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UBI, junior addition, is wildly popular:
The senior addition is pretty popular, too:
Republicans, led by the president, initially got to the left of Democrats with the onetime payout to all tax-filing American adults. As the extent of the economic carnage comes into public focus, congressional Democrats are pivoting past the ground the populist wing of the GOP staked out. Senate Democrats are proposing a $2,000 monthly UBI to last for duration of the coronavirus pandemic. No specific sunset provisions are included–they continue until HHS declares that the emergency is over. As nothing is more permanent than a temporary government program, while it may be Joe Biden’s husk shambling towards the presidency, the geist of Andrew Yang is leading the way.
The idea that the Fed will ever be able to tighten without completely collapsing the financial markets is risible. The conjoined Fed and Treasury are now even publicly playing coy with the idea of negative nominal rates. The environment is allegedly deflationary, after all!
Stop for a second to dwell on that. We’re supposedly looking at the simultaneous prospects of deflation and negative interest rates. That means borrowing dollars that will appreciate in real value while also being paid interest for doing so. Borrow all you’re able to and become wealthier. You’re being handed an income-producing asset for free, as much of it as you’re able to grab. It’s absurd.
So absurd that I, alongside most of my fellow Americans, back the Democrat plan. The Fed has no way out of this trap, so we might as well put the pedal to the metal for as long as we’re able to before default or inflation crashes the dollar. If either of those outcomes are hysterical doomerist nonsense, well, let’s get a damned UBI already, then. What the hell are we waiting for? People are hurting. Help them.
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UBI is just another form of socialism, if it is permanent.
Plus, if it is just temporary, and only for people under a certain level, it is not ‘UBI’ even under the definition of the acronym.
https://pics.me.me/socialism-is-bad-ecause-it-ewards-lazy-entitled-people-socialism-44202132.png
News flash: socialism is dead, capitalism won all over the world.
UBI is capitalist idea, to keep the consumption machine running.
Cold war is over, you can stop listening to Rush Limbaugh "conservative" bullshit.
Yep. And the stock market crash was predictably deflationary.
It is time for you to eat the Terror Bird.
What was that neologism that came into being in the seventies, again? It begins with an "S", I think.Replies: @Mr. Rational, @Thomm
negative rates are for the federal funds rate – the central bank will pay investiment banks to borrow. negative interest rates will never be for you. commercial banks will never pay Joe Sixpack to take a car loan or a house loan.
important to understand what’s going on here. a negative federal funds rate will make things even better for big banks, and even worse for the average man. in that scenario, banks borrow money from the fed at a negative interest rate, meaning they get paid to take the money, which they then loan to you at a positive interest rate – netting them a bigger margin.
they’ll also get very lazy and sloppy with lending again because it’s in their interest to borrow as much money at a negative rate as they can, so they can turn around and lend out as much money to consumers as possible at a positive rate.
this is one of the few places where Trump is 100% wrong. it won’t even help him, though he thinks it will.
Yep, haven't we been there, done that enough already to understand that putting money into Wall Street's hands does nothing for the 90%. More money into the hands of Wall Street just fuels the speculative frenzy in assets, benefiting the top 10% of the economy who are asset holders and, of course, the Wall Street players who gin up the game. I wish we could have a do-over in the primaries. UBI, debt jubilee are ideas whose time is now.
In the meantime, rates on CDs will go to lower than they've ever gotten, which doesn't matter much, as even the 2.5% you can get now is lower than inflation. CDs will have numbers like 0.12%, 0.08%, etc, to make the somewhat-innumerate customers (most of them) think the difference matters, so they should LOCK IN NOW! (to that 0.128% one for 3 years, available this month only, wow!) Then, your money can be lent out for 3 years, at about 3,000% higher a rate. It's a win/win.
What if the rates really showed negative rates("yeah, it'll cost you just a measly 0.5% annually to keep your money safe here in
our vaulterrr,the Main Branch, in a secure location inside a server in ....... and it's gone!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DT7bX-B1Mg
What would people do? Would they get used to paying money to have their digital-form of currency "stored" for them? Gold, bitchez!Replies: @Daniel H
We are in a national crisis, one that predated the emergence of the virus. We must thing of bold actions. A good start, a somewhat debt jubilee through creating a National Bank that will exchange high priced consumer debt for 0.5% financing should seriously be considered. Oh yeah, it will hurt extant financial players. Well most of them deserve a little hurting, screw them.
The poverty is extreme out there. Drudge reports that 40% of low-income workers lost their job in March. And here is something, based on anecdotal evidence, gained by talking to riders on my Uber perambulations, many of these laid-off don’t apply for UI. Why? Crazy to think, but many don’t think that they deserve it, or the process is to convoluted, or they don’t qualify for this or that reason. Crazy, but true. There is a lot of suffering. But the poor in America are used to this. Just rolling with the punches of the American way.
important to understand what's going on here. a negative federal funds rate will make things even better for big banks, and even worse for the average man. in that scenario, banks borrow money from the fed at a negative interest rate, meaning they get paid to take the money, which they then loan to you at a positive interest rate - netting them a bigger margin.
they'll also get very lazy and sloppy with lending again because it's in their interest to borrow as much money at a negative rate as they can, so they can turn around and lend out as much money to consumers as possible at a positive rate.
this is one of the few places where Trump is 100% wrong. it won't even help him, though he thinks it will.Replies: @Daniel H, @Achmed E. Newman, @Audacious Epigone
negative rates are for the federal funds rate – the central bank will pay investiment banks to borrow. negative interest rates will never be for you.
Yep, haven’t we been there, done that enough already to understand that putting money into Wall Street’s hands does nothing for the 90%. More money into the hands of Wall Street just fuels the speculative frenzy in assets, benefiting the top 10% of the economy who are asset holders and, of course, the Wall Street players who gin up the game. I wish we could have a do-over in the primaries. UBI, debt jubilee are ideas whose time is now.
The poverty is extreme out there. Drudge reports that 40% of low-income workers lost their job in March. And here is something, based on anecdotal evidence, gained by talking to riders on my Uber perambulations, many of these laid-off don't apply for UI. Why? Crazy to think, but many don't think that they deserve it, or the process is to convoluted, or they don't qualify for this or that reason. Crazy, but true. There is a lot of suffering. But the poor in America are used to this. Just rolling with the punches of the American way.Replies: @Nodwink
Mark Ames is right: the USA is a nation of sad, beaten-down serfs.
I’m not necessarily against UBI… It may be unavoidable to reduce social unrest when full automation comes to many industries.
However it has its drawbacks… Also I can see why the elites like this idea: basically, robots working and people consuming… In “lockdown” inside their homes, ordering from Amajoke and watching Netfux and “interacting” only via Faceberg.
I used to think this type of world, show in exhaustion in movies, was a sort of dystopia. But now I realize, that, from the point of view of the elites, it’s paradise. And think about it, $1200 per month is chump change for them.
"Well, real Americans will work instead of being socialist lay abouts....."
They could not understand that when self driving trucks put drivers out of work, robots put warehousemen and dock workers out of work, and scores of other jobs are ended due to automation that something had to be done or the people living in gated communities would find their heads on pikes.
Even white collar jobs are at risk as AI is increasingly being used to do routine legal work and routine medical diagnosis. What isn't being outsourced to India anyway.
They just could not comprehend that when you have millions of unemployed men desperate to feed their families that torches and pitchforks will come out.Replies: @Not My Economy, @Cloudbuster
Treat capital gains the same as wages and salaries. Then the UBI won’t seem so cheap for the elite, nor should it.Replies: @Mr. Rational
As a side, totally off-topic note, why is it that publishing comments here is automatic, while at iSteve it takes days? His moderation is so slow! I almost gave up commenting there, when he finally publishes my comment, the discussion already moved forward and it has no point anymore. I don’t know why his moderation is so slow, it cannot be because it’s thorough, since he publishes useless Tiny Dick comments all the time. Usually as the first ones.
It's not the same for every commenter on there, though, as you have likely noticed. He must have a good number of grandfathered-in commenters whose comments go directly up, as with mine on here (thank you, A.E. This IS much more pleasant.) I can tell from experience, Dumbo, that Mr. Sailer is not an early-morning type guy. From 1 P Los Angeles time to well after midnight most times, your comment will appear pretty quickly.
Anyway, it's not usually days, Dumbo, though I've had a fraction of a percent of them take pretty much a day. (I think those just got missed.) You need to comment on iSteve time, which could be really impractical, depending on where you live.
I hope that helps.Replies: @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
Debt Jubilee! Debt Jubilee! Debt Jubilee!
and a restricted UBI that replaces all social welfare spending.
important to understand what's going on here. a negative federal funds rate will make things even better for big banks, and even worse for the average man. in that scenario, banks borrow money from the fed at a negative interest rate, meaning they get paid to take the money, which they then loan to you at a positive interest rate - netting them a bigger margin.
they'll also get very lazy and sloppy with lending again because it's in their interest to borrow as much money at a negative rate as they can, so they can turn around and lend out as much money to consumers as possible at a positive rate.
this is one of the few places where Trump is 100% wrong. it won't even help him, though he thinks it will.Replies: @Daniel H, @Achmed E. Newman, @Audacious Epigone
I think you are quite right with all of this, P.N. A.E., do you think regular people will be able to get loans at negative interest rates? I don’t. We’ll pay 3-4 % while the banks MAKE 1% for borrowing that FED-created money.
