Joe Biden 2021

[Johnny Sack 8397]

10 minutes ago, Goofyboy said:

“Stop with the progressive agenda and govern what you have: a split congress and country. Legislation should come from the center not the left. If you want the progressive agenda, campaign and get a mandate.”

The GOP has jerked the center farther and farther to the right. Universal Healthcare, paid maternity leave, etc are all things that are considered center issues in other countries.

[Bateshorn 9928]

All the “we need to help the poor (white) people who should be middle class but aren’t cause of globalization/pinheaded Libs/mean city folk” stuff ya’ll are talking about is basically UBI.

but here’s the fucking irony:  for over a century, when we had a huge white middle class, every government assistance program had huge bureaucratic/wage/work barriers put on it to make sure the only super poors could get access, if at all.  The Haves wanted to make sure the have nots (who also happened to be mostly black) either couldn’t get access or it was just enough to keep them off the streets and no more.  
 

Well, now poor and middle class whites are being left behind and there’s no real social safety net to catch them.  The basics nature our late stage global capitalism mandates the gulf get worse, not better.  No amount of trumpism will economically lift them up.  What they need is to literally take enormous amounts of money from the rich and give it to the poor, and remake the fundamental underpinnings of our economy. But we all know that isn’t going to happen.

 

So we will slide into authoritarianism because the only thing left is to own the libs.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Bateshorn

[washparkhorn 9939]

3 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

stuff that moves the needle for people in a tangible and demonstrative way.  I don't know if that's possible for the government to work like that efficiently on a national level. I'd like to think it is but it might just be too much.  I would like to think that if we saw results like this from government programs people would be in favor of supporting them more- but I have no idea if that is actually how people would respond or not. I can be pretty cynical lots of times but I hold on to the idea that most people, if given the opportunity, would choose to do good more than harm- but you have to have basic needs fulfilled, and we've known that since Maslow rolled out his pyramid. 

A little safety net goes a long way - especially to those who are invisible to wonderful charities like your own. 

[Bateshorn 9928]

The fact the expanded child care tax credit has lifted literally millions out of poverty in the last two years should give you an idea of how fucking poor vast swaths of this country are.  
 

This isn’t about bringing home a few manufacturing jobs.  

[elfenix 34307]

40 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

That would be the kind of socialism I’d actually sign in for bc I think it would actually work- and kind of what I was messing around with last page in this thread talking about wealth disparity and the only way we can change that is to turn everyone into part of the asset owning class. Why can section 8 be repurposed to ownership rather than rent. We already provide money to subsidize housing let’s just do it in a permanently beneficial way instead of month by month. 
If a kid lives in the same place that is owned by his family they go to the same schools, they don’t have that fear or insecurity of moving all the time, they are known in the community bc they also are owners, and people have pride and dignity and take care of shit when it’s theirs  

[Nice Guy Eddie 13515]

51 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Biden campaigned on everything they're considering for the reconciliation bill.

So why hasn't it passed?

Biden won on a "I'm not Trump" platform not the policies. I'm cool if he wants to pursue a liberal/progressive agenda. I probably agree with a lot of it. But only do so if you can make it happen.  

The Dems failure to do so is going to lead to Trump in '24. 

[wildcat09 29355]

Just now, Nice Guy Eddie said:

So why hasn't it passed?

Biden won on a "I'm not Trump" platform not the policies. I'm cool if he wants to pursue a liberal/progressive agenda. I probably agree with a lot of it. But only do so if you can make it happen.  

The Dems failure to do so is going to lead to Trump in '24. 

Because the Senate is designed to make it extremely difficult to pass anything that would help most people.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13515]

2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Because the Senate is designed to make it extremely difficult to pass anything that would help most people.

that also occurs when you effectively don't have a majority in the Senate. And you have a House that refuses to compromise.

Biden, Pelosi and Schumer should put up the bills individually for votes and tell their side that pass or fail, they're moving on. 

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

9 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

A little safety net goes a long way - especially to those who are invisible to wonderful charities like your own. 

No doubt.  And that also plays into what I was talking about when I said that people need to fill up the base of their pyramid before they can think like that.  When I was trying to get this new thing off the ground 3 or 4 years ago now, and went from making 150k to 48k in year 1, with a family of 5 and a wife that didn't work, I sure as shit wasn't giving money away and if you'd have asked me for a dime I might possibly have bitten off your head.  And I even had the advantage of knowing it was probably transitory, it was my own decision, it was likely to get better, maybe even lots better, and I wasn't anywhere near what my max earning power would ever be.  But living with my parents for 4 or 5 months, not sleeping at night, being lethargic, worrying about money, having my wife talk about getting a job- realizing that wasn't going to materially change our finances enough to matter- but would make everything harder family wise- it was a lot.  And that's some people's entire lives. And they are shit on by people that don't agree with them. Or told how privileged they are or how the world stacks up nicely for them because they are white. 

There's no amount of money you can give them in a practical way that is going to catch up from a wealth disparity perspective. But find a way to give them a legacy to hand down and in 2 or 3 generations there is a lot less of them and everyone comes a lot closer in the wealth disparity perspective. And that's what making everyone a member of the asset owning class would do. But I don't think a $1,000 check monthly works the same way b/c that's going to get spent and be gone (what's the universal salary that everyone says would be "enough money" to make them happy?  20% more than they currently make) whereas helping them be home owners, or have a private portfolio of stocks and bonds and shit like that that they own and can pass on to the next generation- that has a multiplying affect beyond a monthly check.  So, that's why I'd like to see ownership tried as opposed to cash money- because it might well have downsteam advantages that wouldn't otherwise be felt.  

I'd love to see something- if we are talking about wealth transfer and to try to benefit people- be done where we give every kid a certain amount of money held in trust for them until they are 18 if they want to go to school or 25 if they want to buy a house or something like that $5,000.00 or $10,000 (you could do it on a sliding scale based upon income of parents) where it got invested and they could cash that out for college, or trade school, or buying a house. If it was invested in a decent mutual fund it could be worth $50k or 100k by the time the kid wanted the money. How cool would that be as a legacy for people to get kids started in the right way?  Or, what about if all of your EITC was put into a 401k that the government matched every year- the way people in the upper middle class get matching 401k contributions.  Then- you could turn the person that pumps gas into someone that has a portfolio by the time they get ready to retire, and that portfolio could be passed on to their children or grand children so that everyone has the same hand up in life that you or me or so many others on here had throughout their life.  
That stuff is all paternalistic perhaps, but I get the sense it would work, not tank or disrupt whatever our normal markets are which do work pretty well, by and large, considering all the alternatives that have been tried since the beginning of time in this world, and probably be a lot cheaper than what we are doing right now. 

[Goredho 17408]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

sounds like...

or at least that's how the gop will kill it in discourse

 

40 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

That would be the kind of socialism I’d actually sign in for bc I think it would actually work- and kind of what I was messing around with last page in this thread talking about wealth disparity and the only way we can change that is to turn everyone into part of the asset owning class. Why can section 8 be repurposed to ownership rather than rent. We already provide money to subsidize housing let’s just do it in a permanently beneficial way instead of month by month. 
If a kid lives in the same place that is owned by his family they go to the same schools, they don’t have that fear or insecurity of moving all the time, they are known in the community bc they also are owners, and people have pride and dignity and take care of shit when it’s theirs  

I agree with both these posts.  Right now, we're playing an economic Squid Game that is the logical conclusion of unfettered capitalism.  Its after the lights have been turned off, and all the players have turned on each other.  But the people the players are fighting with are not their enemies.  The real enemies are those running the game.  And unlike Squid Game, none of us have a choice whether or not we want to participate.

