You made some basic factual errors, particularly with health insurance given that most people in the United States working, are insured through self insured plans, which are paid by the employer NOT the insurer, the insurer merely acts as an administrator, so that destroys the adverse selection argument because employers ultimately will pay indiscriminately
No such thing as free stuff, tax payers don't get to vote where the money goes. USA is 30 trillion in debt for wars nobody wanted. Average american only has 400 in the bank, inflation is taking all the money out of wage earners pockets, how about no more tax raises until the government can cut the fat? DO we really need the ATF, CIA, NSA, Homeland, DEA, Military bases around the world, etc etc etc?
@@coonhound_pharoah dude, poverty existing is more costly than just doing a net-cost version of a UBI. Why do the more expensive, less effective thing that we are doing now?
Why would anyone be surprised that happy and healthy people are more productive? If you think starvation makes people work harder, try to do hard labor on an empty stomach. Actually your brains need energy too, so it doesn't matter what kind of jobs you hold, you're not going to do well and are more likely to make mistakes if you are hungry and depressed.
The elites don't want people to be happy and healthy, because happy and healthy people won't be as willing to take as much shit from their bosses as they currently do.
@Mickey G - But I think that (and I mean this without irony) is the literal stated goal of the capital-holding class: to keep their workforce just barely productive enough to function for twenty-to-forty years, but weakened and preoccupied enough to be in too precarious a position to ever make trouble … although this is stated in more “benevolent” terms, from the 19th century claim that educating the congenitally incapable (i.e. the workforce) and giving us free time could cause insanity, to the present ideas that book-larnin’ and free time distracts women from motherhood, puts ideas in Black people’s heads, turns children trans, turns college kids communist, and just generally *tricks* people, and the perpetual idea that healthcare is wasted on people so dissolute and prone to vice as we are; the idea always is that we naturally yearn to nobly labor for minimum wage and otherwise numb ourselves with beer and the tee-vee and then die young but happy in our simplicity … but then health and education and free time lead us simpletons to get into trouble instead - in way over our heads, trying to take on the tasks (and wealth) our tireless (and wealthy) rulers so selflessly take on. So by keeping us always slightly ill and preoccupied and saddled with debt and overworked and at one another’s throats and mentally checked-out, our wealthy benefactors are doing us a favor, see? I mean, that’s how it’s framed in those circles. But the end result is the same: we’re kept rested and fed and schooled just enough to keep us working, but ideally never so peppy that we might make trouble.
There's a lot of up front cost to develop something new and bring it to market. Capitalism is always the worst at this. Some of the most important things to exist started as passion projects with no chance of making money.
@@TheModdedwarfare3 and we're suffering now because Capitalism saw profit in the internet, and decided to mold the thing to spit out the most profit with zero regard for others who use it
I have to constantly remind people that damn near every modern thing they like *and need* was most likely a government, publicly funded project before it became a commodity. It is so unbelievably frustrating to have people genuinely believe the private sector is what's "driving the bulk of innovation". They come when everyone has already pitched in money and labour to build the house. And then for some reason they're allowed to take it, trash it, then sell it back to you at a ridiculous price.
The military is more important than any capitalist is for technological innovation. All the communication tech we have today was inventedto facilitate killing and conquest.
bro this is a different income bro it's providing a service it's not free bro there's risk I promise bro it's different it's economic productivity bro trust me bro I swear
The fact that nearly half of Americans were misled into thinking that basic necessities were actually luxury items, and therefore shouldn’t be provided as “free stuff,” which in turn has had tremendous negative consequences on our political landscape for decades, is one of the many reasons I drink 😃
@@broyberbez Things needed to physically survive: Air, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep, reproduction. Things needed for basic safety: Personal security, employment, resources, health, property.
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- Those are still subjective, because the amount is non clear, because different groups may need different things, while we can point to certain objective standards, it isn’t often enough to make a judgement call, outside of the most basic forms of it, which for the most part are guaranteed at least in some form within this world, and even then, the body can survive for s period of time without any of those things, so how do we determine that their lives were worse simply because it was less?? Ultimately it’s completely subjective
@@broyberbez The key point is in your own statement. These "basic forms" are definitely not guaranteed. It is clear to see that, for instance, minimal health care access, or relatively unpolluted air, reap great financial rewards. We can at the very least "point to certain objective standards" and start there. If we eventually have people rioting in the streets for Teslas, well, those are good problems to have. Economics is a human enterprise, and spending money on the population will not always be done well, just as private enterprise does not always produce the greatest good for the greatest number. How do we determine that their lives are worse? We ask them. I like to call that democracy - or marketing ;^)
A society that cannot provide its citizens with their basic necessities without coercion has no business asking for their unfaltering loyalty, or existing in the first place. It's hardly even a moral stance, it's just a bad deal. That society has failed. The goal of civilization is to improve the quality of life of humanity, not to accumulate wealth. If only everyone recognized that.
TRUTH. Austerity politics is, ironically, pretty fucking collectivist as it asks some people to starve so the rest of us can be motivated at threat of death to work and uphold society.
We need to decide what is necessary and what’s not. Anything necessary should be provided by non profits. You shouldn’t get rich providing fire fighters to a population
"without coercion" can't happen with a ruling class, i.e. State, whether that state is left or right. The ruling class are only seeking power and control, and the best way to achieve that is blind the people for what is going on, to keep us divided, to spout the propaganda of one side or the other. "The Law" is nothing more than their immoral justification to violently dominate the rest of us.
Every single argument that goes like "but how will we pay for it" or "that's too expensive" is instantly shattered when you then ask what the budget for the military is and how is that paid.
Well no, because military funding also comes from taxpayer money which is theft. There are alot of people on earth who oppose both universal healthcare and military.
Personally I agree that our defense spending is bonkers. That said, I think military spending is a little left-coded these days. Quite the reversal from the mid-2000s. "Sorry Ukraine, we're fresh out of arty rounds."
people tend to agree that you need to spend money to make money when it comes to private investment but won't make the logical jump when it comes to public investment
Which is why I always use the phrase when people talk about government spending. (At least when the economic case for the program in question is clear and empirically proved - like health care!) Gotta remind them!
it‘s even a step further. no economy benefits, when the state „makes money“ since he literally makes it. so if the state in subtotal earns money that means money i taken out of the economy
The difference is that what the government spends money on typically doesn't provide a positive return, or provides a smaller return than if it just let private individuals spend their money how they wished.
Conservatives: "The people don't want universal healthcare!" Liberals: "Here's some polling on universal healthcare, they clearly want it." Conservatives: "Wait, that poll includes those who make under $400k a year, I thought we were talking about what PEOPLE think."
I love how you self defeat your own argument, the people don’t want “universal healthcare”(whatever that means) because they would stand to lose large parts of their economy, it just isn’t worth the cost risk balance overall! Also, polling on issues is far more nuanced, and ballot measures actually referendums in the topic have come short outside of the vague platitudes
@@broyberbez So let's just prefer to go with the current setup which is more costly and less effective than going to a medicare for all type of system that allows supplemental private insurance due to your bs economic reasons? Lol-
@@broyberbez What parts of their economy would they lose and why? Seems to me like the demonstrable reality is that we would simply shift how we fund large portions of healthcare. In regards to extremely expensive treatments that cannot possibly be guaranteed universally, that is where private healthcare would remain: money is for managing scarcity, not walling off abundance.
@@TheRepublicOfUngeria You don’t understand how much middlemen economics produce value especially in the United States, walking off the entire industry will cause a massive shift in what people will be able to produce
@@NewSocialistEraVideos no supplemental private insurance is unjust as well, it’s all or nothing, otherwise the private insurance will eventually weight in and defund the public one
The bit where he said "and eventually, you get 100 percent of the people paying for 100 percent of the people." And I was like... Yeah. Yes. That's the point.
Sounds good in “theory”. Reality is that 100% of the people paying are not paying an equal amount at every moment in time. So the “time” element obscures the cost and the “(forced) cooperation” facilitates theft in the form of select individuals not being able to allocate resources to their other needs
My favorite jobs that I've had were in landscaping and janitorial stuff. I just liked taking care of things and helping people. Those jobs don't make any money though so here I am at a desk tracking inventory. If there was a universal income, I promise you if people are treated decently, they would do the jobs others seem to think no one would ever want to do.
@Nicholas Time everyone except those in food service who *loath* washing dishes. Rest assured that we love and respect you. There is nothing worse to me than tepid dishwater running down an extended arm towards my shoulder/armpit.
@Nicholas Time I was not trying to deny your expertise or experiences, only wanted to let you know that those of us who hate that specific job adore people like you who want to do it.
somehow i doubt that sending people to schools that you control for 7~ hours a day, 200~ days a year, from ages 6-18, makes it harder to dupe them into voting against their self interest
@@green2498 If you can't understand the issues you have no chance of voting for your interest. At least with critical thinking skills you have a chance.
@@macrumpton the vast majority of people are incapable of understanding the issues, education or no, at best education helps indoctrinate people into having the stance on the issues the people controlling it desire
Aaaaaand… where would I put the proverbial pony in my apartment? That pony argument is SUCH a bogus smokescreen…. Prefer the smell (or lack thereof) of an AI pony projected on a screen-which yes, is very affordable.
I don't think anyone who rants about "competition" and "customer base" in healthcare knows how most people handle medical emergencies. If you're puking and shitting your guts out at the same time for 4 days, you don't think "I should shop around for a doctor..." you say "I need a competent doctor, right the fuck now." Then again, I'm not from the UK, so maybe it's different over there.
If your logic is that people shouldn’t be held responsible when simply bad luck falls on them, then should we compensate everyone who happens to have a factor out of their control? No, medical emergencies are rare, and it’s not very hard for people to freak up scenarios of what to do in this situation and create a contingency plan and choose the right plan as appropriate. Bruh!
@@broyberbez Medical Emergencies are not rare, accidents is the 4th leading cause of death in the world, so they are not rare at all, also strokes and heart attacks tend to happen suddenly and there are a bunch of other problems that can happen without any warnings. I'm in a country with nationalized health care and most often than not, people tend to go to the closest hospital to them and people tend to not be good at thinking clearly in high stress situations, it may not be hard for you to create a contingency plan but it certainly it is to other people, so why make it harder? Also, some people want to have a contingency plan and they can't because they can't afford it or other reasons, I know that if my country had no nationalized health care I would have died as a baby because my parents had no private insurance even though both of them worked.
@@bluester7177 wrong, emergencies in the United States, account for less than 1 percent of total health spending, and your second point on accidents is also false, accidents do not always require someone to be immediately hospitalized, or rushed to the emergency room, yes strokes and heart attacks can happen suddenly, but in the vast majority of cases they are absolutely preventative and it’s not like, people can’t make a provision to purchase the proper insurance which would cover the vast majority of their care in such an instance
@@broyberbez Medical emergencies are not rare, especially in a non-nationalized health care system because the preventative care that would have stopped the emergency isn't done. People wait until it's an emergency for a number of reasons. This isn't because of bad luck. This is because the system is set up to make preventative care too expensive for most people. I know I had a biopsy my doctor wanted as a possible preventative measure. Insurance made me pay out of pocket because they didn't agree. That doesn't count the time I had to take off from work or the fact I had a copay to do anyway. So a preventative procedure cost me upwards of $300. I know people who can't afford that. So don't blame bad luck when the system is designed to make poor people question if death would be cheaper than receiving medical care.
@@bluester7177 furthermore, most insurance plans in the United States, tend to involve the local hospital near them so that is not an issue, also no as a baby you would have not died at least in the United States without insurance because there are plenty of hospitals which treat people for free and a law called EMALTA for babies, plus it is very easy to get private insurance if you work any form of job in the United States, even now if you are self employed
The “no free lunch” concept is a good example of the zero sum game vision. Like we’ve only got one limited pie, if I eat more, you’ll inevitably eat less. But that’s not accurate, the life is almost always a positive sum game, where we can bake much more pies than we’ll ever be able to eat, thanks to our synergy and cooperation.
So? You still take the resources from someone when you fund people's flute classes. Difference is that you're also taking the resources from people against their will.
Yes there's long been more than enough pie for universal basic necessities. Not that the federal government has ever required a balanced budget, but a tenth of one percent tax on Wall St. speculation would cover college for everyone, for instance.
@@MrCmon113 reducing poverty benefits everybody not just the poor. more productive people makes a happier economy. id rather my taxes go towards that than funding the military, quite frankly. people get so bothered by their taxes as if that isnt meant to benefit our whole society
in Kenya, "nationally, the rate of return is 7.9% for primary education, 17.2% for secondary education and 32.5% for university education." pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnads069.pdf
Honestly, I was really surprised by "we shouldn't guarantee everyone a PhD". Why not? I'm from Poland, and all education is free on public universities (private universities tend to provide a lower quality of education). We're not a super rich country, but it's not a problem, and not something any politician wants to change, so it's bizarre that it could even be controversial. Also, idk how it works elsewhere, but here PhD students do research work and usually also some teaching (used to be mandatory, but isn't anymore), so they are salaried employees and I was shocked that is not the norm. The pay isn't great, but the govt also provides scholarships and 0% APR loans. After all, doing a PhD is kinda like an internship for working at the university anyway, so why should you pay them and not the other way around? And I mean, research itself is very valuable, so the research done during the PhD and after, when you already have a PhD seems to be a massive benefit. And the university retains patents for the inventions created by its employees, if it was done as a part of their employment. Not to mention that academia massively influences the world around it, and it is notoriously unequal, with a lot of groups criminally underrepresented. How do you propose we change that while charging for PhDs?
There's a thing called anti-intellectualism and right wing people convinced the masses that the less thinking people there are the better and simpler this complex world will be.
@@unlearningeconomics9021 Thanks a lot for the reply! I guess I didn't even think of universal PhDs, cause it's so absurd it didn't cross my mind. You did say it with a jokey kind of vibe though, so it makes sense. Thanks a bunch for clearing that up! And by the way, I've recently finished catching up on your videos, and I really appreciate what you do. Economics education is critically needed, with pop-econ and political rhetoric void of empirical justification and full of toxic arguments where they provide a model for the result they want, quietly assume the outlandish necessary axioms, and say others don't understand economics if they disagree. Seriously, your work is essential and I'm really grateful for it - especially the video about "econ 101". Good luck and cheers!
I think there's a distinction to be made between everyone *getting* a PhD, and everyone having access to get one. I'm all for everyone having the ability to freely take the doctorate path in school, but it's definitely not something everyone *should* do.
I love when people argue that we can't afford stuff because the amount of money we've (the US) just kinda lost or misplaced could pay off the national debt and then some. But if I miss a dollar on my taxes I get sent to prison and some in debt company is telling me I can't afford a mortgage so I have to pay 2x that in rent every month
Exactly, or how i paid off all my student Loans for all 3 of my degrees, have no outstanding debt, only use debit cards, dont own a credit card, and do not owe a dollar to anyone on the planet, but once my fully paid off student loans aged off my credit report, my credit score which should have been an 800, dropped to a zero. I had had 30 grand in the bank but couldn't get a loan to save my life. TransUnion wanna act like i need to build up my credit history because i dont have enough information for them to calculate a score, yet at the bottom or my credit report they clearly state that they have been tracking me for 28 years. I am 47 in 8 days. My age and the fact that i have nothing derogatory, nor owe anything should speak volumes. There solution is to get a secured credit card. So basically, pre-pay a company that is going to charge me to use my own money to prove i am worthy? I've had my E*trade account for 22 years...but that means nothing? Everyone's is so freaking brainwashed and is like, "yeah, just get a secured card...blah blah to build up your credit blah". I refuse on principle alone. I shouldn't have to. The fact i have no collection accounts, and not one negative thing in my history since 2006, AND the fact that the only loans i ever took out (student loans) were paid back, in full should reflect that and speak for itself.
@@zuz-ve4ro Given that their stated goals are predicated on a dismal understanding of biology, eugenecists can never accomplish them. Of course, their stated goal of uplifting humanity has less than nothing to do with their actual goal, which is the maintenance of various hegemonic orders. Similarly, economists can never achieve their stated goals either, because they are predicated on a physicist's understanding of human behavior. Read the "basic assumptions" economists base their arguments on and the parallels to spherical cows in frictionless vacuums become clear. Of course, their stated goals of regulating human behavior and "maintaining prosperity" are also lies. Their actual goals are clearly the same as those of the eugenicists. I expect, before the century is out, that the field of economics will experience the same culling eugenics did, and for all the same reasons.