In the meantime, rates on CDs will go to lower than they’ve ever gotten, which doesn’t matter much, as even the 2.5% you can get now is lower than inflation. CDs will have numbers like 0.12%, 0.08%, etc, to make the somewhat-innumerate customers (most of them) think the difference matters, so they should LOCK IN NOW! (to that 0.128% one for 3 years, available this month only, wow!) Then, your money can be lent out for 3 years, at about 3,000% higher a rate. It’s a win/win.
What if the rates really showed negative rates(“yeah, it’ll cost you just a measly 0.5% annually to keep your money safe here in
our vaulterrr,the Main Branch, in a secure location inside a server in ….… and it’s gone!”
What would people do? Would they get used to paying money to have their digital-form of currency “stored” for them? Gold, bitchez!
No, you'll pay 12-23%, as I currently do on my JP Morgan credit card.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
Socialism, Socialism, Socialism! It worked GREAT for the last 55 years. We have a much more responsible American population now! ‘Merika, hell heah!
workedwill work GREAT for thelastnext 55 years. We have a much moreresponsibleirresponsible American population now! ‘Merika, hell heah! Oh hell yes!Replies: @Achmed E. NewmanIt’s like this, Dumbo. Mr. Sailer is one of the few writers here that does his own moderation. I don’t mean that he reads every one of them (almost impossible), but he lets them through via some method at the times he is around working on his blog.
It’s not the same for every commenter on there, though, as you have likely noticed. He must have a good number of grandfathered-in commenters whose comments go directly up, as with mine on here (thank you, A.E. This IS much more pleasant.) I can tell from experience, Dumbo, that Mr. Sailer is not an early-morning type guy. From 1 P Los Angeles time to well after midnight most times, your comment will appear pretty quickly.
Anyway, it’s not usually days, Dumbo, though I’ve had a fraction of a percent of them take pretty much a day. (I think those just got missed.) You need to comment on iSteve time, which could be really impractical, depending on where you live.
I hope that helps.
Socialism, Socialism, Socialism! It
workedwill work GREAT for thelastnext 55 years. We have a much moreresponsibleirresponsible American population now! ‘Merika, hell heah! Oh hell yes!So, you're saying that we need Socialism now more than ever, because the people are irresponsible now. Is that it? What should we responsible people do at this point? Just asking for my friends too...Replies: @iffen
workedwill work GREAT for thelastnext 55 years. We have a much moreresponsibleirresponsible American population now! ‘Merika, hell heah! Oh hell yes!Replies: @Achmed E. NewmanRight, mine was sarcasm, Iffen, but it’d have come through better if I could spell “yeah!”
So, you’re saying that we need Socialism now more than ever, because the people are irresponsible now. Is that it? What should we responsible people do at this point? Just asking for my friends too…
I did not want government ownership of economic entities, as a matter of fact we should franchise the USPS. I want an anti-monopoly, efficient and fair social welfare centered government. We need a social welfare system that encourages responsibility, not the one that we have now that is inefficient, work dis-incentivizing, arbitrary and unjust.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Cloudbuster
Who has power and money right now that would benefit from debt jubilee? Contact those people and get them on board.
Unless you bump up those income limits, you will not convince some of us that this isn’t just another form of income redistribution.
Furthermore, since different regions of the country have different costs of living, all these numbers don’t mean shit. I may earn something above some limit that sounds good in Idaho, but I can assure you it doesn’t go as far where I live.
If you are going to do UBI, you have to make it truly “U,” as in Universal, as in for everybody, including me. And, you might want to adjust it upward for how much things cost where I live.
Get real, and don’t take my money for this unless you are going to give it right back to me, increased proportionally for my cost of living.
It's not the same for every commenter on there, though, as you have likely noticed. He must have a good number of grandfathered-in commenters whose comments go directly up, as with mine on here (thank you, A.E. This IS much more pleasant.) I can tell from experience, Dumbo, that Mr. Sailer is not an early-morning type guy. From 1 P Los Angeles time to well after midnight most times, your comment will appear pretty quickly.
Anyway, it's not usually days, Dumbo, though I've had a fraction of a percent of them take pretty much a day. (I think those just got missed.) You need to comment on iSteve time, which could be really impractical, depending on where you live.
I hope that helps.Replies: @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
My biggest complaint with Steve is very simply that he continues to indulge in “spergy” arguments over “herd immunity” versus “lockdown.”
It’s mind-boggling that people haven’t figured out that the lockdowns (now primarily in Democrat-ruled states) are extreme, but uneven. And that is what the argument should be about: why are Democrats unevenly punished businesses to the disproportionate benefit of “GloboHomo” big business?
Seriously, when I buy groceries at the moment, I buy from local stores because I don’t want to stand in an idiotic line – reminiscent of communist Europe – at the Wally World. How is that safe? Yet no one is questioning this, content on instead arguing about the same spergy binary bullshit that’s been stale for 6 weeks now.
There are basically two Alt-Right/dissident right opinions on the subject of the Corona virus, and I am firmly in the camp that simply asks what makes GloboHomo so much safer than a small business.
However, Steve is otherwise a fine blogger and his moderation isn’t unjust, in my experience.
How much are you paying him to blog?
How is it any more absurd than the idea of an a financial instrument being an income producing asset?
Our system based on the idea that there is the magic box called “SPY” where you can put 500 bucks inside and then open the box back up in 7 years and there will be 1000 bucks in there. You can get wealthy by doing nothing expect placing money into the magic box.
UBI is about trying to band aid the system, and it’s now being pushed by people who hate you and want you dead. So think about this. Is UBI, in this context, with everything else the same, good for you?
Take the money, of course, but understand what they are trying to do to you. Try to find countermeasures
I don't find that argument compelling, but there it is.
Plus, if it is just temporary, and only for people under a certain level, it is not 'UBI' even under the definition of the acronym.Replies: @William D. Wall, @obwandiyag, @another anon, @Audacious Epigone
Socialism for everyone (including the white middle and working class) instead of just socialism for the rich, the non-whites, and the ultra-poor.
So, you're saying that we need Socialism now more than ever, because the people are irresponsible now. Is that it? What should we responsible people do at this point? Just asking for my friends too...Replies: @iffen
So, you’re saying that we need Socialism now more than ever, because the people are irresponsible now.
I did not want government ownership of economic entities, as a matter of fact we should franchise the USPS. I want an anti-monopoly, efficient and fair social welfare centered government. We need a social welfare system that encourages responsibility, not the one that we have now that is inefficient, work dis-incentivizing, arbitrary and unjust.
C’mon man (in the words of Joe Biden) you know the reason $500 can double to $1,000 in 7 years. Not just the rule of 72, but also, especially, the productivity of the people.
There was a time when Americans did indeed make things and add value. In those days, which I remember, you could indeed double your purchasing power, your real money, in a certain amount of time. It wasn’t a financial economy then; it was industrial, as in productive. Our parents made things.
No bandaids. The only way to really fix the system is to start making real, physical things again. Screw the financial guys, and that means me too. We’ll be fine. Draw a line around our country, and make stuff here. Let the free market work inside that line, where our culture and our people live. Stop forcing them to compete with, and therefore become like, East Asian worker bees.
The ascent of finance capital during the Reagan-go-go years was the beginning of the end of the middle class. A class of parasites assumed control of the economy.
"We'll be fine."
That's the problem. You suck the blood and sweat from productive people and prosper.
For the past half century America has led the world in making hate filled illiterate criminal “teens” at public expense. That has to count for something.Replies: @Mr. Rational
“We used to make shit in this country.” – Frank Sobotka was always my favorite character on ‘The Wire.’
Capitalism works well when integrated with socialism. A debt jubilee is necessary, especially the elimination of student debt. Is it a wise idea, in a consumer-driven economy, to place a debt burden on a newly-trained work-force, leaving them unable to buy houses and cars and the rest of the crap that advertisers inject into our dreams?
People these days think a college education is a basic human right. That needs to be changed.
Wouldn't eliminating student debt just be rewarding people for doing college courses they don't need and rewarding colleges for providing worthless courses?
In fact wouldn't a debt jubilee just encourage more debt in the long run?Replies: @iffen
AE, it’s 3 decades too late.
http://ota.polyonymo.us/others-papers/NetAssetTax_Bowery.txt
The rigged system is Falling Down.
Retail is down double digits.
The stock market is a balloon about to pop.
UBI is a last ditch attempt to prevent deflation.
Deflation or hyperinflation.
Both will crash the System.
“Screw the financial guys, and that means me too.”
The ascent of finance capital during the Reagan-go-go years was the beginning of the end of the middle class. A class of parasites assumed control of the economy.
“We’ll be fine.”
That’s the problem. You suck the blood and sweat from productive people and prosper.
