We need a two-speed economy

And the bit in between.

Support the Democratic Party ideology, the claim that it helps the poor.
And the Republican Party's ideology is that it helps the rich and everyone else.

Both have a point, so do both.

 

Like a bridge, start at both ends.

During the DNC primaries and his campaign, Andrew Yang suggested a Universal Basic Income (UBI), funded through an automation dividend.

UBI would supersede most welfare payments, but it is different.

It's funded from the money companies save by automation instead of through taxes or increasing the national debt.

The general idea is to redirect some of the money saved to the people who lost their jobs through automation, except it is difficult to identify exactly who that is, so the dividend is paid to everyone.

 

As automation increases - we have just entered the fourth stage of the industrial revolution - the numbers will work out a lot better.

Without this plan, the country will continue to produce more billionaires, and the same number of people will be living in the street.

 

At present, there is too much money at the top of the economy (I'll exempt Elon because he puts almost everything into projects that help us all), and some people at the bottom of the economy are suffering.

And in the middle of the economy, there's a mixture of both.

When I look at a nearby parking lot, I see muscle cars I would never see in England and huge pickup trucks that people own to impress - conspicuous consumption.

But there are also gigantic student loans and massive medical bills.

 

As well as being funded differently, the distribution of UBI is fundamentally different.

A year or so ago, unemployment pay was implemented, giving more money to low-income people than their jobs paid.

And even stupider was that people were required to quit their jobs to get it.

As the name suggests, UBI does not depend on giving up work.

 

The existing plan is for UBI to pay 1,000 dollars a month to anyone over 18.

Add in universal healthcare (UHC), and nobody has to pay anything for basic healthcare.

With UHC, 1,000 dollars a month is almost a survival income.

But you can fill in with as much part-time work as you can find.

So instead of poverty, I call that the 'low speed' end of the income scale.

It's financial freedom, like being semi-retired.

 

UBI funded from a dividend is often called UBD (universal basic dividend).
It was first proposed in the US in 1797 in the pamphlet Agrarian Justice by Thomas Paine.

There are many ways to look at it, and it looks pretty good from most of them.

 

What makes you think everyone in receipt of UBI will only work part time? Plenty will work full time, thus make a killing. If they live off their wages and invest that UBI, they'll be far from 'low speed'.

 

Couple across the road from me collectively make about $1800 a month on social security and they are really struggling at times. I am not sure $1K even is survival income these days. I have had to pay their utilities a few times and every time an appliance breaks, I become their bank. I can spare it being single with no kids, but when one of them dies, the other one is up the creek. I am not paying for other people's funerals just to be a good neighbor. They have no insurance and oppose cremation because they are "true Christians". All I can say is when the hearse drives one away, I won't be answering any doorbells.

 

People who don't plan ahead to pay for their own funerals are @ssholes. What a horrible thing to do to those you love.

 

On UBI, they would get 1,000 a month each, 2,000 dollars a month for the couple.
Any money they could make from odd jobs or crafts could supplement their income.

UBI should free up the welfare system from most unemployed and disabled people.

There will should be additional funds for people who need more help.

 

The problem with UBI is we really don't know how many currently producing people will drop out of the econbomy to just live on their $1000/mo. That would cover my mortgage and my sewer bill. If I then dumped my savings into solar, I could 'retire' to my garden while everyone else buys my house for me in return for nothing. I suspect there's a lot of folks who currently produce that would do something similar. Once production drops and we have the same amount of people consuming from a smaller pool of stuff, $1000/mo is going to be worth less and less. In the end, either the $1000/mo won't be worth anything relative to the goods and services we need and we'll all have to work anyway, or we keep raising it and eventually we all have lots of money but nothing to buy...

 

If ten adults share a self-sufficient farm .. that's $10k a month. They'd be rich in no time.

 

Wait, why should they be semi-retired? Why aren't they working full time?

 

There were a lot of car factories and other manufacturing businesses in Michigan and other Northern and North Eastern states. But that number has been declining for several decades.

And the reason is US companies save money when jobs move out of the US to Mexico or other countries.

Why?

 

US workers at one time offered to work for less than Mexican pay, but the company rejected their offer.

Their offer was still too expensive because the Mexican workers did not require healthcare benefits.

 

Germany still has a substantial domestic car industry.

A significant factor in the US losing domestic industry is when the company sheds jobs, it no longer needs to pay health insurance.

Instead, the now unemployed worker's healthcare costs are paid by the government.

The fix is to eliminate the cost of healthcare which is a penalty against employing American workers.

 

My advocation of a two-speed economy is that rather than the present all-or-nothing economy, where a person is either in the corporation or is nonproductive and subsidized by the state,

that healthcare should be universal so, people are not forced into becoming completely nonproductive to get healthcare paid.

We could have people further down the economy working in car factories or diesel engine plants, and not have all those jobs moved out of the country so the company doesn't have to pay the healthcare and instead, the government pays it.

We need to have lower-income people still making an instrumental contribution to the economy.

 

At present, the government pays enough for the entire healthcare system.

Govt pays toward the Veteran's Association, Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Service, State Children's, Tricare, and Tricare for life. Govt also contributes to many company healthcare schemes.

The amount the govt contributes is enough to run the whole healthcare system.

But the bureaucracy required to run the private healthcare system, to charge this payer for this and that payer for 40% of that, and so on, and also to collect money from companies and individuals, and pay the health insurance company fleet of aircraft and profits and board meetings, is roughly equal to the amount collected through private healthcare contributions.

As accurately as can be determined, the money people pay to private healthcare schemes is about the amount it costs to run those hideously expensive rackets.

They do nobody other than their administrators and owners any good at all.

 

With a less expensive healthcare system our car workers etc would not be priced out of the World market.

Look at Detroit if you dare, then look at a country with Universal Healthcare, they still make cars inside their country

 

Economics is complicated, but having a healthcare system that costs twice as much as everyone else's, and charging per employee, puts the US at a disadvantage compared with other countries.

 

A Universal Basic Income on its own would be pointless if it all got swallowed up in healthcare costs.

I had to quit my job to get my healthcare back.

It would appear the main purpose of the welfare system is to stop people from working.

Who is supposed to benefit from welfare?

Why does everything have to be so complicated?

 

I agree with the OP, we need a two speed economy. I think there are a lot of libertarian ideas out there that can do this; however, we are going to need the power of the government to do a lot of them.

 

I think that might be where the idea works well, that nobody has to drop out of the economy because it is all one seamless system at the lower end.

A person gets a fairly small UBI and then can earn as much as they like and not lose that UBI.

But before even trying to implement a UBI the priority should be to provide low cost medical care to everyone. Only for necessary work; not cosmetics or 500 dollar pairs of glasses.

 

You missed the poster's point.

A HUGE number will simply opt out of work altogether .. or drop from full time to part time. Once that happens, there won't be enough money in the system to keep paying everyone $1000 a month. It's a self-defeating model .. completely unsustainable.

The only sustainable models are those which oblige everyone to work. That's the only way a nation can afford social security and nationalised healthcare long term.