"We can't afford it" is an excuse, not an explanation. When I was a kid, I quickly learned that if I needed something, my parents would say "we can't afford it," but if my sister wanted something, well, the money was found somehow. If you /must/ have something to survive, you'll find a way to pay. That's how people manage to keep going with stagnant wages even as rent and inflation eat us alive. But oh, when you ask the rich and powerful if some of the money you give up in taxes could, say, go to things you need instead of things they want, suddenly "there's no money for it."
@@csrjjsmp this may come as a shock. No really, sit down for this. Ok. Ready? Ok. Power imbalances exist. Hoooo ok I know that was hard. Here’s another one. Power imbalances are usually maintained through force. Ok? Cool that was a fun bit. But seriously. Power imbalances exist, those who are at the top seek to maintain them, and it makes it difficult for anyone at the bottom to make changes. For the guys at the top it’s a matter of deciding unilaterally or with the help of just a few other rich people to make a change. At the bottom it’s a matter of forming a true collective of millions of people, which is inherently much harder to do, especially thanks to things like right to work laws. Finally, what is with the thought stopping comment? What’s your point? Trying to make us all feel powerless? Reminding us that thinking about something doesn’t change anything? Reinforcing the power imbalance by discouraging collective action? Why did you even reply?
UE just charging into a segment about Canada, confidently pronouncing every word wrong, calling Manitoba a city, insulting the prime minister and moving on. Honestly, bravo. It's about time those Canadians were taken down a peg or two Edit: Also calling Alaska a province of Canada, the disrespect is PALPABLE
Canada be like: Lawmakers: "In a few years should run a test to figure out the viability of UBI in a possible future, but let's not make any binding decisions now." Canadian voters: "NO UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME REEEEEEEEEE" And the resolution to allow the study on UBI didn't go through lmao. Yeah the current system totally works, let's not even STUDY other alternatives to find out whether or not they would be better than what we have now. 🧠
@@Ashlevonimagine the progress the world would make if people didn’t have access to the news and didn’t get irrationally mad at things that could help them.
@@burkles4456 It would be a regression, unfortunately, as information and news of events is important for making good, rational decisions. It is exactly why authoritarian regimes limit access to information, or disseminate propaganda and disinformation. The way we would make progress however, is by limiting sensationalized news, outrage bait, and both misinformation and disinformation. However, to do that directly we'd have to go against the right to freedom of speech, and that is a slippery slope towards authoritarianism, as individual biases would get in the way of weeding out bad information and news.
Not an UBI per se, but I was poor and depressed for years, then I took advantage of a government scholarship program to get into trade school (where they pay you 9000$ for a 12-weeks course - 3 in the school and 9 in internship) then you continue to learn the job, but at work, for 1 year while being paid, and then you have a job), and now I am what unitedstatesians call a certified nursing assistant, love my job, and this is the happiest I ever been. Not having to worry about bills for just a few weeks allowed me to focus on training for a skill useful to society, and now I can take good care of our collective grandparents.
@@nightslasher9384??? They literally have this in the Highschool level in my school district for many trade Jobs. In your senior year you can even do paid commissions for school credit.
Great video, we in Finland are preparing to say goodbye to our social programmes as they are apparently "expensive", and the upcoming government is salivating at the thought of getting rid of them. It has been an unwelcome realization that social spending cannot be defended on factual basis. Cutting welfare state is an ideological matter both to neoliberal right and the social conservative right, first group doesn't care because they have enough money to buy private alternatives and the second group doesn't care because it hurts people they don't like. Yet these are the people who claim to be "rational" and "objective"....
@@MrMarinus18 The trade unions have just started a campaign of strikes. Slow show of force now, I hope they will stay the course. The tripartite "negotiations" have been an absolute joke. Leftists are outraged obviously but Finns don't really do protesting, we're more likely to grit our teeth and take it. What has been absolutely disgusting is the media. Even YLE, our public service broadcaster, is openly on the government side, running massive stories like "the people who refuse to strike" and "I'd be lynched - the students who don't participate in school takeovers". That's par for the course for the privately owned media but seeing a company that's funded by a special poll tax so openly side with a certain party (National Coalition Party) is a disgrace. So yeah, I'm a bit disheartened but if the Unions go all the way to a general strike and the liberal Swedish People's Party gets it's act together and breaks the government there is a chance... Otherwise this is how social democracy dies. and it's done in the name of Social Democracy, all the time referring to the "Nordic Standards" while cherrypicking the absolute worst option in every case.
Calling bullshit right away. I bet that if I look it up, Finland is not saying "goodbye" to it's social programs. It's probably cutting SOME costs or replacing SOME programs with others.
@@MrMarinus18 I think you're confusing social democrats with "democratic socialism". The Nordic countries aren't any more socialist than the USA or Japan. They have elected representatives, a separation of powers, the right to own property, the possibility to have businesses and contracts and employ people and trade goods and so on. Swedes and Norwegians don't see themselves as socialists.
The 'funny' thing is that a system with proper social services worked excellent in many European countries for a good amount of time. It's only when 'the profit motive' became ever more 'important' that it all suddenly became 'too expensive'.
@@SphincterOfDoom Health insurances started out as labour initiatives from various industries in the 1800's. Come 20th century, the government added additional rules to allow even the poorest to have access to a health insurance. These policies started out - and grew through - SOCIAL policies. Come 21 century, and health insurances became far more privatized. This resulted in significant reductions of elements that got covered, chief among them the costs for dental care - these are now available at a premium or out-of-pocket. Healthcare personnel has seen their workload shift from actual care work to at least 25% administrative work due to excessive controlling by the privatized insurance companies, reducing the actual care being given and raising the cost of care. None of which ended up in the salaries of healthcare personnel. This is just a brief glimpse in the history if my native country. How is this 'not substantiated'?
@@Celis.C Key thing you're overlooking is that "healthcare" isn't some static thing over time. comparing healthcare now to the 1800s without accounting for that is misleading as well as stupid. There is ZERO evidence government funded healthcare is more efficient. All claims to that effect rely on cherry picking data, or just making outright asinine comparisons like you did. None of them are comparing apples to apples
Not only does means testing sometimes lead to welfare policies where working is punished, but it actually increases the administrative costs of providing support. Would be interesting to see the numbers on how many more people could receive the unemployment benefit with the money saved by not paying people to evaluate whether someone deserves the unemployment benefit.
@@thetaomegatheta absolutely not, the amount of markets and money that can be created and inserted when the industry is out of the hands of the government is to great to bear
Never subbed and supported a channel as fast as this. When someone presents a calm, evidence supported argument that cuts through all the bullshit, and reminds you of your real values in such a practical way. Idk if you want to be associated with “breadtube” or not but your voice is a welcome addition in this conversation as far as I’m concerned.
my ex-mother in law was homless. she got pneumonia every year & had to have emergency surgery that costed around a million dollars every time, every year. I knew bc when she got taken to the hospital they'd send her bills to us trying to get us to pay it until they just defaulted & sent the bill to the state the cost of housing her? about $9,000 a year. we weren't saving money by not housing her, we were paying roughly $991,000 a year for the society-improving privilege of, forcing a woman to sleep on the sidewalk
@@jdtreharne Homeless people tend to have a variety of mental health issues that makes them very difficult to live with and make them flighty on their own accord. If it was as simple as, "sure, you can just stay in the spare room until you get your act together"... they wouldn't be homeless.
@@whatisrokosbasilisk80around 31% of U.S. homeless have significant mental health issues, which means most don't. For many homeless, having a temporary place to live is extremely helpful.
@@personmcdudeguymost people WANT to be homeless. I've worked with the homeless and before I did I used to be feel bad for them but after doing such I do not anymore. There is a rare few who want the help 😂 it's an easy life begging for money, doing drugs, getting free food, and having an open schedule all day to do nothing but bs around.
@@unlearningeconomics9021 Also keep an eye on audio levels - the volume for quote clips is sometimes much lower than the narration. For example, the Peter Lindert quote at 1:10:45
As a Canadian, hearing "the city of Manitoba" is hilarious because almost all the population is condensed in Winnepeg, its capital. It may as well be the city of Manitoba.
seeing this as a french person is sometimes absurd because even if our system is far from perfect, we have a sort of universal healthcare, a minimum insurance for everyone (cmu), unemployment insurance, pension insurance and so on. our social security is one of the best thing my country has (and is slowly destroying thanks to neoliberal policies). This is why everytime i learn about medical Care, pensions, etc in the US i'm always terrified because it causes poverty, precarity, bad health, etc but could be (partially) resolved by having a different system. i know i'm saying all of this from a french perspective so it seems obvious and easy for me while it's really not, but i think that it can be seen as some sort of evidence that this type of solidarity can work (even if it is not to the extent of the UBI described)
@OsirusHandle It is still higher than basically every other country with Universal Healthcare, but try again, French apologist. I mean, at least they have strong unions, so the transit workers can strike at will and shut down the whole country...right????
@@bftjoe Sure, and the people are miserable because of it... smth like 70% of the US would be immediately bankrupted if they had any medical emergency. even your ambulance rides rip you off.
The rich find it unfair that the poor get handouts, while conveniently forgetting that most of them are only rich because they got everything handed to them.
Especially when they """""""""""""earn"""""""""""""" their money by owning the work of other people because they already happened to have money to own a business in the first place.
Hypocrisy of conservatives isn't a bug but a requirement. They need to "conveniently forget" a whole lot more than how they got rich. They basically have to ignore and deny how reality works completely. If they start a sentence with something that is correct, I guarantee you that what follows is nothing but manipulation and lies, possibly by omission. Sincerity is a luxury that only "the poor" can afford because they benefit the most from being loved and respected for who they are and what they actually do, and "the poor" can't lose any power and are rarely the target of smear campaigns. The rich and powerful have to constantly watch their backs and distrust their "friends". They necessarily rely on leverage. They can't possibly imagine that someone would help another because it's really nice to do. We tend to think we're a burden if we ask someone a favour, but when we are asked a favour (that we can help with, with little or no cost to ourselves) we feel it as a gift to us that we're thought of and that we can be helpful. I think we owe those poor "rich and powerful" people a little more compassion and that instead of anger we should show pity and remind them that they do have power but no practical understanding of how to use it to benefit themselves or others. And if they show that they don't care and want to mess up for short term gains for themselves anyway, by all means, get angry and say it out loud. It's a natural response and a healthy discouragement to sociopathic willful ignorance.
ugh thank you for bringing up EE. I watch his videos and sometimes he says something that makes me go "um wtf no?" but I'm not an economist so I'm never really sure.
The problem with many economists is that they try to find a simple pattern and then apply it to the real world and when the pattern doesn't fit it's not the pattern that's wrong it is the world.
@@PinHeadSupliciumwtf That and frequent ignorance or avoidance of socioeconomic factors. "You really should have thought of that before you became peasants." I was reading a paper the other day where the authors were like 'we have no idea why X happened. None at all. It can't be determined. We won't even try. Moving on...' 🙄
Really enjoyed the focus on healthcare, obviously ha. I have some thoughts, but don't pretend to have a sound understanding of the economic ins and outs - particularly of health insurance (as it's still quite unusual to need/have in the UK), so that was very interesting. I do sometimes wish we could ignore the UK and US when having conversations about healthcare, it's that classic anglophone bias, because there are so many countries that do it better than both. I also thought the link between political affiliation and public health initiatives was worth emphasising - most people think the powerful antivaccine (not necessarily COVID vaccine) lobby coming mostly from the right wing as something to do with "conspiratorial thinking" or "bodily autonomy" but if you view vaccines as a powerful public health initiative to improve the health of the population, it's easy to see why they oppose it without considering any actual ideas about vaccines themselves, they simply oppose large government plans in most forms. Then of course, vaccines themselves have additional emotional baggage...but let's not get into that right now. Enjoyed the increased production too, looking good!
The same people in the US going on about large government being bad and bodily autonomy being good are stripping half the population of that autonomy and saying the government gets to choose what doctors do. It’s hard to take those arguments (in the US specifically) seriously. Also, so fun to see you here! Love your channel, and you are correct, the constant focus on a couple of places leads to ethnocentric echo chambers. Which I just contributed to in my first statement, but I just lost a fallopian tube because of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, so I’m pissed at the double speak.
the 1 good thing about Turkey is that literally no one advocates against welfare or government benefits in general, seeing brits and especially americans argue against their best interest is both hilarious and sad at the same time, like just get the pros and go man whyd you gotta complain minorities are getting fed tonight😂😂
Some people would rather shoot themselves in the foot in the oft chance that the ricochet hit their perceived enemy. Those people are insane and spreading it to others because it gives their in-group a real enemy rather than a faceless system to dismantle.
I also find the arguments against arts to be very short sighted and market centric. Not everything needs or should have a market value. We should invest in art because art matters to our society and our culture.
So happy to have discovered your channel! The two first mandates of Lula in Brazil absolutely corroborate the idea that cutting poverty just pays off, period. While I think it’s so important to document and have data to clearly demonstrate those effects, it also deeply bothers me that something so damn self-evident has to be argued over and over and over again. The reason why the owning class keeps pushing austerity at front isn’t even their own financial gain I think; it’s their own sense of control and superiority over an inferior class. "At least I’m not a bum!"
That's an interesting argument. I think it's really hard to pinpoint a single reason, though. Maybe that was one of the reasons, but by now they probably don't care about reasons or logic or stats, they just don't want anything to change since they're doing fine. I honestly can't fault their class for this thinking, it's to be expected. What is baffling is how much of the wage laborer class still believes that messaging..
Basically says all the things I've been saying for a while now. Also happy to see Economics Explained get taken down a peg and especially by someone else with an economics background.
People who get through childhood into adulthood, costing hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars worth of real productivity to raise, only to not be afforded even the most basic preventative medicine in adulthood. How could anyone think that's economically efficient?
I don't watch all EE's vids or even enough to be considered a regular viewer, but I suspect the reason EE assumed that UBI would cause inflation is because it increases the velocity of money. From what I remember EE's analysis was really generalized and as such they ended up using just the base principles that get thrown around, without room to use empiricism. This is a good example of why I prefer your channel and Econoboi nowadays.
The scale of it never comes into question relative to stimulus aimed at banks and large companies, either. The inflation in asset prices that happened on the front side of the pandemic was a primer on the Cantillon effect, when low interest rates, low taxes etc led to a run on assets, stock buybacks and whatnot. That's a type of stimulus in itself even though it doesn't come from taxpayers: it's literally printing money. $1500 for individuals is not. The latter has no effect on inflation, and came too late to help the people much.
@@Pensnmusic business ALWAYS raise prices, that's literally what they do. businesses exist to transfer wealth from a general populace to the owner class, who want money for nothing.
One thing that really frustrates me with many of those strongly against such programs is the rampant hypocrisy, the attitude of benefits for me but not for thee. My mother likes to talk about how when she was in school her family couldn't afford school lunches and their packed lunches were often severely lacking, her parents wouldn't apply for them to receive free/reduced lunch because of pride (even though in her opinion they'd "earned" it because of her father's military service), but the lunch ladies would often give her free school lunches anyway. Suggest to her that quality school lunches should be freely provided to all school children without relying on their parents willingness/ability to jump through hoops to qualify and you'll get a whole rant about there being no such thing as a free lunch, how that would be teaching kids to expect something for nothing, and the tax burden on upstanding citizens to feed the undeserving. Apparently in her world whether a child without lunch money should still receive a quality lunch depends on the morality of their parents poverty, as if children choose to be born to terrible parents.
