OrangeSundays19 t1_jaib457 wrote
Reply to comment by Lil_Phantoms_Lawyer in As construction begins on Atlanta’s “Cop City,” Pittsburghers are concerned about an allegedly similar local project by LostEnroute
Just with rent and expenses. I'm thankfully pretty healthy and don't have dependents, but things are expensive these days, and wages have not proportionally increased.
That tiny bit of breathing room would reduce my stress substantially.
120$ million on a cop playground doesn't help me at all. We spend so much money on police already, and it doesn't seem to have much effect on making things safer. This budget should be slashed immensely and spent on genuine provable community benefit.
imouttahereta t1_jainh3y wrote
Giving random people money for nothing is the exact opposite of something with "provable community benefit". And the last 3 years have made that clear as day if it wasn't obvious enough without it. "things are expensive these days", so let's print more cash and make it worse, right? This project sounds like a waste of money, but what is actually needed in most of the western world is austerity, not replacing counterproductive mass spending with more mass spending.
OrangeSundays19 t1_jaiq8aj wrote
I'm not really advocating for public policy be 'give me $3,000'. It was more of a comment, really.
I don't know if I'm going to solve America's economy in a reddit post, and I'm not really going to try.
I just know $120 million is too much. That we can seemingly agree on.
imouttahereta t1_jairqp3 wrote
Got it. And government inefficiency (or corruption) has been a constant everywhere I've lived. Unfortunately it's all quickly forgotten and there's hardly ever any accountability.
datcheezeburger1 t1_jajhkjo wrote
Got any research to back up those big ideas or did you come up with them yourself? Because I’ve got plenty of studies on deck that show how direct cash payments help communities. The child tax credit was one of the most transformative policies in the country before it was cancelled and that was from a conservative government of all things lol
imouttahereta t1_jajx2sf wrote
Don't tell me you believe the government propaganda about inflation being caused solely by "supply chains" (which I will point out is a problem that was exacerbated by the government paying a lot of people for not working) and "Putin's war in Ukraine".
When you give most people money unconditionally, the value of money goes down, i.e. you get inflation. That is a tautology. Taken to the extreme, unconditional handouts decrease productivity and labour force participation. Can you guess what direction they have been trending in since 2020?
Temporary handouts may have been necessary at the beginning of the pandemic, but they were given to far too many people (I got some and definitely did not need it) and for far too long, and as a result now we're stagflating. I don't see how implementing such programmes permanently could be positive in any way when we have a perfect example of what it leads to right here, today.
datcheezeburger1 t1_jak1rh8 wrote
I’m much less worried about the money we give to regular Americans than I am about the billions we send to military contractors for endless wars, the $30 billion in foreign aid that goes out to help prop up dictatorships in developing countries, or that our government pays to pharmaceutical companies in subsidies and unbelievable drug prices because they know they’ll get a spot on the board of directors after their terms end. There are plenty of pools to pick from, and if you think all that spending is necessary, let’s take a look at the companies making record profits while they pay poverty wages. My taxes just end up subsidizing their shitty wages with social security, medicare, welfare, food stamps and everything else that even a minimum wage job used to pay for 50 years ago. I don’t need to see extra handouts, I’m plenty happy to just redirect some of the ones I see as useless. It won’t introduce any new dollars to the economy, just take them out of the hedge funds invested in these companies.
imouttahereta t1_jak5f2t wrote
Like I said in another comment, replacing bad spending practices with different ones is not much of an improvement. Entitlements (like social security, food stamps, housing assistance, etc.) are one of the top three expenditures of the federal government if I remember correctly, but there's a difference between having programmes to help people who need support, and disincentivising people from working and lowering the value of money by sending everyone a cheque, which screws the people that this is theoretically helping anyway.
I find it ironic that you mention military funding and pharmaceutical companies even though I generally agree with you, considering the last 3 or so years were spent shunning, demonizing, banning, and in some cases firing whoever was critical of Pfizer, Moderna & co. while they were, like you said, making record profits (from our taxes) while lying left and right and asking for more. And military funding? I am not a big fan either, but I'm willing to bet most Americans are in favour of all the aid we are sending to Ukraine, which wouldn't be possible without those investments. So I feel like people point at the spending in those areas pretty often, but when push comes to shove, whether it's thanks to government and media propaganda or simply from circumstances, the public is actually pretty wishy-washy about it. Who would propose cutting military spending in 2023, with even Zelenskyy seemingly laying out bait for World War III? Who would have said anything about pharmaceutical companies in 2021? Definitely not any politician who wanted to get or stay elected. Once federal debt becomes THE big concern, maybe that will change, but I don't expect that to happen any time soon.
datcheezeburger1 t1_jak6zlk wrote
Below this I attached one of the many studies that shows how universal basic income doesn’t raise unemployment, it actually results in more people getting jobs. If you have any research that disputes that point I’m happy to read it but we’re not gonna get very far on just opinions when we’re talking policy.
As for your points about most politicians supporting money for ukraine or for phizer/moderna, I’m firmly against the citizens united decision and think money should be out of politics so those companies can’t own our government in those fields, plus energy, tech, entertainment, etc. Just because they’re corrupt doesn’t give me an excuse to give up on what I think is right
imouttahereta t1_jakbvmo wrote
I'm aware of the small-scale studies on UBI, but firstly I doubt they would be effective at larger scales, and secondly I don't find employment status on its own to be a good measure of productivity. Personally, if I could live reasonably comfortably without investing time and effort into acquiring valuable skills, I probably wouldn't have bothered going to university, let alone migrating to the US for better opportunities. I don't think it's a coincidence that countries with more "socialist" policies tend to stagnate economically, don't innovate as much and fail to remain competitive on the world stage. But of course correlation =/= causation. I would like to see UBI attempted at the scale of a country, but I'd rather see it from a distance than be roped into it.
datcheezeburger1 t1_jalrtd0 wrote
If you have such a problem with stagnation you should be looking towards the ever growing pool of wealth at the top of our economy which doesn’t get spent in communities, it gets shuffled around a dozen hedge funds until we call it part of our GDP. The stagnation has gone on for 50 years now, and it isn’t because of entitlements. Check this out the wages have been flat while productivity is up 250%. They keep our money and then use our taxes to fund our own entitlements. This isn’t even about getting something we “don’t deserve” but getting back our slice of the pie. That money is yours and mine we aren’t doing more than taking it back.
I can accept that you don’t believe in ubi for whatever personal reasons you carry but you won’t convince me for a second that productivity and buying power have ever been related in this country.
burritoace t1_jaqr484 wrote
If you don't think the pandemic fucked up supply chains then you're an idiot
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