I do think it’s possible at the state level to have the government step in to have a more hands on role for real estate among other things. Federally I think that’s a long shot, unless other states see how successful the progressive programs are in Blue states.

I don’t disagree that UBI is in many ways a band-aid. I see it as not too complex for your average person to understand though. The rent problem to me is one that needs to be tackled at the same time that UBI gets implemented.

People still get their freedom of spending their UBI as they desire, although some of their existing expenses could be deducted before they receive UBI payment (e.g., child care payments). From a policy selling perspective UBI looks very attractive, especially when you start receiving payments of it for a while. So much so that people would not stand it going away.

So if you’re working and get a UBI on top of your pay, then you have more money to invest in better versions of the things you have. If you’re living on the street, suddenly you have a government that cares about helping you to get off the ground and help put food on your table.

I don’t think specific help programs should go away mind you; I hear that sometimes but I disagree with that perspective. Maybe some of the UBI could be in a currency that’s only spendable on food (like food stamps), so in those rare cases the money potentially still goes to buying food.

I disagree that inflation hits billionaires harder, they invest their money in the stock market which outpaces the rate of inflation Year over Year. Meanwhile, your total buying power drops tremendously because of inflation’s increase each year. If most of your money isn’t in the stock market then the worth of your money continues to be less. If you don’t get a wage increase at your job, then you’re making less money each year rather than the same amount as well.

I do agree that UBI is good for workers though, mainly because it also puts power back in the hands of workers since they become not dependent on their employers to survive. Workers instead would be coming into work because they want to thrive.

Those people should be taxed more really. Personally, I believe every dollar over $1 billion should be taxed at 90+%. I would set the threshold for scaling those tax brackets much lower than that though.

Billionaires should be banned from using their stocks as collateral for loans as well.

The government really needs to either implement rent controls or buy up many of the private apartments to turn into public housing. It really doesn’t make a ton of sense for the product being leased for profit to be … property? In what world does it make sense for where you live to be a for-profit venture for someone else? Nah, the government could own it and rent out units at more reasonable rates/subsidizing the costs.

UBI is still great imo, but it’s not the end step like you said. We should have Universal Healthcare and public transit as well. I feel that UBI could pay for groceries, but grocery stores/food producers should have more regulations on the fillers and junk they put into these ‘food’ items they sell. I believe education K thru College should be free. It just makes sense for society to subsidize the education costs for the people that will help create value to our economy through their higher education.

UBI can be done at the state level too, but states may have to go into debt to get it going. Blue States should raise the taxes on bigger corporations to help fund the program, possibly even creating corporate tax brackets.

I think states should try to implement UBI at the state level, since it could be many years now before we have the votes to pass it federally. In the meantime, residents in Blue states could have a huge bump in their quality-of-life and it might even sell Purple and Red states to implement some of these progressive programs.

I could see something like what you are saying working Federally for funding such a program. We could implement Federal tax brackets on businesses as well to help fund the programs year after year if we really needed that.

How though? There’s no mechanism in UBI to increase production to match the increased demand. If anything its could decrease production / supply as less people work and choose to just live off UBI.

UBI gives a lot of leverage to workers to have over their employers.

Some people will do as you have said, where they will opt to not work and live off UBI. We see that currently though with some of these people living on the streets. People work for many reasons ultimately. For some, it’s to have their basic needs met, but many people work to have a higher quality of life and to have their wants met as well.

With a UBI you ideally could have a small apartment, amenities, pay for public transportation, and not have to worry about putting food on your table each day. Let me just say you have Universal Healthcare too since if we managed to get UBI implemented, then there likely are other progressive programs we could implement at the same time.

Increasing the amount of cash in the market doesn’t increase productivity/ supply, otherwise printing money would work.

The thing about UBI is that money is backed by the US government, they’re not printing new dollars, so they’re not devaluing the money in the marketplace.

Actually printing money in bulk is bad, because those printed dollars are not backed by assets, thus devaluing that currency as a whole. The US does print more money occasionally, but we devalue our dollar a little each time that we do.

Increasing aggregate demand / money without increasing aggregate supply / productivity just leads to inflation. This is what I mean by its myopic focus on consumption, production also needs to be considered. Everyone wants to focus on the “to each according to their needs” part and not the “from each according to their ability”

I agree that if our demand outpaced our production it would lead to higher inflation. Currently though, we produce much, much more than is demanded. So much so that we have billions in waste each year, that’s billions in weight too! So, realistically, people would be able to afford more food, but people only need/want so much food so spending habits on food should not change so much as to leave shelves consistently empty.

