Jack Dorsey Donates $3 Million To US Mayors For Universal Basic Income Pilot Programs In 15 Cities (forbes.com) 216
Jack Dorsey, the billionaire CEO of Twitter and Square, is donating $3 million to help fund Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI), a new coalition of 15 mayors across the country who want to explore the idea of universal basic income -- a recurring payment to residents -- in their cities. Forbes reports: The coalition was created on June 29 by Michael Tubbs, the 29 year-old mayor of Stockton, California, who has been running a guaranteed income pilot program in his city since the winter of 2018. The majority of the gift will help the mayors create pilot programs for universal basic income (UBI) in their cities, which include Newark, Atlanta, Seattle, Los Angeles, Compton, Long Beach, Pittsburgh, Oakland and more. The rest of the money will go to a new pilot program in Stockton, which Tubbs will announce in the fall.
For now, the roster of mayors in MGI are moderate to liberal-leaning, but that will soon change. Dorsey is making the donation from #startsmall, his philanthropic limited liability company, which he launched on April 7 by transferring $1 billion worth of Square shares -- then 28% of his net worth -- to the LLC. Dorsey said he would primarily focus his charitable efforts on Covid-19 relief, and also fund efforts to improve girl's health and education, as well as UBI experimentation. Tubbs hopes that with more successful experiments of guaranteed income around the country, the federal government will follow with a national guaranteed income program that will extend beyond the pandemic.
For now, the roster of mayors in MGI are moderate to liberal-leaning, but that will soon change. Dorsey is making the donation from #startsmall, his philanthropic limited liability company, which he launched on April 7 by transferring $1 billion worth of Square shares -- then 28% of his net worth -- to the LLC. Dorsey said he would primarily focus his charitable efforts on Covid-19 relief, and also fund efforts to improve girl's health and education, as well as UBI experimentation. Tubbs hopes that with more successful experiments of guaranteed income around the country, the federal government will follow with a national guaranteed income program that will extend beyond the pandemic.
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Jack Dorsey is concerned about refilling the Aral Sea while Chernobyl is blowing [youtube.com] up and contaminating the entire country,
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- No matter what you do, it will never amount to anything more than a single drop in a limitless ocean.
- What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?
From Cloud Atlas [wikipedia.org].
Here is.... (Score:2)
Here is your guaranteed income penny. Now shut up and go away.
{O,o} Just how stupid does this critter think our people are?
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Depends. Are we talking about a penny per day or a penny per second? I don't know about you, but I'd gladly take 315K dollars per year, forever.
Halfassed (Score:3)
3 Million for a Billionaire...
Yeah, he must really have confidence in the project...
As someone who has been getting rather conservative from being pretty liberal at some point what fascinates me about the UBI is that for once it isn't just "throw money at the problem" although I have no doubt that if we let politicians at this, it will end up like that anyhow.
It is imperative that people feel they are contributing to society. Welfare states usually produce very unhappy and often useless people. With the UBI, the original intention is that you don't have to be afraid for your existence, nothing more, nothing less.
The idea seems to strike a balance and THAT is something I can get behind.
The major issue to me is that I've been following the idea for a decade and I keep hearing "Oh, the money is no problem. There are professors of economy who have calculated the whole thing" but when I ask to see the calculation, it's alwys behind some kind of hurdle to get at. My prefered one is "Just google it, man!" which obviously leads to nothing.
The most dickish one was by a German professor I wrote to via email whose lectures consist of a lot of "We absolutely need this or else mankind is doomed, DOOMED I TELL YOU!" who told me to go buy his book.
Yeah.
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To be fair you don't start by just throwing billions at some brand new, untested project. You give them enough money to get started and if it seems to be working and non-fraudulent you can follow it up with more.
That's how it works in business, unless you have a proven track record you don't get billions in your first round of funding.
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This. People need to feel some purpose in their lives. Whether this is a career, volunteer work, family, religion, whatever - it varies from person to person. Excepting a few mentally ill individuals, there is something wired into our brains that needs us to have some purpose, some role to fill.
I remember an interview where some politician from Africa was touring British social housing. The British politicians thought he would be impressed.
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US inner-city blacks were arguably better off before they were "helped" by the Great Society programs of the 1960s.