A complete socialist 180 to something like a UBI isn't really feasible, imo.  Big corporations and the capitalists that lead them need to be reigned in, and the playing field leveled so small businesses with their roots in small communities can compete.  The people I know who are voting for Trump don't want money or housing for nothing.  They want to own a small business and not be crushed under the wheels of WalMart or Amazon.  They want to have housing and land costs reflective of the local economy vs the economy of wealthy outsiders who fly or drive in on the weekends or for the holidays.  They want to not see their economic standing relative to others take an exponential trajectory downwards through no fault of their own.  They want to feel like their children, as adults, will have a good life with the opportunity to pursue their happiness.

Figure out how to give them that, and one day, its like a miracle, support for Trump and Trumpism will disappear.  Or keep saying fuck em, chastise them for their white privilege and enjoy more Presidents like Trump and scenes like January 6th.

[Dbeasy 15068]

32 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Of course it's emotional. This "govern from the middle, not the left!" shit doesn't even remotely make sense. The "too far left" policies that people are complaining about have approval ratings ranging from the mid sixties to like 95%. Terry fucking McAuliffe is as centrist Dem as they get.

"They need to move to the middle" is just what corporate media always says when Democrats lose a race, because corporate media wants that to be the lesson Dems learn, regardless of whether it's remotely descriptive of why they lost. We've seen this happen again and again and again for my entire lifetime, and smart people still haven't figured out that it's literally meaningless drivel.

If the support for the programs was truly what you’ve described, then the Democrats would be winning a much larger percentage of votes than they are. I know you will post all of these polls that show the support is there, and yet all of these races come down to 50/50. 

I have a different viewpoint. I believe a huge chunk of the population don’t trust Democrats because they promote several very controversial programs that are explained and framed incredibly poorly. The programs themselves may not be bad, but because they’ve done such a horrible job of communicating, it scares away voters. Here is a laundry list of poorly communicated programs:

Defund the Police

Free college

Student debt cancellation

Green New Deal

Critical Race Theory

These programs have been explained at various times by sponsors. But because we live in a soundbite society of Idiocracy, the points have to be made over and over and over. 

Look at what the Republicans did on Hillary emails, Benghazi and Tax cuts.   Hammer hammer hammer with the vocabulary of a five year old  

 

[elfenix 34307]

limited sample size (125) but it doesn't take much no-strings money ($500/month, tho stockton CA) to make people meaningfully better off:

 

 

and that's generational too.

Edited November 4, 2021 by elfenix

[gmr548 16580]

37 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

All the “we need to help the poor (white) people who should be middle class but aren’t cause of globalization/pinheaded Libs/mean city folk” stuff ya’ll are talking about is basically UBI.

but here’s the fucking irony:  for over a century, when we had a huge white middle class, every government assistance program had huge bureaucratic/wage/work barriers put on it to make sure the only super poors could get access, if at all.  The Haves wanted to make sure the have nots (who also happened to be mostly black) either couldn’t get access or it was just enough to keep them off the streets and no more.  
 

Well, now poor and middle class whites are being left behind and there’s no real social safety net to catch them.  The basics nature our late stage global capitalism mandates the gulf get worse, not better.  No amount of trumpism will economically lift them up.  What they need is to literally take enormous amounts of money from the rich and give it to the poor, and remake the fundamental underpinnings of our economy. But we all know that isn’t going to happen.

 

So we will slide into authoritarianism because the only thing left is to own the libs.

 

26 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

The fact the expanded child care tax credit has lifted literally millions out of poverty in the last two years should give you an idea of how fucking poor vast swaths of this country are.  
 

This isn’t about bringing home a few manufacturing jobs.  

These are strong posts. There are a lot of people on this board, even in the center and on the left, that make it clear they have no idea 1.) What poverty looks like in this country and 2.) Just how many people fall into that category. This country is absolutely hitting third world levels of inequality.

[wildcat09 29355]

I've made probably hundreds of posts here bitching about how bad the Dems are at messaging. "Defund the Police" and "Critical Race Theory" aren't policies Democratic candidates or more than 3 or 4 Dems in the House support, though. "Defund the police" is something leftist activists support, but they're not the Democratic party (and often they don't even vote for any Democrats). "Critical race theory" as a political issue is just completely and totally made up, like death panels. 

[washparkhorn 9939]

19 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

So why hasn't it passed?

Shitlibs shut it down in fealty to their wealthy masters. 

Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

[Beantown Express 2.0 6559]

1 minute ago, wildcat09 said:

I've made probably hundreds of posts here bitching about how bad the Dems are at messaging. "Defund the Police" and "Critical Race Theory" aren't policies Democratic candidates or more than 3 or 4 Dems in the House support, though. "Defund the police" is something leftist activists support, but they're not the Democratic party (and often they don't even vote for any Democrats). "Critical race theory" as a political issue is just completely and totally made up, like death panels. 

I know dozens of people that were killed by the Death Panels a decade ago.  Why just the other day I was talking to some of them and they are still mad they were killed by those damn Death Panels!

[JimmyJames 12271]

49 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

You sure do have a lot of dumb meaningless charts. 

[Incredulity 11675]

54 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

how is it that you have the worst take on every topic possible? It's impressive, really

I think of you. Then I remove hubris, condescension and smug self-importance.

[wildcat09 29355]

4 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

I think of you. Then I remove hubris, condescension and smug self-importance.

You definitely don't remove hubris.

[Incredulity 11675]

6 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

You definitely don't remove hubris.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Incredulity

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

Back of the envelope math:

There are 3.75 million babies born in the US.  Lets say you wanted to set up a scale where every one of them got $1,000 at birth no matter how wealthy the family, but that the poorest got $10,000.00 and the median got $5,000, and the bottom got $1,000.  Blended average of $5,000 per kid lets say. 

3.5 million times 5 is 17.5 million.  Carry the 3 decimals and that's what- 17.5 billion.  That seems like dick all nothing to the size of our government right now.  If that earned 8% (annualized rate of return in the stock market over the past 50 years is 10.9%) that $10,000 would be worth $80,000 when a kid turned 27 years old according to the law of 72.  So- if you want to go to school you have $40,000 to spend and that's plausible that you could go to a state school, work part time and over the summer, graduate in 4 years and be debt free). Or, better yet you could join the peace corps or get a menial job that will hire an 18 year old, figure out what you want to do as an apprentice in life and be looking forward to $80k cash on the barrel head to help you buy a house or start a business with the skills you've been learning for the last year. Or maybe you've grown up enough to say- I think I need to go to night school b/c this is really what I want to do with my life.  Or trade school.  Or community college.  The possibilities are endless. I'd sure as shit have no complaint if someone laid something like this out with $18 billion a year going to this program.  I would think from a practical standpoint you'd have people crawling out of the woodwork to vote for this.  And hell, if we are really ok with spending trillions then lets look retrospectively at all the kids that haven't reached 18 yet and say- what would this look like if we took 1 trillion the first year for this program and just gave it to every kid equally they'd all get $14,000.00 put into that account.  If you means tested it somewhat and gave more to the kids closer to 18 to put in their account you could probably scratch that one check and make that work for everyone under 18, and spend the low low low amount of $18 billion a year to keep it self sustained.

