How my UBI plan affects real people (appendix to basic income plan 2023)

So, I normally include this in my UBI plan, but I was making it a bit more extensive this time, and figured it would be better to include this as an appendix. 

 Like my previous plan I'm going to test how this plan impacts every day people. You can test your own situation with this formula.

#Adults in household($15,000) + #Children in household($5,400) - income from all sources mentioned in my UBI plan(.200) = total net income after transfers

UBI Scaling for single adult

Single adult, no job (2nd percentile)

UBI: $15,000

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $15,000

Single adult, minimum wage (~16th percentile)

UBI: $15,000

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $27,064 (+79%)

Single adult, median income ($46,001) (50th percentile)

UBI: $15,000

Wages: $46,001

Taxes: $9,200

Net Income: $51,801 (+13%)

Single adult, break even point ($75,000) (~73rd percentile)

UBI: $15,000

Wages: $75,000

Taxes: $15,000

Net Income: $75,000 (+0%)

Single Adult, $100,000 (82nd percentile)

UBI: $15,000

Wages: $100,000

Taxes: $20,000

Net Income: $95,000 (-5%)

Single Adult, $250,000 (98th percentile)

UBI: $15,000

Wages: $250,000

Taxes: $50,000

Net Income: $215,000 (-14%)

UBI scaling for a single parent with 1 kid

Single parent with 1 kid, no job (1st percentile)

UBI: $20,400

Wages: $0

Taxes:$40

Net Income:$20,400

Single parent with 1 kid, minimum wage (10th percentile)

UBI:$20,400

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $32,464 (+115%)

Single parent with 1 kid, median individual income ($46,001)(33rd percentile household income)

UBI: $20,400

Wages: $46,001

Taxes: $9,200

Net Income: $57,201 (+24%)

Single parent with 1 kid, median household income ($70,181)(50th percentile)

UBI: $20,400

Wages: $70,181

Taxes: $14,036

Net Income: $76,545 (+9%)

Single parent with 1 kid, break even point (66th percentile)

UBI: $20,400

Wages: $102,000

Taxes: $20,400

Net Income:$102,000 (+0%)

Single parent with 1 kid, $250,000 (93rd percentile)

UBI: $20,400

Wages: $250,000

Taxes: $50,000

Net Income: $220,400 (-12%)

UBI scaling for a single parent with 2 kids

Single parent with 2 kids, no job (1st percentile)

UBI: $25,800

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $25,800

Single parent with 2 kids, minimum wage (10th percentile)

UBI: $25,800

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $37,864 (+151%)

Single parent with 2 kids, median individual income ($46,001)(33rd percentile household income)

UBI: $25,800

Wages: $46,001

Taxes: $9,200

Net Income: $62,601 (+36%)

Single parent with 2 kids, median household income ($70,181)(50th percentile)

UBI: $25,800

Wages: $70,181

Taxes: $14,036

Net Income: $81,945 (+17%)

Single parent with 2 kids, $100,000 (65th percentile)

UBI: $25,800

Wages: $100,000

Taxes: $20,000

Net Income: $105,800 (+6%)

Single parent with 2 kids, break even point (75th percentile)

UBI: $25,800

Wages: $129,000

Taxes: $25,800

Net Income: $129,000 (+0%)

Single parent with 2 kids, $250,000 (93rd percentile)

UBI: $25,800

Wages: $250,000

Taxes: $50,000

Net Income: $225,800 (-10%)

UBI scaling for a single parent with 3 kids

 Single parent with 3 kids, no job (1st percentile)

UBI: $31,200

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $31,200

Single parent with 3 kids, minimum wage (10th percentile)

UBI: $31,200

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $43,264 (+186%)

Single parent with 3 kids, median individual income ($46,001)(33rd percentile household income)

UBI: $31,200

Wages: $46,001

Taxes: $9,200

Net Income: $68,001 (+48%)

Single parent with 3 kids, median household income ($70,181)(50th percentile)

UBI: $31,200

Wages: $70,181

Taxes: $14,036

Net Income: $87,345 (+24%)

Single parent with 3 kids, $100,000 (65th percentile)

UBI: $31,200

Wages: $100,000

Taxes: $20,000

Net Income: $111,200 (+11%)

Single parent with 3 kids, break even point (82nd percentile)

UBI: $31,200

Wages: $156,000

Taxes: $31,200

Net Income: $156,000 (+0%)

Single parent with 3 kids, $250,000 (93rd percentile)

UBI: $31,200

Wages: $250,000

Taxes: $50,000

Net Income: $231,200 (-8%)

UBI Scaling for a couple, no children

Couple, no jobs (1st percentile)

UBI: $30,000

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $30,000

Couple, one minimum wage job (10th percentile)

UBI: $30,000

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $42,064 (+178%)

Couple, two minimum wage jobs (23rd percentile)

UBI: $30,000

Wages: $30,160

Taxes: $6,032

Net Income: $54,128 (+79%)

Couple, median household income ($70,181) (50th percentile)

UBI: $30,000

Wages: $70,181

Taxes: $14,036

Net Income: $86,145 (+23%)

Couple, two median individual income jobs ($92,002)(62nd percentile)

 UBI: $30,000

Wages: $92,002

Taxes: $18,400

Net Income: $103,602 (+13%)

Couple, break even point (81st percentile)

UBI: $30,000

Wages: $150,000

Taxes: $30,000

Net Income:$150,000 (+0%)

Couple, $500,000 (99th percentile)

UBI: $30,000

Wages: $500,000

Taxes: $100,000

Net Income: $430,000 (-14%)

UBI Scaling for a couple, 1 kid

Couple with 1 kid, no jobs (1st percentile)

UBI: $35,400

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $35,400

Couple with 1 kid, one minimum wage job (10th percentile)

UBI: $35,400

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $47,464 (+214%)

Couple with 1 kid, two minimum wage jobs (23rd percentile)

UBI: $35,400

Wages: $30,160

Taxes: $6,032

Net Income: $59,528 (+97%)

 Couple with 1 kid, median household income ($70,181) (50th percentile)

UBI: $35,400

Wages: $70,181

Taxes: $14,036

Net Income: $91,545 (+30%)

Couple with 1 kid, two median individual income jobs ($92,002)(62nd percentile)

 UBI: $35,400

Wages: $92,002

Taxes: $18,400

Net Income: $109,002 (+18%)

Couple with 1 kid, break even point (86th percentile)

UBI: $35,400

Wages: $177,000

Taxes: $35,400

Net Income: $177,000 (+0%)

Couple with 1 kid, $500,000 (99th percentile)

UBI: $35,400

Wages: $500,000

Taxes: $100,000

Net Income: $435,400 (-13%)

UBI Scaling for a couple, 2 kids

Couple with 2 kids, no jobs (1st percentile)

 UBI: $40,800

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $40,800

Couple with 2 kids, one minimum wage job (10th percentile)

UBI: $40,800

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $52,864 (+251%)

Couple with 2 kids, two minimum wage jobs (23rd percentile)

UBI: $40,800

Wages: $30,160

Taxes: $6,032

Net Income: $64,928 (+115%)

 Couple with 2 kids, median household income ($70,181) (50th percentile)

UBI: $40,800

Wages: $70,181

Taxes: $14,036

Net Income: $96,945 (+38%)

Couple with 2 kids, two median individual income jobs ($92,002)(62nd percentile)

 UBI: $40,800

Wages: $92,002

Taxes: $18,400

Net Income: $114,402 (+24%)

Couple with 2 kids, break even point (90th percentile)

UBI: $40,800

Wages: $204,000

Taxes: $40,800

Net Income: $204,000 (+0%)

Couple with 2 kids, $500,000 (99th percentile)

UBI: $40,800

Wages: $500,000

Taxes: $100,000

Net Income: $440,800 (-12%)

UBI Scaling for a couple, 3 kids

 Couple with 3 kids, no jobs (1st percentile)

 UBI: $46,200

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $46,200

Couple with 3 kids, one minimum wage job (10th percentile)

UBI: $46,200

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $58,264 (+286%)

 Couple with 3 kids, two minimum wage jobs (23rd percentile)

UBI: $46,200

Wages: $30,160

Taxes: $6,032

Net Income: $70,328 (+133%)

 Couple with 3 kids, median household income ($70,181) (50th percentile)

UBI: $46,200

Wages: $70,181

Taxes: $14,036

Net Income: $102,345 (+46%)

Couple with 3 kids, two median individual income jobs ($92,002)(62nd percentile)

 UBI: $46,200

Wages: $92,002

Taxes: $18,400

Net Income: $119,802 (+30%)

Couple with 3 kids, break even point (92nd percentile)

UBI: $46,200

Wages: $231,000

Taxes: $46,200

Net Income: $231,000 (+0%)

Couple with 3 kids, $500,000 (99th percentile)

UBI: $46,200

Wages: $500,000

Taxes: $100,000

Net Income: $446,200 (-11%)

Discussion

So, before I begin, let me just say if your situation is not approximated above, use this formula to figure out your relative tax burden vs the status quo.

#Adults in household($15,000) + #Children in household($5,400) - income from all sources mentioned in my UBI plan(.200) = total net income after transfers

Generally speaking, this plan looks extremely generous to most households. If anything, it probably looks too generous on the surface. We're talking tripling some peoples' incomes. However, that's how this is supposed to work. This is basically like a negative income tax, except done on the UBI side. People who make relatively little money should get a lot back from the plan, whereas middle class people get a smaller bump, almost like a tax credit. Your typical household with 2 adults and 1 child will get $35,400 in UBI but then pay $14,036 back in taxes. 