What's the argument to make for that? The arguments I've heard about a lost black Renaissance point to communities like the Gullah that were decidedly rural. I've heard of the Greenwood "black Wall Street" in Tulsa, but white people burned it to the ground in 1921.
The problem of motivation and purpose could be an issue for people on UBI. But never would I call it the "fundamental problem". Not that I think Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs [wikipedia.org] is an infallible and totally linear journey - but there's a rough accuracy
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I prefer the Terry Pratchett version: "Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
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It is imperative that people feel they are contributing to society.
You mean you feel it's an imperative that people contribute to society. Otherwise you will be against them getting money "for free" for "doing nothing".
The major issue to me is that I've been following the idea for a decade and I keep hearing "Oh, the money is no problem. There are professors of economy who have calculated the whole thing" but when I ask to see the calculation, it's alwys behind some kind of hurdle to get at. My prefered one is "Just google it, man!" which obviously leads to nothing.
If they can print trillions for war for oil, they can print trillions for basic human life.
Re: Halfassed (Score:2)
"Math is hard! Let's do UBI!" --drinkypoo who doesn't understand inflation, basic human psychology, or how wars are different from paying people to sit at home getting stone and having more babies.
"Sir! We have a Baby Daddy Gap! We must implement the More Free Shit For Nothing Program!"
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Ah yes, UBI. Universal Book Income.
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"Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing." - Ron Swanson
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Welfare states usually produce very unhappy and often useless people.
The United States seems to have a lot of unhappy and useless people as it is. How many jobs, and not just in "services", boil down to contactless dick-sucking? I think people underestimate the portion of a modern economy that is busy-work. Everyone lives like a king today, yes - and they all need their jesters and attendant grape-feeders. Then there's the whole automation thing that's become so cliche, that it's easy to ignore intellectually - but that doesn't make it incorrect.
I've heard people describe th
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The safety net is the UBI itself. If you burn through it, it's your own damn fault and nobody should have pity on you.
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Re: Halfassed (Score:2)
What? Personal responsibility? How about we fund free divorces, de-alcohol programs, and more adoptions?
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Use UBI to replace money creation by private banks (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now, most money in the economy is created by private banks when they make loans.
UBI could replace this bank-led money creation by creating it at the point of use - right in people's pockets, and not tied to private debt.
This also solves the funding problem.
Re:Use UBI to replace money creation by private ba (Score:5, Informative)
If you created new money uncoupled from any incentive to use it productively, people could use it on less- or non-productive stuff. e.g. You could blow it on gold toilet seats, or on illicit drugs (which actually decrease your productivity). The amount of money in the economy increases by $x, but the size of the economy increases by less than $x. The amount of money increases more than the economy, which is equivalent to the government printing too much money, and the currency devalues (we suffer accelerated inflation).
What you're proposing basically amounts to what Venezuela did. The government used to offer a certain amount of services for free, paid for by oil exports. When their oil revenue crashed, they were offering more value in services than their economy was producing. This is impossible because productivity is conserved - everything that's consumed must first be first be produced. Venezuela tried to violate this rule of conservation of productivity by creating more money to pay for those additional services. The economy then reacted the only way it could to make the value of offered services (consumption) equal to the value the economy produced (production) - it devalued the Bolivar so the value of the offered services matched the value the economy was producing. That devaluation caused inflation. The Venezuelan government kept doubling-down on this, creating more money to offer the desired amount of services, which since it kept exceeding their production drove the inflation into hyper-inflation.
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Do you have a source for your claim that debt guarantees productivity?
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I see what the people on food stamps buy with my tax money and the term food is used loosely. TV dinners, soda, potato chips, popsicles, all garbage food. Good to know you can buy all the sugar water you want. They could fix it but the outrage would be swift and severe. WIC can do it for single moms with only certain foods and products that are eligible. So there is no excuse as to why my taxes are paying for people to get diabetes.
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That makes no sense because loans will still be required. People on a $30,000 annual UBI wont be paying cash for a house, a car, or any other big expense.
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And loans are still possible. Just not via money creation.
Banks would return to their old business model: paying interest on deposits and lending out those deposits to make money. Instead of just printing it.
