Comments by "oolong2" (@oolong2) on "Andrew Yang Is Nice... Unless You Need Healthcare" video.

People who support a UBI are just imagining having an extra $1000 in a country that doesn't have a UBI... As soon as you give EVERYONE in the country an extra $1000 a month, then rent and various other prices are just going to skyrocket and then you'll have inflation, because you've artificially increased demand. Then over the next few years all of our safety nets are going to get weaker and weaker. Giving everyone money an leaving it up to the market to take care of everybody is kind of a horrible idea. It's far better to make required services free (like healthcare, food, shelter, and education) and leave the rest up to market forces.
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@dgaspar7536 The minimum wage only effects like 3% of workers. Which is entirely different than giving everyone in the country an extra $1000 dollars a month.
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@annalee4120 What market forces exactly? Because if you increase demand by a factor of everyone in the country then prices are going to go up. What exactly is going to prevent people from responding to the increased demand by raising rent?
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@appaul7095 You need an actual argument to refute an argument. Calling things "lies" and running off, is not an argument.
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@dgaspar7536 How so? I'm not sure if you understand the basics of supply and demand. People having more money doesn't magically give people the power to lower prices... Go to any poor country that has an area or city that gets a lot of tourists, the prices in that area will be many times higher than the rest of the country.
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@DaHanG That's called "Black Friday" every year... Just because businesses have a sale when people get a bonus at the end of the year (and the Alaska oil dividend is no different than a bonus at the end of the year from any other job), doesn't mean that a UBI won't increase rent. You don't use a "bonus" to pay for rent or your mortgage. A UBI is specifically meant to be used as INCOME. So if you're paying $800 a month in rent, suddenly your new budget for rent becomes $1600 or more. Which is good in the short term, however businesses will just respond by raising prices on rent. If you think that people will not be greedy and do that, then you're just being naive. Then what happens to all of those safety nets that people opted out of when the inevitable inflation starts hitting? You weaken the ability for society to take care of people who fall through the cracks by leaving it up to the market.
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@appaul7095 This is literally my first comment on youtube on Yangs' UBI. So I have no idea what other augments you're talking about. You sound a bit unhinged. Cool story on the economist. Do you somehow believe that there are not economists who are also against the idea? Maybe it would be more productive if you can argue the idea on it's merits instead of just making an "appeal to authority" fallacy.
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@annalee4120 To me it seems that "Human-Centered Capitalism" is nothing more than a marketing slogan. Unless you can articulate that into specific policies, it's kind of meaningless to me. His thoughts around campaign finance reform are quite good though. Yang is trying to use socialism to change how a the market works, that's basically what a UBI is. He's trying to pretend that the market can work for everyone because it worked for him. It's a classic republican/libertarian line of thinking. However If you're going to do socialism, just do socialism.... Giving people tax money and just throwing them into the market to see what happens, is irresponsible. There isn't a single case of UBI working across the board in any other country.
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@appaul7095 IGoogle "IGM forum universal basic income" for plenty of economic experts who are not on board with the idea. I'm really not going to argue what you imagined that I said before dude. I know what I comment on.
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@colerees3965 Well it's a good thing we're not fixing a car. 😄 You can appeal to authority if you can find a consensus on that topic (such as with anthropogenic global warming), however on a topic where you can find one expert that holds one belief and another expert that holds an opposite one. It's really not helpful to pretend that an argument can be shut down by just throwing out one guy.
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@mokondoenak3706 My point is that rent and other things will go up much more than it otherwise would. I thought my argument was pretty obvious.... I'm just not on board with the idea that markets will suddenly be altruistic if we just hand out money to people. As if there isn't already a long history of people and corporations swindling people from their money and manipulating markets in their favor.
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@aninsightinthemaking.9252 Try one time... Since apparently people have trouble debunking the idea at all. I saw a video of Yang on Facebook trying to answer this very question. His only answer was to assume what people would use the money for... Sorry, but that's not an answer. You're adding an extra 1.8 trillion to the economy (his words) with absolutely no idea or control over how that money is going to be spent. So you really cannot answer the question on what it would do in terms of inflation, rent, etc.
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@appaul7095 The fact is you have no idea what the repercussions are because we have no data on it. There is no concrete model that economists can point to that says "That's how a UBI would effect the economy". The only times it has been implemented is in small populations for specific needs (a few villages, some impoverished people, etc), not across the board for an entire country. Again, I have no problems with socialism that targets a specific need or natural monopolies. However I think it's foolish to not be concerned about relying on a market that has left so many people behind.
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@appaul7095 Alaska's dividend is no different than a yearly bonus, it's not an "income". It's not a monthly income that can immediately be put towards rent or a mortgage. You can pretend that a lot of people don't have concerns over UBI or you can work towards addressing the concerns that people raise. Which do you think is more effective? Just like UBI, flat taxes are much easier to "manage", but they proportionally end up hurting the middle class, poor, and disenfranchised. A UBI pretends that a flat income can fix everything without repercussions, which is just as naive as a flat tax. Comparing targeted programs to a flat income is just not a valid comparison because they are not solving the same problems.... No one has yet to answer the simple question as to why rent would not be raised if everyone suddenly had an extra $1000 a month and what effect that would have on the economy in the long term. Nor has anyone answered the concern over weakening safety-nets as people are forced to opt out of them for a UBI as Yang plan does. I'm not completely against a UBI, I just need to see a lot more evidence besides puppies and rainbows.
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