Obviously, the plan will hit single income people the hardest. One UBI means that they will only be able to make $75,000 before effectively paying into a UBI plan. But most people do not live alone. Most people live with at least one other person. If they're living with another adult, that household is not paying in until $150,000. A single parent might end up paying in closer to $100-130k. 

I feel like this is generous enough. People might wonder about the justice of the exact situations. Why do couples get it easier than single mothers? Alternatively, others will complain why we are subsidizing people for having children in the first place. I've contemplated these questions in the past and here are my answers.

In order for UBI to guarantee real freedom for all, it needs to be given out on an individual basis, and to be unconditional. This means that each adult in a household will have their own UBI. And they can take their UBI and leave the household at any time if it no longer suits their needs. Compare this with an NIT or household based income scheme where you need to file in accordance with your household size, and then if you want to leave you would need to notify the government you no longer live at an address, and then you're doing paperwork, and waiting for the government to give you the money you are owed, and you could be stuck in bureaucratic limbo when you need your money now. It's better just to give it to every individual. This makes UBI kind of scant for people who live in individual situations, but also quite generous, possibly overly generous for those living in a household with multiple adults. I am willing to accept this, and if we need to scale back UBI, I would do so on the basis of the UBI amount as a whole.

Now, children. Children is a tricky question with UBI plans. You got two major camps on this. First of all, you have the camp that is generally defined as being "caring", and everything with these guys is "we gotta take care of the kids". And I would agree with them. If we did not give UBI to children, a lot of left wing welfarists would be screaming about how this plan harms single mothers and blah blah blah. It would turn people against it, and we would get the common rallying cry that UBI supporters want to destroy welfare and make people worse off. This is untrue.

However, we do not want to give a FULL UBI to children. If we did, each child would be getting $15,000. This would cause the opposing side to scream that we're literally incentivizing women to spread their legs and pop out kids like they're clown cars. And I have to admit, the incentives WOULD be too generous toward having kids. So how do I balance those incentives? Well, just as the core UBI for adults is based off of the federal poverty line rounded to some nice flat amount slightly above it, so is the case for my child benefit. The goal is to give people enough money to take care of their kids, without incentivizing people to do nothing but pop out kids and never work or something. While reduced work incentive among single mothers on a UBI is far above the average, I'm okay with it. Part of the reason why so many children grow up into deviant adults, for example, is because the parents are working too hard at jobs to properly raise their kids. We love to pride ourselves on working, but then we want to force single mothers into the work force, where their kids grow up without supervision, join gangs, etc. It's not good. And the alternative to that would be to...send them to daycare or get a babysitter? Well, then we would just be creating yet another "job" to take care of the job that the single mother could arguably be doing all along. So yeah. Let them drop out of the work force and raise their kids if they want. Or work, and then have someone else take care of their kids. It doesn't matter to me. Jobs exist to fulfill our wants and needs. It is up to every individual person to figure out what they wish to do with the economic calculus here. I am not trying to force people to do any which thing. 

But yeah. This means that we will have households that sometimes have very high UBI amounts, especially if multiple adults are in a household. But, again, that's kind of a valid strategy with my UBI. Cohabitation is common, and my UBI encourages it. This should, if anything, make conservatives happy. One of their biggest complaints about welfare is that it breaks up families and discourages work. UBI removes the perverse disincentives with the system such as welfare traps and stuff that requires family members present to work. You can have bureaucracy, or you can have a UBI, but you cannot have both.

More targetted aid may allow the government to scale benefits in a way that might make more sense in some cases, but it comes at the expense of the efficiency of the system. Again, if we went with an NIT and targetted it per household, it would require a lot of paperwork. it would be slow, and unresponsive to peoples' needs, and it might trap people, like battered spouses and children, in abusive relationships. Given a paramount concern is mine is freedom, I believe implementing it on the individual level is better. 

People might also wonder about the amount. Again, I'm kind of working off of a Rawlsian veil of ignorance framework here. I am trying to ensure that everyone, even the most worst off person, is out of poverty under my plan. Anyone who is better off, is better off. Keep in mind, the poverty line for one is $14,590, and it's $5,140 per additional person. My UBI plan is $15,000 per adult, and $5,400 per person, slightly above it. People complain that the poverty line isn't enough. But at the same time, in households, this likely fits a better standard of what a living income looks like. It might look irrational I give a whopping $46,200 for a family of five, but given their poverty line is $35,140, that doesn't really make it excessive in practice. That's only 131% of the poverty line. I mean, sure, some might get significantly above the poverty line, but that's to ensure no one is below it.

You might wonder about work effort reductions. Well, based on my study of UBI, amounts of up to the poverty line generally don't seem to discourage work much. Moreover, given I expect the total tax rates, not just from UBI, but other expenditures to be around 35-70% depending on income bracket. The poor would pay more like 35-45%, whereas the richest Americans would pay closer to 65-70%. 70% is close to the laffer curve peak, which I'd consider the absolute maximum rate of acceptable taxation, while most would pay closer to 45-55%. This is not much different than what is paid in Europe under social democracy, and should not greatly disincentivize work incentive. Once again, compared to the existing welfare system with welfare traps, where people pay close to 100% marginal tax rates, at times, UBI might encourage work effort among those especially at the bottom. It would allow people to earn extra income, without imposing strict limits on what they can earn or lose benefits.

One more thing that should be mentioned. You might wonder about the excessive gains among people at the bottom. Well, those would often be blunted by the reduction of welfare itself. I don't expect the poor to be worse off on UBI than welfare, especially given how I implement the idea. But it would help blunt the gains. 

Supplemental security income would disappear. It has a maximum benefit of $914 a person, less than the $1250 my UBI offers, but still substantial. But we would lose all of the income and asset limits that accompany that. 

SNAP would disappear to, but you're talking, at most, $281 per individual, and $197 on average. Given my UBI gives $1250 per adult and $450 per child per month, it's clear to see what's the better deal.

TANF offers a benefit of $498 on average for a family of three, but with insane time limits, and all kinds of work requirements and asset limits. Yuck. 

WIC seems to give food directly, but with UBI you can buy all the food you want, so it's probably better. 

EITC can give benefits of up to $560 a year for an adult, $3733 for one child, $6164 for 2 children, and $6935 for three children. That's about $3200 for the first child, $2400 for the second, $800 for the third. My UBI gives $5400 per child, and $15000 for the first adult. It clearly wins here.

 The Child Tax credit gives $2000 per child. Again, I give $5400.

So, are people better off on welfare? Or are they better off on UBI? I seriously think most people would be better off on UBI. Even if you got like, every single program above, and you just edged out my UBI plan, i dont think it would be worth it. Because you would be subject to insane asset limits, income limits, work requirements (or alternatively restrictions), and time limits. And as Scott Santens would tell you, like a majority of people eligible for these programs don't even get them. Welfare is a mess, and leftists shouldn't defend it. it was created by people with the backwards mindset, that we had to simultaneously care for the poor, but also force them into the work force. That's not freedom.

Now, people will wonder, finally, would this cause inflation? I've address this issue before, but TLDR? Eh, increased incomes concentrated in the bottom and middle of the distribution might cause some localized shifting in demand, but things like tax increases and the removal of the aforementioned welfare programs should offset a great deal of the extra demand. Keep in mind, I pay for my UBI with taxes, this is a net transfer from roughly the top 20% of income earners, to roughly the bottom 80%. The rich will pay up to 20% more points in taxes, and the everyone else will see an income increase of around, 30%, but it can vary significantly. You might see demand go up for stuff on a localized level. But all in all, inflation shouldn't be massive.

And finally, how would we address any concerns with inflation, work reduction, etc? Well, I certainly don't support implementing UBI overnight. I would phase this in over say, 6 years. $3000 a year, and then adjust it to whatever $15000 is for inflation on the 6th year. If we see increased inflation or work reductions in the middle of the process of phasing it in, we can just slow or draw back the phase in. If we need a lower UBI level like say, $10,000 a year or $12000 a year for society to function without a wage price spiral, then we can settle for those levels. I'm not a rigid ideologue. I'll settle for whatever basic income happens to be sustainable if I need to compromise.

And with that, I hope I've made a basic income supporter out of you.

Funding a Universal Basic Income in 2023

 So, it's 2023, and you know what that means! It's time for another yearly basic income plan. If we had relatively low levels of inflation, I would have probably waited another year or two before a rewrite, but given we apparently had an inflation rate of 6.5% in 2022, and the poverty line now exceeds last year's basic income plan, I will be doing a rewrite for this year. Like last year's version, I expect mostly tweaks around the edges. 

So what's the target amount for this basic income?

This year, I am going to aim for $15,000 per adult, and $5,400 per child. This amounts to $1,250 per adult and $450 per child every month. While I admit that this falls short of what I had last year accounting for inflation, I was very aggressive last year with raising it, and $15,000 is a very nice flat amount. The numbers also don't work out as well as last year's plan due to much lower welfare spending to draw money from and more reluctance to cut the military budget due to ongoing support for Ukraine. Generally speaking the poverty line is literally slightly above last year's UBI plan, at $14,580 for one, and $5,140 for every additional member of a household, so these numbers are adequate for my goals (above the federal poverty line).

Who gets this basic income?

