Holy shit. They did it. The crazy bastards did it. @MSNBC created a graphic with photos of the 20 candidates to appear in the first debates, and they actually went so far as to remove @AndrewYang and include someone who didn't even qualify. This is shameless in how brazen it is.
Good Lord. @MSNBC just can't help themselves. In the latest example, they include his photo in a list of top 8, and manage to read every name but @AndrewYang's??
Isn't it kind of odd how @MSNBC went with 7 bars here instead of 8? Doesn't it look asymmetrically unappealing? Does it look to you like something is missing? That number 8 spot belongs to @AndrewYang with 1.1%.
I'm going to go ahead and leave this here in this thread, as it obviously belongs here. You can force the brass at NBC to put someone on the stage according to their rules, but you can't force them to ask him anything beyond the absolute minimum of questions. #DemDebate#YangGang
With #LetYangSpeak now trending across the country, I feel I should expand this thread with some more examples of blatant MSNBC shenanigans in their treatment of Andrew Yang. Here's where they spoke over his appearance at the Poor People's Campaign Forum.
This egregious behavior has even been noted by @FAIRmediawatch where despite polling 8th at the time, an MSNBC graphic earlier this month excluded Andrew Yang in a photo compilation of 20 candidates. #LetYangSpeak#YangGang
10/ In this latest NBC graphic, @AndrewYang's positive Twitter mention percentage is literally off the charts, likely because #LetYangSpeak was a top trending keyword nationwide all day on Friday and anything over 40% couldn't be displayed… Also, no room for a 9th anyway, right?
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Here's the deal about basic income and inflation: it all depends. Can UBI be inflationary? Sure, if we do it in a certain way in a certain context, but no, not in other ways and contexts. We're talking about a multivariate equation. So what are the variables? It's THREAD time! 🧵
Inflation variable 1: The amount of UBI
A $100/mo UBI is going to have a different inflationary impact than $10k/mo. The amount of UBI matters. It matters because of demand exceeding supply, but also the labor impact that can potentially reduce supply.
Poverty level is doable.
Inflation variable 2: Economic capacity
Inflation can happen when the demand for goods and services exceeds the ability to meet that demand with supply. If a country is at or over its capacity, UBI can raise prices. If there's lots of capacity, supply can meet demand. No problem
Okay, everyone, here it is. I know many of you have been curious to read my take on @sama's basic income pilot results for about two full weeks now. Here's my take.
On average, those who got basic income were two percentage points less likely to be employed and worked about 1.3 fewer hours per week. These two numbers are basically where many UBI opponents and skeptics claim with triumph that this pilot was a failure.
A weekly drop of 1.3 hours works out to about 15 min a workday. That's an extra break. On an annual basis, it's equivalent to 8 days a year. That's a week-long paid vacation. An increase of 8 days would still leave the US at the bottom of all OECD nations, behind Japan by 2 days.
Okay, I'm going to need to write a full in-depth article about this stuff, but it's already reminding me of the Finland UBI pilot and how lots of people think that failed when it didn't. It makes perfect sense to read a tweet like Noah's and think the Denver pilot failed... 🧵👇
If you look at just the right charts along with rhetoric that expresses disappointment, without reading the full reports for yourself, you can think you know all you need to know but you don't. And there are people out there who count on you not reading and understanding studies.
The Denver pilot (which is still ongoing don't forget) uses 3 groups. Group A gets $1k/mo. Group B gets $6500 in month 1 and $500/mo after that. Group C gets $50/mo. However, all groups got a phone along with a plan or a plan stipend, and all groups were connected to helpful orgs
There's something about the debate going unsaid when we argue over whether AI will replace human labor or complement it.
If replace, then basic income is definitely needed.
If complement, then it's easy to believe we own the total value of our enhanced labor. But why is that?
If my labor is enhanced by technology, such that my work as a human contributes 10% to what I produce and a machine contributes the other 90%, then why do I deserve anything more than 10%, even if I own the machine?
Now we need to ask where the machine came from...
Robots, AI, computer hardware and software, it all came from the past. Those alive today are building on what those humans no longer with us built, who themselves built on what they were given.
Government spending was invested in all of this technology to grow and accelerate it.
"People perceive national debt as a negative, Grey said. But instead, he argues, you can think of it as a savings account, because people are earning interest through the bonds that they hold."
It is a choice we make to issue Treasury securities $1 for $1 of federal spending that exceeds taxes. We don't have to do that, but it's popular because people like earning a US government guaranteed rate of interest.
The US issues USD. We choose to also issue securities that pay USD interest. Our 14th Amendment says we can't default on any of our promised payments. Just keep making the payments, and we may as well also issue a $1 trillion coin to demonstrate we don't have to issue securities.
This is good but I wish it also included how Medicare Part D doesn't even carry the same issue as the rest of Medicare because it was set up to use general revenue. It's the example that proves all that's required to "fix Social Security" is just a legislative change in wording.
If we decide to reduce Social Security payments in the future, that's a political choice. We certainly don't have to do that. We can keep making 100% of payments, and no we don't even have to lift the cap on payroll taxes. We can just spend the money.
It's really harmful how wide and how strong the myth-based belief is that the national "debt" is some big scary loan of some kind instead of being more like a savings account and how running a deficit is somehow bad regardless of what the spending is for.