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by AsyncAwait 2714 days ago
UBI has not been implemented on a large scale anywhere yet, so I give you that, but the USA is hostile even to the most basic social programs, like single payer, because of the 'unfettered capitalism' ideology of many in Washington, which is heavily skewed to the right and does not represent the opinion of the population as a whole, (single payer has majority backing).

Tell me where am wrong on this, because you can't start talking about UBI in the USA, while the political class in the country is super hostile even to the concept of universal healthcare, a policy that is uncontroversial in much of the developed, (even developing!) world.

What about paid sick leave, maternity leave, paternity leave etc.? Here the USA does even worse, since not only does practically every developed and developing country have these, but in fact almost every country has some form of these. If USA is hostile to implementing social policies common in much of the rest of the world, you can't start talking about UBI in any serious manner anyway.

2 comments

UBI not tried yet... Alaska? Social Security? Pensions? The idle rich?
The Alaska Permanent Fund is the only one of those that even hits both of the U and I points of UBI (the rest are just I); it doesn't even target the B, though.
Of course they are basic. Many people live on social security, pensions.

And they're a segment of the population. To study the result of a population receiving a BI, there's plenty of data.

> Of course they are basic.

Which of them completely displaces means-tested welfare to provide the support floor for all who are in the eligible population. Social Security doesn't. Pensions don't. Being idly rich might, I suppose, in that that is just “living of capital” but ignoring all the people who don't have a lot to live on.

> And they're a segment of the population. To study the result of a population receiving a BI, there's plenty of data.

Not relevant to UBI there isn't. Some segment of the population receiving income varying a Ross indiciduals based on their past work and investments isn't even loosely similar to the whole population of a community receiving equal unconditional UBI, and there is little reason to expect the former to provide much insight on the latter.

and yet folks are studying UBI already by supplying individuals with a basic income and measuring their behavior. Including YC.

You can't of course study the impact on the economy, but you can surely understand how people change with the UBI.

> because of the 'unfettered capitalism' ideology of many in Washington, which is heavily skewed to the right

I'm going to assume you're not in the USA. Washington DC is over 70% Democrat (which is our left wing party) https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/housing-complex/blo...

Washington DC hasn't elected a Republican (our right wing party, about 6% of the population there) since the 1870s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_Wa....

It's probably a figure of speech, not to be taken literally. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy#Places_and_institutio...
Correct. That's how I meant it.
> I'm going to assume you're not in the USA.

Am not, but follow the politics there closely.

> Washington DC is over 70% Democrat

Am not talking about the actual place "Washington DC", am talking about it as a seat of power, the seat of government. The politicians in the House and Senate and their leanings.

> which is our left wing party

The Democratic Party is nowhere near "left-wing" by what most of the developed world understands that to mean. The Democratic Party has policies equivalent to the Conservative Party in Britain, (The Conservative Party is a right-wing party).

It is precisely because of the extremely right-wing ideology of most lawmakers in Washington that you have moved to such a position where the center-right, (Democrats), are called "left-wing" and the far-right, (Republicans), are refereed to as "center-right". Only in the USA. You don't have a viable left-wing party over there.

There's people like Bernie Sanders and AOC that are what I'd call center-left, but because how far right the acceptable debate in the USA has shifted, they're "socialists".

AOC literally refers to herself as a socialist https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/01/democratic-sociali...
AOC is not part of the dominant faction of the Democratic Party; both major US parties are basically broad coalition, the Republicans basically Right to Far Right (with he latter being currently dominant) while the Democrats are basically Center-Right (dominant) to Center Left. (The “Democratic Socialists” within and aligned with the Democratic Party are more Social Democrats by any non-US standard than actual Socialists.)

There is effectively no real representation of the left, beyond the center-left, in US electoral politics.

You misunderstood, again.

Yes she does, because she's working within the American context. What I am saying is that she would not be refereed to as"socialist" in much of the rest of the developed world. She is only a "socialist" because of how right-wing the USA political context is.

An easy way you can tell, even as an American, is that she's not advocating for abolishing capitalism and seizing the means of production, which are the central pillars of socialism. She's advocating for some social policies that have been common elsewhere for decades.

I'm no student of politics, so I could well be way off base, but isn't 'abolishing capitalism and seizing the means of production' central pillars of communism, not socialism?
> isn't 'abolishing capitalism and seizing the means of production' central pillars of communism, not socialism?

Depends. Socialism has a wide variety of forms. Some are closer to communism than others. Whether we talk about socialism, or communism, more "worker-control" over resources is usually a central pillar of both. It's just that the closer one gets to communism within socialism, the more "means of production" they support turning over to the worker.

It's worth noting that even the USSR did not refer to itself as communist, it was simply 'on a path there', if you will.

From all I know, in the US they think of this when they think "socialist". There's little difference in their mind. I simply wanted to dispel the notion that somebody like AOC is anywhere near "socialist" in the Soviet sense. What she's advocating for is just to import some social policies as per the Nordic model, but not to fundamentally change the existing system to be closer to USSR, which is what many on the right seem to imagine.

> I'm going to assume you're not in the USA. Washington DC is over 70% Democrat (which is our left wing party)

In American English, in political contexts, “Washington” is a frequently used idiom for “decision-makers in the US Federal Government”. (This applies mutatis mutandis, to the names of political capitals generally, which stand in for the leadership of the government seared their; in the context of discussions of a particular corporation or other organization, this also applies to the names of cities wherein regional or central HQs are related).

Anyone who misses this has really no place commenting that other people must not be American because of ignorance free of the partisan alignment of the electorate in the capital district.

> electorate in the capital district

You know they don't have any real federal representation, right? Calling them an electorate when referring to anything other than local DC politics is probably not appropriate.