Every adult citizen or long term legal resident over the age of 18 gets the full basic income, and any child who is a citizen or dependent of a citizen or long term legal resident will receive the partial basic income for children. 

At the moment of writing, the US population is estimated to be roughly 336,068,000. 

I still can't find updated numbers on illegal immigrants, so I will be using the 11,047,000 number again. It still is the top result on google and the most reliable number I can find, so I will stick with it. To be fair, the number seems to be largely stagnant as of late and may have dropped if anything. I'll just use the current number.

As for prisoners, there are roughly 2,102,400 according to latest numbers. These seem to be stagnating or declining too, so despite being a little old, the trend should be somewhat accurate. 

Illegal immigrants and prisoners do not get a UBI as the illegals should not be here and giving UBI is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, and of course, prisoners are...in prison and are having their needs taken care of there. This means that 322,918,600 people will be eligible for basic income this year. Given that the population statistics seem to remain stable at 78% of people being adults and 22% being children, we can deduce that 251,876,508 adults and 71,042,092 children will be eligible for a basic income. 

How much will it cost?

Based on the above information:

251,876,508*15,000 = $3,778,147,620,000

71,042,092*5,400 = $383,627,296,800

Basic income will cost a total of $4,161,744,916,800 or put simply, $4.162 trillion.

So how will we pay for it?

The snapshot for paying for it is as follows.

Spending cuts

$366.4 billion from welfare cuts

$288.9 billion from eliminating tax credits

+                                                          

$655.3 billion from spending cuts

Taxes

$187 billion from carbon tax

$3.320 trillion from 20.0% flat tax on all earned and taxable income

+                                                         

 $3.507 trillion from taxes

Together

$0.655 trillion from spending cuts

$3.507 trillion from taxes

+                                                        

$4.162 trillion to fund a UBI

Spending cuts

Many spending cuts can be drawn from the existing social safety nets. I know this will be controversial for a lot of people, but I want to ease peoples' fears here. These numbers will be drawn in a way to ensure we only cut programs that are worth less than basic income, and to cut programs larger than UBI only in ways that would make people on those programs at least as well off as they are today. I want to take a scalpel and do surgery to the current safety net, not just hacksaw it to death in some right wing neoliberal plot like some progressives think. I want this basic income to make people better off, and not worse off.

Based on USgovernmentspending.com, $513.7 billion per year comes from "other welfare", which is the only form of welfare I want to target. based on past experience, this includes stuff like WIC, SNAP, TANF, and other disposable programs that we would be better off having a UBI under. I do not want to touch medicare, medicaid, or section 8 housing. Social security and unemployment will instead be taxed later on, just like last year's. Considering how recipients of those programs also get UBI, they will be better off in net even with increased taxes than they are now. This leaves us with $366.4 billion in reduced welfare spending, which is a significant cut from last year.

I will not be touching military spending this year due to our aid with Ukraine. Yes, I know our military spending is completely insane, but it seems clear, given the state of other militaries around the world vs ours, that we are getting our money's worth. We can revisit cuts when the current crisis with Ukraine has blown over. 

As far as tax credits go, I'll pull the child tax credit ($118.8 billion), and EITC ($73.1 billion). UBI simply replaces them as it is basically a superior program anyway. People might wonder why I don't target the capital gains tax credits. This is because I assume I'll be taxing capital gains later with my UBI tax, which will push up rates anyway. A lot of these tax breaks are like that. I could remove them here, but if I tax them at higher rates later on, it evens out. Many tax credits are there for specific purposes and I don't want to touch those if I don't know what impact that will have. Healthcare type tax credits will be saved for a universal healthcare plan. I would remove the deduction on qualified business income though, as it seems to be a temporary break introduced by Trump that primarily helps rich people ($47.4 billion), and the deduction for charitable contributions ($49.6 billion) though. This leaves us with $288.9 billion in tax credits removed from the system. 

All in all, this means:

$366.4 billion from welfare cuts

$288.9 billion from eliminating tax credits

+                                                          

$655.3 billion from spending cuts

Yikes. This is a major drop from last year. Well, that's what happens when you cut $500 billion from the welfare budget due to pandemic aid running out, and not cutting the military. If we did cut the military 20% like last year, we would be cutting it by $159.4 billion, but again, I'm gonna back off of that for this year at least. 

Raising the rest of the revenue from taxes

At this point, we reduced the amount of money that needs to be raised to $3.507 trillion.

A smaller tax that might be good would be a carbon tax bringing in roughly $187 billion a year. I know I keep reposting this every year, but it's an estimate that's expected to be good through roughly 2029, so I'll stick with it.

The rest of the revenue will be raised on a flat income tax on all income. This will simply be added on top of the existing tax system. To figure out how much income is there, we have to turn to the Bureau of Economic Analysis' "Personal Income and Outlays" chart. I am specifically looking at table 1. In December 2022, total wages and salaries make up $11.4158 trillion and should be taxable. However, employer contributions on various public and private funds are not. Personal income receipts on assets seems to be capital gains and income from retirement funds that weren't previously taxed. That said, I would consider it taxable. That's an additional $3.4178 trillion. Unemployment benefits are considered taxable, so that's another $21.6 billion. I'll also be including social security here, as I did not cut it above. That's $1.2217 trillion. Proprietors' income with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments is small business revenue and not all of that is taxable. As a matter of that they will have to deduct the vast majority of their earnings as business expenses, so their profits are far less than the amount shown. Based on research they typically pay taxes on about 22% of their income after deductions. That gives us $412.5 billion in profits that are taxable. As I said in previous articles landlords often make around a 13% profit margin. That gives us $105.8 billion to be taxed. 

Adding that all up:

$11.4158 trillion in wages and salaries

$3.4178 trillion in investment/dividend income

$0.0216 trillion in unemployment benefits

$1.2217 in social security benefits

$0.4125 trillion in small business income

$0.1058 trillion in rental income

+                                               

$16.595 trillion in taxable income

Compared to last year, not a huge change. The only real major jumps are investment/dividend income and to a lesser extent wages. We only gained around $1 trillion in total income this year. 

At this point, we only need $3.320 billion to fund UBI. 

Applying a flat tax across all income mentioned above, that's a 20.0% tax on all income.Yikes. Having less money to draw from welfare and refusing to cut from defense spending really took their toll here. For the record, if I had included my normal military spending cuts, the rate would be 19.0%. Well, again, that's why I was conservative with my numbers. 20% is around the maximum tax rate I'd support before cutting the UBI rate, and we just hit it on the dot.

Adding that up:

$187 billion from a carbon tax

$3.320 trillion from a 17.5% tax on all earned income

+                                                 

$3.507 trillion in total tax revenue

Conclusion

So, this year's UBI plan did not work as well as last year's, mainly due to changes in welfare spending and my refusal to touch military spending while our aid to Ukraine is going on. While the tax rate is a little higher than I'd like, it's still what I'd consider to be within the tolerable range. 

But yeah. I make these plans because I feel like funding basic income is one of the largest hurdles that we come across in terms of selling it to people. You have this almost $4 trillion proposal and then people ask "OH YEAH? HOW YOU GONNA PAY FOR THAT?!" Well...now you know. I hope I also put people at ease who didn't previously understand UBI. Particularly, I hope you guys understand that no, I don't supporting indiscriminately eliminating all welfare programs to fund UBI. I left much of the safety net intact such as medicare, medicaid, and section 8 housing, and made reasonable compromises on social security (this includes disability) and unemployment benefits that leaves people better off.

While normally I include a section in these blogs discussing the details of how UBI affects normal people, I plan on adding that separately. However, I will give some basic details here. 

EDIT: here is the appendix

You can calculate how my UBI plan will affect you via this formula:

 #Adults in household($15,000) + #Children in household($5,400) - income from all sources mentioned above(.200) = total net income after transfers

I estimate that my UBI plan will benefit up to 73% of individual income earners, and generally speaking, over 80% of households. The median individual income earner ($46,000 a year) is expected to gain 13% more income under this plan, while the median household's benefit will vary depending on household size. Assuming 2 adults and 1 child, with a median household income of $70,181 a year, your typical household is expected to gain 30% more income from my plan. 

That said, I hope that I have convinced the average person that my UBI plan would help them. A huge misconception people have with UBI is that it will lead to nebulous tax increases that will make the "average person" worse off. I take average to mean "median" here because average income is skewed upward significantly by how much inequality we have. Median, on the other hand, means 50th percentile. 50% better and 50% worse. Generally speaking, my plan is guaranteed to help everyone below the 73rd percentile ($75,000 a year), and potentially much more with households. Assuming 2 adults and 1 child, we're talking the 86th percentile here, or $177,000 a year. 

And with that, I hope you enjoyed my plan, and I hope that I just made a basic income supporter out of you. 

EDIT: Second appendix showing extra data modifying the model.

I think I will keep my worldview the same

 So, I looked over my worldview, and I feel like adding more widerquist oriented stuff changes the tone of it, where i end up having to reinvent the wheel while very little in substance changes. While I was ignorant of the exact history of states from his perspective up until now, i did a good job pointing out that yes, the history of states was violent, and I did grapple with the implications, but I did ultimately conclude that we still need a state, and that this state should be human centered. I mean, going into the history of oppression in detail seems to shift the tone a bit, and while it does strengthen my arguments, it seems kind of unnecessary. So while I do wish i could have written a couple things differently, I will largely keep it the same. After all, it's my own words, and it does sound good as it is.

