Andrew Yang Kicks Off NYC Mayoral Run With Basic Income Promise (aljazeera.com) 155
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Aljazeera: Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, a former presidential contender, officially declared his run for New York City mayor. In a campaign video released late Wednesday on Twitter, Yang put forth an agenda that included a guaranteed minimum income, bringing universal high-speed Internet, starting a "people's bank" and reopening New York City "intelligently" from the pandemic. "I moved to New York City 25 years ago," he said in the video. "I came of age, fell in love, and became a father here. Seeing our city in so much pain breaks my heart." His agenda includes a focus on New York City's nightlife. On his campaign website, Yang pledges to make permanent outdoor dining, "to-go cocktails" and other temporary measures put in place during the pandemic. He also says he wants to attract so-called TikTok hype houses, where social-media influencers live together in big mansions and shoot videos together.
Yang's basic income program would start by providing $2,000 a year to half a million New Yorkers in extreme poverty. Participants would receive the cash through monthly transfers to a bank account opened in their name at a newly-created "People's Bank." His most detailed policy focuses on reviving the city's small businesses. He pledged to open 15,000 small businesses by 2022 and also offered a bevy of unconventional ideas, including buying heaters in bulk and then selling them to restaurants that are serving customers in the frigid outdoors as indoor dining remains shut. He also suggested the city make an investment in Cinch Market, a Brooklyn startup that brings together small businesses on one online platform, whose tagline is "Shop Brooklyn Not Bezo$." Yang, 46, whose two kids attend public school in the city, also said he wanted to subsidize broadband for schools, expand the city's universal preschool program, and reform the school system's admissions process. "There will be no recovery without schools being open and teaching children safely every day," he said.
Yang's basic income program would start by providing $2,000 a year to half a million New Yorkers in extreme poverty. Participants would receive the cash through monthly transfers to a bank account opened in their name at a newly-created "People's Bank." His most detailed policy focuses on reviving the city's small businesses. He pledged to open 15,000 small businesses by 2022 and also offered a bevy of unconventional ideas, including buying heaters in bulk and then selling them to restaurants that are serving customers in the frigid outdoors as indoor dining remains shut. He also suggested the city make an investment in Cinch Market, a Brooklyn startup that brings together small businesses on one online platform, whose tagline is "Shop Brooklyn Not Bezo$." Yang, 46, whose two kids attend public school in the city, also said he wanted to subsidize broadband for schools, expand the city's universal preschool program, and reform the school system's admissions process. "There will be no recovery without schools being open and teaching children safely every day," he said.
Is That enough (Score:2)
to even cover rent in NYC? Or do we need to stack 10 people to an apartment?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No. It won't even cover a month of rent in much of NYC with that yearly payment, much less yearly.
On the bright side, "15k new businesses by 2022" is very doable as long as novel coronavirus vaccines are rolled out en masse and work, and as long as people haven't gotten used to a "new normal" of sitting at home and ordering from Amazon. Small businesses got overwhelmingly wiped out by government instituted lockdowns in NYC. So if everything restarts after vaccination, you can expect a massive comeback of sm
Re: (Score:3)
to even cover rent in NYC?
The point of UBI isn't to hand everyone a comfortable life with no effort.
It is a top-up payment. Enough to keep people from starving and a boost to the working poor.
Or do we need to stack 10 people to an apartment?
If you want a better life, get a job.
Re:Is That enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Emphasis added. This isn't a UBI. It's not even really a BI. It's just an old-fashioned welfare check with a new label.
Re: (Score:2)
A 2018 study I found says that the average of the cheapest borough, Brooklyn, is $1100/mo.
So yeah, this annual $2000 would cover one month, maybe two if you have a roommate on average. If you're in subsidized housing, it may go further.
Re: (Score:2)
$2,000 a year to half a million New Yorkers in extreme poverty.
It's not for the average renter.
Re: (Score:2)
There was recently a study in Vancouver's east side of giving some homeless (not junkies or badly mentally ill) 7500 dollars with good results. Sometimes a cash infusion can really help.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
Re:Is That enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Like most "studies" in this area, this one was run by an advocacy group, not objective researchers.
