Getting money from the government is like the one thing that’s classy to do if rich, but considered tacky if poor.
To be fair, government bailouts are not just free money the government gives large corporations with no attached expectations. When the government bailed out GM, for example, the treasury gave GM $52 billion. $6.7 billion was considered a loan (with interest) which GM has since paid back. The rest was an investment resulting in a 32% ownership of GM by the US Treasury.
On top of this, there is arguably avoidance of a huge negatives impact on workers in GM and elsewhere. So not only the shareholders who were benefiting. And even within shareholders there are regular people, pension funds, etc. Some bailouts make sense.
It probably costs much more money for a government to do UBI in the long term.
Not yet you factor in the productivity and social harmony of a healthy citizen population.
Until by the next year rent has universally increased by the UBI.
I’m fully in favor of UBI, but unless we can get a government that will actually crack down on price gouging all it will do is funnel right back to the crooks at the top.
Have to start somewhere, and starting with ubi is a lot better then the crooked system in place now.
I’d be fine with starting with it, though people seeing prices rise right after will be really disheartening. I’d rather start with actual legislation to punish price gouging. These companies posting record profits while the rest of us struggle more and more is absurd, and I would want to root out that greed first so any UBI can actually help the people at the bottom.
Of course, I don’t expect the American government to do either of these things. Three Republicans will call it the work of Satan or something crazy like that and the Democrats will say they’re all for it until they actually have the means to do it, then suddenly it’ll be too much to handle.
Yea, just start them. People are so conservative that doing anything different from the status quo scares them, but once we have social policies in place, people like them. Libraries, national parks, paved roads, garbage trucks, conservatives fought against every positive social policy, medicare, but then appreciated them once they were enacted.
I don’t mind people possibly being surprised at inflation if their basic financial expenses are covered.
We haven’t tried it yet, it works as expected in all the trials so far, just do it.
The mechanics of sensible ubi are straightforward: enough money or money/housing to ensure survival, public education, pay more to those who contribute more to society.
Nothing is perfect, but ensuring the health of the population and investing in their success is a much better model for progress and growth than the ridiculous she damaging disparity the states is investing in at the moment.
Hope you’re right then. I really wanna see UBI implemented, I’m just worrying it will backfire.
If a company is “too big to fail” the punishment should be that the government bails them out, then breaks it up into smaller parts that are free to fail or succeed naturally without government intervention
or the government should get a significant amount of shares on the company
That’s not something that really works with industries that are zero sum games. You can’t have a dozen competing rail companies in a given state because there is only so many paths that a rail system can take, and you need to clear out continuous stretches of land through eminent domain.
If a company provides a vital services and fails, it should be nationalized. If a company does not provide a vital service and fails, it shouldbe allowed to fail and the employees themselves bailed out.
Not much of a “punishment” to the business to have socialized losses. Oh you’ve mismanaged your ginormous business and it’s going to cause a huge, negative ripple effect on the economy and impact everyone else? Here’s some free money, courtesy of working class taxpayers! Also we’re going to break you up and place no restrictions on how big you can get so that one of your smaller entities can inevitably get enough market share to be in a position to do the same thing a decade later! Huh? Punishment? Oh… Uh… Don’t do that again please, Mr. Business, sir 🥺
Hard to effectively punish entities that feel no pain and are otherwise basically immortal
Best we can really do is mow the grass periodically (which the US gov has been failing to do for a LONG time now, although we’re starting to see anti-trust rumblings in the tech industry now thankfully)
It’s not the best we can do, though. The best we could do would be for workers to own the means of production.
The best we can realistically do in our current time and place, then
Nah, we could definitely start taking back business thru unions and co-ops
How do you determine when a company is in this “too big to fail” category, to get access to this program?
How do you draw the lines in that company to fractionate it? Geographically? Randomly?
How do you determine when a company is in this “too big to fail” category, to get access to this program?
If a company is about to go bankrupt and congress decides it’s too important to let that happen, exactly how it happens currently
How do you draw the lines in that company to fractionate it? Geographically? Randomly?
That’s for business people, lawyers, and politicians to figure out, it’s happened multiple times before, look into the breakup of Standard Oil or Bell
How about we stop spending so much money. The US is already in $36 Trillion dollars of dept.
What if I were to tell you that one of the points of a UBI is to replace welfare programs?
A “universal basic income” shouldn’t be a thing. It encourages laziness and is more government spending which can worsen inflation.
Other than all the proof from places that have tried pilot programs that it actually improves productivity, and the fact that government spending only increases inflation if they’re, you know, making inflation with a money printer.
Anything else you feel like being wrong about today?
Government debt is not the same as individual or corporate debt. Most of the US’s debt comes in the form of issuing Treasury Bonds, and most of the debt is owed to the American people. The US also controls its own money supply in which that debt is denominated.
Also, spending is only part of why debt goes up. A huge portion of the US debt has been created through tax cuts, e.g. the $1.5 trillion Ryan-Trump tax cut for high earners early in Trump’s presidency
With obesity being a big problem, we could always frame UBI as being for individuals too big to fail as well.
Yeah, gonna agree with this one 100%. That shit’s dumb.
