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Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments
- h2odragon 3y agoThere's thousands of lobbyists that need similar takedown exposes. Even the "good" ones, where you may agree with their stated goals: look at what they're actually doing. Look at the parties they fund for which politicians. There's no one stays clean in the Beltway.
- boringg 3y agoI'd argue that no one stays clean anywhere. Humanity is messy.
- Brian_K_White 3y agoI don't like when wrong is made to seem tolerable by calling it merely messy. The world is of course actually messy and not b&w, but that fact doesn't change that. It's like saying that killing is wrong, but sometimes we still have to kill. Yes we do, and killing is still wrong. If you kill someone, it's not because "humans are messy". Oh humans are just imperfect and sometmes you just kill your neighbor, it just happens, no way to avoid it. If you actually want to get anything done you can't be so aspberger absolutist and figure out how to work WITH the neighbor killers.
- boringg 3y agoMy point is the line 'no one stays clean in the beltway' is and very much greater than thou attitude. We all like to rip on k-street and politicos however I don't think tech is on some great white horse that we can speak down on everyone else.
- h2odragon 3y agoI say "no one stays clean" from 20 years working with lobbyists I believed in and still sincerely think we did some good work. The corrupting influence of DC can't be avoided. You swim in the cesspool with the gators, you come out covered in crap.
- boringg 3y agoFair but who do you think funds k-street?
- bhouston 3y agoUnrestricted campaign donations is a huge issue in US politics. It allows for the repeated undermining of democracy in favour of rich people's interests. It is anti-democratic to the core. And I do not mean rich people who are in the upper 10% of income, it favours the ultra rich for whom a $100,000 political donation is pocket change.
- spiderfarmer 3y agoAs a European I already think there is not much democracy left in the USA. At a federal level it's moving towards an autocracy at a rapid pace, and a large part of the electorate seems keen to cheer it on. At a local level money, gerrymandering and propaganda make it impossible to elect politicians who give a fair representation of people's interests. And with a two party system, it's more than likely that both of them fail to represent their policy preferences to begin with. It frightens me that people are so easily manipulated and exploited.
- rayiner 3y ago> money, gerrymandering Let’s take these two separately. As to money: the evidence shows money isn’t buying results. Wall Street and Silicon Valley strongly supported Clinton in 2016. She outspent Donald Trump by 70%: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/09/trump-and-clintons-final-campaign-spending-revealed https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/09/trump-and-cl... ($340m to $581m). But Clinton lost. Within the Republican Party, billionaires billionaires wanted someone other than Trump: https://fortune.com/2024/02/26/ken-griffin-koch-brothers-republican-billionaire-megadonors-trump-haley-desantis https://fortune.com/2024/02/26/ken-griffin-koch-brothers-rep.... But he’s going to win the primary. More generally, the donor money in US politics supports globalization/free trade, and mass immigration (for cheap labor). The money is losing that battle not just in the US, but in Europe too. The problem in U.S. politics right now is that Internet-based donor networks have eliminated the ability of large donors (and institutions) to control the candidates. As to gerrymandering, what makes you think it has any real effect? Do you have a numerical estimatr in your head of what the party split would look like in Congress if there was no gerrymandering?
- feedforward 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
- booleandilemma 3y agoI'm all for UBI as long as the "U" is respected. The article curiously drops the word "Universal" when describing it: First, to bring every reader up to speed, basic income (or UBI)... Note also that the word citizens is used on the Wikipedia page. I have a feeling the US will manage to bungle that too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income
- spamizbad 3y agoUBI's critics expected these programs to have terrible outcomes, where recipients would spend their money on trivialities (or worse: drugs). Instead, what we find is that UBI recipients either spend it on essentials, stuff for their kids children or paying down debt.
- endisneigh 3y agoI don’t really have any horse in the race but the experiments I’ve seen are hardly universal nor sufficiently guaranteed. It’s basically just a one time payment spread over some period, so it’s not surprising people would use money they know won’t be around forever for essentials. On the other hand it would be nice to know what happened with all of the Covid checks since that also was given to many, but again hardly universal. I think the main criticism against UBI is inflation and I haven’t seen any reasonable argument to why it wouldn’t happen.
- Workaccount2 3y agoStrictly economic theoretical speaking, inflation wouldn't happen if the money isn't "new" money, but instead is fully reallocated money. A likely picture would be less money going into assets (where wealthy people money tends to end up) and more money going into consumables (where poor people money tends to end up). However the money pile should stay the same all else being equal.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoMoney from the state does come from the money printer these days thought.