Unsurprisingly, the study showed that, lo and behold, they were right all along, and groups like theirs should get more funding.
Also, unsurprisingly, there is no mention of this "study" being peer-reviewed or published anywhere, and the data does not appear to be available.
Re: Is That enough (Score:2)
$2K/YEAR will not cover rent anywhere in America, unless it costs less than $5.50/day, or about $159/month.
Nobody ever lost friends... (Score:5, Insightful)
...promising people a chunk of other people's money!
Re:Nobody ever lost friends... (Score:4, Funny)
They seem to have lost you.
Re:Nobody ever lost friends... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where does this end if government officals continue to buy votes with the tax payers money? It seems like a race to the bottom for whoever can promise the most "free" stuff. I dont think the average voter realises that this money has to come from either straight taxation or inflation taxation. When they promise the "free" money do this they should tell everyone exactly who they will tax to get it.
Re: (Score:2)
Where does this end if government officals continue to buy votes with the tax payers money? I dont think the average voter realises that this money has to come from either straight taxation or inflation taxation.
For the last 10-20 years, printing money from thin air hasn't caused inflation (because monetary velocity has dropped at the same time, I'm not sure why). Our politicians seem determined to keep printing money until it does cause inflation.
Re: (Score:2)
For the last 10-20 years, printing money from thin air hasn't caused inflation (because monetary velocity has dropped at the same time, I'm not sure why). Our politicians seem determined to keep printing money until it does cause inflation.
Those of us who were alive during the Carter years have been scared about inflation for the last 15 years or so. With the federal debt at what it is currently, even if inflation is a quarter of what it was back then we're gonna make what happened in Greece look like a day at the park.
Re: (Score:3)
America doesn't have that problem.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, it has. About 50% inflation over the last 20 years. Not that that is a terribly high rate of inflation, but it's not the same as zero.
Now, whether that inflation is just because a small positive inflation is better than a small negative inflation, I can't say. But don't kid yourself that inflation hasn't been happening....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if this is the right answer, but just because the input to a system doesn't cause an immediate response doesn't mean the input doesn't affect the system. It isn't unusual to have a lag between a stimulus and a response, and/or for the stimulus' effect to be conflated with other inputs, and/or for the stimulus to have an effect that isn't being monitored/recognized.
When I bought a house in 1988, I had a variable rate mortgage (rate adjusted every 3 years) with an interest rate of 10.5%. I hav
Re: (Score:2)
There is plenty of inflation, just unevenly spread. Where there is little inflation, it is because that product cost has been limited by the advent of billions of industrious Asians. For the rest, look at:
Housing
Equities
Bonds
Healthcare
Education
Political campaigns
Government at all levels
And the youngsters are mystified why they are worse off than the Boomers?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Money doesn't "go into" the stock market. It goes into the pocket of the person you bought the stock from.
Re: (Score:2)
''Where does this end''
It only ends when the US Dollar isn't the accepted fiat currency the world trusts, or when we aren't producing product or IP the world doesn't find sufficiently valuable. Or, when, where we live doesn't demonstrate to the rest of the world that we can be, do, and say anything that doesn't harm others, and we have a fair legal process. The last of which [aside from bigger and smarter guns] is or should be the most important.
Re: (Score:2)
âoeA democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Where does this end if government officials continue to buy votes with the tax payers money?
At some point they will run out of rich people to steal from and it will be straight down hill from there.
Re:Nobody ever lost friends... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think most voters are more sophisticated than that. They understand that taxation exists, probably even saw it deducted from their pay packet.
They also understand that some taxes are progressive, people with more money pay a larger amount and it goes up in bands. Many have probably heard about big companies paying very little tax due to creative accounting too.
So when they hear about UBI they assume that it will be funded by increased taxation on the rich and on big corporations. Of course some of them worry about that because they either mistakenly think they are "rich" or are likely to become rich soon. My uncle was a factory worker and convinced he was middle class, not that anyone is proposing to tax the middle class more but to him that was "wealthy".
