Brawly Likes to Brawl
Member
Maybe they wouldn't end up in these situations if they stopped thinking that a good way to look impartial is by hiring nutjob devil advocates and pretending they're just as valid as anyone else.
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PoliGAF 2017 |OT5| The Man In the High Chair
- Thread starter aspiegamer
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Maybe they wouldn't end up in these situations if they stopped thinking that a good way to look impartial is by hiring nutjob devil advocates and pretending they're just as valid as anyone else.
Cosigned. Job Guarantee vs UBI, Food Stamps v UBI, etc. All the same impulse that comes from that flank.
Health Care's the only one where we really have to do it because people drastically, drastically underestimate their own need for comprehensive coverage and refuse to pay for it.
I don't think food and healthcare should cost money. Necessary services should be free for everybody. Money should only enter the equation if people want to purchase a service they believe to be of higher quality, or otherwise different from, what they are already entitled to as a resident of their community. I'm not against UBI! But slashing our welfare state to make room for it is a really dangerous proposition.
How does UBI alone account for food deserts or the lack of adequate healthcare in impoverished communities? This goes back to the coverage versus access debate, and I don't trust market-based systems to provide universal coverage for any service.
A public option for every necessary good, whether it be healthcare or food or education, ensures a security and consistency that the market cannot provide. This allows for substantially more democratic involvement with the resource distribution process. Local communities should have far greater control over their own services, to protect against external forces (namely, Republican state legislatures) trying to taking them away.
I'm definitely of the opinion that no one should sleep on Klobuchar as a potential candidate. I honestly think the biggest problem with Harris and Gillibrand, as much as I like them, is that they're from NY and CA. Republicans have done such a good job demonizing ~liberal coastal elites~ that I think that alone knocks a point or two away from them in MI, WI, inner PA, OH, etc. It's the stupidest thing ever but I think it's true, and that someone else from middle America has a much stronger appeal to those people (and the coastal states will vote for whoever).
Of course this didn't hurt Trump in the midwest because nothing matters with him.
Of course this didn't hurt Trump in the midwest because nothing matters with him.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
But I mean, they do cost money. Everything costs money, insofar as people tend not to work if they don't get paid money. If you're saying 'I should be able to go to the local State Food Bank and get my apples without paying a dime', the state still had to pay the apple producer to get those apples to the food-bank. You don't pay, but the state did on your behalf - it raised $50 in taxation, considered the necessary level of food provision, and spent it on you.
But once you get that far, you realize: well, why are we letting the state determine what that was spent on? If the state is going to raise $50 for me, why not let me spend it? I can probably do it better than the state, which has a woeful track record in terms of midde-class understandings of poorer needs. Why not just get the state to straight up give me that $50, and I can go pay the apple producer for those apples myself - or I might disagree with the state, and spend $40 on the apples, and $10 on a calculator for my night school courses.
This doesn't mean welfare is determined by a strict dollar entitlement - it's not just 'everyone gets X amount, needs regardless' (and I don't think the UBI should be understood this way!). Needs obviously vary - the archetypical example is going to be that someone with disabilities is going to find their needs harder to fulfil, and would need more dollars to be able to fulfil their needs. However, it is saying: give them enough to afford to fulfil all their needs, then let them handle it from there.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Good points, but I think the critique of her charisma is valid and could be devastating in a national election.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Maybe so, yeah. I mean I said I was gonna sit out all 2020 primary talk after going 100% in on Hillary in 2015, so lol. It is fun to speculate though (more fun than talking about the present day).
I mean, I think there are a bunch of other examples, we just take them for granted now. Like, building the interstate highway system was a lot better than giving people enough basic income to build roads to where they want to go.
In general, I categorize as "infrastructure" things that people in general need but that would be extremely inefficient or antisocial for each person to purchase/produce for themselves -- things like roads, healthcare, internet access, or armed forces. The government should simply take over and provide those things as services to all citizens because that's pretty much why we founded it.
For things that are not infrastructure, we should simply have UBI and let the market manage it.