I wholeheartedly agree!! MY grandparents came to visit and would not stop talking about how "Free meals for children was destroying their state" and all I could think was, are you listening to yourself right now???? how could you possibly be against children never having to deal with food insecurity which is a major problem in america, which is entirely dumb since we produce tons of food and are literally one of the "richest economies". our children are starving and you are worried about how much of our tax dollars it would take??? I donate like 30 dollars a month to feed children because while I didn't have food insecurity due to poverty, the system for school lunch I was put in was not built for a family like mine. my family has a history of unmanaged neurodivergence which means I would forget to tell my mom I was low on lunch money (It was all online, I had a little fund that I would take out of) and if my mom forgot to check every few months (common because during this point in my life she was dealing with some pretty severe depression) then I would rack up school lunch debt and eventually they would stop feeding me. My school did have an alternative lunch for students who couldn't pay, but it was literally two slices of disgusting bread and a slice of kraft cheese. cold. I have sensory issues and related disordered eating and this only exacerbated my issue. I have never blamed my parents for this, but it definitely is a weird feeling to have enough money for food but no access to it. so familiar to food deserts and forced poverty I see prevalent in this country, and it breaks my heart.
I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is that money is only half the problem. High government spending is only as good as the quality of that spending. If you trust the government to make good decisions, high spending is a good thing; if the government can’t be trusted, you should be skeptical of the spending, and if the government is inept, they should not be allowed to spend. Personally, there are many bureaucratic institutions within the government I have faith in, specifically in the scientific realm; however, there are equally as many I think are inept at best and harmful at worst. Skepticism of the government is necessary to keep it accountable, because at the end of the day, a complacent populace keeps the elites in power, while a skeptic populace is more likely to limit their power in some way.
Obviously any legislation that implements it should call it Universal Zesty Income. Not because it makes sense, but because then the acronym would be UZI, which would lead to countless rap songs with lines about spending UZIs on Uzis, and there surely is no brighter utopia than that.
@@breakingboundaries3950 This post was a joke. We absolutely should do UBI, partially because almost no one would actually spend it on Uzis or any other guns, and even attempting to restrict it in that way would cost more than it would save, and it would reduce all crime that was caused by anxiety induced by extreme scarcity. But, even in this regard: we would absolutely still have songs glorifying violence under a UBI, they would just be more fantastical in that they are now performed in a society with much less violence, the same way that Finland produces most of the world's black metal which has extremely gruesome themes in spite of the fact that Finland is literally the least violent country on planet Earth.
This is an incredible comment and I shudder to think that this is how your mind works on a day to day basis. I also, wholeheartedly, agree. Thanks for the giggle.
something that I worry about as a leftist is that a truly universal UBI can be easily counteracted by rent or necessities becoming more expensive if a government doesn't regulate things like housing.
@@ryuko4478 its very hard to talk about anything spicy without being sent to the shadow realm. As long as you do not put those ideas down i think just undoing some of the capitalist conditioning (how many stupid things do people believe without ever realising they make no sense? I know i did) helps the cause
@@ZealothPL My original comment is a very very clear example of something that needs to be answered but is ignored, there are many examples of things like that that UE is either deathly terrified of touching anything radical with a 10 yard stick or just not radical at all (radical for an economist is a low bar for the rest of the population). All of his ideas begin and end at what is possible through reform despite all the evidence that reform wouldn't be simply allowed, governments aren't refusing those ideas out incompetence, they are refusing those ideas because they conflict with their class interests.
I only view UBI as a stop gap imo. It's a harm reduction measure that would inevitably return to the status quo, but much like the covid stimulus checks, it simply gives people a moment to reflect on their lives and act accordingly. That is the moment of weakness in which revolutions are built.
These policies are so under-represented in US Politics that I've been tempted to run for office. This would obviously not go well because I am nobody of importance, but I just desperately need more people to represent these obviously beneficial policies. It is not moral to steal from the poor to give to the rich. It is not moral to condemn people to poverty or death because we can't be troubled to put our own best interests ahead of our disdain for the lower caste.
Denmark is an interesting case, here university is both free and you get a basic income to pay rent and live for. However governments continously cuts and reduces these benefits to the point where the basic income is no longer as useful, for example you can currently have 7 years of payments, but they want to make it 5 years only. This means that if you pick a wrong education 1 year in and change, youre screwed for your last exam year in your 5 year education. Worse people may only do their bachelor that takes 3 years instead of doing the full 5 year education
Does it continue to pay out even after receiving the degree? As in, you only need 4 years for your particular goal and it keeps paying out for an extra 3 years despite you having entered the workforce? If so, then just make it dependent on being in university, why cut the total possible timeframe, that's just shortsighted.
as a fellow health anxiety sufferer, yes holy shit just giving me peace of mind with a universal health care plan was a lot better than losing weeks of work because of hyper anxiety
If you have "health anxiety", wouldn't you get good health insurance anyways? Why do you need to be literally forced to buy health insurance if you're anxious about it?
@@MrCmon113theory: not everyone can afford great health insurance, especially in America. This comment has real “why don’t homeless people just, like, buy a house? Why do they want to sleep on the streets? Ew” energy
The main problem with trying to fix healthcare in the US is that it would require looking at how much everything else sucks. Our healthcare is so shit people end up homeless trying to pay the bills, and we have 8x as many empty houses as homeless people because big corporations buy up any affordable properth to rent out and just hold onto it until they can make more profit from it, and those businesses aren't held to any scrutiny thanks to endless corporate lobbying in our government, which has much more of an effect when our senators and representatives just sit in office until they die of old age because nobody bothers voting for them. And nobody can get to the polls because that would require taking time off work, which could cost them enough in wages that they miss rent, leading them to become homeless.
the dismissive tone of his description there felt like a bit much for something you could get an easy answer from if you asked like any canadian with political interest.
The main issue I have with people like Thomas Sowell and Yaron Brookes is that they bring up legitimate critiques of the welfare system, but their solutions aren’t to find a better means of redistributing wealth, but rather to end redistribution altogether. NO! We’ve tried that before. It has never worked and it will never work. They’re trying to run the economy like a gold standard, and you can’t run a gold standard in a democracy and expect to get re-elected again. It really reminds me of the Winston Churchill quote on democracy - “democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried.” The current welfare system sucks, but it’s been far better than no welfare system. There could be a better system out there, but we haven’t found it yet. Removing what we have without knowing a better solution is only going to make things worse.
They both preach laughably outdated economic doctrines. Yaron Brooke is a baby-brained Ayn Rand worshipper. Right libertarians unironically smile upon the guilded age as a proper economy.
Though with healthcare the main reason the US system is bad is corruption. The reason why people pay so much for such poor service is because health insurance companies and big pharma are bribing politicians to keep it that way. They also pay hugely into influencers like Thomas Sowell and think tanks like the Heritage foundation as well as news outlets like Fox to spread propaganda about the evils of universal healthcare.
The thing about those "legitimate critiques" is that it presupposes the psychology/sociology principles taught in econ 101 courses, which doesn't reflect how humans and society actually function. Just gesturing broadly toward "the incentives!" is not a valid critique of welfare systems because humans are more complicated than that. Only a sociopath lives entirely through reward and punishment, and it's sociopaths pushing this view of humanity.
Whilst free stuff is excellent, what we need is a way to incentivise politicians to actually make sure that free stuff works well. I think that a politicians salary should be tied to the median wage so that they have to improve the economy if they want more money.
Yes this would remove financial corruption as a motivator since it would be a step-down in lifestyle and therefore the motivation would be either helping people in the area... or personal power to harm people in the area, but at least those 2 things CAN be detected and judged through a legal system where wealth can't. Also proportional representation banning of gerrymandering and a local tax proportioning (like the nordic model where proportions of the tax have to be spent in the area it's earned). These simple 3/4 policies would fix so much of the system it's crazy
@@StuartAtkinson4467 Financial corruption would still be a motivation if a politician had an alternative source of income, but it would at least reduce the problem and make it a lot easier to deal with. I definitely agree with proportional representation, it's massively helped. The only issue with the Nordic model is that it doesn't prevent companies exploiting labourers in poorer countries, but that can be fixed too with sanctions and regulations on company supply chains. I hope that one day these few policies, and more, can be a global standard.
@@moth5799 That is only half the issue with the Nordic model. The other half is that it doesn't work without a lot of that outsourced exploitation. And the other magical third half is that it doesn't prevent the state itself from canibalizing the welfare system everytime the rich feel like they've enough flow of educated labor, or they just have yet another fit.
@@louisvictor3473 These are all issues that can be fixed, though it will require some harsh policies that most of the public would not vote for. Tying a politician's salary to the median wage would help avoid them destroying the welfare system, but of course no politician will ever want to implement that. As for outsourced exploitation it can work without it, but the population will have a lower quality of life. The fact is that if we want to avoid callous exploitation of poorer countries we're going to need to take a hit to our living standards, but I just don't see how we're going to get a public to ever vote for that. I would gladly have to pay more for products if it means that they were produced with more fairly paid labour, but that's never going to happen :/ Currently what people lucky enough to be successful and in a first world country can do is to try and prosper using that privilege, but then donate that money to charity. I donate 1/4 of my income at the moment to Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières and Ukraine, and am hoping to be able to donate more once I get a good job after graduating uni. We can all donate a little bit and help third world countries develop just a little bit faster. Alternatively you can also spend that money on influencing politics in your country for the better, both are great options.
@@moth5799 You can't fix them that way The issue isn't what the salaries of our politicians is tied to (it is already not that high comparative, pretty median income). Salary and corruption aren't the only forces of an electoral system. And if your "solution" is a hypothetical one that even by your own standards won't happen, that is not a solution. Also, "it can work but worse" is the definition of no, it cannot work without said exploitation., that is just poor word play. This is the fundamental problem. People in here and elsewhere keep trying to patch this less bad alternative so far, but the reality is, any fix will have to be much more drastic than a mere patch you can write down on a youtube comment section. It is a better version of the system with some room for improvement, sure, but it is still a version of the system with the some rot at the core, and addressing root problems rewuire more than merely patching it, even if the patch is really elaborate.
I would like to offer a different perspective, an opinion that is not based on Western culture and history. First of all, I'd like to talk about innovation and inventions. Nowadays, almost every argument against treating innovation and inventions as public goods is it will stunt progress. Profit is the reason that we can live a comfortable live today. In fact, if there's no capitalism, people won't be motivated to invent. However, I don't think that is necessarily true. Because before capitalism, there was at least a group of people that I know who had invented so many things that it sounds like pseudo-history. I am talking about Imperial China. A lot of Chinese inventions were invented not because of the inventors' desire to make profits. Most, if not all, were invented mainly to benefit the public. In fact, there are only a handful of inventions whose inventors are known. Some may argue that actually Imperial China acted like a capitalist when they monopolised silk and paper production. This statement is completely ungrounded as there was evidence that Korea, Japan, Vietnam and India had their own silk industry way before the "Justinian monks smuggle silkworms to Constantinople" myth. The same thing goes to the "China made paper production a national secret to gain profit" BS. The Japanese knew how to make their own paper and had a flourishing paper industry a century or so after China's. And speaking of paper, Chinese painting is mostly done on paper instead of canvas. And for centuries, the greatest Chinese paintings were made by Chinese scholars as ways to express themselves. Those paintings were not meant to be sold or presented to the emperor. So unlike in the West, it was not common for art to be made because of endorsements from patrons. I am not an expert in Chinese paintings, however I know that those depictions of middle-aged men's flurry of emotions are highly-prized. Lastly, since the video talks about shows and plays, I'd like end this up with Chinese plays. Chinese plays flourished during the Yuan dynasty (around 13th century). In its barely a century of existence, it produced more than 200 playwrights with at least 700 plays. Why did Chinese suddenly got interested in writing plays? The reasons varied, but non of them were driven by profit. Yes, non of them created a theatre company or wrote for the emperor or court. In fact, playwrights were not viewed highly that probably a handful of them were even given any bureaucratic titles. I made this long-winded comment not show off Chinese culture. It's just to provide a different perspective, that a lot of argument against free stuff is conjecture at best, with no convincing real world examples. On the contrary, history has provided multiple reasons to believe profit may not really be the contributing reason why we are here today.
@@VeteranVandal He didn't suck at economics. He just had a different purpose for economics than the average person. We like to pretend that economics is built to mediate and improve the wellbeing of the citizens. He believed economics should be built to improve the wellbeing of the already-wealthy. Its not that he didn't understand where all that money he wanted to give to his rich buddies would come from - ie: the poor and middle class - its that he just didn't care. His goal was moving money from the bottom to the top, and he was _very_ successful at doing so, with his ideas still running most of our economy today - to the detriment of everyone who isn't named Bezos, Musk or a very small handful of others.
@@MrCmon113 In what way? Do you have an actual argument to back that assertion up? The only way I can read any of what I said as "wrong" is if your definition of "wrong" is "doesn't blindly support the status quo". But that's not an argument, that's just ideology. A stupid ideology to boot given how much suffering the current status quo causes around the world.
0:40 "the bigger the gov the smaller the citizen" the classic liberal understanding of the gov being somehow "above" and "separate" from the citizenry (and thus from the classes) despite somehow also being "democratic" (hakim vid moment)
"There's no such thing as a free lunch" is very applicable to physics. But a government is not handing out free lunches - it is investing in its citizens, so that in future they will be more productive workers and thus be able to pay it more taxes. In other news, if you feed your cows more, they'll give you more milk. And they don't mind that they're giving you more milk because they're well fed and happy cows and the milk is part of the deal that gives them more food.
Great video. My grandfather benefited from some free education programs in his retirement. As an immigrant, with limited English, who risked many mental health problems in his later years, especially problems associated with social isolation, he stood to gain a lot from these courses. Still, he felt it was a total rort and he was taking the piss doing 4 different technical college courses in a row to celebrate his retirement. Not only did these courses allow him to earn some income on the side, using his new graphic design skills to contribute to community magazines, and not only did they give him technological skills that meant he didn't feel threatened by the rapid growth of the role of technology and computers in society, but they also gave him a lot to bond with his grandchildren over. The return to the taxpayer in terms of revenue, was probably negligible, in terms of health outcomes, perhaps there, but speculative.... But those courses had a profound impact on his quality of life in his later years as he lived in a foreign country, having given everything away so his children and grandchildren could have a better life. If we acknowledge his low capacity to provide a return to the economy, and agree these courses were a burden at the far end of the "diminishing returns" side of the "free education provides a benefit" scale, what the hell kind of society would we be if a, we didn't acknowledge the debt we owe him, for bringing a high-tax-paying family into the country, and b, if we thought it was somehow ok to leave him to languish in isolation? What's the point of a country's wealth if it can't give fulfillment and happiness?
Love that example of what to do with retirement! Let me remember… seems like Mississippi and California are two states where retirees get free college like that.
Great video! I always saw UBI as a way for people to work less and get out of meaningless work, with the idea that right now with everyone being forced to work, we have an access of labour. But knowing that people end up working more but on what they want realy means there's no downsides at all. Unwanted work would just by market forces end up paying more, instead of being put on people who have no other choice. Perhaps to the point where automation of these unwanted jobs becomes economically viable
Exactly, I know many people who have backgrounds the arts (this includes game dev, the field im in). People are forced to work jobs they don't want to make ends meet, inwould rather have these people work on things they are passionate about.
american who grew up living on food stamps here, the reason incomes are lower is because food stamps are income conditional, if you make too much you get cut off so families on it are afraid to cross the line and lose money in total. i saw this happen a couple times where mom refused promotions and better job offers because we'd lose multiple different government benefits including food stamps.
@@broyberbez it just keeps people poor though, if it wasn't means tested and it was just a thing every american got as a universal program then we would never have needed to worry about losing our food supply if mom got a better job, and people could leave jobs they hate and aren't good for which would improve economic efficiency. food stamps should be a universal program.
@@cageybee7221 No, because they can get a get a better job that makes up for that difference, no one is forcing someone to stay on a specific program, richer people in a society can take care of themselves with the tax cuts they get
@@broyberbez that's not how promotions and raises work. you move up slowly, for alot of people moving up means losing benefits but not gaining enough to replace them.
@@cageybee7221 Wrong, there’s no universal law as of this, and if your boss cares about you enough they’ll make the difference, food stamps are very low in America, making up the difference isn’t that far
My only issue with public spending. Is the gross negligence and over spending on things thay do not directly help the issue that is "trying" to be solved. Outside if that i find public spending to be a huge positive despite the glaring issues that can be fixed. A lot of the money that goes into american education gets straight up wasted. If the public was allowed to see all the financial records and conduct audits of where the tax money went and why. Maybe it would keep our institutions more honest. But i dont trust anything government run. They have a budget and they will spend all the money wastefully because if they dont. They wont get that same ammount or more later when they say they do not have enough funding. It is why donating to some charities grinds my gears when i know at best half of what i gave is going to the person or situation in need.
