Yang’s Freedom Dividend Will Marginalize College Graduates

[Grozny]

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been around for a while and there are multiple articles on its historic weakness, that giving money to the idle poor creates a slippery slope where the bottom 51% just keep voting themselves free money from the top 49% until there is nothing left. I do not fully agree with this critique because I have more faith in humanity than that; the percentage of scumbags in society is closer to 5% than 50%. But there are a significant number of them – boys whose only source of income is stealing Amazon packages, or girls with STDs whose only source of income is prostitution – and it just sticks in people’s craw to give them free money. These are scum who have never seen $1000 in any single month of their entire lives.

But this point has already been beaten to death elsewhere, so let us talk about something else, a point that exactly no commentator seems to get. Universal Basic Income is not really universal! Almost five million Americans have defaulted on their student loans. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is garnishing 25% of their wages and 100% of their tax refunds. The UBI is a tax refund – a negative tax – so the DOJ will take 100% of it. This puts these five million people below the thieves and the whores – way, way, way down at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

But student-loan defaulters are not bad people; they have never stolen anything in their lives, nor have they ever sucked a dick for money. They are just not that type. They have good jobs! Not good enough jobs to pay off their horrendous debts, but still good enough to be seen by their friends and neighbors as solid citizens making a real contribution to society. Most of their friends and neighbors are unaware of the invisible monkey on their backs, the Department of Justice.

The monkey on their backs will become visible to all when their neighbors – including the thieves and the whores – get a $1000 UBI every month, while they are living on 75% wages and get no UBI money. If the UBI pushes rents up, they will be homeless. Yang worries about truck drivers causing social unrest when they lose their jobs to self-driving trucks. Maybe. But innovations in transportation have happened before; think of the truck itself putting the teamsters out of work. Older drivers who could not learn new skills were grumpy but, in the long view, the innovation was clearly a benefit to society. I think it is the college boys, not the truck drivers, who will cause social unrest. An unemployed truck driver has no natural target to direct violence towards. But college boys and riffraff have always hated each other. Riffraff are naturally violent; being flush with UBI cash will just inspire them to start living out their criminal-kingpin fantasies. Elevating them above the college boys may prompt the latter to consider assassination as a way not only to protect their property from theft but also to save the government $1,000 a month.

This concludes my critique of Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend; he must couple it with immunity from tax-refund garnishment by the DOJ or the student-loan defaulters will cause social unrest. But, now that Yang has raised the specter of social unrest, let us consider what causes it.

People do not kill because they are unemployed. They kill because they have come to believe in some radical agenda that can only be advanced by killing. But unemployment does lead to radicalization because people will prefer going down in a blaze of gunfire if the other alternative is dying slowly in the gutter from hunger and cold. This is a fine point, but an important one. Nobody ever raised a rifle to their shoulder and pulled the trigger while thinking, “I’m doing this because I’m unemployed.” They were thinking, “I’m doing this because I believe in the _______ agenda.” But, a year earlier, when they had a job, they did not give any thought to that or any other radical agenda. Unemployment got them thinking about such agendas and – it took them a year or two – but they finally thought themselves into murder. But the agenda itself has nothing to do with what caused them to lose their jobs – it is probably about some unrelated topic like racism, or some kooky economic theory like Marxism or Austrian Economics.

Yang is half right. If his predicted robot apocalypse comes true, there will be a lot of unemployed people. Some of them will cause violence, but they will do so in the name of radical movements that preexisted their job loss and already had recruiters in place who were trained to prey on the recently unemployed; e.g. Antifa or the Proud Boys. Exactly nobody will go to his grave shouting, “I’m unemployed!” They will die shouting, “I’m a socialist!” or “I’m a fascist!” or… whatever.

People only kill for two reasons: their self-esteem has been crushed, or their self-esteem has been inflated. The former kill those who hurt their pride and the latter kill those whom they now view as so far beneath them that killing them is just sport. In the scenario outlined above, the college boys kill because they used to be proud of their education and knowledge, but now they see that the government has pushed them to the very bottom of the social hierarchy, beneath illiterate thieves and whores. The riffraff kill because their UBI money has convinced them that they are the criminal kingpins that they always knew themselves to be and, being the kingpins that they are, it is good sport to kill those little, little people who are so worthless that they did not even qualify for Yang’s Freedom Dividend. Basically, the college boys’ self-esteem was crushed, and the riffraff’s self-esteem was inflated, so now they are killing each other.

But, contra Yang, I do not see unemployed truck drivers getting involved in this fight. They are neither college educated nor are they riffraff. They’re just poor – poorer than they used to be – and looking for work. A UBI will prevent them from falling too far if they really cannot find other work. If administered fairly so the college boys are not screwed, a modest UBI (I suggest $500) is a good idea. There are two tiers of homeless – those with cars and those without – and $500 a month will eliminate that bottom rung. $500 means the world to people living on the edge! The money will trickle up [Yang’s term], so it helps local businesses too. They’ll buy a car from a local dealer, hire a local mechanic to fix it, buy clothes at local stores and eat in local restaurants.

[Adolf_Twitler]

May we see a show of hands that think Yang has even a snowflake's chance in hell he will ever win a presidential election?

So OPie, are you over-thinking this a bit, and don't you think this thread is sort of a mute point?

Hellfire, the leader of the KKK once ran as a Republican Candidate for president!

[CFM]

May we see a show of hands that think Yang has even a snowflake's chance in hell he will ever win a presidential election?

So OPie, are you over-thinking this a bit, and don't you think this thread is sort of a mute point?

Hellfire, the leader of the KKK once ran as a Republican Candidate for president!

A leader in the KKK, a Democrat, was in Congress for 57 years.

When Obama first appeared on the scene, no one thought he'd be President. In just a short time, you left wingers considered his skin color as a qualification and elected him.

[Grozny]

Yang's Freedom Dividend is often compared to Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend. Let's compare the take-home pay for $2500-a-month wage earners, one who has defaulted and one who has not. The PFD varies, but we will here assume that it is $2000. The tax rate is 30% but the IRS takes 40% and then returns the extra as a tax refund.

The Alaskan who has not defaulted makes $30000 a year and, after getting his tax refund and PFD, he has 0.7 * 30000 + 2000 = $23000 take-home pay.

The Alaskan student loan defaulter has 0.6 * 30000 - 0.25 * 30000 = $10500 take-home pay; about 45% of what his co-worker gets. Clearly, this is not enough to pay the high rent and heating oil costs of living in Alaska, so he runs - he moves to the Lower 48.

Now let's compare three people living in the Lower 48 before and after Yang's Freedom Dividend is implemented.

Person A is a thief who makes $500 a month stealing things and trying to sell them for cash - he has never worked an honest day in his life.

Person B makes $2500 a month at honest work; he has not defaulted on his student loan.

Person C makes $2500 a month at honest work; he defaulted on his student loan.

And now the before/after comparison:

Person A makes $6000 before and $18000 after Yang's Freedom Dividend is implemented, a gain of 200%.

Person B makes $21000 before and $33000 after Yang's Freedom Dividend is implemented, a gain of 57%.

Person C makes $10500 before and after Yang's Freedom Dividend is implemented, a gain of 0%.

And now the relative change in status:

Person C was previously making 75% more than what the thief was making. After Yang's Freedom Dividend is implemented, he is making 58% less than the thief.

Clearly, the effect of Yang's Freedom Dividend is to elevate thieves above college graduates. But, unlike in Alaska, loan defaulters cannot run. This is when a social crisis results in violence - when people have nowhere left to run to.