Bam, every kid in America now would have a legacy, regardless of what color they are, where they were born etc.  And, I think you'd have widespread popular support for stuff like this. And it would be fair.  And it would improve lives.  

So- 3 things if we are just giving away money that would make everything better and actually might have a snowballs chance in hell of changing a ton of lives over the course of the years:

1) Make a payment that's an investment to everyone that's a kid now on a 1 time basis that would net them $40-$100k depending upon if they cashed out for school at 18 or some other investment later in life at 25.  $1 trillion dollar up front cost tag and 18 billion a year

2) subsidize a mortgage for everyone that needs help for a subsidy.   Use the section 8 money for ownership instead of rent- that gets us already to 5.5 million families.  Say that the government will guarantee every mortgage for a house that's 80% of median value (that would be $216,000 house nationwide).  Everyone who buys a house for 80% of median gets a no money down note at 5% interest.  The government would probably actually make money on this deal!  People don't really default on their house notes- even for the worst of the worst mortgages that were subprime- in the worst of the worst home market the default rate was only like 18%- if you talk about all mortgages nationwide I don't think it ever got higher than like 2 or 3 percent.  What killed the economy in the housing crisis wasn't repo's- it was asshole types on wall street with their crazy fucking exotic schemes to bundle notes, leverage them and sell them.  If the US government ran a market for poor people that need help for this kind of housing and they rant that like George fucking Baylie at the savings and loan- any guarantee on these mortgages in the program would likely be a rounding error. It would cost nothing.

3) Put all EITC into a portfolio that can be used only for major life events or retirement or something like that.  For all others allow them to use a portion of their social security money to put into this portfolio.  Don't change social security. This isn't a social security program- this is a legacy type program.  Match payments into this account the way that happens with a 401k up to a certain amount based upon income.  Give people that otherwise wouldn't have a chance a chance at that. 

 

Bam- now everyone that wants to owns a house, every kid has a legacy to go to school with or start a life with and everyone owns something throughout the course of their life.  And it doesn't cost all that much money compared to what we blow all the time. 

This is just back of the napkin math and off the cuff thoughts as I'm sitting here avoiding work and trying to solve the problems of the world. I'm sure it could be fine tuned and made much better.  But-- and this is important- it would actually improve lives permanently and we could probably get 80% buy in from the population.  But no, we aren't looking for programs on a basis of "will they work and will they affect a meaningful change" b/c we are so fucking short sighted and we'd rather tear each other apart over all sorts of stupid shit.

[Goredho 17408]

14 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Back of the envelope math:

There are 3.75 million babies born in the US.  Lets say you wanted to set up a scale where every one of them got $1,000 at birth no matter how wealthy the family, but that the poorest got $10,000.00 and the median got $5,000, and the bottom got $1,000.  Blended average of $5,000 per kid lets say. 

3.5 million times 5 is 17.5 million.  Carry the 3 decimals and that's what- 17.5 billion.  That seems like dick all nothing to the size of our government right now.  If that earned 8% (annualized rate of return in the stock market over the past 50 years is 10.9%) that $10,000 would be worth $80,000 when a kid turned 27 years old according to the law of 72.  So- if you want to go to school you have $40,000 to spend and that's plausible that you could go to a state school, work part time and over the summer, graduate in 4 years and be debt free). Or, better yet you could join the peace corps or get a menial job that will hire an 18 year old, figure out what you want to do as an apprentice in life and be looking forward to $80k cash on the barrel head to help you buy a house or start a business with the skills you've been learning for the last year. Or maybe you've grown up enough to say- I think I need to go to night school b/c this is really what I want to do with my life.  Or trade school.  Or community college.  The possibilities are endless. I'd sure as shit have no complaint if someone laid something like this out with $18 billion a year going to this program.  I would think from a practical standpoint you'd have people crawling out of the woodwork to vote for this.  And hell, if we are really ok with spending trillions then lets look retrospectively at all the kids that haven't reached 18 yet and say- what would this look like if we took 1 trillion the first year for this program and just gave it to every kid equally they'd all get $14,000.00 put into that account.  If you means tested it somewhat and gave more to the kids closer to 18 to put in their account you could probably scratch that one check and make that work for everyone under 18, and spend the low low low amount of $18 billion a year to keep it self sustained.

Bam, every kid in America now would have a legacy, regardless of what color they are, where they were born etc.  And, I think you'd have widespread popular support for stuff like this. And it would be fair.  And it would improve lives.  

So- 3 things if we are just giving away money that would make everything better and actually might have a snowballs chance in hell of changing a ton of lives over the course of the years:

1) Make a payment that's an investment to everyone that's a kid now on a 1 time basis that would net them $40-$100k depending upon if they cashed out for school at 18 or some other investment later in life at 25.  $1 trillion dollar up front cost tag and 18 billion a year

2) subsidize a mortgage for everyone that needs help for a subsidy.   Use the section 8 money for ownership instead of rent- that gets us already to 5.5 million families.  Say that the government will guarantee every mortgage for a house that's 80% of median value (that would be $216,000 house nationwide).  Everyone who buys a house for 80% of median gets a no money down note at 5% interest.  The government would probably actually make money on this deal!  People don't really default on their house notes- even for the worst of the worst mortgages that were subprime- in the worst of the worst home market the default rate was only like 18%- if you talk about all mortgages nationwide I don't think it ever got higher than like 2 or 3 percent.  What killed the economy in the housing crisis wasn't repo's- it was asshole types on wall street with their crazy fucking exotic schemes to bundle notes, leverage them and sell them.  If the US government ran a market for poor people that need help for this kind of housing and they rant that like George fucking Baylie at the savings and loan- any guarantee on these mortgages in the program would likely be a rounding error. It would cost nothing.

3) Put all EITC into a portfolio that can be used only for major life events or retirement or something like that.  For all others allow them to use a portion of their social security money to put into this portfolio.  Don't change social security. This isn't a social security program- this is a legacy type program.  Match payments into this account the way that happens with a 401k up to a certain amount based upon income.  Give people that otherwise wouldn't have a chance a chance at that. 

 

Bam- now everyone that wants to owns a house, every kid has a legacy to go to school with or start a life with and everyone owns something throughout the course of their life.  And it doesn't cost all that much money compared to what we blow all the time. 

This is just back of the napkin math and off the cuff thoughts as I'm sitting here avoiding work and trying to solve the problems of the world. I'm sure it could be fine tuned and made much better.  But-- and this is important- it would actually improve lives permanently and we could probably get 80% buy in from the population.  But no, we aren't looking for programs on a basis of "will they work and will they affect a meaningful change" b/c we are so fucking short sighted and we'd rather tear each other apart over all sorts of stupid shit.