- gumby 3y ago“Can”, not “does”. Don’t be disingenuous.
- n2d4 3y agoThat's false, "strictly economic theoretical speaking" inflation is a function of spending and savings (among others). If you take savings and use it to increase spendings, that causes demand-pull inflation.
- stuff4ben 3y ago[flagged]
- foobarian 3y ago> 3 party political system. Wonder if having 3 senators per state would help this along.
- jkestner 3y agoLet’s not stop there. Set the number of senators in proportion to the state’s population, in order to be a more representative democracy.
- bluejekyll 3y agoTo fix the Senate, you need to make it more proportional to the number of people in the states. The other option would be to get rid of the Senate all together, as it’s undemocratic to begin with. North Dakota should not get the same power as all of CA. ND is the same population as San Francisco, it’s hard to imagine the original writers of the constitution would have thought that a 50x imbalance of representation would be a good thing.
- umvi 3y agoI thought that was the whole point - if you make California all powerful in the house and Senate, smaller states get trampled on. It's no longer a union of states at that point, might as well rename the country California.
- erellsworth 3y agoOnly way a 3 (or more) party system works in the US is if we change the way we vote to a ranked-choice type of system with runoff elections. With first past the post, winner take all elections, multiple parties just makes it possible for politicians to win with smaller and smaller pluralities.
- endisneigh 3y agoIf only the folks who said eat the rich did just that.
- outside1234 3y agoBillionares are also against against any sort of criminal consequences and taxes. If you don't like that, you better vote in the next election.
- spiderfarmer 3y agoIt's sad that people at the next election only have a choice between extending democracy and accepting autocracy. It never really was about policies, but in the last 10 year all discourse about policy seems to have disappeared. All discourse seems to be about perpetually misinformed culture wars.
- plastic_enjoyer 3y agoBillionaires want us dead
- spiderfarmer 3y agoNo, they want you alive. They want you to procreate. And they want you to be desperate enough to accept jobs on unfavourable terms, to make sure society continues to provide them with the luxuries they've become accustomed to. The only alternatives for those jobs will have to be "living on the streets" and "joining the military".
- westmeal 3y agoAnd when you join the military you're used as a tool to cement corporate power across the sea for... you guessed it!
- spiderfarmer 3y agoYes. And ever since overturning Roe v. Wade they aren't even subtle about it.
- sackfield 3y agoUBI experiments are mostly pointless until they reach a national level. Otherwise you end up giving people a bunch of extra cash from the working economy, and surprise surprise, people are generally happier and better off with more free cash. The question is what happens when you do this on a large enough scale to affect economic production.
- devonkim 3y agoA lot of the point of the experiments is specifically to provide for evidence that critics tend to have about what poor people do with money. Because a great, great many people basically believe (falsely) that poverty is essentially a choice made by poor decisions more or less and that it is a personal or moral failing. There’s so little evidence for this it’s kind of crazy but then we take a look at those with that kind of attitude and see a huge bias
- lenerdenator 3y agoWell... okay. How did concentrating extreme amounts of wealth work out for the French and Russian royalty? Furthermore, how did it work out for their nations economically?
- throwawa14223 3y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3y agoSure there is. Just give it back if you don't want it. https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.h...
- throwawa14223 3y agoThat doesn't solve the whole problem. It requires more interaction with the state instead of just allowing an opt out. It also doesn't allow opting out at the paying in layer.
- ceejayoz 3y ago> It also doesn't allow opting out at the paying in layer. This is the case for every other program, right?
- throwawa14223 3y agoThere's a lot we need to fix in the USA, but adding more mandatory programs will make that more difficult.
- gameman144 3y agoAs a general rule, "if you don't like this rule we're adding, don't take advantage of it" is a pretty terrible argument. It's absolutely fair to say that a rule shouldn't be implemented while also acknowledging that if it is, it is the best strategy to take advantage of it if it is. For instance, imagine if the NFL decided to give up to two extra points after a touchdown for how stylishly the players celebrated, as voted by a panel of judges in the end zone. This would be a terrible addition in most people's eyes. If it went through anyway, though, you can bet that every team would start dancing their hearts out after each touchdown.
- jacknews 3y agoThe labor 'market' is totally asymetric, since workers are forced to work ... or starve, whereas companies can and do stop hiring, and even fire people, sometimes in a cynical move to suppress wages (witness the current tech scene). UBI would turn it into a real, consensual market. No doubt people benefiting from the status quo do not want change.