In the meantime, rates on CDs will go to lower than they've ever gotten, which doesn't matter much, as even the 2.5% you can get now is lower than inflation. CDs will have numbers like 0.12%, 0.08%, etc, to make the somewhat-innumerate customers (most of them) think the difference matters, so they should LOCK IN NOW! (to that 0.128% one for 3 years, available this month only, wow!) Then, your money can be lent out for 3 years, at about 3,000% higher a rate. It's a win/win.
What if the rates really showed negative rates("yeah, it'll cost you just a measly 0.5% annually to keep your money safe here in
our vaulterrr,the Main Branch, in a secure location inside a server in ....... and it's gone!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DT7bX-B1Mg
What would people do? Would they get used to paying money to have their digital-form of currency "stored" for them? Gold, bitchez!Replies: @Daniel H
I don’t. We’ll pay 3-4 % while the banks MAKE 1% for borrowing that FED-created money.
No, you’ll pay 12-23%, as I currently do on my JP Morgan credit card.
Why in the f__k do you pay interest on the credit card? I never liked your Commie comments to begin with, Daniel, and now I see how you got this way. Pay the thing off each month. This stuff ain't rocket surgery.
Are you worried that if you become fiscally responsible, Communism will lose its luster for you?Replies: @dfordoom, @The Alarmist
I did not want government ownership of economic entities, as a matter of fact we should franchise the USPS. I want an anti-monopoly, efficient and fair social welfare centered government. We need a social welfare system that encourages responsibility, not the one that we have now that is inefficient, work dis-incentivizing, arbitrary and unjust.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Cloudbuster
Sorry, we are all out of these social welfare systems that encourage responsibility of which you speak. That would be private charity by good people in a unified country. That’d be the United States of 1776 to 1965. Sorry, we are all out now. Tank you, come again.
No, you'll pay 12-23%, as I currently do on my JP Morgan credit card.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
No, I absolutely won’t pay 12-23%. I don’t have ANY credit cards – just a debit card.
Why in the f__k do you pay interest on the credit card? I never liked your Commie comments to begin with, Daniel, and now I see how you got this way. Pay the thing off each month. This stuff ain’t rocket surgery.
Are you worried that if you become fiscally responsible, Communism will lose its luster for you?
Apart from mortgages which are difficult to avoid (although I don't have one) getting into debt is foolish and irresponsible. I have a beat-up old car but I own the damned thing outright. I bought the car I could afford, not the shiny new one that would have been nice but would have entailed getting into debt.
I have credit cards and debit cards, but rarely use them. I try to pay for everything with cash. I pay 0%. As the world continues to fall apart, credit cards, debit cards, and even cash might become useless.
These people can have their f'ing jubilee, but I hope they have gardens to grow the food they won't be able to buy at any price in the brave new world they are ushering in.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Audacious Epigone
“As a side, totally off-topic note, why is it that publishing comments here is automatic, while at iSteve it takes days?”
Steve has gone way downhill. as you note, he publishes garbage, zero value troll posts immediately, while sandbagging lots of valuable comments from regular posters.
i’ve complained about it several times. sometimes he even deletes those posts.
i’m really not sure what’s going on. i used to think maybe he wanted as much traffic and volume as possible to bump up his numbers, since he makes a living at this stuff. so he wold even let the troll comments go thru.
now i have less generous assumptions, after he’s blocked me a dozen times over the last 2 or 3 years especially. it’s definitely nothing related to him going off the deep end with this virus thing. he’s been doing this for 3 or 4 years at least.
However it has its drawbacks... Also I can see why the elites like this idea: basically, robots working and people consuming... In "lockdown" inside their homes, ordering from Amajoke and watching Netfux and "interacting" only via Faceberg.
I used to think this type of world, show in exhaustion in movies, was a sort of dystopia. But now I realize, that, from the point of view of the elites, it's paradise. And think about it, $1200 per month is chump change for them.Replies: @Chris Mallory, @RadicalCenter, @Alexander Turok
I had this argument on one of the “conservative” websites a couple years ago.
“Well, real Americans will work instead of being socialist lay abouts…..”
They could not understand that when self driving trucks put drivers out of work, robots put warehousemen and dock workers out of work, and scores of other jobs are ended due to automation that something had to be done or the people living in gated communities would find their heads on pikes.
Even white collar jobs are at risk as AI is increasingly being used to do routine legal work and routine medical diagnosis. What isn’t being outsourced to India anyway.
They just could not comprehend that when you have millions of unemployed men desperate to feed their families that torches and pitchforks will come out.
Negative Interest Rates: You loan someone $10, get less than $10 back at maturity.
Are you people stupid? THAT’S deflation (a decrease in the supply of money & credit.)
People buy long term debt with no intention of holding it to maturity; long-term debt is purchased with an expectation that rates will decline (also known as the market value of that debt rising) so that it may be sold (well in advance of maturity) for a capital gain.
The UBI is hilarious:
1. Teach people that production (productive effort) is irrelevant.
2. Make people utterly dependent on their political masters (turning all Americans into what Native Americans on the Rez know all too well.)
3. Continuing to believe that Say’s Law is irrelevant.
Say’s Law states that in order to consume, you must first produce. This is a logical axiom: For a market of three things/people, the butcher, the baker and the shoe cobbler, in order for the butcher to enter the marketplace and BUY bread, the butcher has to have PRODUCED marketable product (meat) in excess of his own family’s needs, and the baker must have done the same, too.
The UBI (and all such schemes) add PURCHASING power to people’s hands WITHOUT any attendant production. Taken to its full end, you have a “market” full of people waving money around BUT NOTING ON THE SHELVES, because no one needed to produce in order to “be a consumer.”
Welcome to the USSR. Rubles but empty shelves.
If the Fed created $1T in credit and handed it to 1000 hedge fund managers, you don’t get an increase in the price of ground chuck, you get asset price inflation (like the last 39 years.) When the same $1T gets handed to Joe Sixpack everywhere, what do you think happens to food prices?
When you can explain and advise this situation, you can join us at the adult table. Until then, I'm sorry but you will be restricted to explaining economics to 9 year olds.Replies: @Intelligent Dasein
Debt deflation seems highly likely (in the form of either negative rates for “safe” debt, or falling prices…higher i, for shakier debt…or outright default.)
When money is debt, debt is money and debt is wealth. Watch it shrink (we’re not quite there yet, but it seems probable.)
"Well, real Americans will work instead of being socialist lay abouts....."
They could not understand that when self driving trucks put drivers out of work, robots put warehousemen and dock workers out of work, and scores of other jobs are ended due to automation that something had to be done or the people living in gated communities would find their heads on pikes.
Even white collar jobs are at risk as AI is increasingly being used to do routine legal work and routine medical diagnosis. What isn't being outsourced to India anyway.
They just could not comprehend that when you have millions of unemployed men desperate to feed their families that torches and pitchforks will come out.Replies: @Not My Economy, @Cloudbuster
You see this take a lot, but I have to doubt. People have no idea who to target, and even if they did the targets don’t have stores of food or even much hard currency. How does the torch and pitchfork lead to feeding the family? Are they going to literally eat fund managers? The great thing about our system from the point of view of the ruling class is that it dilutes responsibility. Everything is by committee, and nobody knows who is on the committee.
For an enterprising pitchfork-mob leader who is trying to feed his family, it will quickly become obvious that starting up a mob but then ratting out his followers for the reward is a much more likely way to get his family fed than actually attacking a powerful person, who most likely doesn’t live in the same zip code as him in the first place.
Not saying people won’t get violent, but, going to be random or score-settling at best rather than revolutionary.
Today’s white collar workers are going to run somebody through with a pitchfork, lmao
” . . . one that predated the emergence of the virus.’
spot on comment ——-
Missed opportunities
Furthermore, since different regions of the country have different costs of living, all these numbers don't mean shit. I may earn something above some limit that sounds good in Idaho, but I can assure you it doesn't go as far where I live.
If you are going to do UBI, you have to make it truly "U," as in Universal, as in for everybody, including me. And, you might want to adjust it upward for how much things cost where I live.
Get real, and don't take my money for this unless you are going to give it right back to me, increased proportionally for my cost of living.Replies: @Jay Fink, @Audacious Epigone, @RadicalCenter
The universal is what is appealing about it to me. I have paid into the system for decades but rarely get anything back. I want one of two extremes. UBI or cut everyone off. The status quo of saftey net for single mothers, everyone else fend for yourself is unacceptable.
Achmed, you are truly a prisoner of the past. It would be easier (actually, it is near impossible) to seize control of the government and use it to accomplish our goals than it would be to recreate all the little platoons that began disappearing (documented) 30-40 years ago. You have to work with the economy and culture that you have, not the one that you daydream about.
Before you can do anything positive, you have to be able to at least imagine it.
Never heard that tune before. Oh, wait, I have. And it always works out great.
People don’t work for money. People work to produce. The only way to consume, unless you own slaves, is to produce and exchange your production for the production of other people.