I want to vote for you.

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

34 minutes ago, elfenix said:

limited sample size (125) but it doesn't take much no-strings money ($500/month, tho stockton CA) to make people meaningfully better off:

 

 

and that's generational too.

Extremely limited sample size and not for a long enough duration IMO. Temporary jolt is good.  Get used to it and its expected and doesn't have the same effect it otherwise would.

When I ran my first business at 24 right out of law school I put everyone on a profit share in the bottom line (small business- 6 employees).  Receptionist made $50k, junior closer made 65k 3 senior closers made 100k. This was 2004.  This was 35% at least above wages in industry at that time and place. They were overjoyed.  For about 6 months, maybe a year.  After about a year they didn't have a super generous boss and a job they were incredibly lucky to have anymore, they had the expectation that this is what they were worth and what they expected to make.  Morale went down. It wasn't sunshine rainbows and lolipops anymore- it was just- this is life.  3 years later when I got divorced and sold and they went back to the real world with wage cuts, laid off after 6 months (I got the purchaser to guarantee 3 months at current wages and 6 months total employment) and couldn't get those same wages elsewhere they were like- we miss you so much- when might you do something like this again, blah blah blah.  

My guess is after a certain amount of time those checks have the same fleeting effect and long term it doesn't move the needle, but I'd be super interested to see more robust studies, over a longer period of time and see what cost and effect look like to see if we should replicate it over a greater number of people/more of the country/at the national level. 

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19103]

35 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Back of the envelope math:

There are 3.75 million babies born in the US.  Lets say you wanted to set up a scale where every one of them got $1,000 at birth no matter how wealthy the family, but that the poorest got $10,000.00 and the median got $5,000, and the bottom got $1,000.  Blended average of $5,000 per kid lets say. 

3.5 million times 5 is 17.5 million.  Carry the 3 decimals and that's what- 17.5 billion.  That seems like dick all nothing to the size of our government right now.  If that earned 8% (annualized rate of return in the stock market over the past 50 years is 10.9%) that $10,000 would be worth $80,000 when a kid turned 27 years old according to the law of 72.  So- if you want to go to school you have $40,000 to spend and that's plausible that you could go to a state school, work part time and over the summer, graduate in 4 years and be debt free). Or, better yet you could join the peace corps or get a menial job that will hire an 18 year old, figure out what you want to do as an apprentice in life and be looking forward to $80k cash on the barrel head to help you buy a house or start a business with the skills you've been learning for the last year. Or maybe you've grown up enough to say- I think I need to go to night school b/c this is really what I want to do with my life.  Or trade school.  Or community college.  The possibilities are endless. I'd sure as shit have no complaint if someone laid something like this out with $18 billion a year going to this program.  I would think from a practical standpoint you'd have people crawling out of the woodwork to vote for this.  And hell, if we are really ok with spending trillions then lets look retrospectively at all the kids that haven't reached 18 yet and say- what would this look like if we took 1 trillion the first year for this program and just gave it to every kid equally they'd all get $14,000.00 put into that account.  If you means tested it somewhat and gave more to the kids closer to 18 to put in their account you could probably scratch that one check and make that work for everyone under 18, and spend the low low low amount of $18 billion a year to keep it self sustained.

Bam, every kid in America now would have a legacy, regardless of what color they are, where they were born etc.  And, I think you'd have widespread popular support for stuff like this. And it would be fair.  And it would improve lives.  

So- 3 things if we are just giving away money that would make everything better and actually might have a snowballs chance in hell of changing a ton of lives over the course of the years:

1) Make a payment that's an investment to everyone that's a kid now on a 1 time basis that would net them $40-$100k depending upon if they cashed out for school at 18 or some other investment later in life at 25.  $1 trillion dollar up front cost tag and 18 billion a year

2) subsidize a mortgage for everyone that needs help for a subsidy.   Use the section 8 money for ownership instead of rent- that gets us already to 5.5 million families.  Say that the government will guarantee every mortgage for a house that's 80% of median value (that would be $216,000 house nationwide).  Everyone who buys a house for 80% of median gets a no money down note at 5% interest.  The government would probably actually make money on this deal!  People don't really default on their house notes- even for the worst of the worst mortgages that were subprime- in the worst of the worst home market the default rate was only like 18%- if you talk about all mortgages nationwide I don't think it ever got higher than like 2 or 3 percent.  What killed the economy in the housing crisis wasn't repo's- it was asshole types on wall street with their crazy fucking exotic schemes to bundle notes, leverage them and sell them.  If the US government ran a market for poor people that need help for this kind of housing and they rant that like George fucking Baylie at the savings and loan- any guarantee on these mortgages in the program would likely be a rounding error. It would cost nothing.

3) Put all EITC into a portfolio that can be used only for major life events or retirement or something like that.  For all others allow them to use a portion of their social security money to put into this portfolio.  Don't change social security. This isn't a social security program- this is a legacy type program.  Match payments into this account the way that happens with a 401k up to a certain amount based upon income.  Give people that otherwise wouldn't have a chance a chance at that. 

 

Bam- now everyone that wants to owns a house, every kid has a legacy to go to school with or start a life with and everyone owns something throughout the course of their life.  And it doesn't cost all that much money compared to what we blow all the time. 

This is just back of the napkin math and off the cuff thoughts as I'm sitting here avoiding work and trying to solve the problems of the world. I'm sure it could be fine tuned and made much better.  But-- and this is important- it would actually improve lives permanently and we could probably get 80% buy in from the population.  But no, we aren't looking for programs on a basis of "will they work and will they affect a meaningful change" b/c we are so fucking short sighted and we'd rather tear each other apart over all sorts of stupid shit.

I am torn.  We have a lot of people who have no business having kids (i.e. they are too stupid, they cannot afford it, they are shitty parents, etc...), and I just worry that more kids will be brought into the world if these payments go to the parents.  

I assume, for your plan, this money would be held in trust in investments for the kids.  Tie it up tight so that the parents cannot touch it.  Then, the kid can use it for college or a vocational school at 18.  If they choose to not continue their education, then they get it at 25 to do with as they please.  Is that the kind of thing you are talking about?

[David Dennison 18922]

3 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

What does that have to do with who gets more free shit?

[elfenix 34307]

33 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Extremely limited sample size and not for a long enough duration IMO. Temporary jolt is good.  Get used to it and its expected and doesn't have the same effect it otherwise would.

When I ran my first business at 24 right out of law school I put everyone on a profit share in the bottom line (small business- 6 employees).  Receptionist made $50k, junior closer made 65k 3 senior closers made 100k. This was 2004.  This was 35% at least above wages in industry at that time and place. They were overjoyed.  For about 6 months, maybe a year.  After about a year they didn't have a super generous boss and a job they were incredibly lucky to have anymore, they had the expectation that this is what they were worth and what they expected to make.  Morale went down. It wasn't sunshine rainbows and lolipops anymore- it was just- this is life.  3 years later when I got divorced and sold and they went back to the real world with wage cuts, laid off after 6 months (I got the purchaser to guarantee 3 months at current wages and 6 months total employment) and couldn't get those same wages elsewhere they were like- we miss you so much- when might you do something like this again, blah blah blah.  

