Andrew Yang to be NYC's Next Mayor

[NatureB]

Andrew Yang has officially announced his 2021 run to be the Mayor of New York City. It looks like he has a good shot! De Blasio cannot run again due to term limits, and Yang has so much name recognition from his 2020 presidential run and his non-profit Humanity Forward that he actually polled at 20% BEFORE he announced that he was running, 6% higher than the next best candidate.

Yang's platform is to improve the city transit system and get electric buses operating by 2030, kill poverty by enacting the largest UBI experiment ever in the U.S., giving half of a million of the poorest NYC inhabitants up to $2,000. He wants to get the last 29% of New Yorkers to have high-speed internet, which is essential if kids are to be home schooled. Lastly, he wants everybody in NYC to have a bank account.

He also talks about the Capitol Hill riots and some other recent politics in this short clip.

[Forestluv]

I’d love to see Yang in a leadership position with some political power. I wonder if any another Dems will run. I don’t see a Republican winning NYC mayor for a while. These days, the Republican brand is toast in NYC.

[aurum]

@NatureB Cannot wait to see UBI enacted in a place like NY. If it's successful, that's a game changer.

Keep in mind we have to understand what it means for a policy like UBI to be successful. Criteria of success is huge.

If we assume success of a UBI means that NY expands its economy, likely politicians will be disappointed and claim it "didn't work".

But if we understand that the purpose of UBI is a disruption of wage slavery and people being forced to participate in exploitative systems, now we have a much different measure of success.

And this might be more difficult to quantify. Can we quantify how much beautiful artwork might be produced because artists are no longer so strapped for cash? Can we quantify how valuable that is? How beautiful it is?

We may make attempts, but ultimately we will have to see that the success of UBI will not be seen in many numbers. It will be in the difference of people's hearts.

Of course, UBI is also not a panacea. That's another trap. But I do see it as one potential crucial piece of the puzzle.

Edited January 15, 2021 by aurum

[Girzo]

I wish him to do well in those elections!!! 

I have finished reading his book "War on Normal People" today and he seems like a cool, well-informed, grounded guy. He has my trust.

Edited January 15, 2021 by Girzo

[Forestluv]

10 minutes ago, aurum said:

 

But if we understand that the purpose of UBI is a disruption of wage slavery and people being forced to participate in exploitative systems, now we have a much different measure of success.

And this might be more difficult to quantify. Can we quantify how much beautiful artwork might be produced because artists are no longer so strapped for cash? Can we quantify how valuable that is? How beautiful it is?

I agree that setting the intention on goals and assessment is key. Yet how is the goal of wellness assessed? A few ideas:

— Surveys of people’s subjective sense of well-being, stress and job satisfaction.

— Rates of domestic violence, alcohol and drug addiction.

— Suicide rates

— Ranking on best places to live 

— Tourism

[aurum]

5 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

I agree that setting the intention on goals and assessment is key. Yet how is the goal of wellness assessed? A few ideas:

— Surveys of people’s subjective sense of well-being, stress and job satisfaction.

— Rates of domestic violence, alcohol and drug addiction.

— Suicide rates

— Ranking on best places to live 

— Tourism

Sure those sound good. And we could implement many others I'm sure.

For instance, if we value beautiful art as a society, why isn't that somehow measured? Why not include that in the criteria of success?

How about increase in community or family time? Or an increase in people expanding their consciousness?

In other words, what do we really value? Like actually? Not some bullshit like GDP. That is meaningless.

We need to determine what we really value and measure that.

At the same time, we need to understand that any metric of success is still going to fall far short of encapsulating the success of a policy. We have to accept that some things just can't be quantified. And many of those things are what matter the most.

[Willie]

Awesome! I have no doubt he’d do well! 

[invictus]

wish him all the best

[Lyubov]

[NatureB]

@Lyubov Lmao someone was going to bring that up!

@aurum Every once in a while Yang will post or retweet UBI results on Twitter. One you might like is that stress levels went down 78% subjectively for participants in one UBI trial (forgot which one). The person who tweeted it, I believe Scott Santens, captioned it with something like "imagine 78% subjective stress reduction on a society scale." That's the power of UBI, and I trust Yang to fill in the missing pieces as things progress. I believe that if NYC passes some longer term UBI legislation then we will see that ripple across the U.S. within a decade.

@Forestluv I didn't know you liked Yang! Glad to have mod support haha. The measures you mentioned have all been documented as having positive improvements in other UBI trials. I will link a tweet below.

[NatureB]

This is one of Andrew Yang's UBI friends. They almost agree on everything when it comes to UBI, and Yang retweeted this one.

[Forestluv]

@NatureB I support UBI in principle. My concern is if they dismantle well-established social programs for UBI. Established social programs are much harder to cut because they are ingrained in the system. New social programs like UBI are much easier to cut by future politicians. 

[DocWatts]

32 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

@NatureB I support UBI in principle. My concern is if they dismantle well-established social programs for UBI. Established social programs are much harder to cut because they are ingrained in the system. New social programs like UBI are much easier to cut by future politicians. 

