Who will run in 2020?

He is the UK pregame, and postgame show host, and hosts an extremely popular 10-12 AM UK daily show.

Here is announcing his exploratory committee. Once again it is a long shot, but at least a fucking shot.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/peterwallsten/status/1168144457813958657

lol victor.

These entitled purist attitudes are why children are being separated from parents and thrown in cages

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There are zero true idealists in the history books who accomplished anything like what they intended. This is because of their total inability to see anything that they don’t agree with. If something is going wrong with their plans their reaction is to double down and try to will their way to victory. Inevitably the unintended consequences are huge. Wanna be an idealist? That’s fine, but you just opted to be a terrain feature on the board rather than a player.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/01/month-no-strings-attached/

So yeah fuck means tested welfare programs. People will improve themselves on their own when they don’t have to spend every waking moment trying to figure out how to make ends meet.

There are concrete reasons the economics community thinks UBI is a very good idea. We absolutely need to blow up the current welfare system and replace it with UBI as soon as possible.

Scarcity is a mindset. People have to be freed from it before they can become productive citizens in the modern world. It’s too complicated to solve the many varied problems that living hand to mouth entails AND make the moves that are required to become actually successful.

If Bernie is stealing votes that would otherwise go to trump, that seems like a good thing, especially if it doesn’t come from sacrificing any progressive positions to win them over. This is not a defense of anyone to ever rank Bernie 1, Trump 2, but if his message is resonating with uneducated who might otherwise vote for Trump, is that really a negative? If Bernie was taking some terrible positions to win those votes, that would be a fair criticism.

These new votes, if they are coming from Trump, then likely will be coming from toxic people, but we still want them checking the box of Non-toxic candidate right?

As far as reasonable arguments go, I’d say you ask which candidate is going to do best with people who might not vote, might vote third party, or might vote for Trump and they are the most likely person to win. But the answer isn’t necessarily obvious. People say the head-to-head polls are useless, but on the one hand why do they say that? Is there a history that proves exactly how useless they are or are people just making that up? And on the other, they are basically the only info anyone has to go on and better than pure speculation. So…so far, Biden being most likely to beat Trump is the most supportable claim.

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I don’t think this is really accurate. Some economists think it’s a very good idea and some think it’s a very bad idea. The only polling of economists I find (https://basicincome.org/news/2016/07/poll-58-of-economists-oppose-ubi-or-just-charles-murrays-version/) is against it (though that poll is on a more specific question), and the economists I looked up who I generally like to look up (Krugman and Stiglitz) are both mildly against.

Bernie has already moved the party left and caused change regardless if he wins.

Also UBI proponents are striving for idealism…

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M4A is a much more politically realistic thing. It largely serves the same purpose, but it’s better in that it’s both progressive (based on medical need) and it’s not (shouldn’t be) means tested.

that doesn’t count though because reasons

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I don’t know if this is true. Especially if you are talking about M4A that gets rid of private insurance.

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literally the first line:

A recent survey of economists at leading institutions purports to show that 58% oppose a universal basic income, while only 2% support it. However, the survey asked specifically about a UBI that replaces all other social insurance programs and is paid only to adults over 21. Many opposed these qualifications, not UBI itself.

Murray’s proposal is something I’m not for, so I guess I’d be in the 58% opposed if surveyed. For sure UBI has to be paired with a public healthcare system that isn’t attached to anyone’s job… and there would still be public programs to encourage things like affordable housing under a modern welfare state with UBI.

We need to modernize the welfare system not abolish it. Charles Murray is also one of those guys who could say ‘the sky is blue’ and every liberal economist would shudder as they said “I guess so…” because they know the next thing he says is going to be a conclusion they 1000% don’t agree with.

Imo if you read my post, this is you being a dick. Like you’re trying to say I didn’t read the thing I posted.

But I said this:

So, did you read what I posted before replying?

At any rate, you have submitted as fact:

What makes you say this?

https://twitter.com/JustinSandefur/status/1168175065072058368?s=19

Ha-Joon Chang is pretty awesome. Highly recommend his book: Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective.

That abstract reminds me of Thinking Fast and Slow and I expect economists as a whole are pretty similar to the psychologists as a whole that were profiled in that book.

