4 ms·

Why cant we just give everyone a social dividend and then be done with it? We already create enough in taxation and economic deadloss in market inefficiencies

Why cant we just give everyone a social dividend and then be done with it? We already create enough in taxation and economic deadloss in market inefficiencies to finance nearly 10k/year to every citizen.

zanny 8y ago
The why right now, at least in the US, is that federal politicians are beholden the monied interests that lobby and fund their reelection campaigns, not to the constituents. So policy is written in their interests, which doesn't require a social dividend because all involved parties are already wealthy. Even if you solved the money in politics problem (which is hard) you still have the issue of a substantial portion of the US congress being elected in uncontested lifelong seats where the citizens have been thoroughly indoctrinated enough into either major parties ideology that they never consider voting for anyone but their incumbent. As long as politicians can feel their seat is guaranteed representing their own interests rather than those of their electors becomes the norm. So to even begin having a conversation about social dividends you need to radically revamp American elections to incentivize the legislature to represent their constituents. Which requires competitive, representative elections (which means you cannot be using first past the post everywhere) and substantially diluted power and influence so that buying influence over the legislature is less trivial (which almost always means substantially more seats in US congress to make buying a majority of seats more difficult). Which is by nature a constitutional amendment, which the congress itself would never ratify because it would end their gravy train of private influence and wealth so many currently enjoy. So you need it to come from the states, but the state governments are often just as corrupt and out of the control of the citizenry, if not moreso for their lack of publicity and presence in conversation, so you would need to figure out how to fix them first. Its a crazy massive expansive problem Larry Lessig was campaigning on in 2016, and Andrew Yang could learn a thing or two from before having pie in the sky conceptions of being able to institute UBI given the structure of the present US federal government.

zanny 8y ago

The why right now, at least in the US, is that federal politicians are beholden the monied interests that lobby and fund their reelection campaigns, not to the constituents. So policy is written in their interests, which doesn't require a social dividend because all involved parties are already wealthy. Even if you solved the money in politics problem (which is hard) you still have the issue of a substantial portion of the US congress being elected in uncontested lifelong seats where the citizens have been thoroughly indoctrinated enough into either major parties ideology that they never consider voting for anyone but their incumbent. As long as politicians can feel their seat is guaranteed representing their own interests rather than those of their electors becomes the norm. So to even begin having a conversation about social dividends you need to radically revamp American elections to incentivize the legislature to represent their constituents. Which requires competitive, representative elections (which means you cannot be using first past the post everywhere) and substantially diluted power and influence so that buying influence over the legislature is less trivial (which almost always means substantially more seats in US congress to make buying a majority of seats more difficult). Which is by nature a constitutional amendment, which the congress itself would never ratify because it would end their gravy train of private influence and wealth so many currently enjoy. So you need it to come from the states, but the state governments are often just as corrupt and out of the control of the citizenry, if not moreso for their lack of publicity and presence in conversation, so you would need to figure out how to fix them first. Its a crazy massive expansive problem Larry Lessig was campaigning on in 2016, and Andrew Yang could learn a thing or two from before having pie in the sky conceptions of being able to institute UBI given the structure of the present US federal government.