Independents are now America’s largest group of voters.
After George Bush’s presidency, fewer people called themselves Republicans. After Obama’s, fewer called themselves Democrats.
How will these independents vote?
Andrew Yang hopes they’ll vote for him.
In my latest video, the former Democrat explains why he’s started a new party, the Forward Party.
“Our country is polarized and getting worse all the time … seeing each other as mortal enemies … I’m committed to doing everything I can to help change it.”
He’s written a book about that, “Forward.”
Compared with most politicians, Yang is refreshing. He opposes censoring people for what they say. “Saturday Night Live” fired a comedian after he called Yang a “Jew Chink.” Yang tells me, “I didn’t think that was right … he’s a comedian. It’s his job to push boundaries.”
Yang says other things presidential candidates don’t say, like: “Running for president requires traits that make you a terrible leader. You make false promises (and) regularly claim powers you do not have.”
He cites worker retraining as an example. Governments keep funding expensive job training – the federal government alone has 43 retraining programs, but they almost never work. Many promise computer-coding jobs, but Yang points out, “If you actually go to a town that had the plant close, you find no one working as a coder. … People walk out with valueless certificates and no job.”
Unfortunately, Yang’s plan to help people, a universal basic income, may be even worse.
Yang would simply give every adult $1,000 a month. But the United States is already going bankrupt, and a UBI would give more of your tax money even to people who don’t need it.
Yang’s UBI wouldn’t even replace existing welfare programs (Charles Murray’s proposal), so a drug user could just snort up $1,000 and apply for more handouts. His plan would encourage lazy people to stay lazy. People like me, when I was young.
I say to Yang, “I wouldn’t have overcome my stuttering and worked as hard as I did if I had free money. Not having it … drove me.”
“I’m a data guy,” he replies, claiming more people would start businesses. “If you have that fallback, it makes you more likely to take a risk.”
But at what cost? Already, we see an effect of government’s reckless stimulus handouts: inflation is the highest in 40 years. Yang’s UBI would give away four times that every year.
“We waste so much time figuring out our taxes,” Yang complains. “It’s stupid.”
True. In some countries, government just sends you a bill or refund. You can dispute the results, but if you don’t, you can file taxes in less than a minute.
The reason the USA does not have automatic filing, says Yang, is because “Intuit is making too much money off TurboTax. It lobbied (actually, H&R Block and others lobbied, too) and said, no, no, no! (You) can’t do it automatically!”
Yang says other sensible things that Democratic politicians rarely say. During the heat of last year’s anti-police anger, activists screamed at him because he opposed defunding the police. He stood his ground.
Yang’s run businesses, so he doesn’t say stupid anti-capitalist things.
But often, he acts like a typical politician. At the Democratic National Convention, he gushed over Biden and Harris. “You’re just sucking up!” I tell him.
“I was willing to do or say whatever I thought would help get Trump out,” Yang replies.
Why?
“Trump was erratic,” says Yang, “not leading in a positive direction.”
I’m glad Yang is around, with a new party. More choices are a good thing. Yang is a decent man who brings up some fresh ideas.
Unfortunately, many of Yang’s ideas are bad.
He calls climate change an “existential threat.” He wants every gun owner to re-register every five years. He wants to ban assault weapons but can’t define them. He promotes government-funded journalism.
But at the end of our interview, we agreed about one thing:
“We can see very clearly the way our country is going,” Yang concludes. “We deserve better than this.”
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What is someone who votes in political elections independent of, is the rhetorical question.
Sense?
People still read townhall?
Free money, free food, free clothes have obviously made things much worse in this country. Believe it or not, humans are happy when they are working. There is plenty of work to do and there are plenty of people to do the work. Everyone gets off their ass and goes to work or they don’t eat. Tough love.
I know what you’re getting at, but I don’t think that’s the calculus. I have had lots of jobs, gigs, straddles, stop-gaps that happiness had nothing to do with, & never could.
The point is that nothing is free. So the calculus becomes – should become – what is the net?
The problem is too many people are terrible accountants. (Many can’t – or couldn’t, since that’s largely gone by the way now – reconcile monthly statements to registers.)
Poor accounting is a problem that could be solved, in theory…if it weren’t for the other insoluble problem of pragmatic indifference – or unprincipledness.
Here, in terms of the “frees” you list, what bribe-taker will ever accurately account down to the net negative of bribery?
The tough-loved don’t usually enjoy the affection. But the real reason it is dispensed, or the number one reason in the priority continuum it is dispensed, is to preserve the principled against the unprincipled ~ to preserve the principal, the capital, the seed corn ~ to love the ones that have earned it & to punish for effect those that would take the unearned.
And that’s always been rearguard action. Nowadays you need a telescope to see that far rearward. Trickledown econ was always bullshit (in these cartelized from top to bottom “markets). But trickledown bribery & dole…well, just look around.
Saw a Mises piece this morning. Said the mortgage buying fed owns 24% ($2.6 trillion) of the “market,” that it’s “the price-setting marginal buyer or Big Bid,” that the “market” now exceeds the ’06 bubble peak. The banksters “print up” (just keystrokes now) counterfeit, turn that TP into real estate.
I wonder if all that vacant & decrepit commercial property in shithole NYC might be on fed balance sheet, too.
Anyway, back to point…how many people never thought twice about the “nudge” (bribe) of mortgage interest deduction?
The first accounting question to be solved for is: who the fook are these people to be dangling carrots & threatening sticks?
But the non-accountant majority that never balanced a checkbook sees only carrots & the sticks of not gobbling those carrots. Two minutes after taking the carrot it “metas” into “that’s *my* carrot (or social security, or ∞).
Socialism for the elite, free enterprise for the rest, Vidal put it. Except it is “free enterprise” + bribes for the rest – until “the elite” get around to “socializing” the rest.
Bribery is the Titanic iceberg expense. And unprincipled people steam full speed ahead right into those bribebergs, every time. (Some will see “berg” & then “see” jewish plots…cuz the holed hull needs scapegoating away from the sailors who sold themselves for some melting ice cubes…that ice tinkling in the glass is the sound of cogdis/avowal of collusion.)
https://mises.org/wire/federal-reserve-keeps-buying-mortgages
Sideways.
I know A lot of Taiwanese people, as I am married to one. Yang is a complete whack job libtard. Exactly the opposite of most Taiwanese people.
Would you continue to slam your hand in the car door over and over after you figured out it is dangerous the first time you made that mistake?
No Wei! If he were to become our next president, you know sum ting wong.
I don’t care what party they call themselves.
If they argue for more government, of any type, they are the enemy.
Where the fuck is my $1000 a month?