Keep in mind as you watch @MSNBC not mention his name again that @AndrewYang is only being out-polled by three of these people on stage with him, and his RCP national average puts him at 8th overall out of the 20 at the debates... /13
MSNBC: "A new qualifying poll came out from Monmouth where 2% is needed to get into the fall debates. Let's exclude @AndrewYang again, despite his getting 2% for the 4th time and becoming the 9th candidate to officially qualify for the fall debates."
MSNBC: "Okay let's make a graphic that displays all 9 of the candidates that have already qualified for the fall debates. Oh and let's use perspective to make our favorites bigger and let's put Yang on the far end. One more thing, make sure to block him. There we go…" #YangGang
MSNBC: "Hey check out the latest Economist/YouGov poll with @AndrewYang at 2%. Let's make sure and just show Booker and Gabbard at 2%. No one needs to know about this Yang guy and his damn MATH."
CNN: "We have decided that if @AndrewYang didn't exist, these would be the top 6 from the Quinnipiac poll, so despite Yang polling 3% in this poll, there is no point in displaying him in the top 6."
CNN: "Okay okay okay, everyone. Sheesh. Enough with the outrage machine. We've heard you, and so here's the top 6 candidates based on recent rolling polling average, minus @AndrewYang because we couldn't fit him into the graphic obviously."
What if everyone spent every waking hour making really cool things? How cool would that be? Well consider also that there would be no hours spent enjoying anything created because everyone would be creating not enjoying.
Are the things actually cool if no one gets to enjoy them?
6-day weeks used to be normal. Then 5-day weeks became normal. It's past time for 4-day weeks to become normal. There's just so much stuff being created, and increasingly by machines. Humans need more time to actually enjoy all the stuff and life itself. We need to shift gears.
But what about all the jobs going unfilled? Paying people more per hour for fewer total hours per week would make many jobs more attractive, and the people filling those jobs would be less exhausted and more productive. Plus they'd have more time as consumers to create more jobs.
Interesting threat. Basically, Mitch is like "Look here, everyone. If you make it easier to debate and vote on legislation, we're going to start debating and voting on legislation, and none of us here want that, right?"
Mitch is framing it like a bad thing, for Congress to actually debate and vote on bills, because some votes could make legislators look bad to their constituents, but the lack of that is exactly the problem. If a lawmaker votes yes on unpopular laws, then voters SHOULD fire them.
Right now, elections have less teeth, which is helping drive polarization. People just vote for their favorite team, and because of gridlock, people win based on what they say. If they start actually doing unpopular things, that could change who people actually vote for.
I chatted with @JENFL23 the other day about UBI, MMT, ranked-choice voting, the @Fwd_Party, and about incentives in general and how what @AndrewYang is trying to do is to get people excited about reforming systems with reforms that don't typically excite.
Getting people excited about the possibility of starting to receive $1,000 a month is a lot easier than getting people excited about the prospect of being able to vote for more than one candidate, and ranking them to convey preferences. But the former may just require the latter.
To those not steeped in politics, especially those turned off by it, it's really challenging to get people excited about reforming a process they aren't interested in, but we need to try, and that's what Yang is attempting to do. He's trying to mobilize the disengaged.
We must break out of our current understanding of taxing to spend that limits our ability to spend, when the only real limits we have are our real capacity limits. The issue isn't lack of money. It's what to do in addition to spending to manage inflation.
We are watching what happens in real-time of this belief that we can't somehow afford $3.5 trillion in spending, despite being our own currency issuer. Means-tested stuff gets more means-tested. Stuff gets axed. Other stuff expires faster. It's the wrong discussion to be having.
We shouldn't be arguing over what to save and what to cut and what to trim. The debate should be on how to best design the programs, and then how to best manage the impacts of that spending on the economy. What kind and amount of taxes? How to best improve supply chain issues?
67% of over 1,000 Americans surveyed in new poll support #UBI. Support was strongest among Democrats (82%), Gen Z (79%), Finance and Insurance (71%), non-college grads (71%), and those earning under $25,000 (77%).
The top benefit of UBI according to those surveyed was that it would decrease both poverty and inequality, and help those with poor health and disabilities.
The top concerns were that it would reduce the incentive to work and increase the national debt by costing too much.
When asked how people would use their UBI, most people said they'd save it for retirement, or save it for emergencies, or buy groceries, or pay off debt.
GenZ with the strongest support for UBI is the most likely to pay off student loan debt with it.
We just ran a huge unemployment experiment. Half the states reduced UI, it didn't increase employment compared to the states that kept UI. Then the UI expired and it didn't increase employment. Obviously UI isn't the issue but they REALLY want to force people to accept low wages.
These people want so badly to exploit others for their own benefit, that they don't seem to see that they're making things worse for themselves too. You can't cut incomes in a consumer economy and expect employment to rocket up. Consumer spending is what fuels our economy.
If we want to increase employment, we need to realize a pandemic still exists, and that's the main issue to tackle. We also need to make sure everyone has money to spend, and that they can afford things like child care to make employment make sense.