Or that fun little thing they do where they tell you taxes are for something good like schools but theyll attach a clause to it that says a chunk of it will go to fund the industrial military complex. That's not even a joke, I saw that as an option to vote on one time.
There’s no such thing as free stuff. This is government investment in the future of the country, and it is ultimately a good thing. If we want good services, we have to be prepared to invest in them collectively.
If you can't make a profit by eating food then why would you do it? That's just a huge waste of money and you're going to go broke. What do you mean food is necessary to continue life and therefore despite not having a positive profit is necessary to contribute to society because not eating causes you to die? Just stop eating.
I have been desperately trying to remind people that social spending isn't just about charity, or even justice, it's about making society objectively better, even in ways no conservative would dispute - e.i. higher profits, competitiveness, and public safety. The Left has no excuse for not spreading these facts.
What degree of social spending? Having a tank, a warship, a couple of policemen, medical emergencies covered, food for the homeless - most people agree with that. But flute classes for children, PhD programs for Hungarian literature, publicly funded theatres... The people in the comments seem to think that more government spending is always better no matter what.
I work as a pharmacist in a country with universal healthcare, though we do still have a strong private care industry. I can tell you for free that private healthcare prescription-wise isn't better at all, most private doctors seem to write scripts that I need to call to get corrected, like not putting a quantity on an oxycodone script, or forgetting instructions on a vital medication. Also ran into a lady that told me her private specialist gives her prescriptions without a date written so she can put a date on it whenever she needs it, which is highly illegal, at anytime their health condition could change and make those medications possibly seriously dangerous
When it comes to the question of incentive to provide free stuff... even just at the intro of the video it's struck me for a long time that, to a government, population is one of the three most fundamental sources of its power (besides Land and Capital/Development.) Importantly, people are what actually _do_ things. The more people a society has, the more capable those people are as individuals, and the better the people are at working together, the more powerful the society as a whole becomes. Free stuff both makes people more capable, via either new skills or more free time that can be spent on things that aren't necessities of life, and also more willing to work with who ever gave them that free stuff. It's only natural then, that a government that sees itself as an organ of the greater body of society should follow the logic of giving out free stuff.
Damn dude, just killing. Thank you for this. I work in healthcare in the USA and find it hard to filter my experience into an argument that lay people understand. But this video has done it.
9:13 I went through a similar scheme in Ireland. I got into university with grades below the minimum for my course, as well as getting grants from the gov and the eu. Graduated with the second highest grades out of my classmates in my degree and now work for the government so they're getting not only my tax but my expertise 🎉
the fact that it takes so much of a long process and oftentimes requires the use of a lawyer to get disability payments in the united states is quite an abysmal process for literal disabled people. the process is made as intentionally opaque as possible so that as little money goes to the people that need it as possible. also requiring disabled people wait as long as 365 days for benefits to begin which is so long that they could end up homeless or die when giving them benefits first would have saved their homes and lives.
I will forever love Aneurin Bevan, a Welshman and a Labour man, for enacting the NHS into Parliament and therefore law, and starting off one of the things were proudest of 😊🎉 (present stresses notwithstanding)
The UBI experiments in Manitoba and Ontario were both cancelled after a change in government. I can't speak for the Manitoba experiment in the 70s, but when the Ontario Conservative Party was pressed for answers why they didn't continue the UBI pilot, or didn't at least analyze the data, the new premier would only say he didn't believe in it, simple as that. I think a more accurate answer would be he knows the results won't help him politically.
people who complain that the "government isn't run like a business / market" is just euphemism for "the government isn't being authoritarian and hierarchical enough" because I dunno if you figure it out but workplaces, business, the market are inherently hierarchical and anti democratic under our current system. And I thought that the whole point of having a democracy is that everyone has a voice and enjoys the fruits of having an organized and united population. Fantastic video btw
The American Moto: Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the poor. Coorporations get bailed out and loaned to all the time, yet its still an argument how the other 95% of the population should be treated
Such a good video. So much work to produce it! Thank you for your service. And thank you for your pointed critique of Economics Explained. Naming them and addressing them directly is, I think, more effective than just talking generically about the failures of neoliberal orthodoxy or dusty intellectuals from the 1950s. They *are* a very popular channel, and they should do better by their viewers. You're showing what better looks like.
I usually find it very hard to understand these topics, but I love that your videos are so long and you take so much time explaining every single bit, while also making it sound interesting to someone from the arts like me hahaha Thank you so much!
Everyone should have access to the basics needed to be maximally productive. Safe housing, healthy food, safe water, clean air, adequate health care (especially preventative health care), and enough education to perform the jobs available in the society. Denying masses of people access to these necessities is just self-destructive. And the idea that people won’t work to achieve more than these bare minimums (once said education is achieved) is foolishness. Nobody will be satisfied with bare existence if working for some extras is a possibility. Of course, people might not choose to work 60-80 hours a week… 🤔
Problem in the USA is that usually you get health insurance through your work. Your job usually has one provider but may have multiple options from the same insurance. You don’t get to choose who you get it from
Health insurance in the USA isn't even health insurance. It's just discount vouchers for healthcare "products" that have been marked up 1000%+ already.
Seeing that quote at 1:02:30 makes me feel emotional, because you can, in some people's experiences of receiving UBI, almost see a glimpse of that light, a light of a genuine FREEDOM and PURPOSE. It lifts you. That's what socialism means to me, the freedom for ALL people to live how they want to, not at the expense of others, but for reaching our own individualised limits on our own shared terms with the help of others we love around us. To one way or another build a better future through a recognition of what each one of us can provide, whether that's being a genius or a hard worker, or a great leader or great listener, or even being someone who's just nice to be around. That is what I want.
I really appreciate your light hearted humor. It keeps it from being textbook dry without alienating anybody that is open to the information but may not agree at the start. Preaching to the quire about the villainous other does not win anybody over. But if they can’t take a light hearted jab, they are going to get offended by the factual data being debated. I really appreciate what I think is an intentional balance here.
Regarding this part: "Pensions and aging populations represent a genuine fiscal challenge for most countries in the future. The number of people working is going to fall relative to the number of dependent on people who are working." This has been the case since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and we have carried on relatively fine until recently. The rise of productivity per person enabled by technological development allows to support a larger non-working population without a perceived decrease on the standard of living for workers, provided the price of work doesn't stagnate and the state continues to adjust tax rates. However, with a disempowered working class, the wages for large sections of the population aren't keeping up with inflation, and with liberal governments everywhere that want to cut down government spending and ensure the amount of available workers in the labor market stays as high as possible, they choose to adjust retirement age rather than tax rates.
What I don't understand is why they think tax-advantaged private investment schemes are somehow a solution. The demands placed come from their spending and it makes no difference if the source is government pension or private profits. After only 2 generations, such schemes are already creating distress due to the unchecked accumulation of private property.
I am no economist, but here's as I understand it. A billionare will never spend billions, so giving them millions means that million is never spent. It is money lost from the system. If you however take that money and give it to several hundred poor people, they will spend it on many things. It is money used. Money used is money invested. Money invested grows the economy. In a country's best interest, it would be to spread money as evenly as possible to make sure that as much money is spent as possible. As long as the wealth flows, the economy grows. It does not require advanced investments from bankers, just workers spending their money earned. They can buy, company must produce more to meet demand, they must then hire more workers, workers can then spend more, workers now dictate the terms as the need for workers skyrockets. The only one that TRULY loses here are the wealthy cretins that will no longer hold dominion.
i'm australian and it's crazy to think that if we didn't have a couple of key politicians in the 60s & 70s, sooo many of the public/social services i take for granted could have very easily just have never existed and i can't imagine ever actually being able to be passed today because oh no money and economy oh no!
@@swampgod I'm American who lived in Australia for 13years but now I live in New Zealand as my mom is kiwi, I love America and I really want to live there but without universal healthcare as a kindergarten teacher I just don't know how I could make it work financially, I appreciate Australia so much for that, I really wish my country would get it's 💩 together, but unfortunately with some of insanity that some of my fellow American believe I don't see it happening at least not in my lifetime and I'm a millennial
The public and private sector working together is something that works great in the sterile enviroment of economic theory. In practice though with fallible humans in charge the dangers of corruption, insider trading and other kinds of cheat is just too great.
UBI is given to all, and thus, unlike typical welfare that is only paid to the poor, does not function like a penalty on working, that is one of the main benefits of UBI. Working also certainly doesn't need to be the thing we tax to afford it. The best thing to tax is land, or rather we should charge for the use of land, because unlike most other taxes, it does not burden (i.e. tax) productivity, because land is not produced and is fixed in supply. The most that can happen is that it becomes less desirable to own land, which drops demand and the prices for it, whilst the same amount of land exists. However, this drop in demand is limited mostly to those who currently profit simply from owning land, like speculators and those who use their land inefficiently. Land is ultimately needed for all human activity, so there is always a certain amount of demand for it, but among those who actually use it efficiently, and thus it should still be able to provide a solid government income source that can pay for UBI and other social programs. The increased efficiency will also further stimulate the economy.
Of course free money is good, the banks found that out years ago, and the auto industry, and the oil industry. Pretty much its good for everyone but you, for you its bad.
The way you pronounced Ontario sounds like the name of a total hunk that your girlfriend knows really well and she keeps telling you not to worry about him.
I listen/watch a lot of educational/economics channels but yours is rapidly becoming one of my favorites for diving into and going over some nitty gritty details where others just gloss over. I especially appreciated this video as someone who grew up leaning a little to the right, slowly became more of a fence-sitter and am now starting to lean left.
See every side of every news story with Ground News ground.news/unlearningeconomics
You made some basic factual errors, particularly with health insurance given that most people in the United States working, are insured through self insured plans, which are paid by the employer NOT the insurer, the insurer merely acts as an administrator, so that destroys the adverse selection argument because employers ultimately will pay indiscriminately
Very good video.
@@broyberbez define 'most'
No such thing as free stuff, tax payers don't get to vote where the money goes. USA is 30 trillion in debt for wars nobody wanted. Average american only has 400 in the bank, inflation is taking all the money out of wage earners pockets, how about no more tax raises until the government can cut the fat? DO we really need the ATF, CIA, NSA, Homeland, DEA, Military bases around the world, etc etc etc?
@@broyberbez You didn't even watch the video lol
"We should run society like a business" "Okay, free education, free healthcare and UBI then, since the ROI is insane!" "No, not like that"
They mean like a gacha game business lol
Most Businesses run their internal resources on a department level in a socialist way, those who run an internal free market just die.
They want to buy and destroy the society, not improve it. They would indeed oppose things that would improve the society.
@@coonhound_pharoah dude, poverty existing is more costly than just doing a net-cost version of a UBI. Why do the more expensive, less effective thing that we are doing now?
@@NewSocialistEraVideos UBI doesn't solve poverty.
Why would anyone be surprised that happy and healthy people are more productive? If you think starvation makes people work harder, try to do hard labor on an empty stomach. Actually your brains need energy too, so it doesn't matter what kind of jobs you hold, you're not going to do well and are more likely to make mistakes if you are hungry and depressed.
Truuuuuu
Ive lost jobs over this.. i couldnt afford to eat
Mother Theresa thought that 😆 It's weird how much moralism has invaded our government decision making
The elites don't want people to be happy and healthy, because happy and healthy people won't be as willing to take as much shit from their bosses as they currently do.
@Mickey G - But I think that (and I mean this without irony) is the literal stated goal of the capital-holding class: to keep their workforce just barely productive enough to function for twenty-to-forty years, but weakened and preoccupied enough to be in too precarious a position to ever make trouble … although this is stated in more “benevolent” terms, from the 19th century claim that educating the congenitally incapable (i.e. the workforce) and giving us free time could cause insanity, to the present ideas that book-larnin’ and free time distracts women from motherhood, puts ideas in Black people’s heads, turns children trans, turns college kids communist, and just generally *tricks* people, and the perpetual idea that healthcare is wasted on people so dissolute and prone to vice as we are; the idea always is that we naturally yearn to nobly labor for minimum wage and otherwise numb ourselves with beer and the tee-vee and then die young but happy in our simplicity … but then health and education and free time lead us simpletons to get into trouble instead - in way over our heads, trying to take on the tasks (and wealth) our tireless (and wealthy) rulers so selflessly take on. So by keeping us always slightly ill and preoccupied and saddled with debt and overworked and at one another’s throats and mentally checked-out, our wealthy benefactors are doing us a favor, see? I mean, that’s how it’s framed in those circles. But the end result is the same: we’re kept rested and fed and schooled just enough to keep us working, but ideally never so peppy that we might make trouble.
"There's no such thing as a free lunch, stop giving people free stuff"
"OK we are ending corporate welfare"
"No not like that"
“No but my poor boss”
End corporate welfare now. Whoever opposes that should get out of office
Ending corporate welfare is a conservative position
@@jdtreharne I don’t think there is any person of any party who advocates for corporate welfare
@@jdtreharne yes, these people dont have a clue what they are talking about
Never forget that the internet was first created by the government because the private sector initially didn’t see it as profitable
There's a lot of up front cost to develop something new and bring it to market. Capitalism is always the worst at this. Some of the most important things to exist started as passion projects with no chance of making money.
@@TheModdedwarfare3 and we're suffering now because Capitalism saw profit in the internet, and decided to mold the thing to spit out the most profit with zero regard for others who use it
I have to constantly remind people that damn near every modern thing they like *and need* was most likely a government, publicly funded project before it became a commodity.
It is so unbelievably frustrating to have people genuinely believe the private sector is what's "driving the bulk of innovation". They come when everyone has already pitched in money and labour to build the house.
And then for some reason they're allowed to take it, trash it, then sell it back to you at a ridiculous price.
The military is more important than any capitalist is for technological innovation. All the communication tech we have today was inventedto facilitate killing and conquest.
Capitalism iterates.
People innovate.
Capitalists/neoliberals: "THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE LUNCH!!! 😡"
Also capitalists/neoliberals: "Passive Income is a totally real thing 😌"
bro this is a different income bro it's providing a service it's not free bro there's risk I promise bro it's different it's economic productivity bro trust me bro I swear
They're so hypocritical
That is the dumbest comparison I've ever heard. Free lunch and passive income. Good lord you all must be losers
The very definition of a capitalist is that they make money through what they own, rather than what they do personally.
nailed it
The fact that nearly half of Americans were misled into thinking that basic necessities were actually luxury items, and therefore shouldn’t be provided as “free stuff,” which in turn has had tremendous negative consequences on our political landscape for decades, is one of the many reasons I drink 😃
Basic nessexuties are completely subjective
@@broyberbez Things needed to physically survive: Air, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep, reproduction. Things needed for basic safety: Personal security, employment, resources, health, property.
@@-._.-KRiS-._.- Those are still subjective, because the amount is non clear, because different groups may need different things, while we can point to certain objective standards, it isn’t often enough to make a judgement call, outside of the most basic forms of it, which for the most part are guaranteed at least in some form within this world, and even then, the body can survive for s period of time without any of those things, so how do we determine that their lives were worse simply because it was less?? Ultimately it’s completely subjective
@@broyberbez The key point is in your own statement. These "basic forms" are definitely not guaranteed. It is clear to see that, for instance, minimal health care access, or relatively unpolluted air, reap great financial rewards. We can at the very least "point to certain objective standards" and start there. If we eventually have people rioting in the streets for Teslas, well, those are good problems to have. Economics is a human enterprise, and spending money on the population will not always be done well, just as private enterprise does not always produce the greatest good for the greatest number.
How do we determine that their lives are worse? We ask them. I like to call that democracy - or marketing ;^)
@@broyberbez yes, eating is subjective.
A society that cannot provide its citizens with their basic necessities without coercion has no business asking for their unfaltering loyalty, or existing in the first place. It's hardly even a moral stance, it's just a bad deal. That society has failed. The goal of civilization is to improve the quality of life of humanity, not to accumulate wealth. If only everyone recognized that.