The same thing applies to clothing as well, where we toss tons, upon tons of new clothes each year.

Yeah certain industries can scale up relatively cheaply to match this increased demand but things like housing which have a limited supply that expands relatively slowly will just see price increases. You said this could cause increased competition for landlords but it will also cause increased competition for housing.

Housing is purposefully kept at low supply. If houses and apartments were allowed to be scaled up to meet demand, then housing prices would go down. The thing is, that all the Not In My Backyard (NIMBYs) people will not stand for having the price of their house going down, especially if the price could ever drop to be lower than they are paying for their mortgage. Development is slowed down for similar reasons since if there is an abundance of available housing then housing prices could drop.

If there are 4 houses and 5 households and before UBI 4 households made enough to afford $1,000 in rent and they got the 4 houses, after UBI of $1,000 the landlord can use the threat of renting to the homeless person to raise the rent until that homeless person is priced out again. If you increase the amount of money people have without increasing supply then the people will use that money to bid up prices until you’re back to the old distribution of resources.

The government could step in to buy up many private apartments up to turn into public housing or they could implement rent controls to prevent rampant greed from landlords. I don’t think UBI would be enough for most people currently living on the streets to afford to live downtown, but it could help them keep a small apartment in one of the less busy cities or in the lower cost neighborhoods.

The alternative to UBI that the left has been pushing forever, especially the African American left, has been a universal jobs guarantee. Anyone can go into a government office and they’ll give you a job with decent pay. Since you’re putting people to work you can actually increase productivity and supply to match the new demand. You still get all the guarantees of income and the benefits that entails of getting out of bad situations but you also are able to pressure employers for better labor standards. If the government is offering a living wage for 3 days a week then other employers will have to match that. It’s also more politically viable, trying to convince middle America that “free money” is a good thing will be a lot harder then convincing them that a jobs guarantee is good.

Personally, I’m in favor of more government jobs that pay a living wage. I don’t think it has to be mutually exclusive, mind you, we could have UBI and more government jobs. UBI gives more flexibility to a lot of people out there, for instance single parents can more easily work part-time and still put food on the table or university students could focus more on their education rather than needing to balance a part-time job and their schoolwork.

I agree that convincing ‘everyone’ of a UBI would be hard, but if Blue states implemented it and it saw success, then I’m sure people living in Purple/Red states could be convinced as well. I think you’re spot on though that we should still try to sell Universal Job Guarantee at the federal level as it could be sold right now with no further elaboration.

I think it’s still worth implementing UBI, most of the fears are something that can be tackled independently.

For instance, the why not have the government buy up most of the private apartments and turn them into public housing? Or at the least set rate increase limits on rent.

I don’t believe most things would face much noticeable inflation if a UBI were to be implemented, aside from luxury/high quality goods. A little inflation is baked into our economy anyway, as a little inflation is a good thing to prevent deflation.

I agree with you, people fear mongering about UBI being used to control people, when bosses could do that currently with a paycheck. UBI usually means no strings attached, although I’m sure there could be other incentive programs out there on top of UBI to reward people.

If we really want UBI to be less likely to be taken over by bad actors, I feel it makes sense to have each state implementing their own UBI programs. It would be great if this was a federal program that helped everyone, but even getting it passed federally is looking like an uphill climb. It makes way more sense to pass UBI in progressive states, and try to sell purple and red states on the idea as well.

I mean, Alaska has a Basic Income at the least, so in theory we already see one state mildly seeing the benefit of a Universal Basic Income.

Australia probably has the best system in place for any country, but if you want an even better version of what they have, might I suggest STAR voting or Ranked Robin voting? Alternatively there is also Score voting which is similar, but based on scoring each individual candidate.

All of these three avoid some of the pitfalls that are still in Ranked Choice voting, although all of these are much better than First Past the Post.

The problem doesn’t just lie in that there is conflict between people who do and do not want to help one another. It’s that there is a whole system in place that rewards the largescale harming of people.

I agree with you, the fact that there is an entire media environment geared towards fueling this as well does not help anyone. I feel that voting system changes and trying to implement a broader version of the Fairness Doctrine at the state level might help remedy some of the issues.

Trying to convince people to want to help each other is a challenge and confronts people’s individualism. That’s not the issue.

I agree, this is one of the challenges but not the main issue.

But the notion of agreeing on something with people who actively require harming others is fundamentally destructive to that cause.