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It isn't possible to give loans to people on UBI, they only get the 'basic' income, which means they do not have nor create any excess value and thus cannot repay any additional value the loan generates. If you give people more than the 'basics' to cover these additional expenses, it's no longer considered basic and simply 'just take whatever you want without paying for it'
It's a negative feedback loop, you loan out to the person with UBI and want to collect interest, he can probably pay back the loan amoun
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So just to hit the point again banks do not create wealth. Banks loan money to hard "working" individuals who create the wealth to pay the loan bank.
UBI is a lefty dream, but UBi is something for nothing. Someone has to work and create the wealth, which is taken away so others can get it for sitting on their couch playing video games.
Just my 2 cents
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I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word 'created'?
Or economics, really.
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That's because to support ubi you can't understand economics. The two are completely contradictory. To support ubi you must be clueless about inflation and the concept of supply and demand. Most ubi supporters also think money appears out of thin air.
Re: Use UBI to replace money creation by private b (Score:2)
Obviously money doesn't get created out of thin air. That's a straw man. Money comes from trees. Everyone knows that.
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Oh, and what other form of government would do that? With actual examples, if you please.
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It's been tested in social democracies e.g. Finland. I think they are the most likely to adopt it first.
Germany looked at it seriously a few years back I seem to recall.
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This is going to be one of those "but actually true communism was never tried" arguments. It's a pipe dream that people who are poor at math keep rooting for. The bottom line is somebody has to pay for it, most likely those who pay the most taxes. The middle class.
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It depends entirely what level you set it at. If you took the entire welfare budget and divided it equally then clearly it wouldn't cost any extra, but also many people would get less than they do now.
In the long run it may be unavailable though. Eventually automation is going to make most work cheaper to do with machines than with people. We will have to come to terms with that somehow, and unless we invent replicators we will probably still need currency as a way of distributing resources.
Re: Use UBI to replace money creation by private b (Score:2)
The cotton gin utterly destroyed farming.
Industrial automation completely killed the car industry. No one builds cars anymore.
We need less automation so we produce things less efficiently, drive prices up, and are able to support fewer people on the planet at higher cost each with shittier harder lives and use more CO2 to do it.
Technology advances have NEVER, EVER left fewer people with jobs. They only ever ended up creating more work overall and entirely new categories of jobs no one had thought of befor
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Oh, and, Finland is capitalist.
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Yeah, that one. Coalition governments are not as stable as single party ones by design. It's what makes them good.
The current Finnish government is made up of
Social Democratic Party (largest party)
Centre Party
Green League
Left Alliance
Swedish People's Party
Finland traditionally has very strong trade unions who work closely with the government. While it does use a capitalist system it's a social democracy, i.e. capitalism isn't the basis of government policy, socialism is.
Re: Use UBI to replace money creation by private b (Score:2)
And all this joy had led to an alcoholism rate higher than the workers at any beer bottling plant. If Finland is such a wonderful place why is their alcoholism rate so high?
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No this was in 2013. There was a commission looking into it.
He suddenly realized the tax deadline of July 15 (Score:4, Funny)
and needed some quick deductions he could backdate to last year.
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Someone modded this flamebait. Judging by the meltdown he had on Twitter yesterday and the general reaction from Trumpies I think this is going to be hilarious.
UBI: A solution to a solution (Score:3)
Please do a proper trial (Score:5, Insightful)
Please do a proper trial. One where all residents will receive the UBI and all working residents pay for it. It's pointless to only give UBI to residents without a job. That's just welfare and bound to be a great succes.
The most interesting part is to have people pay a LOT of taxes in order to pay the UBI of everybody (and themselves receive UBI of course).
It probably results in a 100% income tax for incomes below UBI level and close to 100% for just above UBI level. Higher incomes will have to accept a very steep income tax, but still earn above UBI level. The trial should prove if higher incomes are willing to pay up and lose some of their incomes. This is FAR more interesting than the part where people receive free money.
Re: Please do a proper trial (Score:2)
That's just welfare and bound to be a great succes
You forgot the letter s for sarcasm
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Higher incomes will have to accept a very steep income tax
You clearly have no idea how 'the wealthy' work with money. Tax it too much and it simply disappears.