Yeah, Libertarian support of UBI typically comes with the aspiration that it will come about in exchange for dismantling of the Welfare State, which is why they support it. And to be fair there probably are some aspects of the Social Welfare State (such as unemployment insurance) that it might make sense to replace with UBI. 

But you're absolutely right that UBI would be an obvious target for austerity measures, so perhaps a gradual implementation would make sense; let people get used to it, and let the program make a positive case for how it can makes people's lives better. I would also be very surprised if a UBI program isn't incredibly popular once implemented, so it's not hard to imagine it becoming as ingrained as Social Security once a Generation grows up with it, and it ceases to feel new or experimental.

[aurum]

12 hours ago, NatureB said:

This is one of Andrew Yang's UBI friends. They almost agree on everything when it comes to UBI, and Yang retweeted this one.

Love it. The potential is definitely there. As long as coronavirus sticks around it's practically a no-brainer.

11 hours ago, DocWatts said:

Yeah, Libertarian support of UBI typically comes with the aspiration that it will come about in exchange for dismantling of the Welfare State, which is why they support it. And to be fair there probably are some aspects of the Social Welfare State (such as unemployment insurance) that it might make sense to replace with UBI. 

But you're absolutely right that UBI would be an obvious target for austerity measures, so perhaps a gradual implementation would make sense; let people get used to it, and let the program make a positive case for how it can makes people's lives better. I would also be very surprised if a UBI program isn't incredibly popular once implemented, so it's not hard to imagine it becoming as ingrained as Social Security once a Generation grows up with it, and it ceases to feel new or experimental.

This is definitely something to be mindful of, which is why we have to have a holistic approach with UBI. In theory we may get to a point where those social services could be cut. But this will only happen if strong communities and decentralized, local economies have taken hold. As long as things are centralized the welfare state is necessary.

[martins name]

@Forestluv so many systems and people will be dependent on a UBI that i don't see how people would vote it away. It would be like indians voting to remove the Ganges river. I think we need more trust for people than to fear that they would. 

I think it's a terrible idea to promote a convoluted and inefficient welfare system just to defend it from libertarians. They have a point in being concerned that it creates perverse incentives and that it impedes individual creativity. If we ignore those concerns libertarians will win in the long run. The simplicity of ubi is one of its strengths. 

[DocWatts]

23 minutes ago, martins name said:

I think it's a terrible idea to promote a convoluted and inefficient welfare system just to defend it from libertarians. They have a point in being concerned that it creates perverse incentives and that it impedes individual creativity. If we ignore those concerns libertarians will win in the long run. The simplicity of ubi is one of its strengths. 

While the extent of how bloated and inefficient the Welfare State is is overstated by Libertarians and Conservatives, using the simplicity of UBI as a starting point for compromise that can be used to build broad base of the political support needed for its implementation makes a lot of sense in my view. 

[Jennjenn]

14 hours ago, Forestluv said:

I agree that setting the intention on goals and assessment is key. Yet how is the goal of wellness assessed? A few ideas:

— Surveys of people’s subjective sense of well-being, stress and job satisfaction.

— Rates of domestic violence, alcohol and drug addiction.

— Suicide rates

— Ranking on best places to live 

— Tourism

I’d add Sanitation. 
I live in NYC and garbage and rats are a huge problem. Garbage trucks only come twice a week and NYC households are overcrowded. Too many people living in one apartment because of high rent prices, and they produce a lot of garbage that is not picked up often enough. And, believe it or not, there are many empty apartments in NYC. With UBI people can get their own apartments or share but with a lesser number roommates. 

Also, lots of good enough food is wasted everyday from all restaurants. There should be a program where restaurants donate or even sell that food to the city instead of throwing it out. There are lots of poor people and people in shelters going hungry, and there are thousands of restaurants wasting food everyday. 
 

[NatureB]

@Jennjenn I didn't know things were tgat bad in NYC. So inefficient.

Yes, UBI must be paired with lowering the cost of housing for it to really work. There is a reasonable fear that landowners will raise rent commensurately with UBI and take it all for themselves. We have to make sure that does not happen.

[Jennjenn]

15 hours ago, aurum said:

For instance, if we value beautiful art as a society, why isn't that somehow measured? Why not include that in the criteria of success?

Good question.  The thing is that just as with the Maslow hierarchy of needs, there are things that should be dealt with first.
Cities focus on the “5 determinants of health” first before they can focus on anything else since those are the ones that predict the quality of life of their people. 
https://www.cdc.gov/socialdeterminants/about.html

 

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by Jennjenn

[DocWatts]

3 minutes ago, NatureB said:

@Jennjenn I didn't know things were tgat bad in NYC. So inefficient.

Yes, UBI must be paired with lowering the cost of housing for it to really work. There is a reasonable fear that landowners will raise rent commensurately with UBI and take it all for themselves. We have to make sure that does not happen.

Very true; UBI would have to implemented alongside price controls for essentials such as Housing, that would put some sort of limit on how much the cost of things like Housing could be raised within a given year (perhaps tied to the Inflation index).