TRUTH. Austerity politics is, ironically, pretty fucking collectivist as it asks some people to starve so the rest of us can be motivated at threat of death to work and uphold society.
Great comment.
We need to decide what is necessary and what’s not. Anything necessary should be provided by non profits. You shouldn’t get rich providing fire fighters to a population
"without coercion" can't happen with a ruling class, i.e. State, whether that state is left or right. The ruling class are only seeking power and control, and the best way to achieve that is blind the people for what is going on, to keep us divided, to spout the propaganda of one side or the other. "The Law" is nothing more than their immoral justification to violently dominate the rest of us.
Unironically how Rome fell (thst thing a good portion of these morons either admire out loud or implicitly), very long story very short.
Every single argument that goes like "but how will we pay for it" or "that's too expensive" is instantly shattered when you then ask what the budget for the military is and how is that paid.
Well no, because military funding also comes from taxpayer money which is theft. There are alot of people on earth who oppose both universal healthcare and military.
Personally I agree that our defense spending is bonkers. That said, I think military spending is a little left-coded these days. Quite the reversal from the mid-2000s.
"Sorry Ukraine, we're fresh out of arty rounds."
It’s not where the money comes from but rather whose productive capacity is going to be exploited and from where the resources are reallocated from.🤔
@@josehawking5293 They're reallocated from me to Raytheon.
Didn’t joe biden even increase it? Like, why is it getting bigger?… (sigh) that’s what she said…
people tend to agree that you need to spend money to make money when it comes to private investment but won't make the logical jump when it comes to public investment
Which is why I always use the phrase when people talk about government spending. (At least when the economic case for the program in question is clear and empirically proved - like health care!) Gotta remind them!
it‘s even a step further. no economy benefits, when the state „makes money“ since he literally makes it. so if the state in subtotal earns money that means money i taken out of the economy
The difference is that what the government spends money on typically doesn't provide a positive return, or provides a smaller return than if it just let private individuals spend their money how they wished.
@@0witw047 that's not a given, as proven by the video.
@@blasianking4827 hey, hey, don't you put your stupid facts and evidence in the way of my knee-jerk opinions!
Conservatives: "The people don't want universal healthcare!"
Liberals: "Here's some polling on universal healthcare, they clearly want it."
Conservatives: "Wait, that poll includes those who make under $400k a year, I thought we were talking about what PEOPLE think."
I love how you self defeat your own argument, the people don’t want “universal healthcare”(whatever that means) because they would stand to lose large parts of their economy, it just isn’t worth the cost risk balance overall! Also, polling on issues is far more nuanced, and ballot measures actually referendums in the topic have come short outside of the vague platitudes
@@broyberbez So let's just prefer to go with the current setup which is more costly and less effective than going to a medicare for all type of system that allows supplemental private insurance due to your bs economic reasons? Lol-
@@broyberbez What parts of their economy would they lose and why? Seems to me like the demonstrable reality is that we would simply shift how we fund large portions of healthcare. In regards to extremely expensive treatments that cannot possibly be guaranteed universally, that is where private healthcare would remain: money is for managing scarcity, not walling off abundance.
@@TheRepublicOfUngeria You don’t understand how much middlemen economics produce value especially in the United States, walking off the entire industry will cause a massive shift in what people will be able to produce
@@NewSocialistEraVideos no supplemental private insurance is unjust as well, it’s all or nothing, otherwise the private insurance will eventually weight in and defund the public one
The bit where he said "and eventually, you get 100 percent of the people paying for 100 percent of the people." And I was like... Yeah. Yes. That's the point.
Me too! :P I 'm sure in his mind that sounded like a good point for his argument, but that's exactly the kind of pooling and cooperation we need.
Capitalism is a zero-sum-game in the minds of the capitalists. They cannot fathom another way of organizing society.
Sounds good in “theory”. Reality is that 100% of the people paying are not paying an equal amount at every moment in time.
So the “time” element obscures the cost and the “(forced) cooperation” facilitates theft in the form of select individuals not being able to allocate resources to their other needs
That's terrible for them because it's currently 90% paying for 10% and they're amongst the ones getting paid.
Except the part where people don't have the same hierarchy of wants, so then it becomes political about who should be paying for what.
"There's no such thing as a free lunch." "If the product is free, you are the product."
Free and Open Source Software community: ✌️*disappaers
ABSOLUTELY
And yet most tech people are still right-wing assholes
The fandom communities and their BAZILLION free games and sometimes even whole-ass engines: *joins the FOSS community in vanishing
Every internal services department in every large corporation *vanishes in a puff of smoke* Every large corporation *falls apart within a few months*
There is exception to rule! Therefore rule is not real or applicable in any situation!
Hats off to you, my erudite friend!
My favorite jobs that I've had were in landscaping and janitorial stuff. I just liked taking care of things and helping people. Those jobs don't make any money though so here I am at a desk tracking inventory. If there was a universal income, I promise you if people are treated decently, they would do the jobs others seem to think no one would ever want to do.
@Nicholas Time everyone except those in food service who *loath* washing dishes. Rest assured that we love and respect you. There is nothing worse to me than tepid dishwater running down an extended arm towards my shoulder/armpit.
@Nicholas Time I was not trying to deny your expertise or experiences, only wanted to let you know that those of us who hate that specific job adore people like you who want to do it.
@Nicholas Time totally understandable, it seems like you've received a lot of negative feedback before.
@nicholastime1513I, as a person with depression who finds it hard to do their own dishes, am very impressed with you
honestly, if politics and bureaucracy wasn't shitted massively, I'd be serving drinks for a living lol
The problem with an educated populace is that it makes it much harder to dupe them into voting against their self interest.
somehow i doubt that sending people to schools that you control for 7~ hours a day, 200~ days a year, from ages 6-18, makes it harder to dupe them into voting against their self interest
@@green2498 If you can't understand the issues you have no chance of voting for your interest. At least with critical thinking skills you have a chance.
@@macrumpton the vast majority of people are incapable of understanding the issues, education or no, at best education helps indoctrinate people into having the stance on the issues the people controlling it desire
@@macrumpton That is intelligence not education
@@the_expidition427 Then education literally makes people more intelligent, by teaching them critical thinking skills and methods.
"Let's put aside that buying a pony is relatively affordable." Is the best factual opening takedown I have ever heard. LET'S GO!
Elinor Dashwood would disagree.
Aaaaaand… where would I put the proverbial pony in my apartment? That pony argument is SUCH a bogus smokescreen…. Prefer the smell (or lack thereof) of an AI pony projected on a screen-which yes, is very affordable.
I want a pony now xd
But also why not? If someone wants a pony let them have it? I think most people will say "no thank you".
@@laulaja-7186 The lack of smell is probably the main selling point there, isn’t it?
I don't think anyone who rants about "competition" and "customer base" in healthcare knows how most people handle medical emergencies.
If you're puking and shitting your guts out at the same time for 4 days, you don't think "I should shop around for a doctor..." you say "I need a competent doctor, right the fuck now." Then again, I'm not from the UK, so maybe it's different over there.
If your logic is that people shouldn’t be held responsible when simply bad luck falls on them, then should we compensate everyone who happens to have a factor out of their control? No, medical emergencies are rare, and it’s not very hard for people to freak up scenarios of what to do in this situation and create a contingency plan and choose the right plan as appropriate. Bruh!
@@broyberbez Medical Emergencies are not rare, accidents is the 4th leading cause of death in the world, so they are not rare at all, also strokes and heart attacks tend to happen suddenly and there are a bunch of other problems that can happen without any warnings.
I'm in a country with nationalized health care and most often than not, people tend to go to the closest hospital to them and people tend to not be good at thinking clearly in high stress situations, it may not be hard for you to create a contingency plan but it certainly it is to other people, so why make it harder?
Also, some people want to have a contingency plan and they can't because they can't afford it or other reasons, I know that if my country had no nationalized health care I would have died as a baby because my parents had no private insurance even though both of them worked.
@@bluester7177 wrong, emergencies in the United States, account for less than 1 percent of total health spending, and your second point on accidents is also false, accidents do not always require someone to be immediately hospitalized, or rushed to the emergency room, yes strokes and heart attacks can happen suddenly, but in the vast majority of cases they are absolutely preventative and it’s not like, people can’t make a provision to purchase the proper insurance which would cover the vast majority of their care in such an instance
@@broyberbez Medical emergencies are not rare, especially in a non-nationalized health care system because the preventative care that would have stopped the emergency isn't done. People wait until it's an emergency for a number of reasons.
This isn't because of bad luck. This is because the system is set up to make preventative care too expensive for most people. I know I had a biopsy my doctor wanted as a possible preventative measure. Insurance made me pay out of pocket because they didn't agree. That doesn't count the time I had to take off from work or the fact I had a copay to do anyway. So a preventative procedure cost me upwards of $300. I know people who can't afford that. So don't blame bad luck when the system is designed to make poor people question if death would be cheaper than receiving medical care.
@@bluester7177 furthermore, most insurance plans in the United States, tend to involve the local hospital near them so that is not an issue, also no as a baby you would have not died at least in the United States without insurance because there are plenty of hospitals which treat people for free and a law called EMALTA for babies, plus it is very easy to get private insurance if you work any form of job in the United States, even now if you are self employed
The “no free lunch” concept is a good example of the zero sum game vision. Like we’ve only got one limited pie, if I eat more, you’ll inevitably eat less. But that’s not accurate, the life is almost always a positive sum game, where we can bake much more pies than we’ll ever be able to eat, thanks to our synergy and cooperation.
So? You still take the resources from someone when you fund people's flute classes.
Difference is that you're also taking the resources from people against their will.
I'm cautious of those who believe contrary to this, what you've said
Yes there's long been more than enough pie for universal basic necessities. Not that the federal government has ever required a balanced budget, but a tenth of one percent tax on Wall St. speculation would cover college for everyone, for instance.
@@MrCmon113 reducing poverty benefits everybody not just the poor. more productive people makes a happier economy. id rather my taxes go towards that than funding the military, quite frankly. people get so bothered by their taxes as if that isnt meant to benefit our whole society
@@MrCmon113 Man, you must have some serious trauma from your flute classes to be constantly bashing on them in at least 4 different comments
In African nations every $1 spent on education leads to $16 in economic growth
There are people out there who think that a 1500% return on investment is a "waste of money"
What African nation?
@@ZentaBonwouldn’t it be 1500%? (Just a nitpick)
in Kenya, "nationally, the rate of return is 7.9% for primary education, 17.2% for secondary education and 32.5% for university education." pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnads069.pdf
ah yes, the nation of africa
Honestly, I was really surprised by "we shouldn't guarantee everyone a PhD". Why not? I'm from Poland, and all education is free on public universities (private universities tend to provide a lower quality of education). We're not a super rich country, but it's not a problem, and not something any politician wants to change, so it's bizarre that it could even be controversial. Also, idk how it works elsewhere, but here PhD students do research work and usually also some teaching (used to be mandatory, but isn't anymore), so they are salaried employees and I was shocked that is not the norm. The pay isn't great, but the govt also provides scholarships and 0% APR loans. After all, doing a PhD is kinda like an internship for working at the university anyway, so why should you pay them and not the other way around?
And I mean, research itself is very valuable, so the research done during the PhD and after, when you already have a PhD seems to be a massive benefit. And the university retains patents for the inventions created by its employees, if it was done as a part of their employment.
Not to mention that academia massively influences the world around it, and it is notoriously unequal, with a lot of groups criminally underrepresented. How do you propose we change that while charging for PhDs?
There's a thing called anti-intellectualism and right wing people convinced the masses that the less thinking people there are the better and simpler this complex world will be.
This is a fair point but I was speaking to the idea of universal PhDs, the same way we expanded primary and secondary education.
@@unlearningeconomics9021 Thanks a lot for the reply! I guess I didn't even think of universal PhDs, cause it's so absurd it didn't cross my mind. You did say it with a jokey kind of vibe though, so it makes sense. Thanks a bunch for clearing that up!
And by the way, I've recently finished catching up on your videos, and I really appreciate what you do. Economics education is critically needed, with pop-econ and political rhetoric void of empirical justification and full of toxic arguments where they provide a model for the result they want, quietly assume the outlandish necessary axioms, and say others don't understand economics if they disagree. Seriously, your work is essential and I'm really grateful for it - especially the video about "econ 101". Good luck and cheers!
Credential inflation
I think there's a distinction to be made between everyone *getting* a PhD, and everyone having access to get one. I'm all for everyone having the ability to freely take the doctorate path in school, but it's definitely not something everyone *should* do.
I love when people argue that we can't afford stuff because the amount of money we've (the US) just kinda lost or misplaced could pay off the national debt and then some. But if I miss a dollar on my taxes I get sent to prison and some in debt company is telling me I can't afford a mortgage so I have to pay 2x that in rent every month
That's because your social credit is low!
Exactly, or how i paid off all my student Loans for all 3 of my degrees, have no outstanding debt, only use debit cards, dont own a credit card, and do not owe a dollar to anyone on the planet, but once my fully paid off student loans aged off my credit report, my credit score which should have been an 800, dropped to a zero. I had had 30 grand in the bank but couldn't get a loan to save my life. TransUnion wanna act like i need to build up my credit history because i dont have enough information for them to calculate a score, yet at the bottom or my credit report they clearly state that they have been tracking me for 28 years. I am 47 in 8 days. My age and the fact that i have nothing derogatory, nor owe anything should speak volumes. There solution is to get a secured credit card. So basically, pre-pay a company that is going to charge me to use my own money to prove i am worthy? I've had my E*trade account for 22 years...but that means nothing? Everyone's is so freaking brainwashed and is like, "yeah, just get a secured card...blah blah to build up your credit blah". I refuse on principle alone. I shouldn't have to. The fact i have no collection accounts, and not one negative thing in my history since 2006, AND the fact that the only loans i ever took out (student loans) were paid back, in full should reflect that and speak for itself.
It's more a matter of blaming scapegoats like blacks for problems rather than seriously trying to solve them.
Austerity is so blatantly Malthusian it's scary how easy people are fooled by it.
Economists are eugenicists, and should be treated the way we treat eugenicists, change my mind.
@@Frommerman well eugenicists sometimes achieve their goals "at least" actually lol
@@zuz-ve4ro Given that their stated goals are predicated on a dismal understanding of biology, eugenecists can never accomplish them. Of course, their stated goal of uplifting humanity has less than nothing to do with their actual goal, which is the maintenance of various hegemonic orders.
Similarly, economists can never achieve their stated goals either, because they are predicated on a physicist's understanding of human behavior. Read the "basic assumptions" economists base their arguments on and the parallels to spherical cows in frictionless vacuums become clear. Of course, their stated goals of regulating human behavior and "maintaining prosperity" are also lies. Their actual goals are clearly the same as those of the eugenicists.
I expect, before the century is out, that the field of economics will experience the same culling eugenics did, and for all the same reasons.
@@zuz-ve4ro ... so do economists... :(
@@Frommerman The economists you get to hear from in the media are the ones that are on message for the media's owners.
"We can't afford it" is an excuse, not an explanation.
When I was a kid, I quickly learned that if I needed something, my parents would say "we can't afford it," but if my sister wanted something, well, the money was found somehow.
If you /must/ have something to survive, you'll find a way to pay. That's how people manage to keep going with stagnant wages even as rent and inflation eat us alive.
But oh, when you ask the rich and powerful if some of the money you give up in taxes could, say, go to things you need instead of things they want, suddenly "there's no money for it."
Why haven’t you changed that? Is that a reason or an excuse? Surely if you really wanted to you would find a way
Exactly
@@csrjjsmp this may come as a shock. No really, sit down for this.
Ok.
Ready?
Ok.
Power imbalances exist.
Hoooo ok I know that was hard. Here’s another one.
Power imbalances are usually maintained through force.
Ok?
Cool that was a fun bit. But seriously. Power imbalances exist, those who are at the top seek to maintain them, and it makes it difficult for anyone at the bottom to make changes. For the guys at the top it’s a matter of deciding unilaterally or with the help of just a few other rich people to make a change. At the bottom it’s a matter of forming a true collective of millions of people, which is inherently much harder to do, especially thanks to things like right to work laws.
Finally, what is with the thought stopping comment? What’s your point? Trying to make us all feel powerless? Reminding us that thinking about something doesn’t change anything? Reinforcing the power imbalance by discouraging collective action? Why did you even reply?