My guess is after a certain amount of time those checks have the same fleeting effect and long term it doesn't move the needle, but I'd be super interested to see more robust studies, over a longer period of time and see what cost and effect look like to see if we should replicate it over a greater number of people/more of the country/at the national level. 

alaska's been doing this for decades, although the amount isn't a guarantee figure and can dip below $100/month

(i forgot that, ironically, alaska is the most socialist state in the country)

Edited November 4, 2021 by elfenix

[Bateshorn 9928]

38 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Extremely limited sample size and not for a long enough duration IMO. Temporary jolt is good.  Get used to it and its expected and doesn't have the same effect it otherwise would.

When I ran my first business at 24 right out of law school I put everyone on a profit share in the bottom line (small business- 6 employees).  Receptionist made $50k, junior closer made 65k 3 senior closers made 100k. This was 2004.  This was 35% at least above wages in industry at that time and place. They were overjoyed.  For about 6 months, maybe a year.  After about a year they didn't have a super generous boss and a job they were incredibly lucky to have anymore, they had the expectation that this is what they were worth and what they expected to make.  Morale went down. It wasn't sunshine rainbows and lolipops anymore- it was just- this is life.  3 years later when I got divorced and sold and they went back to the real world with wage cuts, laid off after 6 months (I got the purchaser to guarantee 3 months at current wages and 6 months total employment) and couldn't get those same wages elsewhere they were like- we miss you so much- when might you do something like this again, blah blah blah.  

My guess is after a certain amount of time those checks have the same fleeting effect and long term it doesn't move the needle, but I'd be super interested to see more robust studies, over a longer period of time and see what cost and effect look like to see if we should replicate it over a greater number of people/more of the country/at the national level. 

I think you have a point here, but that’s sort of middle class ennui you are discussing.

 

 One of my favorite articles I read years ago and can’t find was by a writer who has been desperately poor after a bad divorce.  And she wrote about the constant calculator in your head at the grocery store: if I get this, can I afford that.  Anyone who has been stuck behind somebody with kids on food stamps has watched the agonizing interaction with the cashier has they try to make the numbers balance.  The TV show Maid has a few moments like this where the main character is running numbers in real time trying to keep her head above water. 
 

The author realized she wasn’t flat busted one day when she tossed a couple of things in the cart without thinking about price. There are relative scales to resource scarcity.  Being underpaid is vastly different than being poor.

[DonkeyCigars 143]

23 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

I think you have a point here, but that’s sort of middle class ennui you are discussing.

 

 One of my favorite articles I read years ago and can’t find was by a writer who has been desperately poor after a bad divorce.  And she wrote about the constant calculator in your head at the grocery store: if I get this, can I afford that.  Anyone who has been stuck behind somebody with kids on food stamps has watched the agonizing interaction with the cashier has they try to make the numbers balance.  The TV show Maid has a few moments like this where the main character is running numbers in real time trying to keep her head above water. 
 

The author realized she wasn’t flat busted one day when she tossed a couple of things in the cart without thinking about price. There are relative scales to resource scarcity.  Being underpaid is vastly different than being poor.

That middle class ennui is real.

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

44 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

I am torn.  We have a lot of people who have no business having kids (i.e. they are too stupid, they cannot afford it, they are shitty parents, etc...), and I just worry that more kids will be brought into the world if these payments go to the parents.  

I assume, for your plan, this money would be held in trust in investments for the kids.  Tie it up tight so that the parents cannot touch it.  Then, the kid can use it for college or a vocational school at 18.  If they choose to not continue their education, then they get it at 25 to do with as they please.  Is that the kind of thing you are talking about?

Yes - that’s exactly what it would be. And it wouldn’t be a promissory note- it would be an actual check written on the day of their birth to an index fund with the US government as the trustee. If the kid died then what we that money is with in the account would be paid to his heirs the way any other property would be distributed. 

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

1 hour ago, Goredho said:

I want to vote for you.

I voted for myself in 2020 as a write in. My wife and her friend said they’d vote for me in 2024 if it was Trump/Biden or Harris. With your vote I’m now up to 4. I would make a terrible president but I would go back to sending the state of the union to Congress by letter delivered by a horseman so that would be at least 4 less speeches you would have to ignore in your life. 

[wildcat09 29355]

4 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I voted for myself in 2020 as a write in. My wife and her friend said they’d vote for me in 2024 if it was Trump/Biden or Harris. With your vote I’m now up to 4. I would make a terrible president but I would go back to sending the state of the union to Congress by letter delivered by a horseman so that would be at least 4 less speeches you would have to ignore in your life. 

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

31 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

I think you have a point here, but that’s sort of middle class ennui you are discussing.

 

 One of my favorite articles I read years ago and can’t find was by a writer who has been desperately poor after a bad divorce.  And she wrote about the constant calculator in your head at the grocery store: if I get this, can I afford that.  Anyone who has been stuck behind somebody with kids on food stamps has watched the agonizing interaction with the cashier has they try to make the numbers balance.  The TV show Maid has a few moments like this where the main character is running numbers in real time trying to keep her head above water. 
 

The author realized she wasn’t flat busted one day when she tossed a couple of things in the cart without thinking about price. There are relative scales to resource scarcity.  Being underpaid is vastly different than being poor.

Sure.  It your UBI for the very poor is replacing other benefits in most programs I’ve heard discussed (or is just a very small addition if not) that doesn’t move the needle. I had the discussion with my buddy about “how much money would your wife have to make before you thought it would be worth it financially for her to go back to work and with taxes, daycare, maid, eating out etc he said 100k and I had the figure at 60 or 70 (probably lower for each of us that have three kids now that the kids are in school and don’t need day care or the like). That’s the irrigating and what life looks like when you are upper middle class that someone lower middle class wouldn’t relate to because they haven’t lived it- the same why I’ve only lived the grocery store test a couple times in my life (during school and when I started my new career) and never without the safety net of knowing I had other options if I got desperate enough 30k in credit card bills and living with my parents temporarily that got paid off and settled up after I started making actual money) 

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

3 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

My first act after accomplishing those three planks on my platform would be to shut down Twitter. Charlie strong would be in charge of that for me. My second act would be to ban all less and fewer gifs from the internet. 

[wildcat09 29355]

Just now, Wulaw Horn said:

My first act after accomplishing those three planks on my platform would be to shut down Twitter. Charlie strong would be in charge of that for me. My second act would be to ban all less and fewer gifs from the internet. 

[NWBuck 8571]

I love this idea, and know that people a whole lot smarter than me (most folks) will fine tune it to near perfection.

What I'm interested in is how this might hope to address human frailty and greed. I often get concerned that where money is freely available, prices increase accordingly. Anecdotally, I saw this in California; when there first was a rebate available for buying an electric vehicle, all prices for those cars went up the exact same amount.

How do we create structures that don't allow those at the top to just jack up the prices for everyone, since the assumption is that a portion of the population will have this additional funding available? It seems that this would result in a zero gain for the target audience (kiddos) and more economic stress on everyone else... well, unless they're shareholders in those companies.

