In the end, it wasn't Andrew Yang or Bernie Sanders, but Mitt Romney who seems most likely to bring UBI to America.
19 comments:
ymarsakar
said...
Look up the Church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, welfare system as reported by main sewer california.
Romney needs to make it clear that what works in that organization or church, does not necessarily work in the rest of the country. But it is a good try nonetheless, if a people want a welfare system, they might as well go for the one that is the most efficient and least wasteful.
A lot of Romney's ideas, even if it is not all of them, come from his religious upbringing. He doesn't like to make mention of it because he has a strong identity to his roots and does not want to "embarass" his church.
Leaving aside whether this is a good idea, or a slippery slope, or not enough to do any good, or more than we can afford...
If we end up doing something like this, I'd like to be able to transfer mine to someone else without the recipient having to treat it as income for tax purposes. I'm retired so my income is not going to take a hit because I can't go to work or my employer shuts down but I have relatives, friends, and neighbors who may end up needing this more than I would.
I’m kind of working off a heuristic that only people who are suggesting solutions that aren’t part of their ordinary political program should be taken seriously right now. I prefer small-to-no-government solutions, but under the circumstances I can posit stopgap emergency measures provided they are temporary. Romney may be similarly acting outside his preferences.
Or, Pierre Delicto May be revealing his true colors. Hard to say with that guy. He’s been on every side of every issue.
Hard to say with that guy. He’s been on every side of every issue.
Once you understand the Utah culture of the Latter Day Saints, you will understand Romney... and also Reid for that matter.
This is the so called Mormonism studies, but that is a bit under developed in terms of scholarship.
The primary source documents I recommend are 1. The Book of Mormon 2. The Doctrines and Covenants (mostly by Joseph Smith) and 3. Journal of Discourses (online format of early leadership sermons).
Btw, all lds active members are encouraged to reduce their debt to ZERO, have an emergency savings/food/water storage of 3 months. This has been the case since... I don't know, 1860s? They were like the original preppers before prepping became economically profitable.
It occurs to me that UBI might not be a very promising solution to a prolonged shutdown, because if nobody's going to the factories to make stuff it won't really matter whether you have money to buy stuff. We can 'flatten the curve' for a short time, at tremendous effort and economic cost, but if it goes on more than few weeks we'll just have to accept the costs of re-opening. What cannot be cured must be endured.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings suggest that without someone producing something, money won't buy anything. So a UBI is a nice idea, but I'd rather see less government and more local solutions to fit local situations.
A UBI might be a feel-good idea for the Left, but it's a useless idea. All it would accomplish is inflate the base price level by the amount of the UBI, then the price level would stabilize, and everyone would have the same buying power they had before the UBI was instituted.
It's worse than useless. The UBI would have to be paid for somehow--higher taxes, or borrowing or printing money, which is, at bottom, higher taxes. That takes money out of the private economy, reducing innovation, production, jobs, paychecks compared to what they would be were folks not taxed more. Everyone is poorer for the UBI than they would be without one.
Even the idea of a one- or two-time payment is suboptimal: it was tried a few short years ago, albeit with more delay than might have been, and it had very little effect. Trying this again would only set the expectation of bailouts for the next emergency, and the one after that, and.... With the definition of "emergency" getting looser every time.
So then what do we do about all the people who will be left without paychecks due to social distancing, business closings, etc? We can certainly do nothing but I think the argument for doing something is that it makes people more likely to not go out to work and/or keep their small businesses open, spreading the virus around.
First, and foremost, is to stop the overblown panic-mongering about COVID-19. It's to be taken seriously, but not panicked over. The vast majority of folks--even us geezers, even though the odds are moderately weaker for us--will get over it. As we're discovering empirically, the real problem is economic, not medical, even though the cause is medical and not economic--which puts a more finite and knowable end point to the thing than an economic cause would.
Another thing that might help is short-term, small loans to those who can demonstrate real need--which the Fed is setting up a facility to facilitate. But short-term, small, and must be repaid promptly. Even with this, though, George Melloan makes a strong case for not lending except to the credit-worthy (may be behind a paywall).
And, there's my mantra for the individuals themselves (without whom, on both sides of the cash register, small or large businesses don't exist): family, friends, local charity, church, local community. Then government aid, of a to-be-repaid type, from local jurisdiction first, on up.