If I write a book, I may end up making some of the revisions I wanted to make here, but for now, I'll keep it the same. I just wanted to mention thing since I did mention I planned to do a revision here.

Discussing what the issues with "wokeism" are

 So, I kind of realize that part of the reason my view on wokeism was recieved so poorly on r/aspergers was because I did not properly define it, and that that may have led to some misunderstandings. After all, "wokeism" is a weird topic these days. Most people who rail about it don't seem to know what it is, and when a definition is forced, such as recently in Florida when they banned it and then had to later define it, it often comes down to accepting things like systemic racism, sexism, and poverty. This is kind of stupid in my opinion, as I acknowledge these things as fact to some extent.Yet, I still oppose the concept of wokeism, why? Because to me, wokeism isn't about the ideas themselves. it is about the attitudes, cultures, and behaviors that surround these ideas. And that's what I'm going to discuss here, and then I'm going to go back to the r/aspergers situation and apply what I discussed to that issue. 

So what are the core issues with wokeism?

1) Rigid adherence to critical theory to the point that it becomes a defining feature of their worldview, personality, and self worth

Again, I want to make clear, the issues with wokeism are not the ideas. The ideas are nice. They have academic support. But I would argue that anyone well versed enough in sociology as a topic to have a detailed knowledge of critical theory, should also be well versed enough to understand that critical theory isn't all there is to the world.

Critical theory was a lens created as an offshoot of Marxism, applying the principles of Marxist oriented conflict theory to issues of race, gender, sexuality, and other identity groups. It is intended to shine a specific light on issues that certain subgroups in society face, and to bring attention to those concerns.

However, "woke" people, or as I like to call them, SJWs, tend to take things a bit too far. Their entire worldview is defined by critical theory. Everything in the world relates back to race relations, or some sort of microaggression, and blah blah blah. And that is one of the key problems. It's fine if this theory informs one's worldview, but to define it is kind of dangerous. There are other theories out there, and other ways to see things. people who so rigidly associate with it to the point that it becomes a religion need to go outside and touch some grass already. I know I have my own ways of looking at things, but that's what I keep saying about pragmatism, I can turn off those theories and look at things in other ways. And I often do. And my overall worldview is one in which I tend to view things differently. "Postmodernism" (the "Understanding the Times" term for "wokeism") is a nice lens through which to view the world, but it is only one tool in a toolbox. But in modern times, everyone has to become extremely polarized and run to the furthest extreme possible, and a lot of people have chosen to treat this stuff as a religion or a cult. And that is dangerous. 

2) Aggressive evangelism and purity testing

A huge problem with woke people is that they not only become religious adherents to this "postmodernist" worldview based on critical theory, they are also aggressively evangelical. It's not enough that they believe this stuff, their sense of extreme moral absolutism requires that they spread it, and that ultimately, you have to believe it too. They will say things like "if you're not actively anti-racist, you are racist". This is a variation of the good old "if you're not with us, you're against us", expressing the moral absolutism expressed by Anakin Skywalker and George W. Bush. It is common in my experience that even mild deviations from the expected behavior of an adherent of this ideology are heavily looked down upon, and treated with ire. I will go more into detail on this a little later when I get to the concept of moral policing, but I want to treat that separately, and address another topic first. 

3) "Virtue signalling"

This is controversial in our society, as people who are not in their little moral in group tend to very quickly recognize this stuff, but people who are within the ideology typically do not recognize it. Often times, when this idea is brought up, SJWs will often act like this isn't a problem and that we are just seeing things. Gaslighting behavior is also a common feature in these groups, but I will not be dedicating a topic just to that. I want to discuss virtue signalling here.

So what is virtue signalling? According to google, virtue signalling is:

the public expression of opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or social conscience or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.

"it's noticeable how often virtue signaling consists of saying you hate things"

 Virtue signalling tends to have an obnoxious and self righteous quality to it. That is by design. Because one of the key points of virtue signalling is to...signal to the world how virtuous you are. You are one of the good guys, you understand how the world really works, and by throwing out some obnoxiously self righteous statement, you can stroke your own sense of self ego while teaching some poor soul the "right" way to think about things. 

In a lot of ways, virtue signalling is about signalling one's place of belonging in a social group, with other people normally responding in a way that affirms the original statement, thus giving a massive stroke to the ego of all involved. In other words, it's a massive circlejerk. Literally. 

But the point of virtue signalling goes beyond that. It often acts as a speech check to test one's character and committedness to the group's ideals. If one person virtue signals, you are expected to virtue signal in return. If you do not virtue signal in return, people notice that. If you dare express an opinion contrary to the virtue signal, then there is a problem, and things can become hostile real quick.

Think about it, if one is expected to be actively anti racist to not be racist, then one is expected to have a positive duty to be an activist for anti racist causes. They are expected to virtue signal. And if you do not virtue signal, then this causes a problem. Even if they do not say anything right away, they notice. I mean, I generally try to keep hostility toward wokeism to a minimum on parts of my social media with more active intervention with friends and stuff like that, mostly out of respect for them (as some of them are "woke"), but once, I got into a disagreement with a friend, and they pointed out that i never "speak out" about woke issues and blah blah blah. Well, who says that I have to do that? other woke people, of course. You're not only required to be a member of their little clique, you need to actively virtue signal too and play the social games involved. Wokeism does use social games like this in order to act as a mechanism to enforce conformity.

And as I said, if you actively reject the virtue signal's moral lesson, or even once, use a semblance of free thought to argue against it, then you are labeled excommunicado in the group, and may face social consequences for doing so. Which brings me to the final point.

4) An active hostility toward deviation from the norm

Wokeism does NOT like deviation from its moral mandates. You are expected to be a good believer in the ideology, and if you do not, there will be consequences. These guys are so convinced by their idea of right and wrong that anyone who does not believe the same is just evil (see point 2), and must be punished. These sentiments also follow from self righteous virtue signals in and of themselves, stuff like "we cannot tolerate intolerance", and that "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences."

Essentially, because they are morally righteous, and trying to make a better world where everyone is included and blah blah blah, anyone who dares not disagree with them must be a moral reprobate, they must be wrong. Even more so they must be in line with...with....fascism! Which is why they're so quick to call anyone who doesn't agree with them a fascist.After all, if you don't agree with them, you must hate minorities, women, the poor, what have you. They are convinced by this, and will attempt to character assassinate anyone who doesn't agree with them.

They also believe in policing behavior to the greatest possible extent, and imposing significant social consequences on those who disagree with their ideology. They believe in defriending people who do not express the right values, and let me tell, you I have lost friendships with the woke for all kinds of reasons, including the following:

1) Not acknowledging that Andrew Yang is doing white supremacist dog whistles because he dared talk about issues associated with white people

2) ACCIDENTALLY misgendering a trans person (they were in that weird in between state where they were like born female, but kind of acted male, but didn't actually transition, so it was like that weird grey area where I forgot)

3) Standing up for a mentally ill friend who accidentally said something not PC and got castigated for it.

4) Celebrating Hillary Clinton losing on election night, not because I like trump, but because i hated her guts at the time given the hell she put us through in the 2016 election. 

5) Refusing to vote blue no matter who

Need I go on? That isn't to talk about other forms of social sanctions these guys employ. They will use whatever institutional power they get to toe their line, and anyone who doesn't abide by that will get booted. Take note of what's going on on reddit where SJW moderators take over subs and then ban people merely for expressing certain viewpoints they don't agree with. A few lolworthy bans worth pointing out over the years:

1) Arguing against adding a BLM styled flag in a video game, by arguing that the game should remain apolitical (it was a science fiction game and recently removed another similar police styled flag because blue lives matter morons were using it as their virtue signal). I got banned for a week. Why? Because "human rights aren't political". A virtue signal. That's what I got. F them.

2) Controversy erupted on a meme sub after OP used the "f bomb" (you know, the three letter anti PC one that was common in american lexicon until SJW ideology took off). I pointed out that the term had uses other than being a derogatory slur for gay people, referencing south park and their usage of the word to mean "inconsiderate harley riders". Ban. Just for that. Not using the word, just pointing out that the term is not categorically a hate term and that its usage is broader than that. I appealed it, and I got self righteous circlejerking in response there too.

3) Various subs just for disagreeing with a policy they implemented saying "anyone who expresses X opinion gets banned". Sometimes this happened when I didn't even post in the sub itself. I posted on a more general sub talking about that sub. Opinions included anything as innocuous as wanting to buy the new harry potter game, to expressing pro life views (which i disagree with but believe people shouldhave a right to express).

 

4) Various subs just for daring post in another sub that THEY DID NOT LIKE. If you post in an anti PC sub, expect all of the PC subs to detect your comment and auto ban you from their subs. It's ridiculous. I've gotten banned from several subs just for that. Oh, and these guys also actively try to pressure reddit admins to remove those subs from reddit, claiming they're "hate subreddits." Now, I admit, back in 2015 I was for them removing LITERAL hate subs, but back then, the bar was so low it was like "watch(n words) die" and stuff like that. Yeah, maybe a sub like that IS better off not expecting. Now it's anything that shows any conservative leaning at all. It's like they're actively running conservatives off of reddit. 

 

I could go on and on. But yeah, these guys want to actively police content to ensure that no one is left on these platforms but them. And they justify this by saying that "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences".

And it goes further. These guys will use cancel culture to try to ruin peoples' lives sometimes. I know someone who will actively go around reporting people to their employers if they see them saying anti PC things online, in an attempt to get their bosses to fire them. Let me put this another way, they're using institutional coercion to try to ruin someone's life financially, for daring to say things online that go against their ideology.