Re: Please do a proper trial (Score:3)
Wealthy are NOT sitting on massive cash hordes. You don't know any wealthy people.
Their wealth is in equities and other financial instruments, land, and mostly they own productive businesses.
If they were sitting on tons of raw cash then inflation would make them as poor as you in no time.
Sitting on cash for long periods of time is stupid. Not even drug lords do that.
Re: Please do a proper tria (Score:2)
Oh and you don't understand how capital gains tax works. We already have a system where short term capital gains are taxed as income on top of regular income and long term is taxed lower to encourage investment in productive things over time not just short term flips.
You really have no idea how the economy works, taxes work, or really much of anything yet you have all these brilliant ideas to fix problems that don't even exist or we already have better fixes in place.
Smh.
Jack Needs A Lesson in BHN - Basic Human Nature (Score:2, Interesting)
If Jack wants to experiment with UBI then he should invite his unproductive relatives to live in his basement and see how well that works out.
BHN (Basic Human Nature) is: people squander and feel entitled when they are given free stuff.
For an example of UBI just look at Indian reservations. Native Americans on reservations receive free housing, healthcare, education, and food; and government checks each month, and tax-free basic income. The rate of binge drinking among American Indians is 24 percent, the ra
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These rates you mention can be are higher in other societies on earth that have never been UBI-ied. Tobacco for example:
Kiribati 52.2
Nauru 47.5
Greece 42.4
Serbia 41.6
Jordan 41.0
Indonesia 39.8
Russia 39.1
Lebanon 38.3
Bosnia and Herzegovina 38.3
Chile 38.0
------------------
USA 17.2
The problem with native Americans IMO, is that their culture was destroyed (among with at least 100 000 different primitive societies as civilization marched through the globe in the last 10-15 thousand years.) and they never got a viab
idiocracy (Score:2)
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"If you give un-earned money to ignorant uneducated people, (many who have kids at young age), the money will be burned and they will just ask for more..."
And you can say "You were given the same as everyone else. You squandered yours. Now you'll have to go our and earn some more. That's life. Deal with it."
And then take their kids away and prosecute if they fail to provide for them.
Giving everyone the same chance is not unfair. In fact it's far more fair than the current system where I have to work fo
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If you give un-earned money to ignorant uneducated people
I thought you were talking about the mayors for a moment there.
How do you distinguish this (Score:4, Insightful)
from a political campaign finance violation?
No one ever thinks of the increased sales! (Score:3)
If you're a billionaire, sure, you pay more in taxes, but if you provide any real value to the economy, you will also get a significant boost in sales. It seems like a pretty good investment to me.
If you're poor enough that UBI offsets the increased taxes, you're just going to spend that money right into the local economy...it's a win/win...reduced poverty...stimulus for local businesses....not to mention a reduction in crime and homelessness which is a huge drag on any urban economy....a reduced need for police and private security, etc.
Worrying (Score:3)
It is worrying to see stuff like this. Such a small amount seems odd. Them saying they want to do experiments is odd.
My mayor, from Los Angeles, recently signed into this. A week later he announced how $308 million will be used to house 15000 people, and then the next breath mentioned it would actually take an additional 800 million but 308 is coming from the federal government. If you do the math, it is a cost of 87200 per person. They are buying rundown old hotels. Instead of giving a shitty hotel room to 15k people, who will then still need food, clothing, and all other kinds of help if you ever want them to have hope of finding a job, they could give $1816 per month basic income for 30k people for 2 years. With that income they have shelter, food, clothing, and other basic necessities.
There is 2 other programs announced in the last year totalling 3.5 billion. With all that money they could give basic income to all 150k currently homeless people. Immediate help. Instead, they have these bloated useless housing programs that will only house a tiny fraction and only after years of waiting. If he really cared about basic income, and really believed in it, wouldn't his actions be different?
That's why I worry that the whole organization is astroturf designed to give political cover for some virtue signalling without ever actually helping anyone. Or even worse, they intend to make it look like basic income could never work, the opposite of what they claim.
Re:Fuck him (Score:5, Interesting)
$3 million, so he's funding a UBI for one family over the course of their life?
Re:Fuck him (Score:5, Interesting)
Or 10 families for 10 years.
Or 100 families for 1 year.