Some people can produce by themselves in their home. Building the first PC’s in their garage for example. Or developing the Google algorithm in their landlord’s garage. Or a hot girl who posts pictures in skimpy clothing and gets millions of hits. She produces entertainment and enjoyment for viewers.
But most people have to go to a job because they really cant think of a way to produce stuff that other people value enough to give them their stuff. At a job, someone else put together a enterprise to produce. You rent your time, skills and effort to help the production and you get claims on other people’s production.
If few people produce then their will be shortages of production. When the food and other shortages become acute the government will assign you to a job and jail those who don’t produce. Welcome to the world you ushered in.
Iffen, the economy and culture we have now are crap! You don’t work with it – you work against it. Homeschooling, which maybe 50 times as many parents as used to are doing at least temporarily, is part of the answer – that’s one of a few lucky breaks to come out of this Kung Flu Infotainment Panic Fest.
Before you can do anything positive, you have to be able to at least imagine it.
Why wouldn’t workfare or a job guarantee, or even the government bribing Ford or Carrier, or sending the CEO of GM a dead fish wrapped in a newspaper, so it doesn’t fire factory workers, be a worse idea than throwing people money to watch porn and eat Cheetos all day.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Lenin walks around the world.
Frontiers cannot bar him.
Neither barracks nor barricades impede.
Nor does barbed wire scar him.
Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.
Lenin walks around the world.
The sun sets like a scar.
Between the darkness and the dawn
There rises a red star.Yeah, I know, Soviet Union is dead and buried.
And the British Empire is dead too.
Neither is going to return.
Kipling's British Empire propaganda is as relevant argument in 21st century as is Soviet propaganda.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
You might not be old enough to remember the cynical joke of workers in the Soviet Union: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
And then it all falls apart, because too many have no incentive to actually produce the things the society needs. In a few years you might have the American version of Pol Pot, marching the useless eaters out into the fields and killing all those who can’t or won’t go along to their new roles.
UBI is nothing more than the monetary equivalent of heroin. This is not going to end well.
Actually, your title and comments are nicely captured in this old chestnut:
"Well, real Americans will work instead of being socialist lay abouts....."
They could not understand that when self driving trucks put drivers out of work, robots put warehousemen and dock workers out of work, and scores of other jobs are ended due to automation that something had to be done or the people living in gated communities would find their heads on pikes.
Even white collar jobs are at risk as AI is increasingly being used to do routine legal work and routine medical diagnosis. What isn't being outsourced to India anyway.
They just could not comprehend that when you have millions of unemployed men desperate to feed their families that torches and pitchforks will come out.Replies: @Not My Economy, @Cloudbuster
There’s more to factor in here than mere economics. Men are not just economic machines. Men don’t need to work just to earn an income. They need to work to feel useful and dignified. We see the pernicious effects of unearned money with welfare recipients. UBI won’t fix that.
I suspect that a large number of people these days see work simply a a means of getting money. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I think it's how most people see it.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I just think we now have a culture which measures people's worth not by the work they do but merely by the amount of money they make. Which probably is psychologically damaging.
And when a man gets a bit older the priority becomes impressing that one special woman with the idea that he can be a good provider, that he can support a wife and children. Which means having a job.
But that's largely gone by the board. For men whose only contact with women is watching porn there's no need to impress them. You can be an overweight loser living in Mom's basement with no job but as long as you have wifi you can have all the porn you want and the pornstar you're watching doesn't know or care that you're an overweight loser living in Mom's basement with no job.
It's just a thought.
The exception to this is people who fill up their retirement years with a lot of activities. My 86 year old mother told me that everyone she knew who retired at 65 and sat on the couch all day watching television passed away after a couple of years but everyone who either kept working or engaged in a lot of activities was still around. Even tasks like babysitting the grandchildren, doing part time volunteer work, caring for a pet, growing a vegetable garden and so on which are non-paid work can be effective.Replies: @res
Working retirees may have long active lives, but so do the heirs who never really had to work. Yachting, flying private planes, "agricultural management" (of the land they own) etc. seem to fill the need for purpose and endeavour in life just fine.
It would be easier (actually, it is near impossible) to seize control of the government and use it to accomplish our goals….
Never heard that tune before. Oh, wait, I have. And it always works out great.
I did not want government ownership of economic entities, as a matter of fact we should franchise the USPS. I want an anti-monopoly, efficient and fair social welfare centered government. We need a social welfare system that encourages responsibility, not the one that we have now that is inefficient, work dis-incentivizing, arbitrary and unjust.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Cloudbuster
Iffen wants Fascism, not Communism.
Try to hold in the road.
You’re trying to explain your political philosophy. Do you dispute my description?
Yes. Fascists believe people exist to serve the state. I believe that the state exists to serve the people.Replies: @Cloudbuster
It will fix the county taking your home because you can’t afford to pay the property tax.
The school budget is a majority of property tax spending where I live, Mr. Mallory. They waste money all over the place. I'll tell you another time about being called in to the office for our elementary school boy being out 3 days straight (with no email to the proper authority from us), and the meeting was like a freakin deposition. First thing out of my mouth was "... so this is where my tax money is going ..."
Surely the main problem with student debt is the insane number of people getting college educations. Especially worthless Mickey Mouse degrees in grievance studies and pseudosciences, plus colleges are churning out way too many lawyers and economists. Drastically reduce the number of people going to college and the problem will become manageable.
People these days think a college education is a basic human right. That needs to be changed.
Wouldn’t eliminating student debt just be rewarding people for doing college courses they don’t need and rewarding colleges for providing worthless courses?
In fact wouldn’t a debt jubilee just encourage more debt in the long run?
Why in the f__k do you pay interest on the credit card? I never liked your Commie comments to begin with, Daniel, and now I see how you got this way. Pay the thing off each month. This stuff ain't rocket surgery.
Are you worried that if you become fiscally responsible, Communism will lose its luster for you?Replies: @dfordoom, @The Alarmist
Same here Achmed. I have a debit card and a charge card which I pay in full every month. I use them for convenience, not as a source of free money. I have zero personal debt.
Credit cards are a seriously bad idea. We’re in full agreement on this issue.
Apart from mortgages which are difficult to avoid (although I don’t have one) getting into debt is foolish and irresponsible. I have a beat-up old car but I own the damned thing outright. I bought the car I could afford, not the shiny new one that would have been nice but would have entailed getting into debt.
Of course, you’ll have exactly the home they think you’re worthy of, and you probably won’t own it. UBI won’t solve any of the problems its advocates think it will solve and I’m utterly tired of explaining why.
That’s definitely the most likely scenario. It will actually strengthen the position of the ruling class – it will give them an excuse to crack down.
That’s true in an ideal society where people can see the work they do as being meaningful. These days a lot of work is rather abstract. If you’re a cubicle drone it’s not easy to see your job as meaningful.
I suspect that a large number of people these days see work simply a a means of getting money. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but I think it’s how most people see it.
I’m not disagreeing with you, I just think we now have a culture which measures people’s worth not by the work they do but merely by the amount of money they make. Which probably is psychologically damaging.
Here’s another thought that occurs to me. One of the major motivations for men to work is to impress girls. To impress girls you need a car. You need to be able to buy them gifts and take them out to nice places. Impressing girls costs money. Young men will work jobs they don’t particularly like if it means they can impress girls.
And when a man gets a bit older the priority becomes impressing that one special woman with the idea that he can be a good provider, that he can support a wife and children. Which means having a job.
But that’s largely gone by the board. For men whose only contact with women is watching porn there’s no need to impress them. You can be an overweight loser living in Mom’s basement with no job but as long as you have wifi you can have all the porn you want and the pornstar you’re watching doesn’t know or care that you’re an overweight loser living in Mom’s basement with no job.
It’s just a thought.
However it has its drawbacks... Also I can see why the elites like this idea: basically, robots working and people consuming... In "lockdown" inside their homes, ordering from Amajoke and watching Netfux and "interacting" only via Faceberg.
I used to think this type of world, show in exhaustion in movies, was a sort of dystopia. But now I realize, that, from the point of view of the elites, it's paradise. And think about it, $1200 per month is chump change for them.Replies: @Chris Mallory, @RadicalCenter, @Alexander Turok
Increase tax on household income over one million per year, and tax the Hell out of household income over, say, $25 million per year (less than the top one tenth of one percent of US residents, and generally a pretty unsavory, dishonest, usurious, or socially destructive bunch in terms of how they “earn” that money).
Treat capital gains the same as wages and salaries. Then the UBI won’t seem so cheap for the elite, nor should it.
Insist that the foundations spend at least 10% of their wealth per year, and tax the trusts over a certain limit. Let normal people pass on inheritances without ridiculous taxes, but eliminate the Ford and Rockefeller foundations.
Plus, if it is just temporary, and only for people under a certain level, it is not 'UBI' even under the definition of the acronym.Replies: @William D. Wall, @obwandiyag, @another anon, @Audacious Epigone
Fuck you you fucking asshole.
Bottom 10% whites :
The males : WNs
The females : Fat feminists.A greater trifecta of sordid scum an villainy, one will not find.