Re: (Score:3)
There is a problem we face with taxation though. That is, we keep raising the floor for who pays. I think only 52% of people actually pay Federal income taxes. That means fewer people feeling the impact, thus more people willing to raise taxes because it doesn't effect them. We're dangerously close to a
Re:Nobody ever lost friends... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh look, the Deficit Hawks have come out of their four-year hibernation!
Re: (Score:2)
In the Democratic primaries, Andrew Yang got less than 1% of the vote and zero delegates.
So he doesn't seem to be making many friends.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There has been discussion he was squelched and media would not list his name or show his picture.
My memory may be faulty, but I recall him getting a disproportionate share of media attention, at least until it was obvious that his campaign was failing.
He certainly got a lot of attention here on Slashdot, which has a quota of at least one UBI story per week.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nobody ever lost friends... (Score:5, Interesting)
''Communism lol''
Not even close. Communism doesn't necessarily eliminate the poor, it does nationalize legally earned wealth to be distributed by the group in power to distribute to the ''proletariat'', in theory.
In practice it just makes the group in power oligarchs. There's never been nor will there ever be a real communist government. There's just been totalitarianism and socialism that falter leaving a wrecked financial system and starving the poor that the original motivation for installation started.
State an example that proves me wrong..
Re: (Score:2)
The Inca seemed to have a functioning form of Communism before Europeans showed up.
Re: Nobody ever lost friends... (Score:4, Insightful)
You claim that there will never be such a system, so the burden is on your shoulders alone.
Who knows what the future holds, its just that Communism and Marxist policies are a bad idea each and every time.
The problem is simply incentives. Say you live in a Marxist utopia where everyone works to their ability and gives to everyone according to their needs. Then you have two people working in a factory which outputs $100 worth of value a day.
Person A works their ass of and contributes $80 worth of effort and person B is a slacker and contributes $20 and at the end of the day both receive $50.
What is the incentive for person A to keep working their ass off? Eventually person A gets wise and will reduce their output to only contribute $20 worth of effort because they can't stand the other guy doing a crap job and getting more pay. Everyone will eventually reduce their output to match the slackest person to achieve equilibrium and so now the factory will only produce $40 worth of value a day.
So now they are getting $20 each day and the factory isn’t producing enough goods so the price of products goes up while their pay goes down.
It's just a very bad idea because incentives matter.
Re: (Score:3)
Person A works their ass of and contributes $80 worth of effort and person B is a slacker and contributes $20 and at the end of the day both receive $50.
This is essentially how labor in the USA works right now, except the slacker need to produce $50 or get fired. The guy producing $80 is putting money in the company pocket and not his own, he should only be doing $50. Did you think that laborers are paid based on their productivity? For a truck driver, more effort = more money if your by the mile. For a factory worker, more effort = more money for the company but not you. I used to work in production management while going to the local university for cs
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
When people cannot get fired they will output 5% if you are lucky. The system collapses.
I know, right? Remember when Japan tried that and now the island is a smoking post-apocalyptic ruin?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The implication being, marxism excuses people doing a crap job. Obviously, no factory can survive incompetence and laziness. The "works to their ability and gives to everyone" mantra is preventing the hoarding of wealth, which is a big flaw in capitalism (because money stops being 'earnt'). Like capitalism, marxism and communism don't excuse laziness. That's an effect of totalitarianism: Adopting the same 'everyone must produce' philosophy as capitalism causes a built-in flaw when government runs or ow
Re: (Score:2)
I hate to break it to you but the stock market is not the economy. Moreover the $600 may not have done much for the market, but I am pretty sure it helped those people who received the money.
Note: I am not commenting on the validity/usefulness etc of the stimulus checks,
Re: (Score:2)
I hate it when I hit post without double checking what I have written .... I should have said that I am not commenting on the validity of the stimulus checks, in the sense that there may be other better ways to help people
Re: (Score:2)
The markets did respond to the likelihood of stimulus checks happening or not in the weeks leading up though.
By the time the checks came they were already priced in, but a quick look at the ticker for VOO leads me to think the last week of October was a breakdown in negotiations for stimulus.
Re: (Score:2)
It's basically how the Democrats stole the Georgia Senate seats - by literally promising people $2000 if they voted for them.
