monkseal

I had a friend who decided to live in his Ford Explorer in San Diego rather than pay rent....

Then he flipped his Explorer on the freeway going like 70 mph. He survived unscratched but his SUV was totaled.

Fortunately for him, he was able to move in with his mom and stepdad (who he hated) but if he was anybody else and he didn't have family in the area he would have been completely homeless...

What feels so deceptive about the panic around student debt is the devil is the details. I think if you drill in median student loan debt for an UNDERGRADUATE is like $12k. That's less than a car loan and we don't have a panic about that.

Most of the debt is for graduate, PHDs, law and MDs or undergrads who attend expensive private universities. These people should make more money from that investment.

My point is overall average student loan debt or the overall outstanding amount owed is horrible way to look at it and talk about it. It creates an unnecessary panic.

This is absolutely true. I have spent about a year in China and when you are in those older neighborhoods it is mostly 4-5 story walk-ups. Some of these small units are worth more than a single family home is parts of the US especially if they are next to good schools.

China has a massive housing imbalance. The skyscrapers are being purchased as investments by the newly rich and are out of reach to low/middle income folks. Also, not all those skyscrapers are good quality. In our condo on the 37th floor, we had to have the bathroom flooring completely redone because there were leaks all over the place. This building was built like 5 year ago! In addition, when you walk around the construction sites of those new skyscraper projects, you see those countryside workers crowded into hastily constructed dorms, 4 or 5 people in one tiny room. You can see them sitting around eating their small portion of rice and veggies. It is definitely a sight that would make most “living wage” Americans cringe...

My wife grew up in China and she loathes skyscrapers. We bought a single family home here in the USA with a nice size backyard and she has the happiest wife in the world. She often goes in our backyard just to sit and watch the squirrels. She also has a piano which she can play any time of the day. In China, neighbors complain when start playing your piano in those crowded skyscrapers....

I have an unproven hypothesis that most people on the planet would love their own single family home like we have here in the US. They aren't living in those dense urban areas because it is hip and cool. They are living there because they have no choice.

Listen to the latest "Fifth Column" podcast where they interview this "evil" Ajit Pai guy. I think he makes a strong case that regulating monopolies is the role of the FTC or state's attorney generals and not the FCC and there is no real market failure here.

http://wethefifth.com/ https://play.radiopublic.com/the-fifth-column-analysis-comme...

This letter has nothing to do with the substance of the regulations. It amounts to finger pointing about "illegal conduct". Probably the next thing, we will hear the Russians are behind all of this...

Why can't the FTC regulate or prosecute monoplies, which is its job, instead a bunch arbitrary rules by the FCC?

> 1) How many of these lazy people are there? > 2) How much economic output is wasted by employers trying to filter these lazy people out of their workforce.

I am pretty lazy but I'm not lazy all the time. I don't think there exists such a classes of "lazy people" vs "non-lazy people". Laziness is a mood, a state. It can be altered by motivation. Income is one important motivator although arguably not the only one.

My point is, if we have welfare state with UBI, we will form in-groups and out-groups just as you describe. The taxes of all the "non-lazy” group will be unbearable high. You will hear choruses of complaints from them. They will resent those “lazy people”. Let’s add some other component like race, language or country of origin and you have society more divided than before. These are just a few of the unintended consequences I would see.

And 15k is hardly enough to sell this program politically. You can get that now on disability.

> You might quit your full time job, but you would probably find some part-time programming work you enjoyed to allow you to afford good snowboards

I can get by on a used snowboard. I could also steal on from one of those “non-lazy people” :)

This is why UBI will never become law. Once you start talking about taking away benefits (Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, Food Stamps, HUD Housing Subsidies), people will freak out. The backlash will be very loud.

Look at the tax reform debate now: When they proposed taking away deductibility of mortgage interest or state and local taxes deductions, I started seeing headlines from the New York Times and Washington Post about how this a “Middle Class Tax Hike”...

I would compare UBI to the "second system syndrome" with software developers: If only we can start over with an entirely new platform rather than addressing the technical debt in the current system, all would be well.

At its heart, UBI sounds like a good thing but it ignore basic human nature and particularly in-group and out-group conflicts. UBI in America would calcify a class system where one group of people works and another lives off their work. The working group will come to resent the non-working group and it will further divide the society. People are living a bubble if they don’t think this would be a major source of political and social friction.

Also, I don’t think the proponents of UBI can account for how many people would simply not work if they had the option. I love programming but there are some days where I don’t like my boss and my co-workers. I endure some discomfort but at the end of the day, I’m compensated for that. If you told me I would get 50k per year and free housing, I would probably spend most of my time snowboarding and playing video games rather sit in 1 hour planning meeting. I would probably be much more likely to do this if all my friends were snowboarding and playing video games ….