Hi Jason,

What about a UBI tied to a percentage of total wealth in the system?

The works program you mention is popular with my younger liberal friends.
It retains the "work or die" mentality that I hope we can transcend in the
future, but it is certainly preferable to the prison funnel system we have
currently.

-Chance

On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 8:13 PM, nysa71 <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> Dave & Chance,
>
> Actually, a UBI --- or at least *a standalone UBI* --- is problematic
> because it adds net dollars to the economy without any corresponding real
> output, and hence would most certainly be inflationary, thus leaving those
> at the socioeconomic bottom in the same place that they are now, relatively
> speaking, (i.e., more income, but higher general prices).
>
> A superior proposal, (and one strongly advocated by MMT economists)  is
> The Federal Job Guarantee,  (i.e., a federal policy of full employment).
> The basic idea is that it's federally funded, but locally managed.
>
> So if someone is unemployed, (or even under-employed), they can go down to
> the local Job Guarantee (JG) office, and work with the administrator to
> find something to do in the community. Maybe the person likes gardening.
> He/she could plant some flowers along a local hiking trail. Maybe he/she
> loves animals. Head over to the animal shelter. Has a passion for abused
> women? Head over to the domestic abuse shelter. Love reading? Go help out
> at the library. And so forth.
>
> It doesn't really matter. Just do something in the community that has
> value to the community.
>
> And since it's federally funded, it's adding dollars to the local economy
> with a corresponding real output, and hence insuring *price stability*.
>
> So what do JG employees do with their paycheck? They spend it. And that
> spending becomes income for someone else --- a significant amount being
> income for local businesses. (And local businesses spend their income,
> which becomes income for someone else, who, in turn, spends it, and so
> forth.)
>
> So business income increases, meaning business and business income goes up
> in the local private sector, meaning they have both the need and the
> dollars to hire more people...and they can hire people from the JG, (which
> essentially functions as a buffer stock of publicly *employed* people,
> unlike the current state of affairs where we have a buffer stock of
> *unemployed* people).
>
> So some JG employees transfer from the public sector to the private
> sector, meaning less federal dollars will be injected in the local economy,
> but it's not needed since the economy is now on the upswing. (Hence why the
> JG is what economists refer to as an "automatic stabilizer"...more dollars
> added to the economy in a downturn, less dollars added to the the economy
> in an upturn.)
>
> And whatever the wage is for JG employees effectively becomes the floor on
> what workers in our society will be paid. So if the JG is $15 per hour (for
> example) then that effectively becomes the minimum wage since no one in
> their right mind is going to go work in the private sector for less than
> $15 per hour when they can make $15 in the JG program. It effectively
> empowers labor.
>
> And that's why the likes of Zuckerberg and Musk advocate for a UBI. It is
> no threat to them. And they know it.
>
> The Federal Job Guarantee, on the other hand, *is* a threat to them.
>
> In short, a standalone UBI is just another neoliberal proposal that only
> *appears* to make progress. In reality, it does no such thing.
>
> Don't fall for it.
>
> ~ Jason Bessey
>
> On Thursday, May 31, 2018, 1:57:49 PM EDT, Chance McDermott <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> First, thank you Joe for some of the insider baseball perspective on
> Peterson and a wonderful sociological and administrative analysis.  Gregg,
> your encouragement to travel as a group into the weeds and develop
> principle-based solutions is inspiring during a time of intense micro
> ingroup/outgroup formation.  Jason, I appreciate that you offer an
> economically populist perspective.
>
> More on the point that Jason and Dave are suggesting is a consideration of
> proportionality.  The functional option from my humble perspective is a
> Universal Basic Income that is *tethered to a percentage of total wealth*.
> Healthcare, education, food, shelter, and safety should be guaranteed
> *non-conditionally*.  Essentially we are covering the first two levels of
> Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  It takes nothing substantively from
> industrial geniuses like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or Mark Zuckerberg (they
> retain status at the top of hierarchies), and instead improves the lived
> experience of *everyone.*
>
> There are obstacles from the conservative and liberal side both that boil
> down to this particular justification:
>