Rich people: Those poors need to learn to live within their means.
Next panel: Now excuse me while I park my boat inside my boat.
@@icedirt9658that’s a lot of excuses
UE just charging into a segment about Canada, confidently pronouncing every word wrong, calling Manitoba a city, insulting the prime minister and moving on. Honestly, bravo. It's about time those Canadians were taken down a peg or two
Edit: Also calling Alaska a province of Canada, the disrespect is PALPABLE
fr
Blame Canada, blame Canada!
Canada be like:
Lawmakers: "In a few years should run a test to figure out the viability of UBI in a possible future, but let's not make any binding decisions now."
Canadian voters: "NO UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME REEEEEEEEEE"
And the resolution to allow the study on UBI didn't go through lmao. Yeah the current system totally works, let's not even STUDY other alternatives to find out whether or not they would be better than what we have now. 🧠
@@Ashlevonimagine the progress the world would make if people didn’t have access to the news and didn’t get irrationally mad at things that could help them.
@@burkles4456 It would be a regression, unfortunately, as information and news of events is important for making good, rational decisions. It is exactly why authoritarian regimes limit access to information, or disseminate propaganda and disinformation.
The way we would make progress however, is by limiting sensationalized news, outrage bait, and both misinformation and disinformation. However, to do that directly we'd have to go against the right to freedom of speech, and that is a slippery slope towards authoritarianism, as individual biases would get in the way of weeding out bad information and news.
"Leaving a free lunch on the table"
I really like this quote.
Not an UBI per se, but I was poor and depressed for years, then I took advantage of a government scholarship program to get into trade school (where they pay you 9000$ for a 12-weeks course - 3 in the school and 9 in internship) then you continue to learn the job, but at work, for 1 year while being paid, and then you have a job), and now I am what unitedstatesians call a certified nursing assistant, love my job, and this is the happiest I ever been.
Not having to worry about bills for just a few weeks allowed me to focus on training for a skill useful to society, and now I can take good care of our collective grandparents.
@@Summit_FPS I even bought a house!
@@0744401what country?
Not gonna work in trade.
@@nightslasher9384??? They literally have this in the Highschool level in my school district for many trade Jobs. In your senior year you can even do paid commissions for school credit.
Great video, we in Finland are preparing to say goodbye to our social programmes as they are apparently "expensive", and the upcoming government is salivating at the thought of getting rid of them. It has been an unwelcome realization that social spending cannot be defended on factual basis. Cutting welfare state is an ideological matter both to neoliberal right and the social conservative right, first group doesn't care because they have enough money to buy private alternatives and the second group doesn't care because it hurts people they don't like.
Yet these are the people who claim to be "rational" and "objective"....
And the new government will run an even larger deficit 🤡
I do hope it can be fought and reversed. The Nordic countries play an essential role in validating democratic socialism in the world.
@@MrMarinus18 The trade unions have just started a campaign of strikes. Slow show of force now, I hope they will stay the course. The tripartite "negotiations" have been an absolute joke. Leftists are outraged obviously but Finns don't really do protesting, we're more likely to grit our teeth and take it.
What has been absolutely disgusting is the media. Even YLE, our public service broadcaster, is openly on the government side, running massive stories like "the people who refuse to strike" and "I'd be lynched - the students who don't participate in school takeovers". That's par for the course for the privately owned media but seeing a company that's funded by a special poll tax so openly side with a certain party (National Coalition Party) is a disgrace.
So yeah, I'm a bit disheartened but if the Unions go all the way to a general strike and the liberal Swedish People's Party gets it's act together and breaks the government there is a chance... Otherwise this is how social democracy dies. and it's done in the name of Social Democracy, all the time referring to the "Nordic Standards" while cherrypicking the absolute worst option in every case.
Calling bullshit right away. I bet that if I look it up, Finland is not saying "goodbye" to it's social programs. It's probably cutting SOME costs or replacing SOME programs with others.
@@MrMarinus18
I think you're confusing social democrats with "democratic socialism".
The Nordic countries aren't any more socialist than the USA or Japan. They have elected representatives, a separation of powers, the right to own property, the possibility to have businesses and contracts and employ people and trade goods and so on. Swedes and Norwegians don't see themselves as socialists.
The 'funny' thing is that a system with proper social services worked excellent in many European countries for a good amount of time.
It's only when 'the profit motive' became ever more 'important' that it all suddenly became 'too expensive'.
It even existed in the US with the social liberals FDR and LBJ. It's that Reagan idiot who undid it.
Tons of handwaving and no qualification or substantiation of your claim.
@@SphincterOfDoom Health insurances started out as labour initiatives from various industries in the 1800's. Come 20th century, the government added additional rules to allow even the poorest to have access to a health insurance. These policies started out - and grew through - SOCIAL policies.
Come 21 century, and health insurances became far more privatized. This resulted in significant reductions of elements that got covered, chief among them the costs for dental care - these are now available at a premium or out-of-pocket.
Healthcare personnel has seen their workload shift from actual care work to at least 25% administrative work due to excessive controlling by the privatized insurance companies, reducing the actual care being given and raising the cost of care. None of which ended up in the salaries of healthcare personnel.
This is just a brief glimpse in the history if my native country. How is this 'not substantiated'?
@@Celis.C Key thing you're overlooking is that "healthcare" isn't some static thing over time. comparing healthcare now to the 1800s without accounting for that is misleading as well as stupid.
There is ZERO evidence government funded healthcare is more efficient. All claims to that effect rely on cherry picking data, or just making outright asinine comparisons like you did.
None of them are comparing apples to apples
Man second video I've seen today critiquing EE, gives me nostalgic vibes of old RUclips response videos
Which one? Curious because the guy always rubbed me as someone a little too comfortable with status quo.
@@yserareborn "Economics Explained is Misled about Induced Demand" by Alan Fisher
@@phinks5368 Thanks!
Same here.
@@yserareborn EE is straight up a neoliberal propagandist, his videos on Soviet economy convinced me of that.
Not only does means testing sometimes lead to welfare policies where working is punished, but it actually increases the administrative costs of providing support. Would be interesting to see the numbers on how many more people could receive the unemployment benefit with the money saved by not paying people to evaluate whether someone deserves the unemployment benefit.
its always a good day when unlearning econ uploads
Always!
More like a good month
"Nobody's against free stuff, but I am, in fact, against free stuff." - [Insert generic right-ring politician]
There is no such thing as free stuff
@@broyberbezstuff literally grows on trees
@@broyberbez Everyone knowns that taxes exist. Do you have an argument that's not regurgitated from a divorced dad with a camera?
@@broyberbez
You are right.
'Free' stuff actually has negative cost compared to when people are forced to pay for it.
@@thetaomegatheta absolutely not, the amount of markets and money that can be created and inserted when the industry is out of the hands of the government is to great to bear
Never subbed and supported a channel as fast as this. When someone presents a calm, evidence supported argument that cuts through all the bullshit, and reminds you of your real values in such a practical way. Idk if you want to be associated with “breadtube” or not but your voice is a welcome addition in this conversation as far as I’m concerned.
No way, you just gave them a free donation? That's literally the Soviet Union
no way that you put subtitles in that fast. subbing takes a lot of time. I am amazed at what free things other people can get 💖
my ex-mother in law was homless. she got pneumonia every year & had to have emergency surgery that costed around a million dollars every time, every year. I knew bc when she got taken to the hospital they'd send her bills to us trying to get us to pay it until they just defaulted & sent the bill to the state
the cost of housing her? about $9,000 a year. we weren't saving money by not housing her, we were paying roughly $991,000 a year for the society-improving privilege of, forcing a woman to sleep on the sidewalk
Why didn't she stay with you?
@@jdtreharne Homeless people tend to have a variety of mental health issues that makes them very difficult to live with and make them flighty on their own accord. If it was as simple as, "sure, you can just stay in the spare room until you get your act together"... they wouldn't be homeless.
@@whatisrokosbasilisk80around 31% of U.S. homeless have significant mental health issues, which means most don't. For many homeless, having a temporary place to live is extremely helpful.
@@personmcdudeguymost people WANT to be homeless. I've worked with the homeless and before I did I used to be feel bad for them but after doing such I do not anymore. There is a rare few who want the help 😂 it's an easy life begging for money, doing drugs, getting free food, and having an open schedule all day to do nothing but bs around.
@@jdtreharneand it's because he only uses his mom as a talking point, he doesn't actually care about her 😂
Better camera placement, better lightning, better sound too! Great seeing you improve so much with each video!
I agree! The content has always been great but the videography is certainly improving.
He needs to set his lens to manual though because it often tries focusing on the background when he moves bit
@@krombopulos_michael we actually changed it to autofocus this time and agree it didn't really work out
@@unlearningeconomics9021 Also keep an eye on audio levels - the volume for quote clips is sometimes much lower than the narration. For example, the Peter Lindert quote at 1:10:45
The money he spent is already paying for itself.
As a Canadian, hearing "the city of Manitoba" is hilarious because almost all the population is condensed in Winnepeg, its capital. It may as well be the city of Manitoba.
How about "Alaska, which is also a province of Canada"
seeing this as a french person is sometimes absurd because even if our system is far from perfect, we have a sort of universal healthcare, a minimum insurance for everyone (cmu), unemployment insurance, pension insurance and so on. our social security is one of the best thing my country has (and is slowly destroying thanks to neoliberal policies). This is why everytime i learn about medical Care, pensions, etc in the US i'm always terrified because it causes poverty, precarity, bad health, etc but could be (partially) resolved by having a different system. i know i'm saying all of this from a french perspective so it seems obvious and easy for me while it's really not, but i think that it can be seen as some sort of evidence that this type of solidarity can work (even if it is not to the extent of the UBI described)
we have even more than you guys do in the uk lol. france has more regulations elsewhere though, eg. in specific farming protections and so on.
Yes, and France also has higher unemployment, lower GDP per person, productivity, etc.
@@bftjoe "I just broke my leg and am now bankrupt... ah, but at least my fellow countrymen are very productive 🤩"
@OsirusHandle It is still higher than basically every other country with Universal Healthcare, but try again, French apologist. I mean, at least they have strong unions, so the transit workers can strike at will and shut down the whole country...right????
@@bftjoe Sure, and the people are miserable because of it... smth like 70% of the US would be immediately bankrupted if they had any medical emergency. even your ambulance rides rip you off.
The rich find it unfair that the poor get handouts, while conveniently forgetting that most of them are only rich because they got everything handed to them.
80% of wealth is passed down
Especially when they """""""""""""earn"""""""""""""" their money by owning the work of other people because they already happened to have money to own a business in the first place.
NOOOO you don't get it they're dealing with risk and working hard to make sure their wealth is optimally invested it's nothing like aristocracy 🤣
And their businesses get bailed out and/or subsidized.
Hypocrisy of conservatives isn't a bug but a requirement. They need to "conveniently forget" a whole lot more than how they got rich. They basically have to ignore and deny how reality works completely. If they start a sentence with something that is correct, I guarantee you that what follows is nothing but manipulation and lies, possibly by omission.
Sincerity is a luxury that only "the poor" can afford because they benefit the most from being loved and respected for who they are and what they actually do, and "the poor" can't lose any power and are rarely the target of smear campaigns.
The rich and powerful have to constantly watch their backs and distrust their "friends". They necessarily rely on leverage. They can't possibly imagine that someone would help another because it's really nice to do. We tend to think we're a burden if we ask someone a favour, but when we are asked a favour (that we can help with, with little or no cost to ourselves) we feel it as a gift to us that we're thought of and that we can be helpful.
I think we owe those poor "rich and powerful" people a little more compassion and that instead of anger we should show pity and remind them that they do have power but no practical understanding of how to use it to benefit themselves or others. And if they show that they don't care and want to mess up for short term gains for themselves anyway, by all means, get angry and say it out loud. It's a natural response and a healthy discouragement to sociopathic willful ignorance.
ugh thank you for bringing up EE. I watch his videos and sometimes he says something that makes me go "um wtf no?" but I'm not an economist so I'm never really sure.
The problem with many economists is that they try to find a simple pattern and then apply it to the real world and when the pattern doesn't fit it's not the pattern that's wrong it is the world.
@@PinHeadSupliciumwtf That and frequent ignorance or avoidance of socioeconomic factors. "You really should have thought of that before you became peasants."
I was reading a paper the other day where the authors were like 'we have no idea why X happened. None at all. It can't be determined. We won't even try. Moving on...' 🙄
@@PinHeadSupliciumwtf You've described dialectical materialism.
@@A_R_B_GOr maybe they understand that anti-capitalistic nonsense doesn't work.
Really enjoyed the focus on healthcare, obviously ha. I have some thoughts, but don't pretend to have a sound understanding of the economic ins and outs - particularly of health insurance (as it's still quite unusual to need/have in the UK), so that was very interesting. I do sometimes wish we could ignore the UK and US when having conversations about healthcare, it's that classic anglophone bias, because there are so many countries that do it better than both. I also thought the link between political affiliation and public health initiatives was worth emphasising - most people think the powerful antivaccine (not necessarily COVID vaccine) lobby coming mostly from the right wing as something to do with "conspiratorial thinking" or "bodily autonomy" but if you view vaccines as a powerful public health initiative to improve the health of the population, it's easy to see why they oppose it without considering any actual ideas about vaccines themselves, they simply oppose large government plans in most forms. Then of course, vaccines themselves have additional emotional baggage...but let's not get into that right now. Enjoyed the increased production too, looking good!
The same people in the US going on about large government being bad and bodily autonomy being good are stripping half the population of that autonomy and saying the government gets to choose what doctors do. It’s hard to take those arguments (in the US specifically) seriously.
Also, so fun to see you here! Love your channel, and you are correct, the constant focus on a couple of places leads to ethnocentric echo chambers. Which I just contributed to in my first statement, but I just lost a fallopian tube because of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, so I’m pissed at the double speak.
Oh shit crazy seeing you here lol
@@cobleen3982 Abortion is not murder, but aren't there some worrying similarities?
"Alaska, which is also a province of Canada"
You hear that America, it's ours now!
Yeah I had to double check that. I was like wait what happened? Lost Alaska I guess it was over run by those Timmies mercenaries.
All that time Trump was building his wall on the wrong border.
I honestly can't tell if he meant Alberta or Alaska.
soon...
the 1 good thing about Turkey is that literally no one advocates against welfare or government benefits in general, seeing brits and especially americans argue against their best interest is both hilarious and sad at the same time, like just get the pros and go man whyd you gotta complain minorities are getting fed tonight😂😂
😂😂😂it is remarkable
Some people would rather shoot themselves in the foot in the oft chance that the ricochet hit their perceived enemy. Those people are insane and spreading it to others because it gives their in-group a real enemy rather than a faceless system to dismantle.
I also find the arguments against arts to be very short sighted and market centric. Not everything needs or should have a market value. We should invest in art because art matters to our society and our culture.
In these richest of countries in the OECD, the rich envy the poor, I don't get it.
So happy to have discovered your channel!
The two first mandates of Lula in Brazil absolutely corroborate the idea that cutting poverty just pays off, period. While I think it’s so important to document and have data to clearly demonstrate those effects, it also deeply bothers me that something so damn self-evident has to be argued over and over and over again.
The reason why the owning class keeps pushing austerity at front isn’t even their own financial gain I think; it’s their own sense of control and superiority over an inferior class. "At least I’m not a bum!"
That's an interesting argument. I think it's really hard to pinpoint a single reason, though. Maybe that was one of the reasons, but by now they probably don't care about reasons or logic or stats, they just don't want anything to change since they're doing fine. I honestly can't fault their class for this thinking, it's to be expected. What is baffling is how much of the wage laborer class still believes that messaging..
Davies Gilly really said the quiet part out loud when he said "instead of teaching them subordinatation"
Oopsie
the powerful really thought that the poor existed as their servants
@@elipticalecliptic481 not just that but that they actually wanted to be there servents
Keep in mind this is exactly what conservatives still believe.
@@elipticalecliptic481 slaves is the word your autocorrect miscorrected.
Basically says all the things I've been saying for a while now. Also happy to see Economics Explained get taken down a peg and especially by someone else with an economics background.
