreign leader who has ever said “no” to American economic colonization is a “commie”.

 

We cant compare them. STOP.

 

Hmmm seems the program isn working out so well and they can't get enough people to sign up even to just get the project group for their study.

Why Aren’t People Signing Up For Free Money In Stockton?

STOCKTON (CBS13) — At least 1,200 letters have been mailed out to households in Stockton offering a chance at receiving $500 a month, no strings attached, but not everyone is signing up.....

A team of independent researchers randomly selected 1,200 households where the median income is at or below $46,000. From the group, 100 will be selected to receive $500 a month for 18 months. But the response has been slow.

“We’re looking for at least half of the folks who have received the letter to respond back because it gives the evaluators a chance to select the 100 people from that group,” said Tubbs......
https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/12/19/basic-income-slow-response/

 

You get offered free money in a mailer, you throw it in the trash as some spam/scam. What they should have done is do a social media campaign with verified government accounts and had everyone opt in then make the selections as planned. This was bad, outdated planning on their part.

 

What social media has "verified government accounts"?

 

FB, Twitter, etc. You know, ALL of them?

 

As best as I can tell, this program is running on donations, not subsidy. Correct?

 

So I could create 3 Facebook accounts and get 3 checks......I don think open privately owned social media companies should be substituting for government agencies doling out taxpayer money.

 

The pilot program is.
BTW
Jobs for the Forgotten Man
Wage increases are reaching even unskilled corners of the labor force.
"....We’d note in particular that manufacturers added 32,000 jobs in December, for an increase of 2.3% for 2018. That’s impressive for an expansion now into its ninth year, and it shows the benefit of the new capital investment spurred by tax reform and deregulation. Manufacturing employment fell by 210,000 during Barack Obama’s two terms. It has risen by 473,000 jobs in Donald Trump’s first two years.

Employers are also paying more as average hourly earnings rose again and are now up 3.2% in the last year. That’s the fastest rate since before the financial panic and it looks set to continue as businesses compete to hire and retain the best workers.

The trend is spreading even to traditionally lower-paid corners of the economy. Wages in retail trades are up 4.6% for the year and 5.5% for the last three months. Leisure and hospitality wages for production-level workers rose 4.3% for the year and 5.1% in the last quarter. If this keeps up, Senator Elizabeth Warren will have to retool her 2020 campaign message that the middle class is vanishing."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jobs-for-the-forgotten-man-11546647794
Isn't it better to put people back to work EARNING an income rather than just handing out other peoples money?