So....Nerds for Humanity, a pro Yang youtuber, basically looked into the Biden budget in detail, and looked at his popularity. And...I honestly don't understand why people hate Biden based on this. On the issues, he's doing very popular stuff. he's way better than the republicans. Generally speaking his numbers work and 49-70%+ of the public supports his ideas. But yet....so many people wanna vote republican? WHY?!
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm just saying Biden isnt as interesting as a wet blanket, but on the issues, he's RIGHT. And the public likes his ideas a lot more than the republicans. I don't get it. With these kinds of numbers we should be well into a party realignment AWAY from the GOP and crushing them as a force in politics. Do people really go for this culture war drama and cult of personality stuff over issues?
I mean, that's what I feel like it's about. The democrats arent popular. Their candidates arent popular. Their brand isnt popular. But their policies are. We should have the GOP being crushed party realignment style if people voted on ISSUES. But because they vote for feelings and personalities and blah blah blah, they seem to vote more along traditional partisan lines. That and dont forget the weirdos who are obsessed with transgender stuff. I mean, I did cover how people care more about "stopping wokeness" than about cutting social security. It's baffling to me, but that's what it is.
ANd I kinda get it, I'm on the same page. I have a lot of malaise for Biden. Despite me agreeing with him on the issues, I dont really feel super positively about Biden. Of course I'm a policy driven borderline ideologue, and am open about that, and honestly, I just have grander ambitions than Biden has.
Now, the second thing I wanted to talk about this was nerds for humanity's coverage itself. Which I'm mixed on. On the one hand, I kinda think like him and you'll see a lot of the same critiques when I look at Biden myself, especially if you read my 2021 stuff. He talks about how instead of having all of these little programs that help some people, why dont we focus on a few larger programs that help more people? Like, he did nitpick some of the fairness issues of these programs, for better or for worse. Sometimes I agree, and sometimes I dont. Like on the child tax credit, he mentions he supports it because it is like a mini UBI in a way and Yang has openly camapigned for it, but it DOES exclude adults, and some adults might feel resentful they dont get help. And I feel like thats where a lot of the apathy and malaise for biden comes from. He has a lot of good ideas, but many americans just dont FEEL the positive benefits, because they themselves dont benefit. I feel like this is also what killed the welfare state back in the 1960s and 1970s. We shifted toward the more individualistic "me" generation and people asked "how does this benefit me?" and the answer was, it didn't, so people just sat by while Reagan dismantled the legacy of the new deal and war on poverty...while cheering him on whenever they got a $1k tax cut.
And I admit, I've kinda risen above that, as an ex conservative where I'm like...well I still support this stuff, but yeah I'm not super passionate and why can't this money be spent just on UBI? That seems to be where Nerds is at, and that's where I'm at.
But then he goes too far and in too weird of a direction with this on some issues. For example, he had this huge spiel about social security. And uh...okay. Look. I get it. Social security is a flawed program. it is a contribution based program that basically represents a generational transfer of wealth from the young to the old, and seems to operate like a pyramid scheme where when it goes bust, it's gonna go bust. And long term, I wouldnt mind if we transitioned more to just UBI with SSDI/RI taking a more secondary approach toward things. BUT....we should give seniors what they are owed, and transition this system slowly over decades. my own compromises in my UBI plan outline a good compromise for the first generation, but after that if people want to make it less generous given we have UBI, so be it.
I also do wanna point out that social security could easily be saved just by removing the payroll cap. It doesnt solve the justice issues and how it squares with UBI as a concept. But the issue is artificial and removing the payroll cap would solve the budgetary issues for at least another generation or two.
He also tended to be against free college and student loan forgiveness, which rubbed me the wrong way. I get many people didnt go to college and maybe it seems unfair to ask taxpayers to bail people with student loans out, but as ONE of those people, here's how I see it. My generation was sold on the idea of college as a path to opportunity, so we took out all of this money thinking it would be easy to get a good job afterwards and that paying them off wouldnt be a huge problem. But then we were slapped hard by 2008, the problems Yang talks about with the war on normal people, and the fact that many people with degrees didn't even get off the ground. We're buried under this debt with little to no hope of getting out other than slaving our lives away to pay it off, and it's not a good situation. While Nerds is correct in pointing out that college isnt always a good return on investment and throwing money at the problem might make the issue worse, that's why we need free college to begin with. Private education is a massive market failure in this country, and it is better to solve that market failure by making college free and bailing students out, than by just insisting they have to pay it back. It's one of those things UBI alone cannot solve, and it requires attention.