You would think that retiring early and relaxing would lead to a longer life but there have been studies done that show that people who work after age 65 actually live longer. Many people need to feel a purpose in their life and a need to feel useful to others.
The exception to this is people who fill up their retirement years with a lot of activities. My 86 year old mother told me that everyone she knew who retired at 65 and sat on the couch all day watching television passed away after a couple of years but everyone who either kept working or engaged in a lot of activities was still around. Even tasks like babysitting the grandchildren, doing part time volunteer work, caring for a pet, growing a vegetable garden and so on which are non-paid work can be effective.
The long and the short of it is, it’s all over. The globalist shit show has passed its high water mark. You can feel it. There may be an Indian summer of stellar Amazon profits, but after that comes the inevitable decrescendo.
There is nothing to do and nothing more to say. I have been reading and studying and writing about this moment, sometimes at great length, for more than 15 years. Now that it’s here I just want to marvel and be still, kind of like watching an eclipse or a tidal bore.
The night air is dewey and fresh. The trees are in leaf. The stupid humans have made another one of their messes and nature goes on, timeless and majestic.
I must agree.
Graham Greene wrote that men’s lives have a turning point, a point of no return. (He added that most men do not recognize it at the time.) I believe that this likewise applies to societies, and civilizations, and that this is it.
“We’re supposedly looking at the simultaneous prospects of deflation and negative interest rates. That means borrowing dollars that will appreciate in real value while also being paid interest for doing so. Borrow all you’re able to and become wealthier. You’re being handed an income-producing asset for free, as much of it as you’re able to grab. It’s absurd.”
Mr. Epigone,
I am interested to know how materially different you think this is from the current situation. As other commenters have noted, the negative rates are the rates at which banks may borrow from the Federal Reserve. So effectively the Federal Reserve is paying those banks to borrow from it. But it is already paying them excessive amounts as “lender of last resort” and “expanding its balance sheet.” This is essentially, to my mind, funneling money to those same banks for its worthless assets. Is the difference that instead of paying banks for bad investments, now it would pay banks for no investments?
My question on the difference is not rhetorical. I would like to know why you think a negative Federal Reserve rate would be a fundamental change from status quo. My impression, for what it’s worth, is that absurdity of “being handed an income-producing asset for free, as much of it as you’re able to grab” works because it is not an offer that is available to everyone, but only those with the connections and ability to “borrow” from the Federal Reserve.
Very Respectfully,
Peccavi
But it is a point of remarkable salience to normal people. It's one of those things that will turn financial news into mainstream news. It will alert people that something is seriously wrong with the system, even if they can't articulate why it is so.
Re: the funds rate, it's a lodestar for lending rates throughout the rest of the economy. Joe Sixpack won't literally be paid to borrow, but he'll be able to borrow for free in real terms, and close to it in nominal terms.
Plus, if it is just temporary, and only for people under a certain level, it is not 'UBI' even under the definition of the acronym.Replies: @William D. Wall, @obwandiyag, @another anon, @Audacious Epigone
LOL. Go educate yourself. Socialism means universal right and universal duty to work, not any handouts.
News flash: socialism is dead, capitalism won all over the world.
UBI is capitalist idea, to keep the consumption machine running.
Cold war is over, you can stop listening to Rush Limbaugh “conservative” bullshit.
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."Replies: @another anon
Lenin walks around the world.
Frontiers cannot bar him.
Neither barracks nor barricades impede.
Nor does barbed wire scar him.
Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.
Lenin walks around the world.
The sun sets like a scar.
Between the darkness and the dawn
There rises a red star.
Yeah, I know, Soviet Union is dead and buried.
And the British Empire is dead too.
Neither is going to return.
Kipling’s British Empire propaganda is as relevant argument in 21st century as is Soviet propaganda.
Treat capital gains the same as wages and salaries. Then the UBI won’t seem so cheap for the elite, nor should it.Replies: @Mr. Rational
The really wealthy don’t have much personal income. They are “paupers on paper”; most of their wealth is in foundations and trusts that they control.
Insist that the foundations spend at least 10% of their wealth per year, and tax the trusts over a certain limit. Let normal people pass on inheritances without ridiculous taxes, but eliminate the Ford and Rockefeller foundations.
There is nothing to do and nothing more to say. I have been reading and studying and writing about this moment, sometimes at great length, for more than 15 years. Now that it's here I just want to marvel and be still, kind of like watching an eclipse or a tidal bore.
The night air is dewey and fresh. The trees are in leaf. The stupid humans have made another one of their messes and nature goes on, timeless and majestic.Replies: @Daniel H, @SafeNow
That’s almost poetic.
It was shameful for a free man in Antiquity to sell his labor, a long list of jobs in Medieval times were shameful by definition (like tanner or cloth dyer), and the Early Modern age saw a whole class of rentiers – not just aristocrats, even a middle-class person could inherit or accumulate a small capital to live off – who were perfectly respectable and didn’t deteriorate into lazy bums. Some of them contributed to early development of science (then almost completely unprofitable satisfaction of curiosity) because it was their calling and they weren’t too busy earning their bread. The American notion that selling your labor is always respectable, and almost the only honorable way of life, is a product of very specific time and place and not at all historical mainstream. These perceptions have changed, and will change if they have to.
Working retirees may have long active lives, but so do the heirs who never really had to work. Yachting, flying private planes, “agricultural management” (of the land they own) etc. seem to fill the need for purpose and endeavour in life just fine.
Plus, if it is just temporary, and only for people under a certain level, it is not 'UBI' even under the definition of the acronym.Replies: @William D. Wall, @obwandiyag, @another anon, @Audacious Epigone
GBI, for “guaranteed basic income”, might be better. But universalism sells in the West!
My biggest complaint with Steve is very simply that he continues to indulge in “spergy” arguments over “herd immunity” versus “lockdown.”
How much are you paying him to blog?
It is time for you to eat the Terror Bird.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
We just had the highest month-over-month increase in food prices since February of 1974.
What was that neologism that came into being in the seventies, again? It begins with an “S”, I think.
Time to eat the Terror Bird.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
important to understand what's going on here. a negative federal funds rate will make things even better for big banks, and even worse for the average man. in that scenario, banks borrow money from the fed at a negative interest rate, meaning they get paid to take the money, which they then loan to you at a positive interest rate - netting them a bigger margin.
they'll also get very lazy and sloppy with lending again because it's in their interest to borrow as much money at a negative rate as they can, so they can turn around and lend out as much money to consumers as possible at a positive rate.
this is one of the few places where Trump is 100% wrong. it won't even help him, though he thinks it will.Replies: @Daniel H, @Achmed E. Newman, @Audacious Epigone
Never is a long time. The funds rate is a lodestar for all the other interest rates in the economy.
However it has its drawbacks... Also I can see why the elites like this idea: basically, robots working and people consuming... In "lockdown" inside their homes, ordering from Amajoke and watching Netfux and "interacting" only via Faceberg.
I used to think this type of world, show in exhaustion in movies, was a sort of dystopia. But now I realize, that, from the point of view of the elites, it's paradise. And think about it, $1200 per month is chump change for them.Replies: @Chris Mallory, @RadicalCenter, @Alexander Turok
Indeed, it’s not like the elites enjoy things like eating out or flying around the world. They’d much rather rub their hands together and lock everyone including themselves inside.
Furthermore, since different regions of the country have different costs of living, all these numbers don't mean shit. I may earn something above some limit that sounds good in Idaho, but I can assure you it doesn't go as far where I live.
If you are going to do UBI, you have to make it truly "U," as in Universal, as in for everybody, including me. And, you might want to adjust it upward for how much things cost where I live.
Get real, and don't take my money for this unless you are going to give it right back to me, increased proportionally for my cost of living.Replies: @Jay Fink, @Audacious Epigone, @RadicalCenter
The urge to soak the rich seems like an unnecessary bug. Part of UBI’s appeal is that everyone gets it.
In the case of the financial asset there is at least the pretense that it is being purchased and thus some cost, in the form of delayed consumption, is being paid.
I don’t find that argument compelling, but there it is.
If it wasn’t wise to take out the debt, they shouldn’t have taken out the debt.
Spending money doesn’t magically create wealth. Production creates wealth. Robert Mugabe will be happy to explain the concept to you.
Mr. Epigone,
I am interested to know how materially different you think this is from the current situation. As other commenters have noted, the negative rates are the rates at which banks may borrow from the Federal Reserve. So effectively the Federal Reserve is paying those banks to borrow from it. But it is already paying them excessive amounts as "lender of last resort" and "expanding its balance sheet." This is essentially, to my mind, funneling money to those same banks for its worthless assets. Is the difference that instead of paying banks for bad investments, now it would pay banks for no investments?
My question on the difference is not rhetorical. I would like to know why you think a negative Federal Reserve rate would be a fundamental change from status quo. My impression, for what it's worth, is that absurdity of "being handed an income-producing asset for free, as much of it as you’re able to grab" works because it is not an offer that is available to everyone, but only those with the connections and ability to "borrow" from the Federal Reserve.
