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"[Author] Robyn Sundlee is a research fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. She was the campaign manager for Alaska State R

"[Author] Robyn Sundlee is a research fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. She was the campaign manager for Alaska State Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D) in 2018." Interesting article, but I recommend reading knowing with this information up front.

kwhitefoot 7y ago
I read it without knowing that. Now that I do know it my opinion of the piece has not changed. Do you mean that I should discount the parts that seem to be statements of verifiable fact (call her a liar) or that I should simply not put exessive trust in her opinions (which pretty much goes without saying when you read something on the net written by someone one has never heard of before)? Those of us not steeped in the minutiae of Alaskan politics in particular and US politics in general would need a lot more than that tiny fact to form any strong opinions either way. Most of it seemed unexceptional to me except for the suggestion that the PFD is universal basic income. It's universal by definition but as far as I can tell most proponents of basic income are proposing an amount of money that is enough to live on (not live well but not starve or be homeless). The Alaskan PFD is a long way from that so while it gives strong hints about how UBI might work or not work the sheer scale of UBI is likely to throw up other challenges.
- mojomark 7y ago
  I was just highlighting the fact that the author led the campaign for the candidate who lost just last year to the candidate proposing the PFD hike. That's certainly reason to suspect an unfair bias towards the implication that the PFD system is broken. I'm not saying it's not, but I would not hang my hat on this piece alone without more information and possibly giving more than a year to see how everything actually shakes out. If I were the author, I would have inserted a disclosure statement at the beginning. It all sounds logical, I'm simply stating that the author is far from an impartial reporter.

kwhitefoot 7y ago

I read it without knowing that. Now that I do know it my opinion of the piece has not changed. Do you mean that I should discount the parts that seem to be statements of verifiable fact (call her a liar) or that I should simply not put exessive trust in her opinions (which pretty much goes without saying when you read something on the net written by someone one has never heard of before)? Those of us not steeped in the minutiae of Alaskan politics in particular and US politics in general would need a lot more than that tiny fact to form any strong opinions either way. Most of it seemed unexceptional to me except for the suggestion that the PFD is universal basic income. It's universal by definition but as far as I can tell most proponents of basic income are proposing an amount of money that is enough to live on (not live well but not starve or be homeless). The Alaskan PFD is a long way from that so while it gives strong hints about how UBI might work or not work the sheer scale of UBI is likely to throw up other challenges.

mojomark 7y ago
I was just highlighting the fact that the author led the campaign for the candidate who lost just last year to the candidate proposing the PFD hike. That's certainly reason to suspect an unfair bias towards the implication that the PFD system is broken. I'm not saying it's not, but I would not hang my hat on this piece alone without more information and possibly giving more than a year to see how everything actually shakes out. If I were the author, I would have inserted a disclosure statement at the beginning. It all sounds logical, I'm simply stating that the author is far from an impartial reporter.