Economics Explained is a joke of a channel. Alan Fisher has a great video on the nonsense they espoused about roads and induced demand.
What??? Economics Explained has more than 0 background in economics?? That’s hard to believe.
@@whysocurious7366 gonna guess he works in financial trading & thinks that means he knows something about econ
Here for the EE slander
@@kinesissado9636 It would have to be false for it to be slander.
People who get through childhood into adulthood, costing hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars worth of real productivity to raise, only to not be afforded even the most basic preventative medicine in adulthood. How could anyone think that's economically efficient?
I don't watch all EE's vids or even enough to be considered a regular viewer, but I suspect the reason EE assumed that UBI would cause inflation is because it increases the velocity of money. From what I remember EE's analysis was really generalized and as such they ended up using just the base principles that get thrown around, without room to use empiricism. This is a good example of why I prefer your channel and Econoboi nowadays.
The scale of it never comes into question relative to stimulus aimed at banks and large companies, either. The inflation in asset prices that happened on the front side of the pandemic was a primer on the Cantillon effect, when low interest rates, low taxes etc led to a run on assets, stock buybacks and whatnot. That's a type of stimulus in itself even though it doesn't come from taxpayers: it's literally printing money. $1500 for individuals is not. The latter has no effect on inflation, and came too late to help the people much.
You might like the podcast Pitchfork Economics as well.
@@MrTaxiRob 1500 dollar payments did affect inflation
Monopolies reacted to them bg raising prices. They just lied about why they did it.
@@Pensnmusic business ALWAYS raise prices, that's literally what they do. businesses exist to transfer wealth from a general populace to the owner class, who want money for nothing.
@@tinoesroho and chicks for free
One thing that really frustrates me with many of those strongly against such programs is the rampant hypocrisy, the attitude of benefits for me but not for thee. My mother likes to talk about how when she was in school her family couldn't afford school lunches and their packed lunches were often severely lacking, her parents wouldn't apply for them to receive free/reduced lunch because of pride (even though in her opinion they'd "earned" it because of her father's military service), but the lunch ladies would often give her free school lunches anyway. Suggest to her that quality school lunches should be freely provided to all school children without relying on their parents willingness/ability to jump through hoops to qualify and you'll get a whole rant about there being no such thing as a free lunch, how that would be teaching kids to expect something for nothing, and the tax burden on upstanding citizens to feed the undeserving. Apparently in her world whether a child without lunch money should still receive a quality lunch depends on the morality of their parents poverty, as if children choose to be born to terrible parents.
I wholeheartedly agree!! MY grandparents came to visit and would not stop talking about how "Free meals for children was destroying their state" and all I could think was, are you listening to yourself right now???? how could you possibly be against children never having to deal with food insecurity which is a major problem in america, which is entirely dumb since we produce tons of food and are literally one of the "richest economies". our children are starving and you are worried about how much of our tax dollars it would take??? I donate like 30 dollars a month to feed children because while I didn't have food insecurity due to poverty, the system for school lunch I was put in was not built for a family like mine. my family has a history of unmanaged neurodivergence which means I would forget to tell my mom I was low on lunch money (It was all online, I had a little fund that I would take out of) and if my mom forgot to check every few months (common because during this point in my life she was dealing with some pretty severe depression) then I would rack up school lunch debt and eventually they would stop feeding me. My school did have an alternative lunch for students who couldn't pay, but it was literally two slices of disgusting bread and a slice of kraft cheese. cold. I have sensory issues and related disordered eating and this only exacerbated my issue. I have never blamed my parents for this, but it definitely is a weird feeling to have enough money for food but no access to it. so familiar to food deserts and forced poverty I see prevalent in this country, and it breaks my heart.
That kind of is a problem. The perception of poverty as evidence of immoral behavior. This is not new, it was a thing even in 18th century England.
I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is that money is only half the problem. High government spending is only as good as the quality of that spending. If you trust the government to make good decisions, high spending is a good thing; if the government can’t be trusted, you should be skeptical of the spending, and if the government is inept, they should not be allowed to spend.
Personally, there are many bureaucratic institutions within the government I have faith in, specifically in the scientific realm; however, there are equally as many I think are inept at best and harmful at worst. Skepticism of the government is necessary to keep it accountable, because at the end of the day, a complacent populace keeps the elites in power, while a skeptic populace is more likely to limit their power in some way.
Obviously any legislation that implements it should call it Universal Zesty Income. Not because it makes sense, but because then the acronym would be UZI, which would lead to countless rap songs with lines about spending UZIs on Uzis, and there surely is no brighter utopia than that.
What incentive would people have to commit crime if they’re well fed, bills paid, and can study anything they want for free?
@@breakingboundaries3950 This post was a joke. We absolutely should do UBI, partially because almost no one would actually spend it on Uzis or any other guns, and even attempting to restrict it in that way would cost more than it would save, and it would reduce all crime that was caused by anxiety induced by extreme scarcity.
But, even in this regard: we would absolutely still have songs glorifying violence under a UBI, they would just be more fantastical in that they are now performed in a society with much less violence, the same way that Finland produces most of the world's black metal which has extremely gruesome themes in spite of the fact that Finland is literally the least violent country on planet Earth.
This is an incredible comment and I shudder to think that this is how your mind works on a day to day basis. I also, wholeheartedly, agree. Thanks for the giggle.
Literally call it a monthly gunz and ammoz stipend?
I like your style
something that I worry about as a leftist is that a truly universal UBI can be easily counteracted by rent or necessities becoming more expensive if a government doesn't regulate things like housing.
i think i hear a cat outside? it's going Mao Mao Mao?
@@tinoesroho Yeah it's honestly disappointing as an Anarchist that Unlearning Economics keeps avoiding more radical ideals and anaylyses
@@ryuko4478 its very hard to talk about anything spicy without being sent to the shadow realm. As long as you do not put those ideas down i think just undoing some of the capitalist conditioning (how many stupid things do people believe without ever realising they make no sense? I know i did) helps the cause
@@ZealothPL My original comment is a very very clear example of something that needs to be answered but is ignored, there are many examples of things like that that UE is either deathly terrified of touching anything radical with a 10 yard stick or just not radical at all (radical for an economist is a low bar for the rest of the population). All of his ideas begin and end at what is possible through reform despite all the evidence that reform wouldn't be simply allowed, governments aren't refusing those ideas out incompetence, they are refusing those ideas because they conflict with their class interests.
I only view UBI as a stop gap imo. It's a harm reduction measure that would inevitably return to the status quo, but much like the covid stimulus checks, it simply gives people a moment to reflect on their lives and act accordingly. That is the moment of weakness in which revolutions are built.
These policies are so under-represented in US Politics that I've been tempted to run for office. This would obviously not go well because I am nobody of importance, but I just desperately need more people to represent these obviously beneficial policies.
It is not moral to steal from the poor to give to the rich. It is not moral to condemn people to poverty or death because we can't be troubled to put our own best interests ahead of our disdain for the lower caste.
Denmark is an interesting case, here university is both free and you get a basic income to pay rent and live for. However governments continously cuts and reduces these benefits to the point where the basic income is no longer as useful, for example you can currently have 7 years of payments, but they want to make it 5 years only. This means that if you pick a wrong education 1 year in and change, youre screwed for your last exam year in your 5 year education. Worse people may only do their bachelor that takes 3 years instead of doing the full 5 year education
Ofcourse they reduce it. Socialism is not sustainable. You eventually run out of other peoples money
Interesting to hear how things are going on the other side of the world! Thank you for sharing.
Or if you have ADHD and screw up your first year while learning to implement compensatory tools
Does it continue to pay out even after receiving the degree? As in, you only need 4 years for your particular goal and it keeps paying out for an extra 3 years despite you having entered the workforce? If so, then just make it dependent on being in university, why cut the total possible timeframe, that's just shortsighted.
rip all the doctors in denmark. live in labs like the rest of us
as a fellow health anxiety sufferer, yes holy shit just giving me peace of mind with a universal health care plan was a lot better than losing weeks of work because of hyper anxiety
No it would not, as a result of the degas ting jobs loss of 20 percent of the entire fucking economy
If you have "health anxiety", wouldn't you get good health insurance anyways?
Why do you need to be literally forced to buy health insurance if you're anxious about it?
@MrCmon113 why would I want to pay for over priced American health insurance for the same product I can get which is free at the point of access?
@@MrCmon113theory: not everyone can afford great health insurance, especially in America.
This comment has real “why don’t homeless people just, like, buy a house? Why do they want to sleep on the streets? Ew” energy
The main problem with trying to fix healthcare in the US is that it would require looking at how much everything else sucks. Our healthcare is so shit people end up homeless trying to pay the bills, and we have 8x as many empty houses as homeless people because big corporations buy up any affordable properth to rent out and just hold onto it until they can make more profit from it, and those businesses aren't held to any scrutiny thanks to endless corporate lobbying in our government, which has much more of an effect when our senators and representatives just sit in office until they die of old age because nobody bothers voting for them. And nobody can get to the polls because that would require taking time off work, which could cost them enough in wages that they miss rent, leading them to become homeless.
Banger. As an Ontarian the reason the UBI project was cancelled was an incoming provincial conservative government... I know shocking.
the dismissive tone of his description there felt like a bit much for something you could get an easy answer from if you asked like any canadian with political interest.
Who gave your intro permission to go so fucking hard?
If the government doesn't want to give me stuff, they need to stop asking me for money.
The main issue I have with people like Thomas Sowell and Yaron Brookes is that they bring up legitimate critiques of the welfare system, but their solutions aren’t to find a better means of redistributing wealth, but rather to end redistribution altogether. NO! We’ve tried that before. It has never worked and it will never work. They’re trying to run the economy like a gold standard, and you can’t run a gold standard in a democracy and expect to get re-elected again.
It really reminds me of the Winston Churchill quote on democracy - “democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried.”
The current welfare system sucks, but it’s been far better than no welfare system. There could be a better system out there, but we haven’t found it yet. Removing what we have without knowing a better solution is only going to make things worse.
They both preach laughably outdated economic doctrines. Yaron Brooke is a baby-brained Ayn Rand worshipper. Right libertarians unironically smile upon the guilded age as a proper economy.
Though with healthcare the main reason the US system is bad is corruption. The reason why people pay so much for such poor service is because health insurance companies and big pharma are bribing politicians to keep it that way. They also pay hugely into influencers like Thomas Sowell and think tanks like the Heritage foundation as well as news outlets like Fox to spread propaganda about the evils of universal healthcare.
The Nordic welfare system would be substantially better for the US imo.
The thing about those "legitimate critiques" is that it presupposes the psychology/sociology principles taught in econ 101 courses, which doesn't reflect how humans and society actually function. Just gesturing broadly toward "the incentives!" is not a valid critique of welfare systems because humans are more complicated than that. Only a sociopath lives entirely through reward and punishment, and it's sociopaths pushing this view of humanity.
@@2vexyThey are homogenous and don't bring in tens of millions of unskilled and "needy" people requiring expensive schooling and healthcare.
Whilst free stuff is excellent, what we need is a way to incentivise politicians to actually make sure that free stuff works well. I think that a politicians salary should be tied to the median wage so that they have to improve the economy if they want more money.
Yes this would remove financial corruption as a motivator since it would be a step-down in lifestyle and therefore the motivation would be either helping people in the area... or personal power to harm people in the area, but at least those 2 things CAN be detected and judged through a legal system where wealth can't.
Also proportional representation banning of gerrymandering and a local tax proportioning (like the nordic model where proportions of the tax have to be spent in the area it's earned).
These simple 3/4 policies would fix so much of the system it's crazy
@@StuartAtkinson4467 Financial corruption would still be a motivation if a politician had an alternative source of income, but it would at least reduce the problem and make it a lot easier to deal with.
I definitely agree with proportional representation, it's massively helped. The only issue with the Nordic model is that it doesn't prevent companies exploiting labourers in poorer countries, but that can be fixed too with sanctions and regulations on company supply chains.
I hope that one day these few policies, and more, can be a global standard.
@@moth5799 That is only half the issue with the Nordic model. The other half is that it doesn't work without a lot of that outsourced exploitation. And the other magical third half is that it doesn't prevent the state itself from canibalizing the welfare system everytime the rich feel like they've enough flow of educated labor, or they just have yet another fit.
@@louisvictor3473 These are all issues that can be fixed, though it will require some harsh policies that most of the public would not vote for.
Tying a politician's salary to the median wage would help avoid them destroying the welfare system, but of course no politician will ever want to implement that.
As for outsourced exploitation it can work without it, but the population will have a lower quality of life.
The fact is that if we want to avoid callous exploitation of poorer countries we're going to need to take a hit to our living standards, but I just don't see how we're going to get a public to ever vote for that.
I would gladly have to pay more for products if it means that they were produced with more fairly paid labour, but that's never going to happen :/
Currently what people lucky enough to be successful and in a first world country can do is to try and prosper using that privilege, but then donate that money to charity. I donate 1/4 of my income at the moment to Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières and Ukraine, and am hoping to be able to donate more once I get a good job after graduating uni. We can all donate a little bit and help third world countries develop just a little bit faster.
Alternatively you can also spend that money on influencing politics in your country for the better, both are great options.
@@moth5799 You can't fix them that way The issue isn't what the salaries of our politicians is tied to (it is already not that high comparative, pretty median income). Salary and corruption aren't the only forces of an electoral system. And if your "solution" is a hypothetical one that even by your own standards won't happen, that is not a solution.
Also, "it can work but worse" is the definition of no, it cannot work without said exploitation., that is just poor word play.
This is the fundamental problem. People in here and elsewhere keep trying to patch this less bad alternative so far, but the reality is, any fix will have to be much more drastic than a mere patch you can write down on a youtube comment section. It is a better version of the system with some room for improvement, sure, but it is still a version of the system with the some rot at the core, and addressing root problems rewuire more than merely patching it, even if the patch is really elaborate.
I would like to offer a different perspective, an opinion that is not based on Western culture and history.
First of all, I'd like to talk about innovation and inventions. Nowadays, almost every argument against treating innovation and inventions as public goods is it will stunt progress. Profit is the reason that we can live a comfortable live today. In fact, if there's no capitalism, people won't be motivated to invent. However, I don't think that is necessarily true. Because before capitalism, there was at least a group of people that I know who had invented so many things that it sounds like pseudo-history. I am talking about Imperial China. A lot of Chinese inventions were invented not because of the inventors' desire to make profits. Most, if not all, were invented mainly to benefit the public. In fact, there are only a handful of inventions whose inventors are known. Some may argue that actually Imperial China acted like a capitalist when they monopolised silk and paper production. This statement is completely ungrounded as there was evidence that Korea, Japan, Vietnam and India had their own silk industry way before the "Justinian monks smuggle silkworms to Constantinople" myth. The same thing goes to the "China made paper production a national secret to gain profit" BS. The Japanese knew how to make their own paper and had a flourishing paper industry a century or so after China's.
And speaking of paper, Chinese painting is mostly done on paper instead of canvas. And for centuries, the greatest Chinese paintings were made by Chinese scholars as ways to express themselves. Those paintings were not meant to be sold or presented to the emperor. So unlike in the West, it was not common for art to be made because of endorsements from patrons. I am not an expert in Chinese paintings, however I know that those depictions of middle-aged men's flurry of emotions are highly-prized.
Lastly, since the video talks about shows and plays, I'd like end this up with Chinese plays. Chinese plays flourished during the Yuan dynasty (around 13th century). In its barely a century of existence, it produced more than 200 playwrights with at least 700 plays. Why did Chinese suddenly got interested in writing plays? The reasons varied, but non of them were driven by profit. Yes, non of them created a theatre company or wrote for the emperor or court. In fact, playwrights were not viewed highly that probably a handful of them were even given any bureaucratic titles.
I made this long-winded comment not show off Chinese culture. It's just to provide a different perspective, that a lot of argument against free stuff is conjecture at best, with no convincing real world examples. On the contrary, history has provided multiple reasons to believe profit may not really be the contributing reason why we are here today.
I'm stunned, stunned to discover that an assertion by Friedman is contradicted by actual historical experience!
It's almost as if... He actually sucked at economics.