These are partly the consequences of several things in one, many of them purposefully orchestrated and snowball. Namely, the defunding of education, a culture of superiority, the mass broadcasting of non-experts and personalities, and espionage to help prop up the worst and most divisive opinions.

The unfortunate reality is that there are lots of people out there feeling hurt. This hurt that they feel can very often be entirely justified as well. Maybe their town has had a slump in well-paying, blue collar jobs. Jobs that were once guaranteed to the level of people working at the same job as one of their parents and grandparents. Some of those blue collar workers were frustrated and then here comes the snake-oil pitch telling them that they lost their job, promotion, or higher pay to immigrants -when in reality it could have been to many other things like automation.

Many of those same people aren’t inherently against anyone, but when they feel lied to or taken advantage of then it makes their blood boil. Many of those same people could be convinced that it’s actually the billionaires taking their money and their jobs. From the sounds of it, Bernie Sanders has been having success with that message this year in rural West Virginia. There are a lot of voters out there with lower access to information.

I believe that if we do get a campaign going with progressive leaders that we could make some real inroads even in these communities and make it clear that it’s the billionaires that are making life in their communities more difficult.

I appreciate your genuine response, thank you for taking your time to reply to me.

Okay. Abstractly I’m for personal autonomy proliferation of possibilities and the cultivation/nurturing/flourishing of the potential of all intelligence–ai if that ever exists, whales, visiting aliens if that happens, and whatever else; even hypothetically some apes, if you can believe that–individually and collectively.

Right on, I agree with you that it would be worth promoting those potentials for intelligence like you said. I could even see an argument where we share the genes of understanding complex language that we have, although I feel we should try to slow aging more/eliminate more diseases/cancers before doing that much.

More viscerally I’m for banishing inefficiency precarity exploitation and unjustifiable bullshit, making the world more fun/interesting, and finding opportunities to grow in those considered finished/complete or discarded by bourgeoise society.

To me, it sounds like you want things to be better than they are, because you know they can be. I feel the same way about wanting things to be better, to experience the fun and to find joy in the unexpected/unknown.

Am I right in hearing that you want to pursue your passions, but that economically we don’t reward those routes? If that is the case, I think it’s a modern tragedy that society is not rewarding those with heart and passion to pursue the path they want to walk.

Also pretty opposed to pointless wasteful destruction of things that are unrecoverable or expensive to recover.

I feel the same way as you about wasteful destruction of things that that are damaged or hard to recover. Just because it’s not perfect, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have history or meaning behind it.

I’ve got a lot of anger about delusional superstitions theological and otherwise that justify awful bullshit that prevents and destroys the good stuff.

I think that’s a fair take, the paradox of tolerance certainly applies to what you’re talking about with many beliefs out there.

This means in practical terms that I’m extremely hostile to police, means testing, borders, hierarchy, private property, money, laws in general, bureaucracy, and probably a lot of other stuff you think is necessary or elemental to the way the world works.

I think many of the things you listed make sense to have gripes with in one way or another, especially in this day and age.

For instance, the means test you mentioned. Why is there a threshold for help? Why is it that once you go slightly past the threshold that you lose all of those safety nets from the benefit programs?

I mean, why do we have these arbitrary borders? We’re all human after all. Can’t we just come together and have a unified global society already? At the least you would think traveling wouldn’t be such a big deal, yet alone immigrating to another country just to live.

I don’t think most things should necessarily need hierarchies. I do like that some co-op businesses are out there for that reason, although not as many as there could/should be.

Personally, I’m fine with some forms of private property, but I do think there should be way more public property than there is. For instance, I feel that most if not all private apartments should be public apartments. I would personally like a house someday to have the space to raise a family. Technically, I have no issue with the state itself owning the house property if it was easier for future generations to have access to houses as well.

I don’t think money itself is bad, but how we allocate it is just bonkers. I mean, the fact that there are billionaires when people go hungry and don’t have a roof over their heads is an absurdity. If we taxed the billionaires and big corporations so that everyone had access to something like a Universal Basic Income and other progressive programs/housing, that would go a long ways towards making the world a better place.

I will not be saying what I’m in favor of in the day-to-day here–too unusual.

That’s okay, it’s better to not mention it if it’s too unique to you.

