183 Comments

Something something each according to his ability - ? :-DSeriously tho, and I know Wonkette just ~loved~ to mock the oNe tHoSaNd d0LlArS bit, that was one (OK maybe the only) thing Andrew Yang had right. UBI is just about the only way we're going to move into any future that isn't a total dystopian hellscape imo and tyvfm.

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Glad you recognize it

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They treated Carter like an idealistic bumpkin. The snottiness of the Kennedy's in particular was probably pretty nauseating.

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Carter also surrounded himself with some pretty self important folks. Hamilton Jordan comes to mind.

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Thank you for this history lesson, Erik Loomis!

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Well, sure, but only until inflation says the "safe word."

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I doubt Cruz would have been driving himself. He's probably got a mini-bar in the back of his luxury SUV, and a driver to keep him warm or to butcher if things get really dire.

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Guaranteeing a decent standard of living for people who cannot work and guaranteeing decent work for everybody who wants to work are not incompatible goals. On the contrary, they are interdependent.

Particularly if we end poverty by creating a universal minimum income, which we absolutely should do, we need both to improve the conditions of work and to increase the pay that we give workers, or we will indeed suffer labor shortages. Not every job can be automated. Moreover, there is a lot of work that desperately needs to be done but that not enough people are doing, such as caregiving and building a carbon-neutral energy system. If we want this work to be done, then we must employ people to do it, but the private sector obviously neither employs enough people nor pays them enough. So the government needs to step in to pay for the work that we need to get done as a society. This is the point that Erik Loomis was making.

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Yeah, I noticed that too.

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Whip Inflation Now was actually Gerald Ford's slogan

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Helped to give us Reagan, though most of the blame for that falls on Khomeini

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"almost passing" is a serious overstatement.

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Might be that some have mentioned this below, but the country was in the middle of nearly a decade of serious inflation in 77 and the country was...restive over it. Arguably it killed Ford's presidency; it's not surprising that Carter was leery of handing the opposition a cudgel to beat him with. It took the recession of 81 to put a halt to it, but it had reached double digits by then IIRC.

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It's always gratifying to discover someone who is a legend in their own mind.

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Likewise

Happy to oblige

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We need government by the People, not the contractor. A large Civil Service lets government set wages and benefits. It reclaims the government role of regulating corporations.

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