It's on us as individuals to look after ourselves, our neighbors, those less well off, helping those with small and early grade school kids at home, looking in on the older kids, looking in on the geezers in our neighborhood--in fine, to act like the Christians we style ourselves to be.
Here's a better idea. How about abolishing the US Federal Reserve (which are a private cabal of banking levers), the income tax, the IRS, and... basically, it'll fix most of the problems with the shut down. If you don't have any debt and don't need to pay the IRS, you can sustain yourself for quite a long time without a W2 job.
family, friends, local charity, church, local community. Then government aid, of a to-be-repaid type, from local jurisdiction first, on up.
I think that makes sense in an "after the fact" situation: hurricane, flood, earthquake. But here we want to convince people to do something and it may be easier to do so if we can say we'll help them financially.
it may be easier to do so if we can say we'll help them financially.
That, also, would--or should--begin with family, friends, local charity, church, local community. Nor does this take a lot of money out of our pockets (although the more we can provide the better): help with errands, a bit of shopping and errand-running, some meals, some spot cash (if their own sensibilities can handle it) so they can focus on their larger expenses. The first we is us.
Notice, too, I do not exclude government assistance: I just put it as a last resort, and running from the lowest jurisdiction on up, not as a first/default source from the Feds on down. Even with the present COVID-19 situation, one-size-fits-all is not useful: every locale, every State is unique in its situation. On top of which, the closer a jurisdiction is to the problem, the faster it can move.
I think that rather than giving people money, it would make more sense to suspend ordinary debts for a time. If you're paying a 30 year mortgage, what's a couple months? A lot of things we pay for could be paid for later just as well, when things are not so difficult.
That's more a sort of market-based credit than anything like UBI or a government bailout.
Anything government does is a bailout and hurts someone in balance of those it purports to help.
Government-mandated loan suspensions? Fine, if the lender is the one making the offer. If government mandates it, it hurts all lenders, large and small, big margins and little, and has ripple effects far beyond the simple mandated delay--and the damage is permanent since the time value of money cannot be recovered. This is another reason why government intervention must be a last resort, not the default.
If it's voluntary, at least the lender can plan for the loss and the interruption of income--and so for the threat to payroll and payables, including its own debt owings.
I'm reluctant to support solutions that force companies to bear financial burdens. If we want to say that individuals don't have to pay their mortgage for a couple of months, then someone else has to pay those mortgages, presumably with the idea that the individual will repay those months to whatever entity stepped in. So perhaps some level of government pays mortgages for a couple of months and the individual home-buyer repays those months to the government either a little at a time or at the end of the loan.
running from the lowest jurisdiction on up, not as a first/default source from the Feds on down
I suspect that most local and State governments don't have the money to make a significant difference. The Feds do because they can borrow still more. This type of situation is a reason why - as Megan McArdle argued years ago - governments shouldn't borrow money for regular expenses: someday there's going to be a real emergency and we'll need a big credit line. Similarly, States and local governments should have some kind of rainy-day fund but that's a hard sell. Maybe both those arguments will be more appealing after this.
most local and State governments don't have the money to make a significant difference
They have enough to make a serious dent in the local, individual, problems.
The Feds do because they can borrow still more.
No, the Feds don't have a red cent; every penny is citizens' money not the Federal government's. It's the same with local and State governments, come to that, but the...collections...are much smaller and easier for citizens to allocate--and the cost is limited to those local and State citizens.
What the Feds borrow is just higher taxes or higher inflation, for which all citizens must bear the cost, across generations. That may be relatively appropriate for truly national problems, but in our compact, the nation is built from the bottom up, accumulated from those local and State entities, not the top down. Thus: once government becomes involved--as a last resort--it's best involved from the bottom, local, up. That's what lessens the burden on the Federal government, on all citizens, even for--especially for--national level problems.
That's the misapprehension of folks like Cuomo and Newsom: it's the responsibility of the governments they lead, long before it becomes the Feds' responsibility.
19 comments:
Look up the Church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, welfare system as reported by main sewer california.
Romney needs to make it clear that what works in that organization or church, does not necessarily work in the rest of the country. But it is a good try nonetheless, if a people want a welfare system, they might as well go for the one that is the most efficient and least wasteful.
