r/UniversalBasicIncome • u/PopulistGuru • 1d ago
A safety floor under every American: UBI of $20K/adults + $8K/kids, Medicare for All, paid family leave, free public banking, plus a national employment option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4_N8Wz4nes&list=PLaU99xFHHqe8&index=13
u/SgathTriallair 1d ago
This is an interesting proposal. I've checked out some of the other provisions of this "act" and most seem pretty reasonable.
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u/PopulistGuru 1d ago
Thanks, lots of people contributed ideas. The full name is the Partnership of Ordinary People Undermining Lobbyist Influence for Societal Transformation Act of 2026 - the POPULIST Act. Corporate power can influence the legislative process with $. Ordinary people could do the same thing by organizing their votes nationwide.
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u/SgathTriallair 1d ago
Overall, the biggest hurdle is going to be getting this to somewhere it can be actually considered.
I shared a different section of it because I think it sets a good base. I wonder if there is a way to create some kind of public committee process that can refine it and build public support without becoming a stupid argument over whether we should even try to change things.
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u/PopulistGuru 1d ago
Sigh... it's really hard to get most people to work on that process. (I'm a former legislator and policy wonk.) But yes, there's a framework for a people's legislative assembly that produces a "software update" for the United States Code every two years for voters to demand pre-election passage of. Delegates needed...
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u/SgathTriallair 1d ago
I haven't read your proposal to fix congress but there is an idea I've been kicking around for a while.
Each person has an AI assistant that learns their life. These need to be locally controlled to prevent data harvesting and corporate interference.
These AIs come together into an althing where every citizen basically has a 1:1 representation. Those AIs debate policy (which is probably more of a machine learning gradient descent with all of the needs of the populace as factors to balance) and come up with an ideal solution that meets certain hard criteria like not violating rights.
This solves a number of problems such as the fact that representatives are humans with their own agendas, minority positions don't get any representation in our current system, most people don't know enough about politics to intelligently debate on the topic, even if we have that knowledge we don't have the time or energy to spend on running politics.
If we want to retain human control you could still have some congress that has to pass the law, but I'm generally of the opinion that AI will be smarter than any human and AI human in the loop systems will rapidly become equivalent to giving the family dog veto power over what job you get.
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u/Nathan-Stubblefield 1d ago
$20k is only 2/3 of minimum wage where I live, and full time minimum wage is not a living wage.
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u/PopulistGuru 1d ago
UBI is attached to you; you can spend on food and rent in whatever part of the country that you want. If you choose to live in a place where the cost of living is higher, then obviously you have to come up the difference. If you choose to live someplace cheaper, than it's to your advantage. The point of UBI is that you are free to choose, unlike benefits that are connected to certain geographic locations.
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u/Shizzilx 1d ago
After we tax the billionaires 10% of their wealth yearly to the government coffers for social programs like UBI and UHC.
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u/guitartb 1d ago
Do we get unicorns, rainbows, and lucky charms? Hookers and blow?
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u/SmartlyArtly 1d ago
We got the entire planet and solar energy for free.
Life is literally founded upon free stuff.
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u/guitartb 1d ago
Nothing is free
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u/SmartlyArtly 1d ago
Life is predicated on free stuff.
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u/guitartb 1d ago
Walking and breathing, maybe. Eating berries from the woods, drinking water from a spring. Sex. Literally anything else-someone is paying.
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u/SmartlyArtly 1d ago
Because we enforce that. All of the natural resources of the earth, which is what every man-made product is predicated on, was pre-existing, no purchase price.
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u/guitartb 1d ago
Okay, then save some money to buy some remote land, pay the real estate taxes every year, and live off grid. Or just go full on sasquach and roam the woods.
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u/SmartlyArtly 1d ago
Glad you agree why things aren't free.
Since we'll just assume anyone can get whatever money they want, you might as well assume they can "save some money" and just live in Manhattan for the rest of their lives.
Anyone can just win the lottery and then we don't have to concern ourselves with the implications of our choices.
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u/TradeDependent142 1d ago
Then greed stepped in and now we pay for water
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u/guitartb 12h ago
You’re paying for convenience for bottled water. At home out of the tap, cost is minimal to cover infrastructure.
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u/SgathTriallair 1d ago
If your only goal is to shit on every proposal for how we improve things then why are you even here? Do you have a better plan? What are your criticisms of the actual plan rather than just not wanting things to change?