Or 1000 families for one month.
This is just another useless "Here's enough money to cover all of your expenses for a year plus a little extra for discretionary spending. Tell me in 12 months if you would like to continue receiving it." study. All of these sample sizes is too small to answer any questions about UBI other than "Do you like to receive money for doing nothing?", which we all know will be a resounding YES.
$3M is nothing to this Dorsey guy and his tune would change completely around if he had to pay 90% of his annual income and 90% of Twitter's profit for UBI.
Better to spend money on lobbying at this point? (Score:2)
A UBI has been proven to be a success already in previous experiments in the US and Canada:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"In order to determine real-life responses to NIT implementation, the US government undertook four income maintenance experiments; they transpired in New Jersey and Pennsylvania (1968-1972), rural areas of North Carolina and Iowa (1970-72), Seattle and Denver (1970-78), and Gary Indiana (1971-1974). These prospective large-scale field studies were truly remarkable due to their size and
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I know money trees don't exist, so where do the billions of dollars come from?
Re: Better to spend money on lobbying at this poin (Score:3)
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Ask the same question to the USA government [nytimes.com].
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however, data from the American studies would argue against a dramatic decline in the labour force."
I'd expect that is mostly because the subjects knew that the study would only last a couple of years and after that they would be out of a job and forced to start over in their careers.
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I bet that's more than the taxes he's paid all year.
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"If at first you don't succeed, give up!" --- arbiter1
Of course he misses the point that these small-scale trials are research projects, not actual implementations.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even more unfortunately, people look at these small-scale trials and assume that the recipients of the "UBI" (note that in these trials, "Universal" is not true, and "Income" is temporary) will, when given money for a year or two (and know in advance that they're only getting money for a year or two), behave in exactly the same way as they would if given money forever....
Sorry, UBI is NOT the same as "Select few get some temporary aid"....
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And it's almost always picking people who are already on some form of social assistance. I don't think I've ever seen a study where they gave money to people who where already earning a good wage in a stable job.UBI is supposed to be universal, where everybody gets the money. The studies don't even implement the way it would actually work.
Re: Why? (Score:3)
Every -experiment- has the same design. Money from an external source is pumped into the system to prop it up. They are trying to prove a perpetual motion machine while rigged up to a motor. Unless the entire planet is going to receive cash from the aliens on Alpha Centari, there is a gigantic math problem here. If you calculate the entire planets total wealth there is not enough money to pay everyone the UBI. And how will you stop the baby factories that will game the system? Mandatory sterilization? All y
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
The theory of a UBI is that the benefit of being guaranteed a minimum income will be greater than the cost of everyone paying for that minimum income. i.e. value (money) from productive people is shifted to unproductive people. This actually has some merit. An unproductive person buoyed this way may not resort to crime, or may be able to return to a productive job more quickly. So the cumulative loss while they're unproductive could be less than the loss if there were no UBI. But on the flip side, an unproductive person buoyed this way may choose to simply continue living that way, and remain unproductive for longer than if he were forced to resume productivity to feed himself.
I honestly don't know which of those two forces will dominate. So I'm genuinely curious to see if a UBI could actually work. But no "UBI test" I've seen has actually tested it - by extracting money for the UBI from the participants, and redistributing it back to the participants. They've always taken money from outside the participants, and given it to the participants. You can do that on a small-scale, but it's impossible to scale that up to the point where it's "universal."
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If you need to be reminded how people behave when given free stuff then invite your unproductive relatives to live in your basement.
Or look at Indian reservations - Native Americans on reservations receive free housing, healthcare, education, and food; and government checks each month, and tax-free basic income. The rate of binge drinking among American Indians is 24 percent, and the rate of tobacco use is 40 percent.
That's UBI.
People don't value what they haven't earned.
Native Americans, cultural disruption, and potlach (Score:2)
Your conclusion is too sweeping given the Native American experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, large numbers of Native Americans were forcibly relocated to designated lands west of the Mississippi River. This created concentrated populations of displaced, demoralized, and often traumatized Indians, frequently resettled in desolate, barren country where hunting and farming were difficult. In this environment of an already-disrupted, fragmented
Nine generations ago (Score:3)
Yep, in 1830, about nine generations ago, some pretty fucked up shit happened.