A lot of Romney's ideas, even if it is not all of them, come from his religious upbringing. He doesn't like to make mention of it because he has a strong identity to his roots and does not want to "embarass" his church.
Leaving aside whether this is a good idea, or a slippery slope, or not enough to do any good, or more than we can afford...
If we end up doing something like this, I'd like to be able to transfer mine to someone else without the recipient having to treat it as income for tax purposes. I'm retired so my income is not going to take a hit because I can't go to work or my employer shuts down but I have relatives, friends, and neighbors who may end up needing this more than I would.
I’m kind of working off a heuristic that only people who are suggesting solutions that aren’t part of their ordinary political program should be taken seriously right now. I prefer small-to-no-government solutions, but under the circumstances I can posit stopgap emergency measures provided they are temporary. Romney may be similarly acting outside his preferences.
Or, Pierre Delicto May be revealing his true colors. Hard to say with that guy. He’s been on every side of every issue.
He’s been on every side of every issue.
Nah. He just overthinks everything. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Eric Hines
Hard to say with that guy. He’s been on every side of every issue.
Once you understand the Utah culture of the Latter Day Saints, you will understand Romney... and also Reid for that matter.
This is the so called Mormonism studies, but that is a bit under developed in terms of scholarship.
The primary source documents I recommend are 1. The Book of Mormon 2. The Doctrines and Covenants (mostly by Joseph Smith) and 3. Journal of Discourses (online format of early leadership sermons).
Btw, all lds active members are encouraged to reduce their debt to ZERO, have an emergency savings/food/water storage of 3 months. This has been the case since... I don't know, 1860s? They were like the original preppers before prepping became economically profitable.
It occurs to me that UBI might not be a very promising solution to a prolonged shutdown, because if nobody's going to the factories to make stuff it won't really matter whether you have money to buy stuff. We can 'flatten the curve' for a short time, at tremendous effort and economic cost, but if it goes on more than few weeks we'll just have to accept the costs of re-opening. What cannot be cured must be endured.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings suggest that without someone producing something, money won't buy anything. So a UBI is a nice idea, but I'd rather see less government and more local solutions to fit local situations.
LittleRed1
A UBI might be a feel-good idea for the Left, but it's a useless idea. All it would accomplish is inflate the base price level by the amount of the UBI, then the price level would stabilize, and everyone would have the same buying power they had before the UBI was instituted.
It's worse than useless. The UBI would have to be paid for somehow--higher taxes, or borrowing or printing money, which is, at bottom, higher taxes. That takes money out of the private economy, reducing innovation, production, jobs, paychecks compared to what they would be were folks not taxed more. Everyone is poorer for the UBI than they would be without one.
Even the idea of a one- or two-time payment is suboptimal: it was tried a few short years ago, albeit with more delay than might have been, and it had very little effect. Trying this again would only set the expectation of bailouts for the next emergency, and the one after that, and.... With the definition of "emergency" getting looser every time.
Eric Hines
So then what do we do about all the people who will be left without paychecks due to social distancing, business closings, etc? We can certainly do nothing but I think the argument for doing something is that it makes people more likely to not go out to work and/or keep their small businesses open, spreading the virus around.
There are a couple of things that can be done.
First, and foremost, is to stop the overblown panic-mongering about COVID-19. It's to be taken seriously, but not panicked over. The vast majority of folks--even us geezers, even though the odds are moderately weaker for us--will get over it. As we're discovering empirically, the real problem is economic, not medical, even though the cause is medical and not economic--which puts a more finite and knowable end point to the thing than an economic cause would.
Another thing that might help is short-term, small loans to those who can demonstrate real need--which the Fed is setting up a facility to facilitate. But short-term, small, and must be repaid promptly. Even with this, though, George Melloan makes a strong case for not lending except to the credit-worthy (may be behind a paywall).
And, there's my mantra for the individuals themselves (without whom, on both sides of the cash register, small or large businesses don't exist): family, friends, local charity, church, local community. Then government aid, of a to-be-repaid type, from local jurisdiction first, on up.