@@VeteranVandal He didn't suck at economics. He just had a different purpose for economics than the average person. We like to pretend that economics is built to mediate and improve the wellbeing of the citizens. He believed economics should be built to improve the wellbeing of the already-wealthy. Its not that he didn't understand where all that money he wanted to give to his rich buddies would come from - ie: the poor and middle class - its that he just didn't care.
His goal was moving money from the bottom to the top, and he was _very_ successful at doing so, with his ideas still running most of our economy today - to the detriment of everyone who isn't named Bezos, Musk or a very small handful of others.
@@altrag number indeed did go up in Chile
@@altrag All of what you just said is wrong.
@@MrCmon113 In what way? Do you have an actual argument to back that assertion up?
The only way I can read any of what I said as "wrong" is if your definition of "wrong" is "doesn't blindly support the status quo".
But that's not an argument, that's just ideology. A stupid ideology to boot given how much suffering the current status quo causes around the world.
0:40 "the bigger the gov the smaller the citizen" the classic liberal understanding of the gov being somehow "above" and "separate" from the citizenry (and thus from the classes) despite somehow also being "democratic" (hakim vid moment)
"There's no such thing as a free lunch" is very applicable to physics. But a government is not handing out free lunches - it is investing in its citizens, so that in future they will be more productive workers and thus be able to pay it more taxes.
In other news, if you feed your cows more, they'll give you more milk. And they don't mind that they're giving you more milk because they're well fed and happy cows and the milk is part of the deal that gives them more food.
Ok but like they give corporations free shit all the time.
Abd they say it's good cause it'll trickle down
Good, corporations provide a huge benefit for the economy
@@broyberbezcorporations provide huge benefits for the people who own them
@@isabelkloberdanz6329 and the politicians they lobby.
@@bluester7177 yes such wonderful benefits for society at large 😍
Great video. My grandfather benefited from some free education programs in his retirement. As an immigrant, with limited English, who risked many mental health problems in his later years, especially problems associated with social isolation, he stood to gain a lot from these courses. Still, he felt it was a total rort and he was taking the piss doing 4 different technical college courses in a row to celebrate his retirement. Not only did these courses allow him to earn some income on the side, using his new graphic design skills to contribute to community magazines, and not only did they give him technological skills that meant he didn't feel threatened by the rapid growth of the role of technology and computers in society, but they also gave him a lot to bond with his grandchildren over. The return to the taxpayer in terms of revenue, was probably negligible, in terms of health outcomes, perhaps there, but speculative.... But those courses had a profound impact on his quality of life in his later years as he lived in a foreign country, having given everything away so his children and grandchildren could have a better life. If we acknowledge his low capacity to provide a return to the economy, and agree these courses were a burden at the far end of the "diminishing returns" side of the "free education provides a benefit" scale, what the hell kind of society would we be if a, we didn't acknowledge the debt we owe him, for bringing a high-tax-paying family into the country, and b, if we thought it was somehow ok to leave him to languish in isolation? What's the point of a country's wealth if it can't give fulfillment and happiness?
Love that example of what to do with retirement! Let me remember… seems like Mississippi and California are two states where retirees get free college like that.
Great video! I always saw UBI as a way for people to work less and get out of meaningless work, with the idea that right now with everyone being forced to work, we have an access of labour. But knowing that people end up working more but on what they want realy means there's no downsides at all. Unwanted work would just by market forces end up paying more, instead of being put on people who have no other choice. Perhaps to the point where automation of these unwanted jobs becomes economically viable
Exactly, I know many people who have backgrounds the arts (this includes game dev, the field im in). People are forced to work jobs they don't want to make ends meet, inwould rather have these people work on things they are passionate about.
Really good video. Even with my absurdly inattentive ADHD, I'm following and learning from this.
I find it hard to keep up with long form educational stuff if they don't interest me (bad college professor lectures, oh god), so I feel you.
american who grew up living on food stamps here, the reason incomes are lower is because food stamps are income conditional, if you make too much you get cut off so families on it are afraid to cross the line and lose money in total. i saw this happen a couple times where mom refused promotions and better job offers because we'd lose multiple different government benefits including food stamps.
Yes, means testing is needed to ensure the poorest get the most
@@broyberbez it just keeps people poor though, if it wasn't means tested and it was just a thing every american got as a universal program then we would never have needed to worry about losing our food supply if mom got a better job, and people could leave jobs they hate and aren't good for which would improve economic efficiency. food stamps should be a universal program.
@@cageybee7221 No, because they can get a get a better job that makes up for that difference, no one is forcing someone to stay on a specific program, richer people in a society can take care of themselves with the tax cuts they get
@@broyberbez that's not how promotions and raises work. you move up slowly, for alot of people moving up means losing benefits but not gaining enough to replace them.
@@cageybee7221 Wrong, there’s no universal law as of this, and if your boss cares about you enough they’ll make the difference, food stamps are very low in America, making up the difference isn’t that far
My only issue with public spending. Is the gross negligence and over spending on things thay do not directly help the issue that is "trying" to be solved. Outside if that i find public spending to be a huge positive despite the glaring issues that can be fixed.
A lot of the money that goes into american education gets straight up wasted. If the public was allowed to see all the financial records and conduct audits of where the tax money went and why. Maybe it would keep our institutions more honest. But i dont trust anything government run. They have a budget and they will spend all the money wastefully because if they dont. They wont get that same ammount or more later when they say they do not have enough funding.
It is why donating to some charities grinds my gears when i know at best half of what i gave is going to the person or situation in need.
I think this is a fair take.
Or that fun little thing they do where they tell you taxes are for something good like schools but theyll attach a clause to it that says a chunk of it will go to fund the industrial military complex. That's not even a joke, I saw that as an option to vote on one time.
"Nobody spends other peoples money as carefully as their own." Milton Friedman
Nowhere near 50%. Overhead costs are huge.
There’s no such thing as free stuff. This is government investment in the future of the country, and it is ultimately a good thing. If we want good services, we have to be prepared to invest in them collectively.
If you can't make a profit by eating food then why would you do it? That's just a huge waste of money and you're going to go broke. What do you mean food is necessary to continue life and therefore despite not having a positive profit is necessary to contribute to society because not eating causes you to die? Just stop eating.
There is no free stuff, outside of tax cuts for the rich lol
Air is free.
If you want good services first you need good people serving them.
@@VeteranVandal true, however clean breathable air is not
I have been desperately trying to remind people that social spending isn't just about charity, or even justice, it's about making society objectively better, even in ways no conservative would dispute - e.i. higher profits, competitiveness, and public safety.
The Left has no excuse for not spreading these facts.
What degree of social spending?
Having a tank, a warship, a couple of policemen, medical emergencies covered, food for the homeless - most people agree with that. But flute classes for children, PhD programs for Hungarian literature, publicly funded theatres...
The people in the comments seem to think that more government spending is always better no matter what.
@@MrCmon113Damn, I can only give one thumb up. Like Sowell says, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
I work as a pharmacist in a country with universal healthcare, though we do still have a strong private care industry. I can tell you for free that private healthcare prescription-wise isn't better at all, most private doctors seem to write scripts that I need to call to get corrected, like not putting a quantity on an oxycodone script, or forgetting instructions on a vital medication. Also ran into a lady that told me her private specialist gives her prescriptions without a date written so she can put a date on it whenever she needs it, which is highly illegal, at anytime their health condition could change and make those medications possibly seriously dangerous
All Econ and Pol-Sci Students beware 4:36 is a regression table jumpscare. Be warned it may be traumatic…
This video, and your channel as a whole, is the type of stuff that billions should see and take to heart
When it comes to the question of incentive to provide free stuff... even just at the intro of the video it's struck me for a long time that, to a government, population is one of the three most fundamental sources of its power (besides Land and Capital/Development.) Importantly, people are what actually _do_ things. The more people a society has, the more capable those people are as individuals, and the better the people are at working together, the more powerful the society as a whole becomes.
Free stuff both makes people more capable, via either new skills or more free time that can be spent on things that aren't necessities of life, and also more willing to work with who ever gave them that free stuff. It's only natural then, that a government that sees itself as an organ of the greater body of society should follow the logic of giving out free stuff.
Damn dude, just killing. Thank you for this. I work in healthcare in the USA and find it hard to filter my experience into an argument that lay people understand. But this video has done it.
9:13 I went through a similar scheme in Ireland. I got into university with grades below the minimum for my course, as well as getting grants from the gov and the eu. Graduated with the second highest grades out of my classmates in my degree and now work for the government so they're getting not only my tax but my expertise 🎉
Thanks guys if you want to look it up, it's called the HEAR Scheme. It's for students from low income families :)
I’m studying Public Health and you’ve clarified some really gnarly concepts, like adverse selection, that I struggled with. Thanks
the fact that it takes so much of a long process and oftentimes requires the use of a lawyer to get disability payments in the united states is quite an abysmal process for literal disabled people. the process is made as intentionally opaque as possible so that as little money goes to the people that need it as possible. also requiring disabled people wait as long as 365 days for benefits to begin which is so long that they could end up homeless or die when giving them benefits first would have saved their homes and lives.
The precursor to the NHS was community organised healthcare in South Wales, definitely a bit of history worth looking into.
I will forever love Aneurin Bevan, a Welshman and a Labour man, for enacting the NHS into Parliament and therefore law, and starting off one of the things were proudest of 😊🎉 (present stresses notwithstanding)
The UBI experiments in Manitoba and Ontario were both cancelled after a change in government. I can't speak for the Manitoba experiment in the 70s, but when the Ontario Conservative Party was pressed for answers why they didn't continue the UBI pilot, or didn't at least analyze the data, the new premier would only say he didn't believe in it, simple as that. I think a more accurate answer would be he knows the results won't help him politically.
people who complain that the "government isn't run like a business / market" is just euphemism for "the government isn't being authoritarian and hierarchical enough" because I dunno if you figure it out but workplaces, business, the market are inherently hierarchical and anti democratic under our current system.
And I thought that the whole point of having a democracy is that everyone has a voice and enjoys the fruits of having an organized and united population.
Fantastic video btw
Wow! Awesome production quality is apparent from the start!
The American Moto: Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the poor. Coorporations get bailed out and loaned to all the time, yet its still an argument how the other 95% of the population should be treated
Such a good video. So much work to produce it! Thank you for your service. And thank you for your pointed critique of Economics Explained. Naming them and addressing them directly is, I think, more effective than just talking generically about the failures of neoliberal orthodoxy or dusty intellectuals from the 1950s. They *are* a very popular channel, and they should do better by their viewers. You're showing what better looks like.
Neoliberalism was debunked long before it became a popular political stance on economics.
I usually find it very hard to understand these topics, but I love that your videos are so long and you take so much time explaining every single bit, while also making it sound interesting to someone from the arts like me hahaha Thank you so much!
Everyone should have access to the basics needed to be maximally productive. Safe housing, healthy food, safe water, clean air, adequate health care (especially preventative health care), and enough education to perform the jobs available in the society. Denying masses of people access to these necessities is just self-destructive. And the idea that people won’t work to achieve more than these bare minimums (once said education is achieved) is foolishness. Nobody will be satisfied with bare existence if working for some extras is a possibility. Of course, people might not choose to work 60-80 hours a week… 🤔
I wouldnt lift a finger, as most people. Great prospect for a healthy and productive future.
Problem in the USA is that usually you get health insurance through your work. Your job usually has one provider but may have multiple options from the same insurance. You don’t get to choose who you get it from
Health insurance in the USA isn't even health insurance. It's just discount vouchers for healthcare "products" that have been marked up 1000%+ already.
Seeing that quote at 1:02:30 makes me feel emotional, because you can, in some people's experiences of receiving UBI, almost see a glimpse of that light, a light of a genuine FREEDOM and PURPOSE. It lifts you.
That's what socialism means to me, the freedom for ALL people to live how they want to, not at the expense of others, but for reaching our own individualised limits on our own shared terms with the help of others we love around us. To one way or another build a better future through a recognition of what each one of us can provide, whether that's being a genius or a hard worker, or a great leader or great listener, or even being someone who's just nice to be around. That is what I want.
I really appreciate your light hearted humor. It keeps it from being textbook dry without alienating anybody that is open to the information but may not agree at the start. Preaching to the quire about the villainous other does not win anybody over. But if they can’t take a light hearted jab, they are going to get offended by the factual data being debated. I really appreciate what I think is an intentional balance here.
Regarding this part: "Pensions and aging populations represent a genuine fiscal challenge for most countries in the future. The number of people working is going to fall relative to the number of dependent on people who are working."
This has been the case since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and we have carried on relatively fine until recently. The rise of productivity per person enabled by technological development allows to support a larger non-working population without a perceived decrease on the standard of living for workers, provided the price of work doesn't stagnate and the state continues to adjust tax rates.
However, with a disempowered working class, the wages for large sections of the population aren't keeping up with inflation, and with liberal governments everywhere that want to cut down government spending and ensure the amount of available workers in the labor market stays as high as possible, they choose to adjust retirement age rather than tax rates.
What I don't understand is why they think tax-advantaged private investment schemes are somehow a solution. The demands placed come from their spending and it makes no difference if the source is government pension or private profits. After only 2 generations, such schemes are already creating distress due to the unchecked accumulation of private property.
A monetary sovereign nation can always afford public spending. They literally cannot run out of money, and that money does not have to be repaid.
I am no economist, but here's as I understand it.
A billionare will never spend billions, so giving them millions means that million is never spent. It is money lost from the system.
If you however take that money and give it to several hundred poor people, they will spend it on many things. It is money used. Money used is money invested.
Money invested grows the economy.
In a country's best interest, it would be to spread money as evenly as possible to make sure that as much money is spent as possible. As long as the wealth flows, the economy grows.
It does not require advanced investments from bankers, just workers spending their money earned. They can buy, company must produce more to meet demand, they must then hire more workers, workers can then spend more, workers now dictate the terms as the need for workers skyrockets.
The only one that TRULY loses here are the wealthy cretins that will no longer hold dominion.
Rooting for you on switching to doing this full time.
Sad to say many things like public education, libraries hell even public roads couldn't be done if you tried to do them today
And these will be the same people will be the same guys who would write love letters to movies
i'm australian and it's crazy to think that if we didn't have a couple of key politicians in the 60s & 70s, sooo many of the public/social services i take for granted could have very easily just have never existed and i can't imagine ever actually being able to be passed today because oh no money and economy oh no!
@@swampgod I'm American who lived in Australia for 13years but now I live in New Zealand as my mom is kiwi, I love America and I really want to live there but without universal healthcare as a kindergarten teacher I just don't know how I could make it work financially, I appreciate Australia so much for that, I really wish my country would get it's 💩 together, but unfortunately with some of insanity that some of my fellow American believe I don't see it happening at least not in my lifetime and I'm a millennial
The public and private sector working together is something that works great in the sterile enviroment of economic theory. In practice though with fallible humans in charge the dangers of corruption, insider trading and other kinds of cheat is just too great.
UBI is given to all, and thus, unlike typical welfare that is only paid to the poor, does not function like a penalty on working, that is one of the main benefits of UBI.
Working also certainly doesn't need to be the thing we tax to afford it.
The best thing to tax is land, or rather we should charge for the use of land, because unlike most other taxes, it does not burden (i.e. tax) productivity, because land is not produced and is fixed in supply.
The most that can happen is that it becomes less desirable to own land, which drops demand and the prices for it, whilst the same amount of land exists.
However, this drop in demand is limited mostly to those who currently profit simply from owning land, like speculators and those who use their land inefficiently.
Land is ultimately needed for all human activity, so there is always a certain amount of demand for it, but among those who actually use it efficiently, and thus it should still be able to provide a solid government income source that can pay for UBI and other social programs.
The increased efficiency will also further stimulate the economy.
Of course free money is good, the banks found that out years ago, and the auto industry, and the oil industry. Pretty much its good for everyone but you, for you its bad.
The way you pronounced Ontario sounds like the name of a total hunk that your girlfriend knows really well and she keeps telling you not to worry about him.
I listen/watch a lot of educational/economics channels but yours is rapidly becoming one of my favorites for diving into and going over some nitty gritty details where others just gloss over. I especially appreciated this video as someone who grew up leaning a little to the right, slowly became more of a fence-sitter and am now starting to lean left.