And of course, they will try to also punish celebrities who dare go against the grain. When Roseanne had her little ambien inspired trip causing her to say some black person looked like a monkey, BOOM, she was killed off in the show, she was forced to divest from the show, and they changed the show from "Roseanne" to "The Conners". 

Or take, again, JK Rowling. There is intense social pressure against buying the new Harry Potter game because she's a "TERF", with people on one subreddit even threatening to ban anyone who says that they bought the game. Im gonna be honest, I dont like harry potter, but i paid far more close attention to the game simply because of the controversy. SO they're inadvertently "streisand effect"ing this crap here. But yeah, they're screaming so loud about how this woman is a transphobe and anyone who buys who game is supporting bigotry and blah blah blah, and they try to impose active consequences on people for daring to go against their dogmas. 

This is why I say that these guys are a fundamental threat to free speech. To be fair, DeSantis and his anti wokeness crap is too. I wanna make that clear. Seriously, F that guy. But, these guys are like a cult. Like, literally. This kind of behavior is the kind of behavior expected from a highly militant and evangelical religion. By expelling anyone and imposing social consequences on anyone who dares criticize the group's ideas, the group maintain's solidarity through authoritarian means. Those who question the group are cut off from their social circles, making their life MUCH more difficult in hopes to force them back to the fold, while those who still maintain the ideas maintain the group's integrity. The group is both protected from assault in this way, deviation is deterred, and solidarity encouraged.

5) A final point: this stuff is literally brainwashing

Howstuffworks.com has an interesting article on brainwashing that I've found very useful at various points of my life. It discusses thought reform, mostly in the context of a country like North Korea, and mentioned how brainwashers attempt to break down one's identity by convincing them that they are bad, and then trying to build them in in such a way that they are good. This is intended to undermine someone's self esteem, make them feel guilty, and then force them to change their ways. I made an interesting parallel when I blogged on atheistanalysis before coming here in which I looked at how Christianity is literally brainwashing. The article no longer exists, but the long story short is I basically broke it down to the point that Christianity uses the same kind of brainwashing process, convincing people that they are evil via mechanisms like sin and original sin, and how the salvation story is essentially an attempt at thought reform similar to brainwashing. By channelling one's guilt and accepting Christ as one's savior, a bad person becomes one of the good guys, and gets to start life anew, while being "born again". 

Postmodernism, ironically, or maybe not since Noebel actually managed to call it, also behaves like a religion. It has the same "mind virus" techniques of making one feel guilty due to things like privilege and the past wrongs of their identity group, tries to manipulate people with stuff like privilege and white liberal guilt, and ultimately serves as a form of behavioral reform to change how the person thinks and to make them an adherent of their belief system. This really is the new "religion" of the left. And a huge reason I tend to be so resistant to it is because of my dedication to free thought and the rejection of organized faiths without sufficient evidence. I did not leave Christianity, just to put up with THIS. And I will continue to be a vocal critic of this belief system when it calls for it. They do not have power over me. They might try to virtue signal, and bully me, and push me out of online spaces, but they cannot change my mind. I admit, a lot of atheists have gone down this path. I have discussed how in some ways, postmodernism has replaced secular humanism on the left as the religion on the left, much to my dismay. I've also expressed how the democrats use this religion to enforce conformity to their own brand without having to do anything. That said, I do want to discuss some of the social consequences of this, and how this stuff works in the wild, using real examples I've come across.

How the left uses woke ideology to enforce conformity on their side

This shouldn't be anything new, but the left constantly uses acts of virtue signalling and social justice politics to act as a unifying base on its side of the aisle. How do you enforce an ideological consensus without actually doing anything? Why, you just appeal to a bunch of identity groups susceptible to this stuff, look at the entire issue through those lenses, and then bully and virtue signal people into submission. 

In America, we have two parties. Because of historical forces, one side of the aisle is made up almost exclusively of white people, and is more predominantly male. This means that everyone else is thrown into the other side. So most people of color, women, the LGBT+ community, etc, are all liberal. And due to the historical forces of the previous party realignment, the democratic party has gone all in with being a multicultural, socially progressive party, but an economically moderate party, winning over a sliver of white males who are highly educated, affluent, and who are themselves susceptible to woke ideology. In some ways, these groups are more responsible for wokeism than even the identity groups they're intended to serve. In a way this ideologies serves LITERALLY as a secular church for these people, in which they can virtue signal all they want and feel good about themselves, without actually doing anything in the real world. It actually serves to reinforce the democratic status quo, and to enforce conformity to its values. 

 

We saw this regularly in 2016. In 2016, the democrats would constantly "play the race card" so to speak. They would speak so self righteously about how Bernie, ya know, the dude who has been fighting for minority rights all of his life and was even arrested in the 1960s for protesting segregation, doesn't get black people. We get constant virtue signals about OMG THE BLACK VOTE and stuff like that.

These are virtue signals. In the context of online discussions, these are often speech checks too. The goal is to see how one reacts. It's a statement that's INTENDED to be polarizing and provoke response. If one adheres to the woke religion, they won't see much of a problem with it, they'll just go on about how the other person is right and bernie needs to "get it". What is "it" and how do you get it? That's the neat part, you don't. It's a circle jerk of social conformity. It's an in group out group thing. Either you're "with it" or you're not. There's no real metric of how one can get good enough to be part of the special elect few white people who "get" black people, like Hillary happened to be. It's as if the talking point was designed in order to enforce conformity around clinton. And you can either get on board and prop up the circlejerk...or...you can fight.

So what happens if you push back? Well, then they call you a racist. They can say you dont care about black people and other such things, and paint you into a corner. They did the same thing with sexism, saying anyone who wouldn't vote for clinton was sexist. Even if you happened to support jill stein because you didnt support the woman who could win. It's an ever shifting goalpost in order to force social conformity around whatever they want to do. And you're put in a position of either giving up on your own position and joining the circlejerk, or fighting back getting socially exiled.

Being as blunt as I am, I chose social exile. I will almost always choose social exile over giving up my own voice. I refuse to virtue signal, I refuse to give up my concerns for this stuff, and if my ideas make me less popular, then so be it. I dont care what people think of me. I care about my ideas and shifting conversation toward my own ideas. And that's why I tend to get in so much trouble with these guys. These guys dont like independent thinkers with a spine. heck, their goal is to marginalize us, either through social disapproval, loss of friendships, or even removing us from public spaces if they have the institutional power to do so (which is what makes this mindset among reddit mods so scary to me). 

The same applies to the idea of voting blue no matter who. How do they enforce this? By telling people if they cant' do it for themselves they have to do it for their privileged brothers and sisters and blah blah blah. Rejecting this and pushing back, once again, gets social consequences. ANd there is a lot of hate toward those who refuse to fall in line. Which, given my mentality, just makes me more rigidly against them. Because I will not submit. 

Again, this is a speech check. It's intended to make you respond by saying the right thing. "Oh yeah, you're right. I can't just abandon POC, gee I guess i better vote democrat after all!" is what they want. If you dare assert your own interests, that's selfish, that's privileged. It's a no win situation for you. Either you agree with them, or you invoke their wrath. And because my autism makes me brutally honest, and unwilling to bend to social conventions that i fundamentally disagree with, I tend to not react well to that.

Speaking of autism

So, that brings my back to r/aspergers and the crapshow that happened here. r/aspergers, much like other autism related subs it seems, have fallen to the woke mob. Autism is strange, community wise. It's mostly a disorder (if you can call it that) that affects males predominantly, but it also does affect some women. Transgender people also are far more likely to be autistic, and there is a link between gender dysphoria and autism. 

This creates some tensions within the community. On the one hand, autism is predominantly male, and males are privileged. But at the same time, there is a lot of social pressure for these subs to be inclusive, and this makes them often susceptible to these social justice ideologies. This leads to a sort of duality in the community in which you got a lot of tension between the predominantly white male group of autistic people, and the more woke, socially inclusive group. And because of social pressure and wanting to be inclusive, the woke elements seem to have won out. 

This leads to weird tensions over "inceldom", where autistic males tend to struggle with dating and tend to lack understanding of, or don't care about social conventions, but as we can tell, the woke stuff is highly a social phenomenon. It is mostly enforced at the social level, between people, and often through moderation in communities like these. And because a lot of autistic males tend to struggle with dating, they often are prime candidates to become "incels". Over time, rejection by women, and rejecting of social norms tends to drive some of them to sexism, hating women, and longing for the good old days when men were just expected to ask women out and be persistent and blah blah blah. Wokeism actually changed a lot of the dynamics, made things a lot more complicated, and a lot of people with autism just struggle to get it. And after a while, some will choose to just abandon those norms and become incels. So inceldom is actually a MAJOR problem within the community.

But...the community also wants to be woke, and appeal to the trendy trans aspies and stuff like that. A lot of women on r/aspergers go on about how they "fear" men because they're creepy and don't know how to take no for an answer, and of course, there ends up becoming social tensions, in which the woke ideology tends to resolve....by expelling any men with any incel tendencies.