I'm curious, do you also blame your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's condition when you personally decide you don't want to go to work today?
For me, when I fuck up, which is often, that's because I made a bad decision. It doesn't have anything to do with my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
Btw - squirrel for dinner on Sunday (Score:5, Interesting)
Btw, speaking of my ancestors, my grandfather was literally dirt poor - his house had a dirt floor. My dad grew up eating squirrel.
Later, my dad was a vice president of an oil company, and once took me for a trip on the corporate jet. I grew up hanging out at the country club.
Later, I was homeless, living I an empty lot behind Target.
Now, my daughter is growing up in a house with three more rooms than we can even think of a use for - three mostly empty rooms we don't even have names for.
I wonder if she'll be homeless or rich. I'm shooting for rich by encouraging her natural tendency to think long term and create a great future for herself rather than doing whatever she feels like at the moment. We'll see. Maybe I should get her my grandma's recipe for squirrel just in case.
Highs and lows; cows & squirrels & beans, (Score:3)
Something to think about regarding such a mixture of highs and lows:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma... [theatlantic.com]
"Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and
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It's a reservation, not prison. They are free to leave any time.
UBI is compatible with a work ethic (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the design of a true UBI is you get it whether you work or not. So it is not like unemployment insurance or disability payments or food stamps or other similar needs-based income which might be a disincentive to work.
Consider it this way, how many children of millionaires better themselves through education and working their way up some career ladder? If what you said was true, then shouldn't we have a 100% inheritance tax to protect the children of the wealthy from having awful lives?
Tangential: "Children of the Affluent: Challenges to Well-Being" by Suniya S. Luthar and Shawn J. Latendresse"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
"Growing up in the culture of affluence can connote various psychosocial risks. Studies have shown that upper-class children can manifest elevated disturbance in several areas--such as substance use, anxiety, and depression--and that two sets of factors seem to be implicated, that is, excessive pressures to achieve and isolation from parents (both literal and emotional). Whereas stereotypically, affluent youth and poor youth are respectively thought of as being at "low risk" and "high risk," comparative studies have revealed more similarities than differences in their adjustment patterns and socialization processes. In the years ahead, psychologists must correct the long-standing neglect of a group of youngsters treated, thus far, as not needing their attention. Family wealth does not automatically confer either wisdom in parenting or equanimity of spirit; whereas children rendered atypical by virtue of their parents' wealth are undoubtedly privileged in many respects, there is also, clearly, the potential for some nontrivial threats to their psychological well-being."
Paradoxically relative to your point, when people have a safety net (like universal health care and a guaranteed subsistence income) some will take more risks like start a business because they don't have to "play it safe" to ensure their economic survival (especially if they have kids). Was Bill Gates one such example?
"How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates"
https://philip.greenspun.com/b... [greenspun.com]
"Lesson 1: Choose Your Grandparents Carefully: William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars."
Also, while it is true in general that in theory "anyone can earn a million dollars a year", in practice (absent inflation etc.) such jobs are limited to a small percentage of the population because extremely high paying jobs are usually based on some combination of exploiting other people's labor, extracting rent from other people, addicting other people to things (including junk food which dumbs people down), or selling a mass-produced consumer item (often media or entertainment-related or celebrity-related) for which there is in aggregate limited demand.
For example, the Kardashians would not be who they were if there were a million of them all vying for attention on an equal footing, as celebrity at their level in our society can only support guessing at most a few thousand individuals at extremely high incomes. The same goes for aid software. There is undoubtedly room for thousands of software millionaires -- but there are only so many new "Slack" companies that the world will support -- especially given much of the value of Facebook, Microsoft Windows, or Twitter is that they are platforms with social networking effects where every new person who uses them makes it harder for everyone else t
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We're hiring.
I assume you aren't the kind of racist shithead who thinks "he couldn't possibly do MY job, because he has a different skin complexion". The fact that your great-great-great-great-grandfather doesn't make you more qualified than somebody whose great-great-great-great-grandfather lived in Montana.
More specifically, my advice on work is get help from friends and family to make two lists:
For both lists, th
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> This from the person who said
Um, no. Though now that you brought it up, when I was drinking all day, that was something I needed to address, not blame it on 200 years ago.