(again, zero economic background... just trying to figure shit out)

Edited November 4, 2021 by NWBuck

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

That gif can stay.  I laugh every time. And with the one with the cat knocking shit off the table captioned, fuck this, fuck that, fuck all these, especially fuck all of these.  Those two are cool. 

[Goredho 17408]

14 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I voted for myself in 2020 as a write in. My wife and her friend said they’d vote for me in 2024 if it was Trump/Biden or Harris. With your vote I’m now up to 4. I would make a terrible president but I would go back to sending the state of the union to Congress by letter delivered by a horseman so that would be at least 4 less speeches you would have to ignore in your life. 

We need a Surly PAC to jumpstart your campaign.

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

3 minutes ago, NWBuck said:

I love this idea, and know that people a whole lot smarter than me (most folks) will fine tune it to near perfection.

What I'm interested in is how this might hope to address human frailty and greed. I often get concerned that where money is freely available, prices increase accordingly. Anecdotally, I saw this in California; when there first was a rebate available for buying an electric vehicle, all prices for those cars went up the exact same amount.

How do we create structures that don't allow those at the top to just jack up the prices for everyone, since the assumption is that a portion of the population will have this additional funding available? It seems that this would result in a zero gain for the target audience (kiddos) and more economic stress on everyone else... well, unless they're shareholders in those companies.

(again, zero economic background... just trying to figure shit out)

So, if you guarantee loans at 80% of median house prices with no down you will have a lot more affordable houses being built, and they will damn sure come in at that number b/c it will be easy to sell them to poorer people. Since it's a guarantee from the government on the loan at a higher interest rate than market (but not in an unduly burdensome way) you wouldn't have people go to this loan that could get taken care of the in the market, so it would be a select crowd of people fucked up in their finances. Might this lead to some foreclosures?  Sure.  Do foreclosures disrupt the market place?  Sure.  But probably not near as many as you'd think b/c some of these people would be getting housing subsidies like the government already does to section 8- so the government is paying some/all of their mortgage already.

Putting people's money into investment accounts would provide more liquidity to the market, but not a huge deal. Total market cap right now in the US market is 50 trillion ).  Total EITC payments a year are 70 billion.  That's not enough money to spook the market, (it's about what .15% of the market) and after a certain amount of time when people get to retirement in the system (or have a life even that you could get money out of a 401k for) it would probably be about net with money entering the market vs exiting the market being essentially the same.  Call it some initial minor inflation in asset prices but that's not enough money flowing in as a percent of what's going out to really move the needle.

As far as the money to kids for school or to do whatever the fuck they want with it- this would probably lead to schools raising tuition or being created to get some of that sweet sweet money from 18 year olds going to school.  Might have to look at putting a cap on this in some way at the public schools at least. I don't know- does this send an extra 10% of kids to college or trade school?  15%? 20?  yeah- that inflation would suck- and we wouldn't see run away educational inflation without that.  Maybe- and this would be a cost saving thing on a government side along with keeping a lid on tuition inflation it could come with a corresponding decision by the government to not guarantee student loans anymore. WIth the assumption that we don't have to guarantee federally student loans anymore b/c everyone has $40k to go to school with and the free market can take care of the rest.  
As far as every kid that waits until 25 having a rolling group of 25 year old 1.5 million strong every year getting a free roll at 80K?  Price of hookers and blow would likely sky rocket.  Is that enough extra money entering the economy to have any kind of actual affect on it?  I don't know. My instinct would be know.  Maybe the right thing to do would be to just say that once you turn 18 you can use the money between 18 or 25 for school or school related expenses whenever- if you turn 25 you don't get the check but it's opted to continue in your account, you have to proactively withdraw it, you can only withdraw 10-% at a time unless you have a justifiable capital expenditure.  But I don't think you'd have to do any of that shit, honestly, to worry about it. I don't think a bunch of people newly turned 25 could swamp the economic system getting 5 figures turned over into them.
I bet the wedding industry would fucking love it.  Tourism industry.  Hookers and blow.  Housing (but we've already fixed that). But the market would see this happen as a whole- you don't have the danger of rebates targeted directly to electronic car companies affecting prices- b/c that's a 1/1 swap this is 1/infinite (kid can buy anything they want in the marketplace that is life). 

[elfenix 34307]

20 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

My first act after accomplishing those three planks on my platform would be to shut down Twitter. Charlie strong would be in charge of that for me. My second act would be to ban all less and fewer gifs from the internet. 

fuck prescriptivists!

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

16 minutes ago, Goredho said:

We need a Surly PAC to jumpstart your campaign.

Yall would not like my takes on pretty much anything in the catch all that is desribed as "woke-ism".  I think I might manage to offend literally the entire country. Almost to a person.  

When I used to teach school my kids at the shitty school used to get mad at me b/c I'd talk about how terrible and awful overreliance on government was b/c everyone had a chance to make their own way in the world. The deck might be stacked against you blah blah blah but that doesn't mean you can't choose to succeed and if you choose to succeed nobody can take that away from you.  Then I went and taught at the affluent ish district and they'd come in with their socialism is the worst blah blah blah and I'd sound like bad teammate shitting all over everything that happened in industry in the industrial revolution and asking them how they could possibly not see how socialism was necessary and of course we had communist revolutions, blah blah blah.  Then I would tell the teachers that we weren't living in the real world, we were overpaid (we made more than the median parent that worked 250 days while we worked 187) considering the fact that there was literally no pressure on us, if we could manage to make it through the year without showing up drunk or fucking one of our students we wouldn't get fired, if we remembered to take our attendance every period and update our website they would throw a fucking party for us etc.  Pretty much everything I would do would be to challenge assumptions or piss off someone who thinks they have the whole world figured out.  It would be a fucking trainwreck (but my heart would always be in the right place and I'd always try to tell someone something they could take with them to make their life a little bit better or see a situation from a different POV)- so maybe in that sense this bunch of nihilists that would like to see the world burn would get something out of that.  

And shit- I wouldn't be able to use the military and I wouldn't be able to not use the military.  How can you send kids to their death. How can you order strikes that will cause collateral damage to innocents elsewhere?  How can you see evil in the world, have the power to do something to stop it and then not stop it?  Oh yeah- if you do that kids will die and so will innocents. Fuck all that. I have enough stress with 12 people on the payroll in two different businesses and the amazing responsibility that comes along with that to need meds and lose sleep when things are going bad at night.  I can't even fathom making life or death decisions (or indecisions that will also lead to life and death).  What a shit job the presidency is if you want to do it right.  No fucking way anyone decent should want to be president.  You have to be a martyr or a narcissist to want to do it.  

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

14 minutes ago, elfenix said:

fuck prescriptivists!

had to look it up- but agreed!

You just gave me the first word I've had to look up for months (or maybe a couple years).  Thanks for embiggening my vocabulary!

[berlinerbaer 678]

23 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, what did kind of happen is that Democrats did used to rely on a very ignorant portion of the electorate that could be pandered to by promising "stuff."  The proverbial "free shit army."

Trump co-opted big chunks of the "free shit army" and a whole other very ignorant portion of the electorate, not on the grounds that they would get any free shit (never did anyway), but instead just by demonizing and blaming others for the plight of the free shit army, while continuing to cornhole the free shit army at great depth and speed.

