Is Yangs UBI going to work?

That was Yang's original plan. That UBI and welfare benefits wouldn't stack. Those were the numbers behind the careful calculation that a 10% VAT tax on technology would pay for UBI. But he later changed his mind. So, who knows how he's going to pay for a stacked benefit.

 

Anyone wanna explain how such a thing would be Constitutional??

Not that lefties care about the Constitution, but still

 

It's a tax.

 

Well I'm sure how he pays for it now doesn't really matter. It's free money after all.

 

Lol

 

Oh, I get it. The money isn't free. But even social programs have to be balanced. In the budget.

 

Yes, now we would have to call it that.

My point is that the people receiving, later on, might be providing something that is returned to society with no cost to society which makes it more like trade rather than employment or welfare.

The fact is that our perceptions of work, worth, profit and wealth are not healthy for human society. If this was not true, it is likely our societies would not have such serious problems.

Perceptions actually have more to do with it than we would think. For example.

“Welfare” is a label with unsavory connotations within our capitalistic society. Capitalism is another such label. The fact is that the word needs a qualifier to remove itself from a distorted presentation. “material capitalism” fits our society well enough. Now we can apply another qualifier to the label and call it “spiritual capitalism”.

Our society knows nothing about this concept, but such ignorance does not dispense with the fact that the Pacific Northwest tribes practiced such capitalism and the main feature of their society and culture was the “Potlatch”. Understanding of the function of the Potlatch has been removed from our society. However, it was such a powerful feature of Native society that it was banned by laws to complete the subjugation of Native people and compel integration of them into material capitalism.

Our evolution will require understanding of our human condition and acceptance of it.

 

It will come with problems of politicians reducing it and if other benefits are removed.

 

OK you kind of lost me with all of the spirituality nonsense. I don't care about that. I care about whether a policy is good, or bad, and if it's practical, both in implementation and in cost. If you want to talk about "spiritual capitalism" or polatch I'm not interested.

 

Well that fool is out of the race. Guess his silly ideals about this UBI monstrosity have zero traction overall, that is reassuring.

 

UBI will be back. You can read the this thread and see the desire to get something for nothing. It's a strong feeling.

 

It will resurface no doubt.

 

Here is how any of the "free stuff for all" things like free healthcare, free college, or UBI will work:

Hardworking citizens that contribute to society are taxed this much:
<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

Those unable/unwilling to contribute to society are taxed this much:
<->

Hardworking citizens that contribute to society receive this much:
<---------------------->

Those unable/unwilling to contribute to society receive this much:
<---------------------->

Government bureaucrats receive this much:
<----------------------------------------->

It is a wonderful deal for a few of us, but a terrible deal for most of us.
If you have made your life a success, you are going to get screwed. That's all you need to know.

 

Thankfully not this time around. Utter failure as a policy ideal to even get a nomination much less win the election. Perhaps that might quiet the "give em free stuff" crowd down for a while.

 

He is smart and wants to get ready. for what the Luddites predicted a hundred years ago. They will get the last laugh .after being laughed at for a hundred years.

 

Lets do the math. Currently the County has 20 trillion in GDP. We currently pay a bit over 3.5 trillion in federal taxes and a bit over 1.5 trillion in state and local. This adds to about 5.5 trillion in taxes in a 20 trillion economy. UBI will theoretically cost about 3 trillion in taxes, but people will choose between UBI and their current public benefits, so maybe it will add more like 2 trillion. We also have a 1 trillion deficit which will have to be covered somehow. That bring us to 8.5 trillion. Then we have to consider proposals like public option/universal healthcare, free college, paying off the student debt, free preschool, green new deal, reparations, infrustructure, etc. Before we know it, more than half of our economy will go to the government, and we will be the most socialist country in the world.

 

This seems a very plausible outcome.

Somehow the transition to automated “everything” serving humanity for free does not seem to logically occur from where we are.

 

It it possible. We would have to develop true AI and robots. We are well on our way with robotics and are building smarter and smarter computers. Even if we don't build true AI, we will be able to replace tens of millions of jobs with machines. But right now, we don't have a jobs problem.

 

If a majority of Citizens approved it, it could be.

But taxation of income is not constitutional except as the war tax.

Are we done conducting war on the world yet?

 

This a good point to consider another factor. The environment.

All of the technology requires resource and has toxic waste impacts. Rarely do I see discussion regarding automation, AI and robotics consider the quality of air and water.

Truly intelligent AI created by humans would have to address that issue. Now the question of the possibility of humans that cannot adequately address this matter, designing and perfecting AI that can is raised.

Seems to me that we would have to be capable of living in such a way as organic creatures, in order to fully grasp how automation could do this. I would suggest we do not have the correct focus technologically. Further, we don’t have the correct focus as organic creatures to do it on our own.

The social philosophical principles we allow to control us need refinement. The fact we have a constitution which has basic correct principle written, indicates a path for us simply by enforcing the constitution.

 

The environment is an interesting point. Looking at robot today, they tend to have similar kinds of components as computers. So they will probably generate similar waste. One thing we can do is improve our recycling of computer and robotic components. If we did have truly intelligent AI, it certainly would be able to address this problem, maybe even a lot better than humans. We could even use AI to reduce our own waste by creating waste cleaning robots. We could start doing this even before creating intelligent AI.

 

There is no free healthcare now or will there ever be. Heathcare costs now are being paid individualy through payroll deductions and through increased prices of goods and services that we purchase now. healthcare costs are imbedded in the price of everything. Just because we don't see it doesn't mean it is not there. the right certainly understands that corporate taxes are paid by the consumers, I don't understand why they have their head in their ass about how is healthcare paid for.

 

LOL! Shades of Asimov.

AI’s first real task is to figure exactly how to absolutely minimize its environmental impact.

Hmm, why wouldn’t we demand government to the same thing?

 

And I also think we should have AI figure out how to minimize our impact while it is at it. Problem is, we don't know whether we will ever achieve true AI. If not, we will have to use work with our learning machines to figure out those impacts.

 

If the Dems have totally destroyed themselves....... by going so far toward the extreme left... then Andrew Yang would be a possible national leader for an emerging third party.