> By the way, I am part Choctaw.
And therefore you are never allowed to leqve and have to spend your day drinking? If I ever get to meet Ben Campbell again I'll let him know you said he has to get his butt back on the reservation and stay there.
You did finally answer the question - yes you DO blame your own decisions on 200 years
Re: Nine generations ago (Score:2)
Liar or ignorant?
Natives not only get free education at almost every prestigious top end school, if they bothered to finish high school and got anything like a semi-not-sucking SAT score they're guaranteed acceptance.
Where do you get this shit from? Go look at Stanford's NA program. It is written into their fucking charter that they will help NAs as much as humanly possible.
Sheesh. And your dumb assery ignorance got modded up instead of down to -2, Fucking Wrong, where it belongs.
Re:Native Americans, cultural disruption, and potl (Score:4, Insightful)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"In North America, Native Americans have the highest probability of developing alcoholism compared to Europeans and Asians."
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You lost me at "countries where ubi has actually been trialed". There has never been a trial of ubi. Never. Point me at one of these so called trials and I'll show you which of the 3 letters they missed. Usually it's the u.
Re: (Score:2)
They weren't Americans.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Look at California reservations. There are tons of them inside or at the borders to cities all over the state.
No state taxes, UBI from tribe, free government Fed money, free housing, alcohol / drug rates (usually meth) are through the roof, child abuse, wife battery, corruption in tribal government, low education levels, unemployment levels through the roof, gambling addiction for those running casinos. The works.
Using NA as evidence that UBI is good and people will improve themselves when given lots of f
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Oh and that casino money? Tribes usually sub that out to a company run by white people so they don't even run their own casinos although they are guaranteed jobs at the casino, very few take up that offer.
Casino money in California is "taxed" by agreement with the state from Schwarzenegger's era to go into a pool which is divided up among non-casino tribes. So a bunch of tribes don't even have the hassle of running a casino but get casino money anyway.
You know what my cousins are getting per month? Aroun
Re: (Score:2)
And so the only way to pay for it is for the people receiving it to also be the ones paying for it.
That is very near-sighted. Currently, public revenue comes mostly from income taxes, but that has not always been the case, and may need to change in the near future, as labour becomes less valuable due to automation.
We saw a similar situation with sales taxes in the recent past. Goods have become so cheap to produce, that they now make up a small and decreasing part of our spending. Almost all civilised countries have abandoned sales tax, and moved to a "goods and services tax", aka "value added tax".
Re: Why? (Score:2)
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Can we please get back to the topic? These arguments about taxes are really taxing my mind [merriam-webster.com].
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the money paid to the recipients, must also come from the recipients
That's a misunderstanding of how UBI was to be funded. The money paid to the recipients is supposed to come from the government no longer managing money being paid to the recipients. By making it universal and basic hundreds of other government programs should be shutdown in its wake.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
But, but, but, math is hard, let's do UBI instead!
Just print the money, it'll all be ok when we add another 10 zeros to every bill. We can even raffle off who gets their name and face on the bills since by the time you get one in your hands they'll need to redesign to add a few more zeros anyway.
I want a one trillion dollar bill with my face and "Way smarter than you" for the name as official US currency even if it can only buy a cup of coffee.
Re: (Score:2)
It also depends largely on who receives the money. Some people are passive consumers while others are active creators. The passive ones will spend their money to buy/rent things and the creative ones will use their time creating things and make money on top of their UBI, unlike the passive ones.
And even if you have more money than you know what to do with it, it doesn't mean you stop doing anything.
For example, we don't hear about millionaires and billionaires sitting at home on their ass doing nothing, Bil
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Robots do all the work fallacy.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
"Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try." - Homer Simpson
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The difference [xkcd.com].
Just because UBI pilot programs failed before doesn't mean that all future ones will fail too. There's too many variables at play, changing the country in which the pilot programs are tried can change everything (ex: U.S.A. vs Canada, Americas vs Europe vs Asia, etc).
Re: Why? (Score:3)
True. So when a consistently successful program is tested out and proven true and we know why it works and it is repeatable, let us know. In the mean time if Jack wants to give away a few pennies he'll never notice, more power to him.
Re: (Score:2)