At least the free shit army tried to vote in their own interest.

People forget, but Trump did more than pander to the "free shit army".

He ran a populist campaign. Yeah, that included racism and grievance but he also told everyone he wanted to tax the rich and "drain the swamp". Those are progressive policies. He co-opted the left as much as the right. Politically savvy considering he was running against a centrist. He then took corruption to heights never before seen.

Not specifically responding to you, just pointing this out.

[TwiceHorn 31495]

8 hours ago, Goredho said:

This is a really good post, but the people I know who voted for Trump are not looking for free shit.  They are blue collar workers and people living in rural areas who would have been comfortably middle class when I was growing up in the 70s.  For decades they have continued to live and work as they, their parents and grandparents have, but their economic position has drifted further away from the median of middle class towards poverty -- especially relative to the wealthiest 1% of our country.  If you are a person living in my rural community, making a living here serving this community, you can't afford to own a home here as prices have been jacked up beyond what the local economy can support by people who are making or have made their wealth in a city.  I am a part of that problem, and while my goods and services needs and tax dollars support the local economy, our community is definitely divided along economic lines into those that have and those that have not.  A lot that now find themselves on the poor side of that dividing line would have been on the other side 40-50 years ago.

These are people who we tend to call ignorant rubes and dismiss with a "Fuck em!"  They are just as entitled to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as any educated professional with a more progressive world view.  Their vote is just as valid.  Their ability to pursue happiness and lead a life of contentment has been eroding for decades.  Their plight is the soil in which Trumpism sank its roots.  I think the only way out of this mess is to improve the lives of those people so that someone like Trump cannot exploit their very real struggles.  And we have to do that even as they are screaming in our face that we are their sworn enemy.

Odds are we're fucked either way, but for my kid's sake I would like to at least see someone in the middle give it some real effort.

No, i acknowledged that it was more than the "free shit army," but kind of returned to that phrase a little much in the post.

Between November 2016 and January 2017, I acknowledged that Trump was pretty masterful at speaking to a segment of the population that has gone mostly ignored by the political class.  

Naively, I suppose, I didn't really hear what he said to them or understand the really base instincts he was preying on and subsequently unleashed.

And, I think you're absolutely correct.  The problem is, no one has been successful at doing anything for those classes of people in probably 75 years.  And some of the things that get done get called sOcIALisM.

It's the "what are we going to do with the morons" problem.

Also, there's a certain irony about the way liberal types, which now includes me, treat the trumpkin rubes in much the same way as conservatives treat the poor, or free shit army.

Edited November 5, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[berlinerbaer 678]

6 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Back of the envelope math:

There are 3.75 million babies born in the US.  Lets say you wanted to set up a scale where every one of them got $1,000 at birth no matter how wealthy the family, but that the poorest got $10,000.00 and the median got $5,000, and the bottom got $1,000.  Blended average of $5,000 per kid lets say. 

3.5 million times 5 is 17.5 million.  Carry the 3 decimals and that's what- 17.5 billion.  That seems like dick all nothing to the size of our government right now.  If that earned 8% (annualized rate of return in the stock market over the past 50 years is 10.9%) that $10,000 would be worth $80,000 when a kid turned 27 years old according to the law of 72.  So- if you want to go to school you have $40,000 to spend and that's plausible that you could go to a state school, work part time and over the summer, graduate in 4 years and be debt free). Or, better yet you could join the peace corps or get a menial job that will hire an 18 year old, figure out what you want to do as an apprentice in life and be looking forward to $80k cash on the barrel head to help you buy a house or start a business with the skills you've been learning for the last year. Or maybe you've grown up enough to say- I think I need to go to night school b/c this is really what I want to do with my life.  Or trade school.  Or community college.  The possibilities are endless. I'd sure as shit have no complaint if someone laid something like this out with $18 billion a year going to this program.  I would think from a practical standpoint you'd have people crawling out of the woodwork to vote for this.  And hell, if we are really ok with spending trillions then lets look retrospectively at all the kids that haven't reached 18 yet and say- what would this look like if we took 1 trillion the first year for this program and just gave it to every kid equally they'd all get $14,000.00 put into that account.  If you means tested it somewhat and gave more to the kids closer to 18 to put in their account you could probably scratch that one check and make that work for everyone under 18, and spend the low low low amount of $18 billion a year to keep it self sustained.

Bam, every kid in America now would have a legacy, regardless of what color they are, where they were born etc.  And, I think you'd have widespread popular support for stuff like this. And it would be fair.  And it would improve lives.  

So- 3 things if we are just giving away money that would make everything better and actually might have a snowballs chance in hell of changing a ton of lives over the course of the years:

1) Make a payment that's an investment to everyone that's a kid now on a 1 time basis that would net them $40-$100k depending upon if they cashed out for school at 18 or some other investment later in life at 25.  $1 trillion dollar up front cost tag and 18 billion a year

2) subsidize a mortgage for everyone that needs help for a subsidy.   Use the section 8 money for ownership instead of rent- that gets us already to 5.5 million families.  Say that the government will guarantee every mortgage for a house that's 80% of median value (that would be $216,000 house nationwide).  Everyone who buys a house for 80% of median gets a no money down note at 5% interest.  The government would probably actually make money on this deal!  People don't really default on their house notes- even for the worst of the worst mortgages that were subprime- in the worst of the worst home market the default rate was only like 18%- if you talk about all mortgages nationwide I don't think it ever got higher than like 2 or 3 percent.  What killed the economy in the housing crisis wasn't repo's- it was asshole types on wall street with their crazy fucking exotic schemes to bundle notes, leverage them and sell them.  If the US government ran a market for poor people that need help for this kind of housing and they rant that like George fucking Baylie at the savings and loan- any guarantee on these mortgages in the program would likely be a rounding error. It would cost nothing.

3) Put all EITC into a portfolio that can be used only for major life events or retirement or something like that.  For all others allow them to use a portion of their social security money to put into this portfolio.  Don't change social security. This isn't a social security program- this is a legacy type program.  Match payments into this account the way that happens with a 401k up to a certain amount based upon income.  Give people that otherwise wouldn't have a chance a chance at that. 

 

Bam- now everyone that wants to owns a house, every kid has a legacy to go to school with or start a life with and everyone owns something throughout the course of their life.  And it doesn't cost all that much money compared to what we blow all the time. 

This is just back of the napkin math and off the cuff thoughts as I'm sitting here avoiding work and trying to solve the problems of the world. I'm sure it could be fine tuned and made much better.  But-- and this is important- it would actually improve lives permanently and we could probably get 80% buy in from the population.  But no, we aren't looking for programs on a basis of "will they work and will they affect a meaningful change" b/c we are so fucking short sighted and we'd rather tear each other apart over all sorts of stupid shit.

This all sounds good to me but candidates have proposed something in this general ball park and nobody's been chomping at the bit to vote for it besides progressives. Andrew Yang comes to mind but so does Joe Biden and the child care payments that have been going out for the past several months after the latest stimulus package. No hypotheticals needed. That's real world stuff you can point to.

And guess what? Biden's approval is in the gutter. No, not because of the payments, but at least in spite of them.