Very Respectfully,
PeccaviReplies: @Audacious Epigone
Functionally, it is merely a matter of degree, the logical progression in a policy of perpetual easing. In that sense, it’s not a change in the quotidian process.
But it is a point of remarkable salience to normal people. It’s one of those things that will turn financial news into mainstream news. It will alert people that something is seriously wrong with the system, even if they can’t articulate why it is so.
Re: the funds rate, it’s a lodestar for lending rates throughout the rest of the economy. Joe Sixpack won’t literally be paid to borrow, but he’ll be able to borrow for free in real terms, and close to it in nominal terms.
Lenin walks around the world.
Frontiers cannot bar him.
Neither barracks nor barricades impede.
Nor does barbed wire scar him.
Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.
Lenin walks around the world.
The sun sets like a scar.
Between the darkness and the dawn
There rises a red star.Yeah, I know, Soviet Union is dead and buried.
And the British Empire is dead too.
Neither is going to return.
Kipling's British Empire propaganda is as relevant argument in 21st century as is Soviet propaganda.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
Kipling was a warning. Ignore reality and be crushed by reality when it reasserts itself.
Kipling's narrative voice contrasts the eternal wisdom of these commonplace texts with the fashionable and naïve ideas of "the Market-Place," making oblique reference to feminism ("the ... Feminian Sandstones"), Lloyd George and Liberal efforts at disarmament ("the Cambrian measures"), and socialist policies advocated by trade-unionists, many of whom were coalminers ("the Carboniferous Epoch").[4]
Exactly. Keep telling people that they shall be grateful they can work in coal mines 12 hours per day for pennies and absolutely extatic when they are told to march into poison gas and machine gun fire for the glory of British Empire, and one day reality will reassert itself.
Reality that looks like Lenin walking under the red star.Replies: @scrivener3, @Audacious Epigone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headings
Kipling’s narrative voice contrasts the eternal wisdom of these commonplace texts with the fashionable and naïve ideas of “the Market-Place,” making oblique reference to feminism (“the … Feminian Sandstones”), Lloyd George and Liberal efforts at disarmament (“the Cambrian measures”), and socialist policies advocated by trade-unionists, many of whom were coalminers (“the Carboniferous Epoch”).[4]
Exactly. Keep telling people that they shall be grateful they can work in coal mines 12 hours per day for pennies and absolutely extatic when they are told to march into poison gas and machine gun fire for the glory of British Empire, and one day reality will reassert itself.
Reality that looks like Lenin walking under the red star.
Of course in West Virginia, thanks to the efforts of their betters, no one works in coal mines at all. Heroin has turned out to be an acceptable substitute.Replies: @another anon
Silly boy, what applies to them is not the same that applies to us.
Why in the f__k do you pay interest on the credit card? I never liked your Commie comments to begin with, Daniel, and now I see how you got this way. Pay the thing off each month. This stuff ain't rocket surgery.
Are you worried that if you become fiscally responsible, Communism will lose its luster for you?Replies: @dfordoom, @The Alarmist
In parts of Europe, people and companies are told they must start paying minus 0.4% on their bank deposits over a certain level, while in at least one European country, people are getting mortgages at negative rates. IOW, responsibility is being punished and irresponsibility is being rewarded.
I have credit cards and debit cards, but rarely use them. I try to pay for everything with cash. I pay 0%. As the world continues to fall apart, credit cards, debit cards, and even cash might become useless.
These people can have their f’ing jubilee, but I hope they have gardens to grow the food they won’t be able to buy at any price in the brave new world they are ushering in.
Your comment explains very well why governments HATE HATE HATE for people to be able to own gold and silver.
These people get the jubilee idea out of the Bible, Alarmist. The difference was that the 50-year jubilee was known in advance. Business transactions, including loaning/borrowing money, would be done accordingly. This school-loan jubilee garbage is a moral hazard - it would screw over the responsible young people, and give them the attitude that they will never play by the moral rules again.Replies: @The Alarmist
Perhaps people could think outside of the box and work on the other end of this. After they’ve been blowing $80,000,000 on a bond issue for the libraries, which were renovated for no particular reason, and paying for redundant fancy baseball parks while the old ones are still standing, perhaps the folks paying for this out of property tax could have a say in this matter. Nobody says the property tax has to keep paying for all this crap.
The school budget is a majority of property tax spending where I live, Mr. Mallory. They waste money all over the place. I’ll tell you another time about being called in to the office for our elementary school boy being out 3 days straight (with no email to the proper authority from us), and the meeting was like a freakin deposition. First thing out of my mouth was “… so this is where my tax money is going …”
I have credit cards and debit cards, but rarely use them. I try to pay for everything with cash. I pay 0%. As the world continues to fall apart, credit cards, debit cards, and even cash might become useless.
These people can have their f'ing jubilee, but I hope they have gardens to grow the food they won't be able to buy at any price in the brave new world they are ushering in.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Audacious Epigone
The governments LUV LUV LUV it when people have no safe place to put their money, Alarmist. Inflation has made even a home safe chained to 8″ beams and concrete under the crawl space not truly a safe place, but I guess that beats paying your bank to keep your money in some digital form on a server (think of how idiotic the whole thing is!)
Your comment explains very well why governments HATE HATE HATE for people to be able to own gold and silver.
These people get the jubilee idea out of the Bible, Alarmist. The difference was that the 50-year jubilee was known in advance. Business transactions, including loaning/borrowing money, would be done accordingly. This school-loan jubilee garbage is a moral hazard – it would screw over the responsible young people, and give them the attitude that they will never play by the moral rules again.
Thanks.
Your comment explains very well why governments HATE HATE HATE for people to be able to own gold and silver.
These people get the jubilee idea out of the Bible, Alarmist. The difference was that the 50-year jubilee was known in advance. Business transactions, including loaning/borrowing money, would be done accordingly. This school-loan jubilee garbage is a moral hazard - it would screw over the responsible young people, and give them the attitude that they will never play by the moral rules again.Replies: @The Alarmist
Agree.
What I meant to say is that they can have both their effing jubilee AND UBI, but in that world the availability of credit and the prices and availability of goods will adjust to reflect the real value of the money on offer for them. I’ve already reached my John Galt point, but I’m still showing up because it is kind of getting entertaining to see what new batpoop things get thrown against the wall. Time to go tend the garden now.
Do you dispute my description?
Yes. Fascists believe people exist to serve the state. I believe that the state exists to serve the people.
That’s CRAZY! I have a magic box at home and despite putting all my money into it, the only thing that’s ever come out is babies..
People these days think a college education is a basic human right. That needs to be changed.
Wouldn't eliminating student debt just be rewarding people for doing college courses they don't need and rewarding colleges for providing worthless courses?
In fact wouldn't a debt jubilee just encourage more debt in the long run?Replies: @iffen
A debt jubilee would be fair. It is a question of equity. As it is, student debt is going to be forgiven. I paid back my student loan. Why shouldn’t I get my money back if the current crop gets theirs forgiven. Many, if not most, financiers and banks are backstopped from time to time. 2008 and the Savings and Loan bailout come to mind. The next federal bill will include money to bail out irresponsible tax and spend cities and states.
Forced to reply due to lack of “agree” button capacity, let me pick one nit.
For the past half century America has led the world in making hate filled illiterate criminal “teens” at public expense. That has to count for something.
Yes. Fascists believe people exist to serve the state. I believe that the state exists to serve the people.Replies: @Cloudbuster
Yet you assume a strong central government that will impose your vision on the nation. That can’t be done without making people serve the state. You words are funny because virtually all the fascist governments started off as popular movements for the people and ended up in tyranny.
This time will be different; we can do it the "right" way.Replies: @Cloudbuster
Kipling's narrative voice contrasts the eternal wisdom of these commonplace texts with the fashionable and naïve ideas of "the Market-Place," making oblique reference to feminism ("the ... Feminian Sandstones"), Lloyd George and Liberal efforts at disarmament ("the Cambrian measures"), and socialist policies advocated by trade-unionists, many of whom were coalminers ("the Carboniferous Epoch").[4]
Exactly. Keep telling people that they shall be grateful they can work in coal mines 12 hours per day for pennies and absolutely extatic when they are told to march into poison gas and machine gun fire for the glory of British Empire, and one day reality will reassert itself.
Reality that looks like Lenin walking under the red star.Replies: @scrivener3, @Audacious Epigone
Thanks to capitalism, no one works for 12 hours a day in coal mines for pennies.
Of course in West Virginia, thanks to the efforts of their betters, no one works in coal mines at all. Heroin has turned out to be an acceptable substitute.
If they instead listened to Kipling and similar grug brains, the result would be communism victorious all over the world.
Is this what you want, comrade?
https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/35/34630/39018197-communism-wallpapers.png
What was that neologism that came into being in the seventies, again? It begins with an "S", I think.Replies: @Mr. Rational, @Thomm
That one took me a minute.
That’s because Sailer is an asshole and doesn’t like dissent. His articles are trite and inane…not worth reading…let alone commenting on.
For the past half century America has led the world in making hate filled illiterate criminal “teens” at public expense. That has to count for something.Replies: @Mr. Rational
IMO, they would recycle well as hog slop for Smithfield and export to China.