D's in Georgia won because R voters stayed home. R voters stayed home because they were tired of Trump.
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't see the ads on youtube, did you?
Nope.
Hype Houses (Score:5, Insightful)
"TikTok hype houses, where social-media influencers live together in big mansions and shoot videos together..."
Dear Lord: Please take me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"TikTok hype houses, where social-media influencers live together in big mansions and shoot videos together..."
Dear Lord: Please take me.
Take you to the Hype House [wikipedia.org]? Wouldn't you rather go to Disneyland? Or Hell?
Re:Hype Houses (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you for your swift reply, Jesus. I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting one at all.
Hell is fine.
Re: (Score:2)
''Wouldn't you rather go to Disneyland? Or Hell?''
Interesting decision. People in Disneyland [heaven] want hookers, blow and booze [sin], people in Hell want ice.
Choose your poison.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Panem et circenses.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Good luck Yang (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
People live on the streets
Perhaps this is what he had in mind by 'permanent outdoor dining'.
Where does he expect this money to come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The way politics should work:
Step 1: Propose policies
Step 2: Explain the policies in detail and convince voters they will work and be affordable
Step 3: Win the election
The way it actually works:
Step 1: Make vague promises of lots of free stuff
Step 2: Get elected
Step 3: Figure something out
Re: (Score:2)
New York city is already broke because of the lockdowns. People can't pay their rent. Landlords can't pay their property taxes.
Sales tax revenues are way down because of closing businesses.
Money is political fiction, as long as there is tools, resources and people, the economy will survive. Newsflash, the upper class has been taking state subsidies forever and it never hurt the economy any.
https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/... [imf.org]
Re: (Score:3)
By selling zoning rights. NYC real estate is incredibly valuable, there are many locations where the market would support a 40 story skyscraper but currently zoning only allows a 3 story row house. Sell the building owner the right to build 37 more stories, at a price of let's say 10% of the real estate value of those 37 stories, and the city will be able to raise huge amounts of money more or less instantly. As a bonus, the new housing supply would mean that living in the city would get much cheaper.
Re: (Score:2)
Where does he expect this money to come from?
Other people's money, of course.
500K * 2K = $1 billion (Score:2)
So a billion dollars which won't provide a basic income will come from... where? The remaining 8 million of 8.5 will be so thrilled to kick in $125 each.
Re: (Score:2)
Also should mention plenty of third world shitholes have higher per capita COL than $2K let alone trying to live in NYC on that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you open 15,000 small business (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What business has ~300 stores in each state? Or did you mean there's a chain with 15000 stores in one state?
Slash dot is now a political news site (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Tech is boring now.
Apple releases new iphone, a bit faster with a slightly better camera. Samsung releases new Galaxy phone, it's a bit faster with a better camera. Intel/AMD/Nvidia has a new product you can't buy. Woooo.
Re: (Score:3)
Lol. Sadly accurate, except there are interesting stories out there like this guy building his own ISP [arstechnica.com] it's just that /. doesn't create any of its own content, it's an aggregator, and some of the good shit never makes it here.
Re: (Score:2)
But there are rational limits to where there is overlap between topics of tech interest and political issues. This seems to exceed those limits. Just because Yang is supposed to be a tech guy doesn't mean the NYC mayoral election is a topic relevant to /.
I guess we need a button for "this does not belong on /. you hyper-partisan turd"
Re: (Score:2)
There's a tech angle here...? (Score:2)
does he say (Score:2)
...where this money will come from?
People's Bank (Score:2)
People's Bank. Get ready for a trademark infringement lawsuit.
I say they name it Hobo and Squatter Banking Corporation. HSBC.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, he'll also form a People's Liberation Army to defend against it.
A true New Yorker! (Score:4, Informative)
He moved out of the city as soon as the lockdown happened claiming his apartment in Manhatten was inadequate for him, his wife, and 2 kids to spend that much time together. And he didn't just move a bit outside of the city, he's 80 miles north of it.
Re: (Score:3)
What I hear is (Score:2, Troll)
We don't have enough middle/upper class people in the state! Lets tax the middle/upper class we DO have, and give it to the lower class! Those middle/upper class people definitely wont go to a different state that doesn't steal from them weekly!