I'm happy to allow the socialist onramp by saying that if we perceive market failures in the wake of UBI we should consider them evidence of an infrastructural need and provide government intervention. If this leads eventually to a fully planned economy then great, everything is fine. But I'm really not convinced this will be necessary in the main because we've simply never seen what a market would look like in which labor is not extracted via coercion and have no idea how that society would take shape. I think there's a good chance that might be enough.
But you're assuming that impoverished communities have the same opportunities to acquire food or healthcare as people in wealthier areas. As I understand it, UBI would not make low-income communities more amenable or secure. Abolishing our welfare state as Pigeon suggested won't ensure that poor people get good healthcare, because the amount of healthcare their monthly check can provide will only be as good as recipients can afford. In this way, UBI doesn't ensure quality of life at all. It just prevents people from dying.
But haven't the failings of charter schools and health insurance start-ups shown that market systems are much worse at providing reliable services? Switching to a UBI market system would force many people to rely on the cheapest services available.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Is it really just a lack of charisma that sunk our losing candidates or is it something more specific? I feel like with Clinton, Kerry and Gore the problem was they came off as smug and elitist (I don't think this). If Klobuchar just comes off as a goofy mom type character then that might be different.
This is very baffling to me. You understand that we control how much healthcare they can afford via controlling the amount of UBI they receive, right?
More than 70% of Americans effectively spend their own money on their healthcare. Do you believe none of them receive good healthcare?
Those are things I classified as infrastructural in my post.
???
Why? You keep asserting things like this with absolutely no justification.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
I think the UBI ought to consider these things. I think it's a terrible understanding to see the UBI as some fixed amount - everyone gets exactly £15,000 a year, or whatever. No. The UBI shouldn't guarantee a minimum income, it should guarantee a minimum quality of life (or at least, the means to afford it). It's purpose is to take coercion out of the employer-employee relationship, because it gives the employee an 'out' - they can say, I have this minimum quality of life and won't starve if I choose not to take this. That whole principle doesn't work if the UBI doesn't allow impoverished communities to get good quality fruit and veg, or gives different communities different qualities of life because they have the same incomes but different costs and cost opportunities and therefore different 'out' values. So that would have to be considered as part of the UBI - it would have to vary by area, local travel costs and travel times, local food costs, local healthcare costs, and so on.
It also doesn't happen in a vacuum. The UBI doesn't solve all issues. It has nothing to say on public goods, for example. So it's still the job of the government to ensure urban development doesn't ghettoize poorer communities and allows them access to markets where good food is sold. For example, provision of widespread and heavily subsidized public transport would be a must.
EDIT: pigeon, just call them public goods. There's no need to invent your own terminology with 'infrastructural'.
aspiegamer
Member
There was a doubling down on the transgender bullshit mixed in with all this, too? Nice, nice. I like how that's only the 4th or 5th most insane thing said in one afternoon.
Edit: Yeah, I'll rate it 4th under (in no specific order) yelling at McConnell, wanting to nuke someone and thanking Putin.
Edit: Yeah, I'll rate it 4th under (in no specific order) yelling at McConnell, wanting to nuke someone and thanking Putin.
Futurevoid
Member
Amy's pretty damned affable in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_NAj1rbvIw
(second half)
I like her quite a bit. She's not going to be Obama as an orator but she's down home which there's something to be said about that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_NAj1rbvIw
(second half)
I like her quite a bit. She's not going to be Obama as an orator but she's down home which there's something to be said about that.
I think charisma is overstated, one of those concepts that hucksters invented to justify bullshitters who get their way. Gore and Kerry weren't inspiring because they had a messaging problem (Gore who wanted to distance himself from Clinton for god knows what reason and Kerry not being believable when he tried to be anti-Iraq). Clinton was just too real with people (her policies would have worked, but they weren't the sweet lies that middle America loves to hear, and her open embrace of racial issues stirred up a hornet's nest already inflamed by Obama's existence).
Most election winners won because they had the more marketable message. MAGA, Yes We Can, You're With Us Or You're With the Terrorists, It's the Economy, Stupid. The takeaway is that you need winning soundbytes to "win" the news cycles and create positive buzz which trickles down to your followers.
Democrats 2020: "America, we can do better than this."
Most election winners won because they had the more marketable message. MAGA, Yes We Can, You're With Us Or You're With the Terrorists, It's the Economy, Stupid. The takeaway is that you need winning soundbytes to "win" the news cycles and create positive buzz which trickles down to your followers.
