In the US we have a $21 trillion economy that we all make possible. Where's our staking income? Where's our stonk dividend? Where's our return on investment?
UBI isn't about money for nothing. It's ROI we are due as token holders with voting rights who pay taxes to burn USD.
But seriously, can we discuss how it's possible for anyone who supports crypto to be against income disconnected from work, when income disconnected from work is "living the dream?"
Why is it okay to earn passive income as a staker, but not as a holder of the US citizen token?
All of us are paying gas fees to help make the USD coin stable. Everytime we vote, we're participating in our DAO governance. We're all validators of the US economy, and each of us contributes to its code through division of labor. We're mining without getting paid our fee share.
Many cryptocurrencies have discovered what many corporations have already discovered, that it's wise to reward the owners of a currency or token. Staking interest is smart. Stock dividends are smart.
Basic income is smart too. It will create more USD users. It's good tokenomics.
Please note too that none if this is anything against crypto. I myself own multiple cryptocurrencies, and am earning interest off DeFi and staking. I'm just not clueless enough to believe my crypto gains have somehow been earned in the same way min wage earners earn their wages.
I also look at all the unpaid work going on, especially right now with even more care work going on at home than ever during a pandemic, and see that constant, unending, and extremely valuable to society hard work as far more deserving of passive income than my clicking "stake."
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THREAD: We have 12 days to end gerrymandering. The problem is that even though most voters hate it, many lawmakers love it because they get to pick their voters and stay in power. The Senate's new Manchin-approved #ForThePeopleAct needs to be passed before districts are redrawn!
If you're not familiar with how gerrymandering works, learn about the strategies of packing and cracking and how it enables politicians to subvert popular will and even gain and keep power despite getting fewer votes.
Definitely watch the CGP Grey video above as it also shows that traditional solutions to gerrymandering aren't really the best solutions. We have to go deeper if we really want to fix this problem, and that's where the Fair Representation Act comes in.
"Officials could coerce them to work... with so-called 'farm policies' where benefits were lowered or cut off during the planting or harvesting seasons to force parents and children as young as 7 into the fields for extremely low wages."
Every governor who canceled the UI boost and extension early just did this same thing. You need to understand that this isn't about getting people to work in general, because people want to find the right work for them, paid or unpaid. It's about forcing people to accept low pay.
It's still too early to tell despite what misinfo media is already lying about, but the data so far is showing that employment has actually gone down a bit in the states that ended their UI early while going up in states that have kept UI going.
I'd support Patricia's patreon, but what's the point really when her anti-UBI logic is that people don't need income in advance of the work they do, to enable that work, and that being able to refuse other work in order to pursue stuff like podcasting is not really contributing?
Having a patreon has actually deepened my understanding of UBI. The security provided by having a dependable monthly income is huge, and until I felt it, I didn't realize how little security I ever felt before that. UBI opponents tend to be people who take security for granted.
I also absolutely recognize to my bones now, that access to resources comes before work. Lacking money prevents work. Lacking economic security hinders focus by creating survival-centric tunnel vision that functions like a tax on higher order long-term thinking and planning.
I've been in the process of writing the article I've been working on for 5 months now. Basic income enables the kind of research and time that big projects need, and I think if everyone had UBI, we'd see far less click-bait and content for content's sake.
There's a big difference in general between subscription-based content and ad-based content. Ads require clicks which require as much content as possible. Subscriptions require subscribers which require subscriber satisfaction.
Quality is more likely via subscription vs adverts.
This is also behind the fall of local journalism and rise of disinformation. It was a devil's bargain to stop subscribing to our local papers to get our news for free on the internet. The loss of well-researched local journalism is a big piece of our mis/disinformation problem.
The heart of MMT is about spending before taxing instead of taxing before spending. It's not the concept of a job guarantee, but for some reason MMT has attracted a ton of people that see MMT as the way of "putting people to work" instead of the way of focusing on resources vs $.
The question, "Can we resource it?" instead of "Can we pay for it?" is the correct one to ask of any policy, and that question centers around efficiency. We should always focus on doing the most of what we want in the best way possible, where best includes efficiency + quality.
Because MMT focuses on resources, best utilizing it should center on evidence-based policymaking, where we only do something if we know it works, and we should not do stuff that doesn't work, or doesn't work as well as the provision of cash.
Inflation is a regressive tax that impacts those with low incomes more than high incomes. However the net outcome can be made progressive, where those with low incomes see an increase in buying power and those with higher incomes see reduced buying power. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
I fully expect inflation hawks to soon start claiming the monthly CTC is part of the inflation story but if your income is $12k and you get $500/mo CTC, then an annual inflation rate of 3% would reduce buying power by $45/mo. That's $455/mo more.
It is $455/mo with 0% inflation.
What's also interesting about this is that any conservative crying about inflation as a result of the monthly CTC will be making the argument (whether they realize it or not) that taxes should be raised on *families* in order to reduce the invisible tax of inflation on the rich.