What's the problem with you people (Score:2)
Subsidize broadband? (Score:4, Informative)
Yang, 46, whose two kids attend public school in the city, also said he wanted to subsidize broadband for schools.
Not quite sure of the shell game yang is playing with this "proposal":
He want to take city money, presumably collected from residents and businesses in the city to "subsidize" broadband for schools so that they have improved access to the internet, because the city school district - which collects its operating funds from the same city residents and businesses that pay city taxes - don't have the money to pay for improved access to the internet?
What?
It's not like he's counting on outside money from the state or federal government (as mayor he has no ability to 'conger up' money from other sources). What he's basically saying is schools won't increase their budgets to secure better broadband, so the city will increase taxes on residents to pay for it.
I suspect Yang imagines the federal government will continue to rain money in Democrat cities like NYC to fund these projects.
Q: Why would NYC get in the space heater business? Are they planning on keeping restaurants closed into 2022?
$2K/year is $166/month, or about $5/day - WTF does that do for the poorest residents of NYC? That is not life-changing money, that's a happy meal/day in NYC, or a slice of pizza and a soda... Granted, it's something but this is on top of Welfare, Section 8 subsidy, WIC, SNAP, free healthcare, etc. - the poorest residents in NYC that will collect these benefits aren't the homeless, it's the ones already enrolled in city/state/federal assistance programs - the homeless are, by-and-large outside of the reach of such a program.
I'll be honest... (Score:2)
Say Goodnight, Gracie. (Score:2)
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. "
Re: (Score:3)
I for one know better. All that 'largess' has to come from somewhere, it does not magically appear. I must assume that I am far from alone in knowing that Money Does Not Grow On Trees.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
His campaign van says 'FREE CANDY' on the side (Score:2)
Hey New York! Elect me mayor and I'll give you all sorts of FREE STUFF that I magically make appear out of thin air!
Save it for Penn and Tellers Fool Us and stop bullshitting everyone.
Magic always comes with a price and the 'price' in this case is a destroyed, bankrupted economy.
Hey Negative Nelly no problem we'll just print more money!
Enjoy your RUNAWAY INFLATION.
Naw man we'll just borrow more from China!
Brilliant. You going to give every New Yorker free lessons in speaking Mandarin for when Beijing forecloses on Manhattan?
Stupid i
People's Bank (Score:2)
Where everyone calls you "Komrade" as you open your "Worker's Checking Account".
How is going to open any small businesses? (Score:2)
UBI has been tried before (Score:3)
In Finland and, most recently, in the province of Ontario in Canada. Both of these experiments were shut down a few months after they started. In Finland it was calculated they would have to raise their current income tax rate by 30% to make it sustainable. In Canada, it was shut down 2 years earlier than originally slated.
UBI is basically an extension of the welfare state where everyone gets a bit of government cheese, not just those unable (or unwilling) to work. Free money. Sounds great except when it comes time to actually pay for it. I suppose we can trot out the old "make the rich pay" thing but it never seems to work out that way. Those people employ experts whose job it is to find loopholes in tax legislation and they are highly compensated and very good at it. The middle class don't have those kinds of resources so end up paying the bulk of the taxes intended for the rich. This happens time and time again.
The same strategy is being used for wealth tax. All it has done has encouraged rich people to leave California and New York in droves. Texas and Florida await them with open arms.
Rich people didn't get where they are by just rolling over and accepting things like this. They have resources and mobility and will move if they have to. Good riddance you say? Fine, but who is going to fill the void for the substantial taxes they no longer pay to their state?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This Andrew Yang proposal of a "basic income promise" sounds like a great way to drive even more of the productive people out of NYC and NY state
What is the logic behind this assertion?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I'll take the figures as provided. All good reasons to consider moving elsewhere (and to address the particularly Byzantine US tax system) but neither new nor directly related to the "basic income promise". Perhaps I have missed something, but it seems that finding a billion dollars for any purpose out of an existing budget around $85B should not be too difficult*. I am sure promises from Yang's opponents will have no trouble matching the size of these, just targeted differently. Perhaps the complaint
Re: (Score:2)