Democrats 2020: "America, we can do better than this."
The idea that "food deserts" are the problem has struck me as a very upper-midlde-class out of touch answer to the problem as time as gone on.
Even if fresh food is available, it requires time that people may not have, equipment that people may not have, and skills and knowledge that people may not have.
It's a problem, yes, but it seems like you're treating the symptom and not the disease (poverty.)
Even if fresh food is available, it requires time that people may not have, equipment that people may not have, and skills and knowledge that people may not have.
It's a problem, yes, but it seems like you're treating the symptom and not the disease (poverty.)
EDIT: pigeon, just call them public goods. There's no need to invent your own terminology with 'infrastructural'.
Fair! This is how you can tell I'm not actually trained at this stuff.
Box of Kittens
Banned
Yeah. If your response to a billionaire's sociopathic "experiment" is "well, I guess if the company doesn't fall apart when you're on vacation that means your position isn't needed" I have a lot of questions about your mindset. When it's the prevailing position on a left leaning forum, it kinda explains a lot about America.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
I think the charisma of the candidate is what drives those messages, though. "Yes we can" with Kerry at the forefront just doesn't seem like it would work.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Sure, but "yes we can" wasn't Kerry's m.o.
If Democrats run with a "we can do better" message for 2020, about appealing to peoples' better instincts, Klobuchar's a great figure to deliver that. Highly efficient, respected by both sides of the aisle while still being fairly mainstream in her positions.
I feel like Clinton was the wrong candidate against Trump because she and Bill were not people who were afraid to get their hands dirty, and they had the appearance of corruption. Hard to make the case that Trump is a sleaze when more than half the country doesn't think much more highly of you. Klobuchar could take him on from a much higher moral ground.
(just to clarify, I wouldn't expect the 2020 Dem campaign to be sunshine and farts, but I think Klobuchar can deliver a positive message)
I think if you want to tackle food quality in America, the first thing you need to do is reform farm subsidies. You guys are way overproducing corn, and it ends up in a ton of food products as a result.
And as kirblar said, time is another major issue. People may know what foods are unhealthy, but they either don't or believe they don't have time to prepare meals. A McDonald's diet is more efficient for a lot of people. If UBI can allow for someone to go from working two jobs to just one, then they'll have more time to cook and buy groceries.
And as kirblar said, time is another major issue. People may know what foods are unhealthy, but they either don't or believe they don't have time to prepare meals. A McDonald's diet is more efficient for a lot of people. If UBI can allow for someone to go from working two jobs to just one, then they'll have more time to cook and buy groceries.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
See I was following along with you right until you made the distinction about minimum quality of life being our metric for success. If that's how we're evaluating stuff then it seems much easier to organize and implement if we bypass any sort of market stuff and just provide services to people instead of passing through figuring out "Person X living in region Y with needs Z needs this much money to hit our threshold."I think the UBI ought to consider these things. I think it's a terrible understanding to see the UBI as some fixed amount - everyone gets exactly £15,000 a year, or whatever. No. The UBI shouldn't guarantee a minimum income, it should guarantee a minimum quality of life (or at least, the means to afford it). It's purpose is to take coercion out of the employer-employee relationship, because it gives the employee an 'out' - they can say, I have this minimum quality of life and won't starve if I choose not to take this. That whole principle doesn't work if the UBI doesn't allow impoverished communities to get good quality fruit and veg, or gives different communities different qualities of life because they have the same incomes but different costs and cost opportunities and therefore different 'out' values. So that would have to be considered as part of the UBI - it would have to vary by area, local travel costs and travel times, local food costs, local healthcare costs, and so on.
It also doesn't happen in a vacuum. The UBI doesn't solve all issues. It has nothing to say on public goods, for example. So it's still the job of the government to ensure urban development doesn't ghettoize poorer communities and allows them access to markets where good food is sold. For example, provision of widespread and heavily subsidized public transport would be a must.
EDIT: pigeon, just call them public goods. There's no need to invent your own terminology with 'infrastructural'.