Your post really understated exactly what the article was about IMO. For starters the version of UBI was very polarizing, presented by a very polarizing figure, and was basically that polarizing figure trying to use UBI as a trojan horse to undermine the social safety net. And even then 42% were not opposed to it.

I know a lot of econ people, and the vast majority of the ones under the age of 50 think it’s the best version of a welfare state available. Most of the disagreement about it comes from the fact that econ people generally agree about very little, and a fair few of them owe their careers to the Koch brothers and oppose any social safety net at all. I basically discount those people entirely to be honest. (The only free book I got for a college class was Atlas Shrugged, courtesy of BB&T… they start on you early)

I think your article makes my point with only 58% opposed to something written by Charles Murray. Probably the most popular proposal he’s ever put out lol. Beyond that though a simply huge number of economists are on the record as being for UBI, which a simple google search will confirm.

Ok, but “literally the first line” is what you say to people who didn’t read what they posted. I obviously did and I don’t put that much weight into my article, but it’s the only thing I found which addressed the “economics community” and it’s thoughts on UBI and I think it’s better than your knowing a lot of people in economics.

Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were supporters of UBI. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but it is the Koch end of the political spectrum that has been most friendly towards UBI historically. I really mean that doesn’t make it bad though, and I’m even sympathetic to their driving reason, that it gives the government less power.

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The left is supposed to push making things better for the commoners and the right is supposed to scream about the costs until it’s optimized into something lean but muscular enough to solve the problems that had the left squawking in the first place.

There are good ideas that come from the more right wing libertarian wing of intellectual thought. UBI is a fix for the conservative criticisms of the welfare state where it demotivates people and causes poverty. They aren’t close to 100% wrong about that either. If your housing and food are linked to not making more than X dollars you’re always going to make X-1 dollars, and literally refuse to work (at least legally) past that point. UBI fixes that, and it fixes the welfare stigma which is another very serious problem with welfare programs. Many people who very badly need help don’t get it because they don’t want the social stigma.

It’s actually a complete tragedy that the right wing has fallen into the state they are in today. They decided to go dumb and push ideas that straight up don’t work (namely supply side economics, but once they did that it became ok to say fuck intellectual rigor and it’s been downhill since). They’re supposed to be advocating against government control (the fact that the right is pro our criminal justice system shows how far from their intellectual roots they have strayed) and in favor of individual liberty. I mean think about how crazy it is that they are pro life for a second… or that ACLU is a liberal organization.

So instead we have our current political meta where one party is sort of leftist but also being forced to integrate these weird ‘moderate’ people who probably would have been conservative in a saner meta.

A good liberal idea is to end poverty. It’s hugely wasteful of human capital and productivity and is very morally wrong. I grew up poor and it sucked. I wouldn’t wish for anyone else to have a childhood as deprived as mine and I know lots and lots of people who had it way worse. It’s shameful that people in a country as rich as this one live in poverty. Children even more so.

We need to consider the possibility that the first generation of programs designed to alleviate poverty don’t work. I mean they’ve been around for a long while, and there are still poor people… lots of them.

So we figure out why they didn’t work and fix them. My opinion is that means testing is one of the core flaws built into the welfare state. I think it traps people instead of helping them. I think if you blew them up tomorrow without any replacement five years from now the poverty rate would be lower… but there would also be a lot more homeless people picking through our trash. The people who were forced to figure it out and managed to escape poverty are who conservatives think about the most, and the people who would lose out badly and be reduced to dumpster diving are who liberals think about. I think there’s a solid way to help both groups, and that’s UBI because it solves the problems of the previous iteration of welfare.

I’m open to being talked out of my ideas about UBI, but I think they make a ton of sense, and I haven’t seen any really good arguments against UBI yet.

I’d even take it so far as to tax stuff that has negative externalities for society like pollution, booze, cigarettes, drugs, and fines for bad behavior and distribute them as UBI. After all the public is being hurt by these externalities and deserves to be compensated. In the case of criminal justice I think fine money being kept by the city that levied it is a horrible incentive that is significantly responsible for the downright dystopian state of criminal justice in America.