Merely expressing ANY view on r/aspergers that can be called even remotely incel, gets a ban, as I found out. And yes, they did give a warning not to make "rape jokes" or "incel BS" on that thread, but I really did not feel like my content violated those rules. As a matter of fact, I don't know how we can discuss the issue, without actually delving into the thought process that makes autistic men turn incel. I really do think social justice ideology does that. Because social justice logic is polarizing. As I said, a virtue signal is a speech check. It's an attempt to test one's conformity to that belief system, with severe social sanctions involving refusals to do so. So when they say "well you're not entitled to affection", you're supposed to say "gee, sorry, you're right, i guess i shouldn't just feel like crap for being rejected without even understanding why". And that just doesn't fly for a lot of aspies. Because a lot of aspies, like me, ahve their own developed senses of right and wrong, we dont obey arbitrary social conventions, we often see through those conventions, and we have severe problems with just conforming to crap we don't see the point in conforming to. So you confront an autistic man struggling with dating with a virtue signal like this, and by expelling them from your community for wrong think, you're driving them to the other side.

As I said, this is polarizing, and those who do not conform to this religion often are pushed to the opposite extreme. Which i admit, is very toxic. I dont endorse that extreme. I dont support what the right thinks about wokeism. my criticism is primarily from my own liberal/libertarian secular humanist worldview with an emphasis on freedom of thought. Many rightoids reject social justice ideology for all of the wrong reasons, including: thinking sociology is BS, being fundamentalist christian, thinking they're stupid and just throwing the baby out with the bathwater, blahj blah blah. Many begin to think being "woke", which in their mind, merely means believing in the ideas of systemic problems, is bad, and that that needs to be policed. That's what desantis is doing, and that's very anti intellectual and wrong. No, I recognize the ideas, I support their freedom to openly discuss the ideas, I reject the cult like aspects and all of the social conformity BS that accompanies it. That I want to make clear. 

But, as I said in my previous article, something I've noticed is that most people aren't as smart as I am. Im not saying this to virtue signal my own intellectual superiority, but to point out that in my experience, most peoples' tribalism seems to override their intelligence, and ability to think in a nuanced way. People just fall into tribes and run to the furthest extremes possible it seems, and most people who become anti woke actually DO become the opposite extreme. Which is, quite frankly, just as bad or worse.

So my goal IS to actually prevent people from going down that path. But to do so, you need to stop alienating people where they feel the need to do so. if you arent' woke, and dont conform to that ideology, and find the rules confusing, cliquey, and manipulative, you might join anti woke groups that radicalize you the other way. I dont want people going on 4chan and listening to literal fascist sales pitches and getting their life "back together" because of jordan peterson and his toxic ideology. I dont want people to become woman haters. But, if you wanna prevent that, you gotta address the root causes that cause that, and that means dropping the insufferable circlejerk that drives people away. Rather than ban men with any "incel" wrong think instantly from your community and PUNISH them for daring...have thoughts that you don't approve of, try LISTENING to them, and giving them helpful advice. Not virtue signals. Not self righteous nonsense. Not telling the person they're creepy and that women are LITERALLY LIVING IN FEAR OF THEM, just, being there for them. 

If you dont want people to become tribalistic, you need to check your own tribalism. And that's what I encourage any member of an autistic community to do so here. I mean, it's rough, I've been there, and quite frankly, I actually have come to realize that the social justice crowd has put some really harmful ideas in my head that negatively impact my own self image and lack of confidence. Because we dont really get social conventions. We dont know how to behave, and social justice dynamics just confuse us MORE. Trust me, if you don't become an incel and reject those norms outright, what ends up happening is you become me where you are so socially inhibited you literally dont know how to approach people for fear of doing something wrong, and that affects you mentally too. And even though I know that that stuff is toxic, I also know that well, it's very easy for women who happen to accept those attitudes to destroy your self confidence. Trust me, been there. 

Again, that's the consequence of my MIDDLE ground position. Understanding that this stuff is bad for me but being forced to agree with the logic to the point that I'm extremely inhibited, have zero self confidence, and live in fear of rejection. It's not healthy. But that's what this stuff teaches. And yeah. 

Anyway, this isn't about me, although I did feel the need to discuss my own experiences with it. But I really do think that if people want to stop turning people into incels, they need to stop teaching them toxic social norms that either destroy their sense of self worth, or cause them to reject those norms to the point of becoming radical on the other side. Social justice ideology has a serious extremism problem, and that extremism fuels extremism on the other side. 

And you could say, but doesn't their extremism fuel extremism on this side? Yes, it does, but at the same time, I believe my humanist approach based in liberty is a much better counter than this woke nonsense. Both sides are extremist ideologues with harmful ideas and ideologies. My side is more moderate, still represents left wing values, and disarms people more, as it avoids falling into the worst pifalls the woke do.

The problem with the woke is all of those characteristics mentioned above leads to an ideology with no checks and balances. Extremism is encouraged, moderation is dissent and leads to social consequences. SO it's just a massive example of groupthink in action. The way to counter group think is to have a dissenter challenge it, which snaps people out of their spell, but here, dissenters who think ratiionally are enemies of the movement, and treated as such. And that's why that's so harmful.

Discussing Prehistory of private property chapters 15-16 (conclusion)

 So, I finished the book! Yay. And I will likely take a significant break from research after this, although i do plan on writing a couple articles in the next week or so. 

But here, the book wraps it. They go over what they discussed, and what their conclusions are, and I kind of wanted to discuss that. Widerquist and McCall seemed to be on the same page as I am as far as redistribution goes. Because private property is not natural (even if it is, I would still be pro redistribution), it's perfectly fine to change and modify the property rights system in any way we want to. It's probably not wise to radically tear down the system, and thankfully Widerquist is sane enough to recognize that, unlike some other leftists who are tempted to go full on 'revolution" mode after studying history in the same way. We can take the system we have and improve it. And they did make a call for redistribution. 

HOWEVER, there does seem to be one logical conclusion with how they framed their arguments to make people pay for the property they own, and the implication seems to be "land value tax". Philosophers do that sometimes and while they didn't mention LVT directly, it seems that the LVT would be the most direct tax that would be justified by their logic.

I want to briefly argue against that. I discussed LVT previously on this blog. I'm not a fan. And I'm not a fan because the pragmatic nature of it goes against the actual goals of independentarianism. Indepentarianism is, IMO, about securing ECSO freedom. Freedom of self ownership, not being coerced into the wage labor system. The land value tax is very attractive to would be indepentarians and social libertarians as a whole, but pragmatically, I do not believe it actually would secure freedom. 

This is because we all exist in three dimensional space, and when the two dimensional plan we live on, land, is taxed, it amounts to a tax on existence. UBI is money given for existing, but given how land values for the typical home in the US go, I would expect that large swaths of a UBI would be undermined by the LVT. A 5% LVT could potentially raise $4600 per person a year, but given the typical property is around $300k last I looked, with 30% of that value being land, meaning $90k land value, at 5%, the typical home owner is paying $4500 in taxes. For a $4600 check. Whoopie. Yeah yeah, it scales in a household better, but still, this does not, in any way, guarantee ECSO freedom. 

Not only is an LVT needed to fund a UBI much higher, as a fair UBI is around $15k these days, but the tax would increase in line with the UBI increase. If you want to ensure that everyone has enough of an income to live in without being coerced into work, I do not believe that you can do that from a LVT. And that's why I'm not a fan of georgism and the LVT. It seems so attractive on paper, but it's just a feel good policy that comes from philosophical principles, without those principles being checked against reality to make sure that they actually do what they're supposed to do. So many ideologues end up falling into a trap that they tend to think mostly in raw philosophical concepts, without ever checking their philosophies against reality and making sure that they actually do what they are meant to do. 

If we want a tax that actually accomplishes the goals og ECSO freedom, you need to tax from income. By taxing from income, you're taxing people based on their means to pay it. People get an income, they pay a certain percentage of that income, and they tend to not be affected as negatively as someone paying a LVT could be, if they lack any additional income streams. I mean, everyone ends up with at least the UBI, and while monetary rewards for work would be reduced by 18%, anyone making under $80k as per last year's UBI plan would benefit. And work would still be encouraged. You would be allowed to work as much or as little as you want, as long as you pay 18%. People think taxes on labor are unjust, but to some extent that's what stems from propertarian thinking. Labor is sacrosanct in these ideologies and shall not be taxed, and it's unjust, but here's the thing, if working is VOLUNTARY, i don't see the problem. Sure, being forced to pay tribute to a feudal lord or dictator like in the olden days of states is unjust, but it was assumed, in those societies, that labor was a fact of life, so you were effectively working for the state and required to pay tribute to an unjust government. Here, government is taking money in order to give it back to you in such a way that you are not forced to do anything. It's one of those things where I mentioned how something that a propertarian would see as restrictive actually gives people more freedom. What is more unjust, being forced to work from a state of propertylessness, or being forced to pay taxes on your work so that people aren't forced to work. What's more unjust, being forced to work, or taxes? I think being forced to work is far more oppressive than taxation, and if taxation provides a policy that liberates me from coercion under the normal operation of the property system without it, taxation is fine.

Now, back to the land value tax...should there be SOME sort of LVT? Uh, yes, and I discussed this previously in my housing policy. While a home up to a reasonable value (say $1 million, or $300k in land value) should be protected from taxation, excessive land ownership, or the ownership of multiple properties, SHOULD be taxed. While I believe it's fair to allow people to have ONE home, and that home to be sacrosanct, and it being their castle, and blah blah blah, uh....land is a fixed resource that is not unlimited, and no one should dominate that resource to the exclusion of others. if your land claim is too big, or you try to control multiple land claims for the purpose of extracting rent from people, yeah, that should be heavily taxed and discouraged, to ensure that there remains enough open land, and homes (I think homes are more important than land in this case, land doesn't mean much if you can't live on it), to ensure that everyone has some place where they can live. And if they want to move, they can divest of their current property and do so, with adequate time windows allowing for a smooth moving process. 