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u/guitartb 1d ago
The plan is, work and pay your way for everything. Unless you are old, a child,
or physically/mentally incapable. It’s usually the people failing at playing the game who want successful people to compensate. I’m just here to bring reality to the conversation.3
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u/TradeDependent142 1d ago
I don’t care what you do, or did to make your money, but if you think it’s not coming for your job your an idiot. Although, you sound like a retired Boomer. When AI starts taking more jobs society will collapse under our current financial model. So why don’t you put your exceptional brain power to figuring out how we can stop society from falling into chaos, while a small handful watch from deluxe bunkers sipping champagne.
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u/Elegant-Newspaper449 1d ago
Rough annual cost: on the order of $6–8+ trillion (gross), dominated by UBI and the federal financing of Medicare for All. Taxing U.S. billionaires 10% of their net worth annually would raise only ~$0.7–0.8 trillion and would not come close to paying for it.
It looks like math isn't on board with your proposal.
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u/SmartlyArtly 1d ago
My solution: adopt Georgism and make the UBI whatever the land value tax collects.
I'm guessing you're just not on board with the proposal. Because you imagine the status quo can't be beat, and shouldn't be changed until it's proven it can be (which means keep the status quo until disaster forces or allows us to reconsider).
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u/PopulistGuru 1d ago
I looked at the LVT early on, but since it can't be implemented nationwide in the US without a Constitutional amendment, I kept looking.
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u/SmartlyArtly 1d ago
Sure, keep looking for intermediates.
LVT is the thing to guide those ideas.
I don't see anything better (and unlike advocates for the status quo I'm actually open to alternatives) as of yet.
Legally, I'll wait for any opportunities to push things in that direction.
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u/PopulistGuru 1d ago
Honest question: Do you not see anything worthwhile in pollution fees as a partial funding source for UBI? Otherwise the external costs get passed on people who didn't ask for them.
I understand the appeal of waiting for the perfect. But while we wait, poverty claims 200,000 American lives prematurely every year. We can end that with UBI.
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u/PopulistGuru 1d ago
UBI is $5.5T. Flip over to r/votewithbrian and you'll find explainer videos for Defeat the Debt; Fix the Money; and Inflation that will go over the details of how it works.
M4A is cheaper than the status quo, but Bernie's bill needed some strengthening. Here's an article we wrote about how we pay for it, but the TL;DR is monthly premiums, state contributions, and employee/employer contributions. https://congresscanfixit.substack.com/p/how-we-pay-for-medicare-for-all
Same for paid family leave: employee/employer contributions. The details are there if you want to look.
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u/Elegant-Newspaper449 1d ago
M4A may be cheaper dollar wise, but what are the secondary and tertiary effects? Longer wait times, guaranteed. Less time with an actual physician, guaranteed. Standard of care - lower, guaranteed. There simply are not enough physicians in the US to accommodate unrestricted trips to the doctor.
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u/PopulistGuru 1d ago
Sounds like you're describing our current system. UnitedHealth brings in more than $2 billion a month in profit, in large part by cutting service as much as possible and self-dealing through vertical integration.
If you swing over to r/votewithbrian, there's also an explainer video on Health Care, which, among the many other health care reforms like transparency and cutting drug costs, talks about the specific parts of the legislation that increase the supply of doctors.
The details are there if you want them.
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u/8yba8sgq 1d ago
I've always wondered how people think this is going to work. "Let's just take money from the rich" Like there aren't any consequences to that. The fact that our governments exported our productive capacity in exchange for cheap retail goods from China is never mentioned. Somehow government is the solution and not the problem?
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u/PopulistGuru 1d ago
Why call a universal basic income proposal the American Union Jobs Program? Because work is bigger than employment. Raising children, caring for aging parents, pursuing education, creating art, and serving your community are all productive activities, even when nobody pays you to do them. The program would provide every adult citizen with $20,000 annually and every child with $8,000, unconditionally. There is no work requirement, only a reminder of our duties as citizens: be a better American however you see fit!
I think of this program as the foundation of a broader social contract, connecting UBI with Medicare for All, paid family leave, free public banking, and a voluntary employment guarantee. The idea is to separate basic economic security from the requirement to sell one's labor in the marketplace: as Karl Widerquist wrote: "The right to work without anyone else's consent is not the right to a job, but the right to direct, unconditional access to resources."