> *Work hard or die.*
>
>
> How do we get around that one?
>
>
> -Chance
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 10:31 AM, nysa71 <000000c289d6ba14-dmarc-
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> Dave,
>
> I'm beyond delighted to see someone else here understand MMT. It can not
> be emphasized enough, IMO, that the general public needs to understand it.
>
> On one technical note, it's not even as complicated as "printing" money.
> Most money is just created via keystrokes ---- marking up accounts in bank
> computers.
>
> Even paper money doesn't add net financial assets to the economy. It
> simply transfers numbers from a balance sheet at the central bank to
> numbers on pieces of paper you can carry around in your pocket.
>
> Money is a unit of account. It's the numbers that's the money, not the
> paper, (anymore than it's a spreadsheet or a computer screen).
>
> Also, (in finding a way to connect MMT to psychology), "money", in a lot
> of ways, is analogous to a Token Economy in applied behavioral analysis.
>
> Again, I was delighted to read your comments!
>
> ~ Jason Bessey
> On Thursday, May 31, 2018, 9:34:15 AM EDT, Dave Pruett <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> Dear All,
>
> I've not weighed in much on the conversation because much of the
> discussion, in psychological terms, is beyond my ken.  But I would like to
> weigh in on the current economic thread.
>
> Jason has very succinctly pointed out the inherent instability in
> capitalism, it's innate tendency to make the rich richer and the poor
> poorer.  When the old Soviet Union existed as a counterweight to laissez
> faire capitalism, capitalism had to maintain a kinder, gentler facade.
> After the collapse, no holds have been barred with the result that the
> world's oligarchs have increased their wealth and power to the detriment of
> nearly everyone else, here and elsewhere.  So, as Jason points out,
> governments should intervene, to stabilize the system.  Unfortunately,
> ours, by "neoliberal economics" and in decisions like "Citizen's United"
> and the recent tax law, has intervened decidedly on the side of the wealthy
> and the oligarchs. Inequality in the US is at a level that often triggers
> revolution.
>
> There is a missing piece to the economic landscape, however, that offers a
> legitimate way for monetarily sovereign nations to intervene in
> economically beneficent ways.  The notion is counterintuitive, because most
> of us are under the mistaken impression that federal budgets are analogous
> to family budgets.  Expenditures must be balanced by income.  Families,
> however, cannot legitimately print money. Sovereign governments can.  The
> argument against this is that printing money is inflationary, Weimar
> Germany being the oft-cited example.
>
> Modern monetary theory (MMT) holds that the printing of money is allowed
> and is inflationary only when the country is at full production and full
> employment. Abe Lincoln financed the Civil War by printing "greenbacks" and
> Hitler built his war machine with fiat money. Indeed, recently, the US has
> printed trillions of dollars for the Afghan and Iraq wars and the 2008
> bailout, yet inflation remains low.
>
> MMT sees the federal budget as essentially the inverse of the family
> budget.  Taxation is necessary not to generate revenue but to slow the
> economy if it becomes overheated.  MMT proponents would say that we always
> have enough money for our priorities, which in an ideal world would include
> infrastructure, universal education, universal health care, and many other
> common goods.  In this light, austerity measures should be seen for what
> they are: political tools not fiscal responsibility.  And the recent tax
> overhaul, which will increase the national debt by $1.9T exposes, voted for
> those who previously touted "fiscal responsibility," exposes the sham.
>
> --
> C. David ("Dave") Pruett
> Professor Emeritus
> Department of Mathematics & Statistics
> James Madison University
> 540-246-3087 (Home)
> ------------------------------ ------------------------------ -------
> Author of *Reason and Wonder* (Praeger, 2012)
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__reasonandwonder.org&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=wEmzC1gTZ4_KNcO4DV_FCHI_XlkPimM1kRdUG0Si1F0&s=TAoz7B2tgZLuMZZa-9qwTtTtVXC0DJTKWuzfaD2HPWs&e=
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> and/or https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.amazon.com_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=wEmzC1gTZ4_KNcO4DV_FCHI_XlkPimM1kRdUG0Si1F0&s=Ee2z6Fz8Tq-gPt_yxsWKFinUxXKuI49NWiFD3YUtiK8&e= author/woksape
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.amazon.com_author_woksape&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=5ZTed4uTCuG9Jzta-ei5WGSmHLRH1pXlJBeUvsOvPyQ&s=SrUtK2c4MqMd6qlcKZfGQx17HFPHCHctAWcEGW3-ocQ&e=>
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