Interesting thread on amicus brief written in response to WI partisan gerrymandering case.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ruthgreenwood/status/895758715244208128
https://mobile.twitter.com/ruthgreenwood/status/895758715244208128
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
What do you think providing services is if not making that final part? The NHS has to figure out what resources it dedicates to which communities all the time! Just because you don't see that decision-making process, doesn't mean it isn't happening. How do you think the NHS decides how much equipment to allocate to Salford as opposed to Rochdale (satellites of Manchester) if not by considering the cost of operating in one compared to the other, the health needs of the local residents, how far afield people come from to get to that specific hospital, and so on.
People have different visions of what a good quality of life is. Providing them cash to then spend on housing, food, etc. is going to go way better than dictating it to them directly.
Also, more money in poor communities means more likely grocery stores appear in said community. A lot of the bad food problem is caused by families needing both parents to work or single parents with multiple jobs. It is a time thing as people have said. If people could get by on 40 hours a week it would allow more time to actually do stuff at home.
Also if people have a guaranteed income even without a job it should reignite mobility to move to other cities and states in search of better prospects. Currently mobility has stagnated and is declining.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
I think she can, too. Just saying I think the criticism of her charisma could be an issue. If she can shine in this area, she'll be a great candidate.
PG ream? The MPAA sure has gotten lax on what it considers PG these days.
Aaron Strife
Banned
If nothing else, she'd be the first President from Minnesota. That's good enough for me.
nature boy
Member
Oh shit CNN going with MITCH SLAPPED
Just try not to remember what happened to the last two from Minnesota who tried.
Starting the post-Lord era off with a bang, eh?
Brawndo Addict
Banned
Just wanted to chime in as someone who has spent years volunteering with a local non-profit organization that operates a small food bank alongside various other service programs such as computer training, budget/accounting assistance, etc. I have spent years arguing that we should phase-out our focus on in-kind food donations and shift towards a cash based system of assistance such as gift cards (which usually have inherent purchasing restrictions against liquor, cigarettes, lottery tickets for reference).
Unfortunately there is enormous institutional resistance to this idea, both from our donor base and our salaried employees/board, none of which I consider to be very evidence-based or in keeping with our mission of charity. Sometimes it feels like people are more concerned with making sure that donors and volunteers feel good about themselves as opposed to actually improving the lives of our fellow neighbors and making them feel good. [Building awareness of the larger societal injustices that perpetuate this whole state of affairs in the first place is a whole other can of worms.]
Even if you were to completely remove the human element of all of this (which you absolutely should not), there is immense operational benefit to be had in minimizing in-kind donations. In-kind donations take an inordinate amount of labor time to deal with and distribute. Taken by itself, it's a completely stupid distribution model for getting a can of soup in someone's hands:
Donor drives to the store.
Donor shops and buys X.
Donor drives back home.
Volunteers drive to location to set up donation drive.
Donor drives to donation area and drop off X.
Xs are collected by volunteers and are driven back to sorting facility.
Volunteers sort through Xs and they are made available in the Food Bank (assuming it's in the same physical location).
Client drives to Food Bank.
Client goes through Food Bank and grabs X.
Client drives home with X.
Volunteers drive home.
Alternative
Donor sends $25 donation online via credit card.
Organization converts $25 donation into $25 grocery store gift card (purchased with bulk discount pricing).
Gift Card is mailed to client.
Client drives to store and buys X with gift card.
Client drives home with X.
The amount of volunteer time and overhead that is wasted on food bank operations is insane relative to how cheaply you could achieve an equivalent result (if what you really care about is getting food to people who need it). We're basically trying to build a secondary, and much worse, grocery store for people to visit with no capital or distributional infrastructure when it would be a million times easier to just leverage the pre-existing billion-dollar grocery store industry. You probably don't even think about all the secondary things we have to deal with like logging the amount of mileage and gasoline that volunteers use. People thought I was joking when I said eliminating the food bank would also help us be more climate-change conscious by reducing gasoline usage.
Unfortunately there is enormous institutional resistance to this idea, both from our donor base and our salaried employees/board, none of which I consider to be very evidence-based or in keeping with our mission of charity. Sometimes it feels like people are more concerned with making sure that donors and volunteers feel good about themselves as opposed to actually improving the lives of our fellow neighbors and making them feel good. [Building awareness of the larger societal injustices that perpetuate this whole state of affairs in the first place is a whole other can of worms.]