Also, I know Yang and many of his supporters tend to look at college as just a matter of employment training, but that's kinda bogus. As Bernie pointed out in his recent book, we need free college because we need to make people to be good citizens. Currently people dont have the critical thinking skills to really think about things properly. And that leads to a lot of uneducated people supporting morons like Trump and MTG and stuff. We need college to make democracy work, to make people well rounded, and good citizens.
Also, even if free college may not guarantee people a job, people should have the opportunity to compete for me. Without college being free. A lot of white collar jobs just become accessible only to the elites. While the problems of more people going to college have churned out more people who cant get jobs after college because the jobs arent there, if we didn't do things this way, college would be only for rich people like it was for most boomers. if we really care about being the "land of opportunity" and a meritocracy, as opposed to an aristocracy, then we should support free college as something to level the playing field.
Another issue this guy seemed leery on was regulating housing prices. I admit, I'm not a fan of rent control, but I am so because it goes against basic econ 101 stuff. Price ceilings end up just making the market worse, by creating shortages. Maybe you could argue short term they're needed to solve price gouging, but there's a reason I dont lean into rent control in my own housing policies. And that's because it doesn't work.
Now, his argument was a bit different in the video. He mentioned being a "libertarian" and not liking the government telling people what they can and cant charge. I disagree, and I'm also a "libertarian" of sorts. But my libertarianism is based more in indepentarianism and real libertarianism. Ya know, left libertarian traditions that favor the liberty of people over that of property owners. I think it's perfectly fine, when the national inclinations of the market deny people a place to live, to step in and regulate such things. I mean, the freedom of a rich person to charge whatever they want is also the freedom to deny someone else a home if they dont pay. And that is extortionary. Markets need to work for people, Im fine with regulating markets to get results that work for people, but those policies need to actually work, and I'm not convinced rent control does. What rent control does is limit the amount of housing by reducing the profit motive to build new housing, and what that does is lead to less housing overall. Which for those not covered by rent control agreements means even HIGHER rents long term. The correct answer to the housing crisis is to subsidize the construction of millions of new housing units. By flooding the market, we basically reduce the price that way, while also increasing the supply. So you ultimately wanna subsidize new housing and stop people from abusing the market for profit rather than controlling prices directly.
I mean, I know I say Im similar to yang on politics, but I'm not exactly like yang, and this dude seems to be towing Yang's 2020 line more closely than I am for better or for worse. We probably agree on a lot of stuff, but we would also disagree on stuff like free college and student debt forgiveness, and housing. I mean, I get the whole appeal of "why have this when we can instead have UBI?" and I generally agree with such a sentiment. I've made this criticism of Biden a lot in the past. But whenever I suggest a program on top of UBI like free college or housing, there's normally a reason for it. And that reason is that that market is fundamentally broken on a deeper level that UBI by itself will not solve. Yang/Nerds' solution to the free college thing is "stop giving colleges money". Okay, but then you either create an aristocracy that can afford college while no one else does, or you end up with tons of people deeply in debt with no career prospects. We should recognize that free college and student debt forgiveness are very much needed to solve modern problems with the economy. Same with housing. There is some validity to the idea that if we just give people a UBI and do nothing else, rents will probably rise in a lot of areas. Because those markets are broken, there's a shortage of housing relative to demand and certain bad actors like landlords, investors, etc. are exploiting that. And arguably, you could even argue some other stuff like Biden is pushing like free childcare are also important, and if we can fit them into the budget I'm not opposed to them, I just dont emphasize them or are passionate about them.
So...all in all, what are my takeaways from this? Well, first of all that a lot of anti biden sentiment is idiotic. I mean, Biden isnt great, I would like to do better than Biden, but I want someone more progressive who does more. Anyone thinking of voting for a republican and trump who agrees with Biden on policy is the kind of person that makes me say "this is why we need free college in this country."And as far as Nerds' take on stuff, I get the sentiment that yeah, why do X thing when we could instead do UBI? but he takes it too far even for me sometimes. Yes, we need social security for now at least. Yes, we need free college, student debt forgiveness, and some sort of housing program. And healthcare too. And yeah, that's my view on this.
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