Of course in West Virginia, thanks to the efforts of their betters, no one works in coal mines at all. Heroin has turned out to be an acceptable substitute.Replies: @another anon
Nope. It is because the capitalists saw what happened in Russia, and found it would be good idea to moderate their greed a little bit to avoid losing everything, including their heads.
If they instead listened to Kipling and similar grug brains, the result would be communism victorious all over the world.
Is this what you want, comrade?
popular movements for the people and ended up in tyranny.
This time will be different; we can do it the “right” way.
The exception to this is people who fill up their retirement years with a lot of activities. My 86 year old mother told me that everyone she knew who retired at 65 and sat on the couch all day watching television passed away after a couple of years but everyone who either kept working or engaged in a lot of activities was still around. Even tasks like babysitting the grandchildren, doing part time volunteer work, caring for a pet, growing a vegetable garden and so on which are non-paid work can be effective.Replies: @res
I tend to agree with your conclusion, but you have to be very careful about reverse causation (healthy people keep working) in studies like that.
Instead of A causing B or B causing A it could even be there is some unknown factor C that causes both A and B. In my case, I've always had a strong desire to be independent. I physically take care of myself because I have a strong fear of being an invalid who needs to be physically taken care. I keep working partly so I can have that continued income stream and don't have to rely on government handouts. When I hear politicians promise people their social security or government pensions are going to be there in the future or there is going to always be enough money to fund the welfare state I look at the government's financial situation and don't want to rely on those promises. So my desire to keep working and stay healthy are both partly caused by that third factor, the desire to maintain my independence.
Kipling's narrative voice contrasts the eternal wisdom of these commonplace texts with the fashionable and naïve ideas of "the Market-Place," making oblique reference to feminism ("the ... Feminian Sandstones"), Lloyd George and Liberal efforts at disarmament ("the Cambrian measures"), and socialist policies advocated by trade-unionists, many of whom were coalminers ("the Carboniferous Epoch").[4]
Exactly. Keep telling people that they shall be grateful they can work in coal mines 12 hours per day for pennies and absolutely extatic when they are told to march into poison gas and machine gun fire for the glory of British Empire, and one day reality will reassert itself.
Reality that looks like Lenin walking under the red star.Replies: @scrivener3, @Audacious Epigone
Kids don’t work 12 hour days in the West because of labor laws. They do so because of Western wealth and productivity. When the west was poorer, they did. In some places in the third world, they still do.
I have credit cards and debit cards, but rarely use them. I try to pay for everything with cash. I pay 0%. As the world continues to fall apart, credit cards, debit cards, and even cash might become useless.
These people can have their f'ing jubilee, but I hope they have gardens to grow the food they won't be able to buy at any price in the brave new world they are ushering in.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Audacious Epigone
It’s tangential, but for the responsible credit cards are one of the few ways to get a leg up. 1, 2, 3% cash back on various categories is common. Pay on time and it’s akin to getting a 2% discount over those paying cash and a 20% discount over those who don’t pay off their balances each month.
Claims which can be made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
What was that neologism that came into being in the seventies, again? It begins with an "S", I think.Replies: @Mr. Rational, @Thomm
You can’t be selective about sectors. Total CPI plunged. Even when they exclude ‘food and energy’, you are excluding ‘energy’ as that fell more than food rose.
Time to eat the Terror Bird.
That an African wants socialism (along with his cognitive kin, the WN w*gg*rs, and the females of that subrace, the fat bluehaired feminists), that tells functional, normal, civilization-creating white people that we should avoid it.
There could not be a better advertisement against the perils of socialism than a simple glance at who/what supports it :
Africans
Bottom 10% whites :
The males : WNs
The females : Fat feminists.
A greater trifecta of sordid scum an villainy, one will not find.
This time will be different; we can do it the "right" way.Replies: @Cloudbuster
My apologies. I hadn’t realized until now that you are a parody account.
UBI is not an acronym, but rather, an initialism. When you pronounce the letters as a word, you have an acronym, for example, AIDS. When you pronounce the letters individually, you have an initialism, as in FBI.
There is nothing to do and nothing more to say. I have been reading and studying and writing about this moment, sometimes at great length, for more than 15 years. Now that it's here I just want to marvel and be still, kind of like watching an eclipse or a tidal bore.
The night air is dewey and fresh. The trees are in leaf. The stupid humans have made another one of their messes and nature goes on, timeless and majestic.Replies: @Daniel H, @SafeNow
“The long and the short of it is, it’s all over.“
I must agree.
Graham Greene wrote that men’s lives have a turning point, a point of no return. (He added that most men do not recognize it at the time.) I believe that this likewise applies to societies, and civilizations, and that this is it.
Time to eat the Terror Bird.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
Food consumption didn’t drop but prices still shot up.
Energy and travel dropped because consumption dropped enormously. Energy is going back up. That’s going to push food prices even higher. Travel, too.
because supply declined while demand didn't change much.
some would say, declined artificially.
the sooner US companies bring in robots to replace those third worlders with a smock and a knife standing there cutting meat, the better.Replies: @Mr. Rational
The composite CPI is the only comprehensive metric of inflation. Whatever its imperfections, it is the holistic metric. Being selective about sectors is not going to fly.
The stock market crash didn't cause inflation to rise (which is what you predicted). The opposite happened. Inflation that later happens because of QE (which it won't) also doesn't make you right, since you said inflation would happen even without QE.
Your prediction flat out failed. Time to eat the Terror Bird.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
What, you’ve never heard the expression “semper ubi sub ubi”?
You must really hate the Chinese..
My apologies. I regret that you do not appreciate parody.
1. Teach people that production (productive effort) is irrelevant.
2. Make people utterly dependent on their political masters (turning all Americans into what Native Americans on the Rez know all too well.)
3. Continuing to believe that Say's Law is irrelevant.Say's Law states that in order to consume, you must first produce. This is a logical axiom: For a market of three things/people, the butcher, the baker and the shoe cobbler, in order for the butcher to enter the marketplace and BUY bread, the butcher has to have PRODUCED marketable product (meat) in excess of his own family's needs, and the baker must have done the same, too.The UBI (and all such schemes) add PURCHASING power to people's hands WITHOUT any attendant production. Taken to its full end, you have a "market" full of people waving money around BUT NOTING ON THE SHELVES, because no one needed to produce in order to "be a consumer."Welcome to the USSR. Rubles but empty shelves.If the Fed created $1T in credit and handed it to 1000 hedge fund managers, you don't get an increase in the price of ground chuck, you get asset price inflation (like the last 39 years.) When the same $1T gets handed to Joe Sixpack everywhere, what do you think happens to food prices?Replies: @Toronto Russian, @Jedi Night
This is not what happened in the USSR. There were gigantic volumes of production, just highly skewed in favor of the military and non-consumer goods. Consumer goods production was neglected (except the ones meant for party elite and to show off before foreigners), and logistics of getting them to people were stupid and wasteful. Here’s an example of astounding difference in productivity between official state agriculture and the tiny, highly restricted sector of personal agriculture:
Tanks and rockets, but hard to find non-rotten potatoes or wearable winter boots – was more like it.
Yes, instead of working longer causing better health it could be the opposite and being in good health enables you to work longer. The arrow of causation may point either way. For example, my former wife is in bad health and couldn’t work even if she wanted to and collects a disability pension from the government. I can keep working because I have no problems with my health at all.
Instead of A causing B or B causing A it could even be there is some unknown factor C that causes both A and B. In my case, I’ve always had a strong desire to be independent. I physically take care of myself because I have a strong fear of being an invalid who needs to be physically taken care. I keep working partly so I can have that continued income stream and don’t have to rely on government handouts. When I hear politicians promise people their social security or government pensions are going to be there in the future or there is going to always be enough money to fund the welfare state I look at the government’s financial situation and don’t want to rely on those promises. So my desire to keep working and stay healthy are both partly caused by that third factor, the desire to maintain my independence.
After they sent us melamine-tainted baby formula, yeah, I do.
I also recognize a great way to turn a disposal problem into profit.
1. Teach people that production (productive effort) is irrelevant.
2. Make people utterly dependent on their political masters (turning all Americans into what Native Americans on the Rez know all too well.)
3. Continuing to believe that Say's Law is irrelevant.Say's Law states that in order to consume, you must first produce. This is a logical axiom: For a market of three things/people, the butcher, the baker and the shoe cobbler, in order for the butcher to enter the marketplace and BUY bread, the butcher has to have PRODUCED marketable product (meat) in excess of his own family's needs, and the baker must have done the same, too.The UBI (and all such schemes) add PURCHASING power to people's hands WITHOUT any attendant production. Taken to its full end, you have a "market" full of people waving money around BUT NOTING ON THE SHELVES, because no one needed to produce in order to "be a consumer."Welcome to the USSR. Rubles but empty shelves.If the Fed created $1T in credit and handed it to 1000 hedge fund managers, you don't get an increase in the price of ground chuck, you get asset price inflation (like the last 39 years.) When the same $1T gets handed to Joe Sixpack everywhere, what do you think happens to food prices?Replies: @Toronto Russian, @Jedi Night
Say’s Law and how it works in the medieval village economy, that’s good, you just passed the elementary-level exam. Now, for your high school level assignment, explain to the class how Say’s Law works when the butchers, bakers, and cobblers of the nation are replaced by robots. Assume the robots are made and operated by a handful of industrial manufacturers who become multibillionaires by earning the productive reward for replacing those millions of obsolete workers. Further assume that the robots are produced, operated, and repaired by a largely automated, computerized process.