It tangentially reminds me of Obamacare and how the Dems got nuked from orbit electorally the following year, except that was a direct cause and effect. But guess what? It's the law of the land. It was an irreversible step in the right direction.

I like good policy too, way more than I like the teams that come up with them. If we could possibly get election reform as well as some real lasting action on climate change this term (BIG if), I would really take the sting out of the Republicans taking control of Congress and the presidency in 2024.

[washparkhorn 9939]

4 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

So, if you guarantee loans at 80% of median house prices with no down you will have a lot more affordable houses being built, and they will damn sure come in at that number b/c it will be easy to sell them to poorer people. Since it's a guarantee from the government on the loan at a higher interest rate than market (but not in an unduly burdensome way) you wouldn't have people go to this loan that could get taken care of the in the market, so it would be a select crowd of people fucked up in their finances. Might this lead to some foreclosures?  Sure.  Do foreclosures disrupt the market place?  Sure.  But probably not near as many as you'd think b/c some of these people would be getting housing subsidies like the government already does to section 8- so the government is paying some/all of their mortgage already.

Putting people's money into investment accounts would provide more liquidity to the market, but not a huge deal. Total market cap right now in the US market is 50 trillion ).  Total EITC payments a year are 70 billion.  That's not enough money to spook the market, (it's about what .15% of the market) and after a certain amount of time when people get to retirement in the system (or have a life even that you could get money out of a 401k for) it would probably be about net with money entering the market vs exiting the market being essentially the same.  Call it some initial minor inflation in asset prices but that's not enough money flowing in as a percent of what's going out to really move the needle.

As far as the money to kids for school or to do whatever the fuck they want with it- this would probably lead to schools raising tuition or being created to get some of that sweet sweet money from 18 year olds going to school.  Might have to look at putting a cap on this in some way at the public schools at least. I don't know- does this send an extra 10% of kids to college or trade school?  15%? 20?  yeah- that inflation would suck- and we wouldn't see run away educational inflation without that.  Maybe- and this would be a cost saving thing on a government side along with keeping a lid on tuition inflation it could come with a corresponding decision by the government to not guarantee student loans anymore. WIth the assumption that we don't have to guarantee federally student loans anymore b/c everyone has $40k to go to school with and the free market can take care of the rest.  
As far as every kid that waits until 25 having a rolling group of 25 year old 1.5 million strong every year getting a free roll at 80K?  Price of hookers and blow would likely sky rocket.  Is that enough extra money entering the economy to have any kind of actual affect on it?  I don't know. My instinct would be know.  Maybe the right thing to do would be to just say that once you turn 18 you can use the money between 18 or 25 for school or school related expenses whenever- if you turn 25 you don't get the check but it's opted to continue in your account, you have to proactively withdraw it, you can only withdraw 10-% at a time unless you have a justifiable capital expenditure.  But I don't think you'd have to do any of that shit, honestly, to worry about it. I don't think a bunch of people newly turned 25 could swamp the economic system getting 5 figures turned over into them.
I bet the wedding industry would fucking love it.  Tourism industry.  Hookers and blow.  Housing (but we've already fixed that). But the market would see this happen as a whole- you don't have the danger of rebates targeted directly to electronic car companies affecting prices- b/c that's a 1/1 swap this is 1/infinite (kid can buy anything they want in the marketplace that is life). 

This is what left libertarianism looks like. Cool.

Follow the numbers. Cut out the unnecessary private and public inefficiencies. Subsidize what we must have more of. Incentivize improving quality of life. Put a fee/cost on what we need less of. Streamline. Rectify negative externalities quickly and humbly. We are in a race with other economic powers. It's best that we are fit from top to bottom if that goes south. 

You might Katie Porter on economic issues. Plain talk - with solid numbers.

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

1 hour ago, berlinerbaer said:

This all sounds good to me but candidates have proposed something in this general ball park and nobody's been chomping at the bit to vote for it besides progressives. Andrew Yang comes to mind but so does Joe Biden and the child care payments that have been going out for the past several months after the latest stimulus package. No hypotheticals needed. That's real world stuff you can point to.

And guess what? Biden's approval is in the gutter. No, not because of the payments, but at least in spite of them.

It tangentially reminds me of Obamacare and how the Dems got nuked from orbit electorally the following year, except that was a direct cause and effect. But guess what? It's the law of the land. It was an irreversible step in the right direction.

I like good policy too, way more than I like the teams that come up with them. If we could possibly get election reform as well as some real lasting action on climate change this term (BIG if), I would really take the sting out of the Republicans taking control of Congress and the presidency in 2024.

Maybe?  Maybe not?  Maybe go Fuck your self?

just kidding. I just love that Gif. But don’t know how to post gifs, so…

it could work. It would be better coming from someone on the GOP trying to carry the populist banner, but if that happened I’m sure progressives would shit all over it while @washparkhornfavored neoliberal shit heads (or whatever he calls them) works to kill it, while all the grifters either line up to bilk it doesn’t all it’s worth or kill it bc nobody gets paid for solving problems but they get paid well for stirring up grievances. 
the FDR poor white coalition has won elections for 8 decades in America. The fact that the Dems chased them away show how stupid the Dems are. That’s why they owned the house for 2 or 3 generations. It’s why they have little chance in the house going forward. There aren’t enough votes from coastal elites and minorities to get done what you want in any kind of meaningfully governing coalition and they are finding that out to their detriment right now. Their only real chance is to quit being fucking stupid as it relates to Manchin and buy him out with an 8 figure golden parachute  for rolling over and losing his election in 24 by going along to get along. Would that work? Maybe. I’ve not ever met the person who didn’t like ridiculous amounts of money, so…

but yeah- they don’t have a mandate, they don’t have a governing coalition and they don’t have the intelligence to take what they can get as a down payment on what they might sometime later be able to get without showing their ass to everyone in the process. It’s terrible (and stupid) politics and although it wouldn’t surprise me from Chuck Schumer I thought Nancy Pelican was better and ran a tighter ship. She’s old as fuck, maybe she’s lost a step. 

[washparkhorn 9939]

Wasn't shitting on you. Those are progressive ideas. Status quo is not working for the majority.

[mchookem 16336]

 @TwiceHorn and @Wulaw Horn have cemented themselves firmly in the evil liberal cabal 😄

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by mchookem

[gmr548 16580]

Wulaw is out here trying to get the government to invest in a home for every household. I have seen it all. And for the record, as a progressive, I would not shit all over that plan coming from your or any other Republican. I am hard pressed to imagine it coming from an actual GOP politician, and there's obviously room to change the framework, but those are different things. On a fundamental level, there's plenty of evidence out there that shows keeping things simple is often the most effective solution to societal issues. What's the most cost effective way to address homelessness? Pay for supportive housing. What's the most cost effective way to address healthcare costs? Pay for healthcare. What's the most cost effective way to combat poverty? Give people money. Most cost effective way to reduce carbon emissions? Carbon tax.

Also, there's a .gif button at the far right. Hit it, search for gif, post.

[Wulaw Horn 19096]

35 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Wasn't shitting on you. Those are progressive ideas. Status quo is not working for the majority.

I know. I was joking about you loving the neo shit libs or whatever you call them.