Ah now she's the vanguard of the progressives like she's the vanguard of party unity and Sanders is the saboteur in the Democratic Party despite her still trying to strong arm super delegates despite complete popular losses all the way to June in 2008 and her saying in interviews that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June and she still shouldn't back Obama just in case he's assassinated.

The passage should read more like: "Unfortunately, we couldn't make the time. To provide a meaningful amount of acknowledgment of existence to the working middle class, you'd have to signal an enormous amount of disloyalty to your corporate donors, and that would mean actually going to the midwest and cannibalizing time spent promising right wing policies to rich suburban Republicans. We decided it was exciting but not necessary. We raised over a billion dollars and can just buy our way through the general election."

Don't most of the advocates of Universal Basic Income agree with the premise of "cannibilizing other important programs"? I tend to associate UBI with "what you get if you challenge a Libertarian to provide welfare", as it is a single primitive that for some level of squinting replaces large numbers of more specific programs.

I think there is a basic Left/Right divide on this question where the Right is closer to "liquidate all social security programs and distribute the proceeds" and the Left is closer to "new handouts in additional to all existing programs, with price controls to prevent inflation."

I'm running out of things that the progressives want the government to pay for without any logic and mathematics behind it:

1.) College 2.) Healthcare 3.) Abortion 4.) UBI

Why not just throw the entire enchilada out there and just have them pay for everything? If giving people money allows for economic growth, then wouldn't it make sense to just give everyone unlimited amount of money. Why stop at X when you can go for Y.

1,2& 3 is already free is most countries and even in developing countries like India. Why are Americans so averse to universal health coverage?

They aren't against it, they are against the incompetent government that will oversee it.

You've just moved the goalposts. Your original comment said:

> I'm running out of things that the progressives want the government to pay for without any logic and mathematics behind it

The logic behind the first three as presented is "most countries already do this," along with the implication (justified, in my opinion) that it works out well for their citizens.

So why wouldn't it be the same in the USA? Is our government uniquely incapable of this? Is it that the model of these other countries is unsustainable? Is it that we have a huge propaganda machine in place that is convincing many of our citizens to conclude without serious and informed consideration that it shouldn't be the role of our government to provide these things? Or is it some other option?

There is absolutely no such thing as competent government. Even here in Australia the medicare is an absolutely marvelous thing although I cannot say that about the current government. The policy should be sound, not the people who created the policy.

How do the first three have no "logic or mathematics behind it"?

Developing nations can afford to create such programs, and run them successfully without harming themselves.

Surely the US is mathematically, and logically, capable of providing such services?

Yes, that is one of the arguments put forth against UBI in the Intelligence Squared Debate on UBI [1].

Basically, the argument is that you'll never raise taxes in the USA, so if you want to help the poor, you have to target the poor, not give half that money to rich people. If you're unable to raise taxes, which you very likely won't be able to, then you just end up taking money away from the poor.

If you can raise taxes, you can rebalance the money given to the rich with a progressive tax making it essentially a Negative Income Tax AKA Mincome [2], but again it whether you'd be able to do it or not is a different question.

[1] https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basi...

[2] http://i.imgur.com/JbnFDo5.gifv

> that would either mean a lot of new taxes or cannibalizing other important programs

Like the state of Endless War? https://theintercept.com/2017/09/13/the-clinton-book-tour-is...

If I had my druthers I'd like to see the "defense" budget halved--I don't understand what $600 billion of military spending gets us over $300 billion, and Ron Paul, a libertarian, ran on that very platform. It's okay to say that $300B isn't enough to cover the costs of UBI, but it's a damn sight closer to meeting that threshold, and in my opinion it would result in a lot less blowback (read: future excuses for more military spending). This is something that is still essentially off the table amongst mainstream political discourse, and that is a problem.

Anyone with a 4th grade knowledge of mathematics would realize this is a terrible idea. Even the research states this would raise GDP if you didn't raise taxes and pay for it with debt. Its the socialist dream to simply create money out of thin air or put it on credit. But the rich can be taxed more right?

Yes, the rich can be taxed more. I can easily afford more taxes. I don't mind paying my taxes, though I have some complaints about how they are spent.

This response doesn't really even matter because the rich wouldn't be taxed enough to actually pay for it. And if they were it would hinder economic growth. You also realize the top 50% of income earners in the US pay 100% of the taxes. You also realize the top 10% earners pay 37% of the income taxes. So at what point is enough enough?

The entire premise of UBI is counter productive as it is. We can act like the differ but we all know that people will simply drop out of the work force when they don't have to work.

Wouldn't this be a solution to any third world country is to simply supply a UBI to its citizens? Why wouldn't Venezuela do this if it was so great?

Such a big risk to attempt that ignores economics 101.

My response was only addressing that we can pay more in taxes, easily. It would not even be a burden.

What it's spent on is another matter entirely.

I can't speak for Venezuala as I don't live there. I doubt they have a GDP great enough to be very effective in these regards.

> You also realize the top 50% of income earners in the US pay 100% of the taxes. You also realize the top 10% earners pay 37% of the income taxes.

Yes, this is the entire point of tax brackets.

> So at what point is enough enough When they pay more.

You realize you can overpay your taxes and not take refunds. Or, alternatively, give to charity equivalents (and not deduct from taxes). If you think that you personally should pay more in taxes, that's within your power!

This is a flippant response.

Progressive taxation works primarily because those with broad shoulders contribute the most. Individuals contributing more to government income at the individual level does not have the same results, primarily because the benefits of higher taxation can only be realised if the policy is universally applied.

The comment I'm replying to writes:

>I can easily afford more taxes. I don't mind paying my taxes

That person's argument is "I don't mind" and therefore taxes should be increased. My point is that just because that individual commenter doesn't mind, that doesn't generalize to everyone else who would be paying more in taxes.

In other words "I don't mind paying more" is an argument for you to pay more taxes. It's not an argument for me to pay more taxes, because I do mind. My comment is trying to raise this idea, albeit in a somewhat flip way.

The point is that the person wanting to pay more taxes is not hindered from doing so. The idea is being able to force the ones that dont want to do it, to do it.

Of course a policy universally applied will be more effective, but its silly to say its what people want. If people want to give more, they can.

Given the context...I think his response was apt

You'd probably be a bit surprised at both what I pay for taxes and what I donate.

Yes but him alone does not a difference make.

You should self-impose the tax rate you see fit and donate the difference to the causes that you would prefer your taxes to be spent towards, and encourage your other rich friends to do the same.

I do, and I do.

If you're curious, you can even donate money to the government. In my case, I like donating to NASA. However, you can't earmark the funds, they have to go into NASA's general account.