I mean, I don't like landlords, they're the scalpers of housing (although some leftists will still see this blog as landlord apologia for pointing out that they are only a small part of the housing crisis), and honestly, I really think that home ownership should be reasonably spread as wide as possible. So tax those who have more than they need, and take the money and spend it on building more housing. And yeah. 

I mean, again, already discussed this in other articles, but it feels like it's worth mentioning here. I kind of felt like widerquist's conclusions were kinda going dangerously close to going down the LVT rabbit hole, when I examined that possibility empirically and found it lacking. Taxing income is better at building a functioning system where people aren't coerced into the labor market. Land value tax FEELS good, but it really does just turn the government into a massive landlord, and seems mostly attractive to neoliberal types who want the logic of the market to dictate every aspect of our lives, where you cannot even be entitled to your own home if you do not continually pay taxes on your right to live there. 

It's kind of like socialism. Ya know, socialism and siezing the means of production feels good, but in a modern state, socialism just ends up going back to the monarchy system of land ownership where the government controls everything and gives out land titles based on fiat. Heck the whole reason why propertarians get so high and mighty is because of the failures of that system and how they're system as the opposite extreme is better. I feel like georgism kinda does that too. Where it mixes the social with the private, but in a weird way that kind of has the worst of both. So we got a government akin to a feudal lord demanding tribute, along side a largely private market system where human needs are subject to said market. Again, it really doesn't accomplish what it is supposed to do on paper, and I would prefer things done in another way.

Other than that, good book. I really think that this book gave me that final piece of information i needed to complete my worldview exercise. It gave me a coherent view of history through which to base my political worldview on. And it feels very consistent with the rest of my worldview overall. I'm sure I disagree with widerquist on some things, but I'm also largely in agreement with him despite actual policy differences.

That's the thing. I'm not really a philosopher. He is. I'm delving into philosophy because I need a philosophical worldview through which I can properly frame my policy recommendations, like, I need his work and the works of others like him to make the pitch for my policies, but at the end of the day, I'm far more comfortable with the policy end of things. I'm better with getting the actual ideas onto paper and discussing practical policy side. Philosophy alone gets weird, and sometimes doesnt make good policy. While philosophy ultimately, to some extent, guides policy, at the end of the day, you need someone more like me to be able to get the rubber to meet the road and actually accomplish these things well. The problem with every failed policy is, in my opinion, to some extent, due to an overreliance on philosophy, and not enough reliance on actually making things work. It's why communism failed. What do the critics always say? Great on paper, doesn't work in reality. Ignores a lot of oversights. But then the same people who say that wax philosophical on their own, go to the other extreme, and also make dysfunctional systems themselves. Hence why propertarians get criticized, despite their criticisms of authoritarian communism being valid. It's not that any philosophical system has all of the answers on its own. You need to be able to get in there, translate your philosophy to actual worthwhile policies, and go from there. And that's what I am trying to do here. LVT seems like the "philosophically just" tax for widerquist's ideas, but an income tax would actually accomplish the desired results far better. And given my willingness to delve into moral relativism and the fact that all of these rules are made up anyway, I'm going to prioritize rules that work over strict philosophical principles here.

And yeah. That's my opinion. Great book, really brought the most fuzzy aspects of my worldview into focus. The history of statism is violence, propertarian truth is a bunch of crap, and we should make a system where we can live as we want to and truly be free. Right wing capitalism doesn't do that. Neither do a lot of systems honestly. And yeah, we need to design a system that actually gets us there. And that's where I wanna go with my project next.

Discussing the Tyre Nichols incident

 So...as you might know, we had another one in America. Another what, you might ask? Another incident in which cops went overkill on arresting a guy and the guy died from it. This one is just so WTF I have to comment. I won't post any videos, if you wanna look into it, you can look it up, it's very graphic, but yeah. They pulled this dude over, dragged him out of the car, and beat the everloving crap out of him, and then neglected to get him the medical aid he required. He died. I mean, it sounds so much worse than I even described it, the amount of violence here was just grotesque and uncalled for. If a gang banger did this due a rival gang member, that would sound about right. Ya know, crips, and bloods, blah blah blah. But POLICE doing this to this random freaking guy? It's crazy. This is the most gratuitous example of police violence I've seen since George Floyd, and this actually makes that look relatively civil. That's how bad this was. Anyway, all five cops are being charged with murder, and I say, good. Ya know, as I always say, I'm very enlightened centrist on these issues. Is the conflict perspective on police correct? Yes. Is the functionalist one also correct? Yes. Which one is more correct? Neither, both are lenses through which to view the institution of police. A government needs police, but at the same time police can abuse their powers, and this was flagrant abuse. How I feel about various incidents tends to vary depending on context. I know the BLM crowd loves to criticize police in any and all incidents. Oh, some crazy guy with a knife charges at a police officer causing him to run for his life and shoot the dude?" Oh, well he should have used a taser." I'm serious, I see people say stuff like that, it's like, "what?" I mean, if you're gonna do something stupid like suicide by cop, you get what you get. Even in incidents where the incident is POTENTIALLY dangerous and they get a little too twitchy, i kind of understand. I mean, maybe it's being autistic, but I can understand misreading a person's movements in the heat of the moment, these guys are trained to protect themselves and if they even think you're gonna pull a gun on them, and they get a little trigger happy, I can kind of understand. Ya know? But this....this is just...wtf. Like they're not even trying. I don't know how anyone can look at this and think it's okay. 

So yeah, RIP Tyre Nichols, and I hope those cops who beat him to death are brought to justice. This is pretty straightforward, there's little nuance to this, and it seems obvious that the answer here is that this is wrong and the police did not act properly.

An honest discussion of how to stop autistic men from becoming incels

 So, r/aspergers had a discussion a few days ago about how to best stop autistic men from falling into incel rabbitholes. And I gave my honest opinion. I know autistic men who have gone down that rabbit hole, and I have myself faced the same issues and pressures that these men face. But, I wouldn't consider myself an incel. Wanna know why? Because incels are extremely toxic and sexist toward women and I find those attitudes unhelpful. Anyway, r/aspergers didn't like my post and banned me for three days. Called it "incel bull####" or something. it wasn't, but the mods didn't wanna hear it.

Anyway, r/aspergers might not be good on discussing this stuff, and I'm gonna post about that later, but first, I wanna post my original comment unadulterated. THIS is what they banned me for:

Not sure if this is a popular opinion, but my honest opinion? Drop the "woke" crap.

Most autistic people are males, and most arent exactly socially adept and go against the grain. But that stuff is like a "religion" these days. There's a lot of virtue signalling and blah blah blah and it seems very...NT in nature, to put things that way. Like either you're "in" or you're not. It's very cliquey.

And these guys tends to crap on autistic men a lot. If they cant get a girlfriend and they vent online about it, what happens? You get these self righteous people go on about how "you're not entitled to affection" and blah blah blah, and while it's technically true on some level, it comes off as self righteous as fudge. Like sometimes men just want their own shoulder to cry on. They want to vent about frustration and I feel like a lot of these social justice type people like to kick people while they're down. In some ways, they TURN people into incels because what's their reaction going to be after a while? "F these guys". They turn against that stuff. They start ranting against that stuff. They find support with the likes of "men's rights" groups (and that "manosphere" is toxic as hell and a literal gateway to incel mindsets) and they end up on 4chan because any time they dare express their honest opinions on this site some moderator who cant tolerate dissent will ban them, and they listen to people like Jordan Peterson, and you get the idea?

As I see it, the key is to stop them from ever going down that rabbit hole. But if you wanna do that, then you gotta drop the woke stuff. You gotta stop treating these guys like the problem is THEM and they just dont get it and that they need to learn this and blah blah blah.

Im not saying that the idea that someone isnt entitled to affection and stuff like that isn't true. Of course it's true. I'm saying that self righteously virtue signalling it to a venting guy, or calling him "creepy" for liking someone and not knowing how to express it properly (common issue with autistic men), and blah blah blah doesn't help, and probably actually hurts. because sometimes it polarizes people AGAINST that stuff, driving them to the same manosphere rabbit hole we don't want people to go down.

And I know some people might self righteously say "screw them" or try to argue with me on this, arguing that they dont see the problem and people need to learn X and blah blah blah...but honestly, if that's you, I ask you to consider if maybe you're part of the problem here. Are your attitudes helpful? Are they constructive? How do you think someone who doesn't see eye to eye with you is going to respond to your attitudes?

I knew someone who kind of went down that path once. He was MGTOW, he was extremely sexist toward women, he HATED the woke stuff to the point it became his literal special interest and he would rant to me about it day and night until I told him to stop and he wouldn't. Wanna know what he once told me about being alt right? That alt right is just being willing to say "no" to these people, by these people, he meant, the social justice left, the people pushing those attitudes. As I see it, those guys, in their self righteousness and obnoxiousness, drive people away, and they end up making enemies. Like people who are normal fence sitters and who probably dont have strong opinions can easily go down that rabbit hole because someone pissed them off and they had a bad day. And if the mainstream isn't going to provide that person with the proper support for their problems, who do you think will? The alt right will, duh.