Even if you were to completely remove the human element of all of this (which you absolutely should not), there is immense operational benefit to be had in minimizing in-kind donations. In-kind donations take an inordinate amount of labor time to deal with and distribute. Taken by itself, it's a completely stupid distribution model for getting a can of soup in someone's hands:
Donor drives to the store.
Donor shops and buys X.
Donor drives back home.
Volunteers drive to location to set up donation drive.
Donor drives to donation area and drop off X.
Xs are collected by volunteers and are driven back to sorting facility.
Volunteers sort through Xs and they are made available in the Food Bank (assuming it's in the same physical location).
Client drives to Food Bank.
Client goes through Food Bank and grabs X.
Client drives home with X.
Volunteers drive home.
Alternative
Donor sends $25 donation online via credit card.
Organization converts $25 donation into $25 grocery store gift card (purchased with bulk discount pricing).
Gift Card is mailed to client.
Client drives to store and buys X with gift card.
Client drives home with X.
The amount of volunteer time and overhead that is wasted on food bank operations is insane relative to how cheaply you could achieve an equivalent result (if what you really care about is getting food to people who need it). We're basically trying to build a secondary, and much worse, grocery store for people to visit with no capital or distributional infrastructure when it would be a million times easier to just leverage the pre-existing billion-dollar grocery store industry. You probably don't even think about all the secondary things we have to deal with like logging the amount of mileage and gasoline that volunteers use. People thought I was joking when I said eliminating the food bank would also help us be more climate-change conscious by reducing gasoline usage.
Host Samurai
Member
Seriously WTF. This is new thread worthy.
St. Louis NAACP chapter gets behind warning to African Americans visiting Mo.
http://wapo.st/2uuRqNZ
St. Louis NAACP chapter gets behind warning to African Americans visiting Mo.
http://wapo.st/2uuRqNZ
Would you like to provide any amount of context? There's a paywall
StopMakingSense
Member
Pretty sure there was a thread about it last week.
Host Samurai
Member
Sorry was on mobile. Here's the headline
St. Louis NAACP chapter gets behind warning to African Americans visiting Mo.
The full Putin response:
Obviously Putin didn't "fire" those people.
They are still working and being paid by the US.
Our president doesn't understand how government works.
Box of Kittens
Banned
Humphrey didn't actually do that bad. I'd argue he actually ran a very good campaign.
Mondale never had a chance but telling people you're going to raise their taxes, regardless of context, is not a good idea.
I'm sure that UBI would allow more people to have healthcare than currently do, but I was comparing the merits of UBI alone to a potential expansion to our existing welfare state. Free walk-in clinics could be more expensive than UBI, but they would ensure that health expenses don't need to come out of income. If we support UBI because it offers greater economic freedom to the recipients, we should also support efforts to demonetize essential services.
My misgivings with UBI (or at least, UBI without a welfare state) don't come from any lack of faith in the buying habits of benefit recipients, but instead from a skepticism in the ability of private enterprises to assume the state's role as a provider of reliable social services for the disadvantaged.
Given that many of the people who advocate for UBI tend to be ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs, I fear that many proponents just want an excuse to abolish the welfare state and reduce their tax burden.
This is a really good point that I didn't consider, so I apologize for being short-sighted. You're correct that UBI could lead to a reduction in hours worked, which can potentially be a lot more meaningful than guaranteed food and medical care.
Fenderputty
Banned
Why is UBI always mentioned but not a negative income tax?
Latter is effectively a method to achieve the former?
CNN Producer: "Anderson, we've got some bad news. Jef-Jeffrey Lord was fired today. He-he won't be coming back."
Cooper:
aspiegamer
Member
By now the Pentagon has told Trump that it would take months to actually prep for a war... right? And that'd just be moving material and not the aspect of moving people around. One reason everyone knew W's claims of Iraq being able to prevent a war in the final weeks was always bullshit is because there was no literal way to further hold assets in the region without entering Iraq to use them up. The shipping logistics are massive and are more like a tsunami than things moved piece by piece. The decision to take territory had to be made well in advance for the supply chain to work correctly.
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