This sounds pretty uncompromising because it is. I haven’t had much connection to established society and ideas in my adult life except by conflict, and was explicitly excluded as a child. I have gained nothing from it except by force or deception, and so had no positive social/material bonds with it to guide my intellectual/emotional growth or relationships that would be stressed by radical ideas. Nobody has compromised with me, so I have compromised on nothing, which is unfortunate–i quite enjoy co-creation if the built world and perceptions thereof. Of all the people to seek common ground with; I am not the ideal. There are others you could ask.

I’m sorry that you’ve been fighting alone for so long and in such an uncaring environment at that. We’re not built to walk a lonely path -one without warmth, kindness, and consideration shown to us. I feel like you’re being a bit hard on yourself here, no one’s perfect after all. It sounds to me like you do care about helping others, it’s difficult when your voice is not being heard though.

You won’t convince many people if you aren’t willing to explain yourself; how can someone trust one that isn’t willing to meet them halfway? I encourage you to not say who you are, but what you stand for.

I think we can both agree that authoritarians are bad, and that what we are seeing now from the right is pushes for power by authoritarians.

Well, you still have ample chance to amend yourself and speak from the heart, if that’s something important to you.

Nah I’m agreeing with you; I’m talking about the type of person you replied to though.

From my understanding, they would love those helpful things, but as soon as they hear the person they dislike might be helped or benefit it makes their blood boil because they hate that guy. I believe this is the crux of some of the issues.

This is what makes even the first part of this post happen where liberals try to negotiate, they offer a “okay what about if the person works 40 hours” and the answer they get back is still a “NO”.

I do think it’s possible to convince these people, but you really have to sell it as “there is the billionaires and then the rest of us who are hard working people”. Senator Bernie Sanders has had success in West Virginia doing this, so maybe if we can get some progressive campaigns going to these small towns, listening to the concerns of the locals, and uniting these people under this common concern it can help build some bridges.

Hear me out here, maybe, the words mean slightly different things based on the cultural associations with those words?

I don’t disagree that they are used differently in Europe and the rest of the world, but those terms have regionally unique meanings in the US.

Liberal here means more pro-business/capitalism. It doesn’t inherently mean pro-unregulated capitalism though, nor pro-big corporations/billionaires.

Leftist here means supports left leaning policies. That can range quite a bit, and likely is more left-of-center.

I think your breakdown is an accurate representation of politics regardless. Lots of people saying they want this or that, but not a ton of action actually going forward to change things. Yet alone there even being big incentives for those in power to actually implement those changes.

To me, it feels like positive change has to happen locally and at a state level, since people don’t necessarily care to want what they are unfamiliar with.

I’ve seen more of this type of accelerationist, cultist talk cropping up lately. As a leftist-liberal, I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive where we can’t be pushing for that incremental positive change while still wanting more.

The fact that over 50% of those on the right, who are in power, don’t want positive change at all -even that incremental change- is what is the worrying sign.

We should be pushing for progressives to be in office and implement these progressive policies at the state level, as it’s clear that we have a big up-hill challenge to get any progressive policies passed federally.

What do you mean? Compromise on what issues exactly?

I agree with pretty much everything under the sun with left leaning policy. I’m a leftist-liberal since I don’t think those points are inherently mutually exclusive.

They can fall in line or fuck off–if a shitlib wants to volunteer as a warm body for something I’m doing without trying to subvert it I won’t turn them away

Cool! Was this just a lie then?

Great! Can you please explain some of the specific things you are doing? You mentioned this in your previous comment. Specifically the part about coalitions and such.

I think this stance isn’t quite the full picture. The issue I see in the US is that over 50% of the people in power federally, Republicans, don’t want even those very moderate positions voted in.

It’s not an issue of leftists being too left, but an issue of there not being enough people sold on leftists views in all the red/purple states. When the 40 hour a week requirement isn’t even getting sold, of course those people further right aren’t voting in a more considerate option.

Really, I feel the issues stem from many people believing that we were close to getting the liberal goals passed federally. Now, it looks like we’re starting back several steps with how much 2024 was a backstep. At this point, trying to get those leftist programs implemented at the state level is the most logical thing to do, specifically in blue states.

I think blue states held off on implementing most of these programs since it is very expensive and it would have made way more sense to fund all these programs federally, but that’s not realistic now. Blue states need to be willing to go into debt to fund these progressive programs, and only after they are implemented and the people are benefiting is it likely that purple/red states also buy into trying these programs.

Don’t get me wrong, the corporate Dems aren’t the ones trying to get these programs implemented at the state level. For that reason, we should primary the non-progressive Dems. Better yet, we should try to get an alternative voting system implemented in each of our states so we get more politicians like Mamdani in office.