It's on us as individuals to look after ourselves, our neighbors, those less well off, helping those with small and early grade school kids at home, looking in on the older kids, looking in on the geezers in our neighborhood--in fine, to act like the Christians we style ourselves to be.
Eric Hines
Here's a better idea. How about abolishing the US Federal Reserve (which are a private cabal of banking levers), the income tax, the IRS, and... basically, it'll fix most of the problems with the shut down. If you don't have any debt and don't need to pay the IRS, you can sustain yourself for quite a long time without a W2 job.
family, friends, local charity, church, local community. Then government aid, of a to-be-repaid type, from local jurisdiction first, on up.
I think that makes sense in an "after the fact" situation: hurricane, flood, earthquake. But here we want to convince people to do something and it may be easier to do so if we can say we'll help them financially.
it may be easier to do so if we can say we'll help them financially.
That, also, would--or should--begin with family, friends, local charity, church, local community. Nor does this take a lot of money out of our pockets (although the more we can provide the better): help with errands, a bit of shopping and errand-running, some meals, some spot cash (if their own sensibilities can handle it) so they can focus on their larger expenses. The first we is us.
Notice, too, I do not exclude government assistance: I just put it as a last resort, and running from the lowest jurisdiction on up, not as a first/default source from the Feds on down. Even with the present COVID-19 situation, one-size-fits-all is not useful: every locale, every State is unique in its situation. On top of which, the closer a jurisdiction is to the problem, the faster it can move.
Eric Hines
I think that rather than giving people money, it would make more sense to suspend ordinary debts for a time. If you're paying a 30 year mortgage, what's a couple months? A lot of things we pay for could be paid for later just as well, when things are not so difficult.
That's more a sort of market-based credit than anything like UBI or a government bailout.
Anything government does is a bailout and hurts someone in balance of those it purports to help.
Government-mandated loan suspensions? Fine, if the lender is the one making the offer. If government mandates it, it hurts all lenders, large and small, big margins and little, and has ripple effects far beyond the simple mandated delay--and the damage is permanent since the time value of money cannot be recovered. This is another reason why government intervention must be a last resort, not the default.
If it's voluntary, at least the lender can plan for the loss and the interruption of income--and so for the threat to payroll and payables, including its own debt owings.
Eric Hines
I'm reluctant to support solutions that force companies to bear financial burdens. If we want to say that individuals don't have to pay their mortgage for a couple of months, then someone else has to pay those mortgages, presumably with the idea that the individual will repay those months to whatever entity stepped in. So perhaps some level of government pays mortgages for a couple of months and the individual home-buyer repays those months to the government either a little at a time or at the end of the loan.
running from the lowest jurisdiction on up, not as a first/default source from the Feds on down
I suspect that most local and State governments don't have the money to make a significant difference. The Feds do because they can borrow still more. This type of situation is a reason why - as Megan McArdle argued years ago - governments shouldn't borrow money for regular expenses: someday there's going to be a real emergency and we'll need a big credit line. Similarly, States and local governments should have some kind of rainy-day fund but that's a hard sell. Maybe both those arguments will be more appealing after this.
most local and State governments don't have the money to make a significant difference
They have enough to make a serious dent in the local, individual, problems.
The Feds do because they can borrow still more.
No, the Feds don't have a red cent; every penny is citizens' money not the Federal government's. It's the same with local and State governments, come to that, but the...collections...are much smaller and easier for citizens to allocate--and the cost is limited to those local and State citizens.
What the Feds borrow is just higher taxes or higher inflation, for which all citizens must bear the cost, across generations. That may be relatively appropriate for truly national problems, but in our compact, the nation is built from the bottom up, accumulated from those local and State entities, not the top down. Thus: once government becomes involved--as a last resort--it's best involved from the bottom, local, up. That's what lessens the burden on the Federal government, on all citizens, even for--especially for--national level problems.
That's the misapprehension of folks like Cuomo and Newsom: it's the responsibility of the governments they lead, long before it becomes the Feds' responsibility.
Eric Hines
People are reporting their debts are paid off or cancelled. Mortgage, car loans, student.
There is talk of an alliance of nations resetting world currency, and gettinh rid of the fed reserve. Gesara or nesara.
As usual, alphabet and facebook plus american media has buried it. Plus the agent smiths of this matrix.
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