When you can explain and advise this situation, you can join us at the adult table. Until then, I’m sorry but you will be restricted to explaining economics to 9 year olds.
Yes, this is called anarcho-tyranny.
how does a bank that can’t print money, make money by lending to Joe Sixpack at a negative rate?
“Food consumption didn’t drop but prices still shot up.”
because supply declined while demand didn’t change much.
some would say, declined artificially.
the sooner US companies bring in robots to replace those third worlders with a smock and a knife standing there cutting meat, the better.
Furthermore, since different regions of the country have different costs of living, all these numbers don't mean shit. I may earn something above some limit that sounds good in Idaho, but I can assure you it doesn't go as far where I live.
If you are going to do UBI, you have to make it truly "U," as in Universal, as in for everybody, including me. And, you might want to adjust it upward for how much things cost where I live.
Get real, and don't take my money for this unless you are going to give it right back to me, increased proportionally for my cost of living.Replies: @Jay Fink, @Audacious Epigone, @RadicalCenter
I agree with you, Buzz, that there shouldn’t be a maximum income to receive a UBI, whether temporary or, preferably, permanent. And the maximum income for the “CARES Act” payments was far too low if you’re going to have a maximum.
Trying to raise a large-ish family in Los Angeles, with our brutal housing costs and taxes, we think it’s ridiculous to treat a household earning AGI of $150,000 or $200,000 here or in similar cities as “too rich to need the help.”
Funny how the enactors of the “CARES Act” had no similar qualms about giving hundreds of billions of invented and borrowed dollars to big banks and corporations. The main beneficiaries of that loot are their executives, directors, and major shareholders. People of that ilk have a household have an AGI just a wee bit higher than $150,000 per year. Like 50x and 100x and 200x higher.
‘Back up’ to a level that is at or below the pre-crisis levels. That is not inflation, and is certainly not what your prediction was (which was pre-crisis anyway). Your prediction also said that inflation would happen even without more QE.
The composite CPI is the only comprehensive metric of inflation. Whatever its imperfections, it is the holistic metric. Being selective about sectors is not going to fly.
The stock market crash didn’t cause inflation to rise (which is what you predicted). The opposite happened. Inflation that later happens because of QE (which it won’t) also doesn’t make you right, since you said inflation would happen even without QE.
Your prediction flat out failed. Time to eat the Terror Bird.
I'm going to have fun revisiting these comments in a year.Replies: @Thomm
When you can explain and advise this situation, you can join us at the adult table. Until then, I'm sorry but you will be restricted to explaining economics to 9 year olds.Replies: @Intelligent Dasein
None of this has anything to throw into the scales against Say’s Law. Any automated process, no matter how elaborate, is still just an auxiliary for human hands and an intermediary between production and consumption. How this is supposed to subvert the principle involved is mystifying.
If machines and computers are creating our wealth, UBI allows us to enjoy a portion of that wealth.Replies: @Mr. Rational
because supply declined while demand didn't change much.
some would say, declined artificially.
the sooner US companies bring in robots to replace those third worlders with a smock and a knife standing there cutting meat, the better.Replies: @Mr. Rational
I’m waiting for the robots with literal X-ray vision to be introduced to meatcutting. You wouldn’t be able to have humans nearby while their systems were active, but they’d be able to do things faster and more accurately than just about anything else.
We already have a good working for this in South Africa and Mexico. Ransom is HUGE in both places. Successful individuals (not Winners of Capitalism, just run of the mill successful individuals) have security details.
In short, Say’s Law is being overturned because human labor is being rendered obsolete by computerized machines.
If machines and computers are creating our wealth, UBI allows us to enjoy a portion of that wealth.
Hint, hint. Robot "labor" needs to pay employment taxes too.
If machines and computers are creating our wealth, UBI allows us to enjoy a portion of that wealth.Replies: @Mr. Rational
Only if we tax and redistribute it.
Hint, hint. Robot “labor” needs to pay employment taxes too.
By simply holding it. If Joe Sixpack deposits $100 and a year later withdraws $95 while over the course of that year the purchasing power of the dollar increased by way of price deflation, the bank just made $5 nominal and $5+ real for doing nothing.
The composite CPI is the only comprehensive metric of inflation. Whatever its imperfections, it is the holistic metric. Being selective about sectors is not going to fly.
The stock market crash didn't cause inflation to rise (which is what you predicted). The opposite happened. Inflation that later happens because of QE (which it won't) also doesn't make you right, since you said inflation would happen even without QE.
Your prediction flat out failed. Time to eat the Terror Bird.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
I never said price inflation would happen without QE. I know I didn’t because I’ve never seriously entertained the thought that QE was anything other than permanent until the collapse. It could idle for a bit, but it wasn’t staying off and it certainly wasn’t reversing. We got confirmation of that in late 2018.
I’m going to have fun revisiting these comments in a year.
That is what you said.
You specifically did not say that QE would be needed for there to be inflation.
Also, you have to use widely accepted inflation metrics like the CPI. You can't just say 'but I heard that some types of food are now higher priced than they were at the lows, but I don't want to include other sectors'.
Here is a hint : Economists have predicted 100 of the last 0 bouts of inflation. Yet, even THEY say that stock market declines cause deflation, not inflation.
The magnitude by which your prediction failed is epic. There is really no wiggle-room left.
I'm going to have fun revisiting these comments in a year.Replies: @Thomm
You specifically said that a stock market crash would cause inflation, since the inflation would leak out of the stock market into the rest of the economy.
That is what you said.
You specifically did not say that QE would be needed for there to be inflation.
Also, you have to use widely accepted inflation metrics like the CPI. You can’t just say ‘but I heard that some types of food are now higher priced than they were at the lows, but I don’t want to include other sectors’.
Here is a hint : Economists have predicted 100 of the last 0 bouts of inflation. Yet, even THEY say that stock market declines cause deflation, not inflation.
The magnitude by which your prediction failed is epic. There is really no wiggle-room left.
No, I said a stock market crash would cause consumer prices to rise because the effects of over a decade of inflation would move from assets to consumer goods. That is already happening in things people have continued to buy, and as soon as they start buying other things they’re not buying now–like airline travel–those prices are going up, too.
Really? I am the troll?
You specifically said in the past :
https://www.unz.com/anepigone/the-coming-crash/?highlight=inflation
And you specifically said this is multiple articles, not just the one I quoted.
You actually, explicitly predicted that a stock market crash would cause inflation in the broader economy, as the inflation leaks out of the stock market and goes elsewhere. This is a fundamentally incorrect understanding of what inflation is and is not, but at any rate, the stock market crash happened and inflation did not (even with the QE, which you did not even say was a necessary condition for inflation).
Remember, even the inflation-hawks who have predicted 100 of the last zero bouts of hyperinflation do not think a stock market crash is what causes inflation (it causes deflation, in reality). This gives you some idea about how unlikely to ever happen that prediction was.
You are not the only person who thought Kamala Harris would be the nominee (hence all you had to eat was a little crow). But you were the only (normal) person who thought a stock market crash can actually cause inflation. It is one of the worst predictions of all time.
The increase in consumer prices is coming. We are at the beginning of a long period of economic pain. Yes, if the CPI changes we’ve seen over two months–record increases in food prices, record drops in fuel and travel–was the end of the story, I’d have been way off the mark. But I think this is only the beginning.
You need to put more quantification around your prediction and the metrics under which it would be considered a ‘success’. At the moment, your ‘proof’ of inflation is saying things like “I heard somewhere that a certain subcategory of food rose in price from the bottom, but is still below where it was in 2019.” That is not hyperinflation. Not by a long shot.
If $23 Trillion in worldwide QE did not cause inflation over the decade that it was printed, another $4 Trillion will not either. Until you grasp this, you won’t advance past square one of economic fluency.
Plus, your prediction was specifically for the stock market crash causing inflation. That did not happen, and you can’t add other qualifiers and caveats after the fact.
Again, I quoted your actual article where you said this (and you said it more than once). I have quoted your own words as irrefutable proof.
https://www.unz.com/anepigone/the-coming-crash/?highlight=inflation
To give you an idea how bad of a prediction this is, even the inflation hawks who have predicted 100 of the last 0 hyperinflations never claim that a stock market crash leads to inflation ‘leaking out’ of equities and into other sectors. That is tantamount to saying that going broke increases wealth.
This is one of the worst predictions of all time. It is infinitely worse than the prediction that Harris would be the nominee, since a lot of other people also thought that. Hence the crow vs. terror bird differentiator. Give it up, sir.