 I don't think that my comment was that bad, outside of my sleight against reddit moderators (they literally performed par with the course). Which was admittedly stealthily aimed at these guys because I had a previous problem with these guys before when I literally did vent about something at a rather dark point in my life. But to be fair, it wasn't just them, it was the idea that anyone who dares disagree with wokeism gets the ban hammer for no apparent reason these days. These reddit moderators are like little dictators. You give them the tiniest bit of power, and they feel the need to police what people have to say to the point they create an echo chamber. This is no different here. 

To analyze my comment in more detail.

I mean, it's true in my experience. I'm the kind of male who has been unsuccessful with the ladies, and I totally get the struggles of the issue. While I'm in a relatively good place there right now, where I feel more at peace with myself, I struggled with these issues for years. And I still struggle with self image problems. How do I talk to women? Am I creepy? What is the right way to approach them? And woke people make it hard. Traditionally, men are expected to take on all the effort of "pursuing" women, with women taking a more passive role, and while I know things are slightly different, i don't think things have changed that much. This expectation still trends into the era of gender egalitarianism. But...women tend to have a negative perception toward the role of being the reciever of requests, despite the fact that society still seems to expect that of them. If a man they're interested in approaches them, they're fine, if they're not interested, it's creepy. If someone is autistic and a little off and doesn't know how to express their views, they're also creepy. Like, basically, it's a no win situation. Now, I'm not an incel. Incels are the male equivalent of the man hating feminist, railing about how women are evil and blah blah blah. I'm better than that. But this IS a discussion about how to stop men from going down that path, and I think dropping the woke crap IS the answer. 

I mean, the woke crap doesn't help. As I said, sometimes men just wanna vent. They wanna express their concerns, but then when they do, they're crapped on for it. They're told self righteously, "well you're not entitled to affection and blah blah blah." And I agree with them. The scary thing about incels is eventually they do expect affection and reduce women to sex objects. But, again, self righteously getting in peoples face and kicking them when they're down is NOT the answer. 

Again, the SJWs love to do this weird virtue signalling thing of telling people obvious things and getting in their face about it. And after a while, you eventually get to the point of being like "F these guys". 

I expected pushback. I mean, r/aspergers is an SJW craphole and it was full of comments from women who were like OMG MEN ARE SCARY AND I LIVE IN FEAR OF THEM AND BLAH BLAH BLAH. And it's kinda ridiculous. Yeah, some men are scary. But men also...have feelings, and are people too. You need to sometimes be a little more sympathetic. Especially on a freaking internet message board where people are communicating with you via a screen. You're not gonna get raped through your screen. ANd if they do send an unsolicited picture of genitalia...well that's fair game for harassment and moderation.

As far as the last part, well, that was literally a friend of mine, or more specifically an ex friend. He wouldnt stop going on with his toxic BS so i kicked him out of my life. Reconnected with him years later, he just got worse. It didnt even last a day before I was done. 

But...I think he offers a cautionary tale. When I first knew him, he was more liberal. Had some incel type features, and dealt with some severe traumas from previous relationships that turned him sexist, but yeah. I think examples like his are worth showing. How can we seriously discuss this issue, if we do not have an open and honest discussion about inceldom? 

Honestly, the whole ANTI-PC movement, is a response to the PC movement. Eventually people do get fed up with all of this crap and they become anti PC. I'm anti PC, but not in the way they are. I simultaneously recognize the validity of the PC crowd's points, while also coming out hard against them because they are just a toxic insufferable circlejerk. Now, imagine how bad these people must be if i can find common ground with them and i STILL hate them. It aint even their views that i hate, it's culture and how they express those views. And the zero tolerance BS is a huge issue i have too. They gotta militantly push their opinions, they gotta make it a huge part of their political identity, and they gotta suppress anyone who disagrees with them, even if they, like me, come at it from a relatively constructive perspective.

It's not hard to imagine how the incel trap works. Eventually, people do get fed up. And they join the counter movement. THeir hearts become full of hate, and it's because people weren't there for them when they needed them. Again, if feminist and woke groups arent there for them when they need help, and the MRAs are, why would they NOT join the MRAs? Do you not realize how easy it is for youtube to drip feed you this content if you are in a vulnerable state?

In a different life, or even in this life with a couple different if variables, I easily could've become these guys. I think inceldom is, to some extent, a matter of ignorance, but it's mostly a matter of falling in with the wrong sub groups. As I see it, if people aren't given more constructive help when they need it, they will get help from those who DO listen. Even if those guys are toxic themselves. 

As I said, you scream at them that they're not entitled to affection, you ban them from forums for daring to express their opinions, and you get them watching people like JORDAN FREAKING PETERSON, and you can't be surprised when people fall into that crowd. As I see it, if you wanna fix the issue, you gotta fix it before they go down that path. Because that path will indoctrinate/brainwash them into those mindsets. No one is born an incel. Incels are made. Incels are people who are full of hate from past hurts and have been radicalized into some bad political ideologies. Let's face it. 

And with that said, let me now vent about THAT SUBREDDIT. That subreddit has never been a safe space for autistic males to express their concerns. Ya know, a few years ago, I was in a relatively dark place. A lot of crap went down, and I wasn't feeling very good about myself. A love interest of mine not only rejected me, they basically destroyed my self esteem on the way out of their life. To not pull any punches, they told me that I was a loser for my anti work views more or less and that no woman would ever ever wanna date me, because women want someone who are providers. I repeated what they said once on r/aspergers. I didn't think it was bad, I thought it was technically realistic. Well, I got a lot of comments saying that that was hateful toward women and that it was "incel logic" and I got temp banned then too. I didn't even think that was bad. I mean, you guys know my views on here. And you could probably imagine how being told that messed up my self esteem and made me feel unlovable. But, instead of offering a helping hand, they banned me for it. It was a temp ban, but regardless, yeah, that sucked. 

TO be fair, some comments i got before it got taken down did shake me out of that harmful mindset. I realized, yeah maybe not all women are like that, and that maybe she was just a piece of crap. Kind of ironic that a liberal woman rejecting me said nasty things to me that could be construed incel logic. And after that I kind of realized the issue was her and I regained some self esteem. I still struggle with some image issues due to those comments, and it has made me more reluctant to try to date after that, but yeah. I did basically realize that yeah, to some extent, the problem wasn't me, it was her. She was out of line for telling me that. Of course, it was the POSTERS who convinced me of that, not the overzealous moderator opinions.

These subs don't like any opinion that goes against the grain. In their desire to create a safe space, they create a space that not only isn't safe, but hostile to a lot of people. If you dont toe their line, you get the ban. And that's why they banned me here too. I dared criticize the religion of woke.

Anyway, that's why I decided to post this on here. Because I feel like this behavior deserves some calling out. It's not helpful, it's actually immensely harmful. As someone who isn't an incel, wanna know why i didn't become one? Because i have an education and an internal moral compass to know that that stuff is wrong. But if there's anything i've observed about humanity in the past decade or so, it's that most people aren't that smart, they aren't that independent, they aren't that willing to go against the grain. They wanna belong. They want emotional support. They want to be with people who are somewhat like minded. They want to be comfortable in their own skin. Woke mentalities don't do that. Despite their claims to want to facilitate safe spaces, they are fiercely tribalistic and hostile to anyone who dares express any views that dont fit neatly in their worldview. And as we can see here, they can't stand the mirror being held up to their hypocrisy.Maybe these groups help some people, but they do so at the expense of others, and create intense tribalism in our societies based on identity group. And sadly, being an autistic white male is an identity group, and if they don't fit within the realm of the "woke", they might find that belonging among the "anti woke." 

Which brings me back to my points. If you're woke, what are you putting out there that might drive people to another opposing group? Are you actually offering these guys any answers? Or are you just telling them they are the problem for feeling as they do and expressing it as they do? I'm not saying we should facilitate every mentality they have. Quite frankly, i think it's realistic to say, no people don't deserve affection from someone specific. I mean, they do need to get over their failures, eventually. 

But let's not forget how PAINFUL this can be to a lot of guys. And that sometimes, lecturing attitudes telling people they're wrong in a self righteous and self serving way isn't helpful. So guys struggling out there, I feel you. I probably am one of you to some degree. But you don't need to go down the path of the anti woke to do it.

Heck, let me tell you what you should do, as someone who myself is like this. Just...be yourself. Be true to yourself. be true to who you are. Dont join anyone else's group. Make your own group. That's what I do. I always say it, I'm politically homeless. I'm too left for some lefties, too right for some other lefties, im in this weird free for all against everyone sometimes. Same goes with the woke/anti woke stuff. I'm my own third force of enlightened centrism in between. I don't hate women. I respect their autonomy. They're people too. Blah blah blah. Being an incel actually isn't helpful. Maybe it will make you feel good, but just think about how much hate you're putting out in the world with that. And is that helping anything? No. If you are a mgtow like the friend i mentioned above, well, feel free to not associate with women, but i think hating them and having sexist attitudes kind of makes you a jerk. Women are people, don't hate on them. Although dunking on self righteous SJWs is fair game IMO. 

Anyway, I posted this mostly to call out that sub for their woke censorship BS, but also because I feel like I have a lot to say on this issue, as an autistic male who has struggled with dating. That's why I went so deep into my own personal stuff, to set an example. There are answers out there, you don't need to go down the path of hating all women and becoming a sexist moron because some girl rejected you. Individual women can be pieces of crap, but "all women"? No. Anyway, just keep being you, and hang in there, it does get better eventually.