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Cake day: October 4th, 2023

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  • tal@lemmy.todaytoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldAre you in support of UBI?
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    15 hours ago

    Are you in support of UBI?

    I don’t think that it’s a terribly interesting question as a yes-or-no question for all UBI policies.

    The thing about UBI is that the devil is in the details: UBI covers a broad range of policies. You really need to know the specifics of a proposal to know what it entails; UBI policies may be very different.

    For example, there are a number of left-wing groups who like the idea of UBI, because they see it as a way to redistribute wealth. Normally, they tend to want something like keeping spending policy more-or-less where it is, adding UBI, and increasing taxes on some groups that they’d like to shift wealth from.

    There are also a number of small-government right-wing groups who like the idea of UBI, because they see it as a way to reduce the role of government in setting purchasing decisions. Normally, they tend to want something more like a revenue-neutral form of UBI; there, one does something like cutting spending policy (on various forms of subsidy, say, like for food or housing) by $N and then shifting that $N to UBI so people can choose how to spend it. Here’s a right-libertarian take on UBI:

    https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income

    Of course, as with any policy proposal, the details matter a lot. And the Swiss proposal is problematic in a number of ways. For starters, 2,800 USD a month means that a married couple could get $67,200 per year for doing nothing. And while it’s true that Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of per capita income, that’s still an awful lot of money. Furthermore, the Swiss proposal seems to involve implementing a basic income in addition to their currently existing welfare system. Few libertarians would be willing to sign up for that deal. But as a replacement for traditional welfare programs, there is a lot for libertarians to like about a basic income.

    So, okay, both our wealth-redistribution guys on the left and our small-government guys on the right are talking about UBI policies…but they are talking about policies with very different implications due to the specifics of the policy. The left-wing guy probably isn’t especially excited about the form of UBI that the right-wing guy wants, and the right-wing guy probably doesn’t like the form of UBI that the left-wing guy wants. So I’d really need to know the specifics of a given UBI policy before I could say whether I think it’s a good idea; I wouldn’t just be across-the-board in favor of or against any UBI implementation, but would need to see a specific UBI proposal and consider it individually.


  • Criminals can be monogamous and sober.

    Sure.

    However, if police policy on undercover officers has some publicly-known constraint that doesn’t apply to the people that they are aiming to impersonate, one has an easy litmus test for whether someone is a police officer or not.

    It’s not like gangs are like “commit sexual assault or we’re going to shoot you for being a cop.”

    Doesn’t mean that the officer is going to be shot, but they might not be trusted by whoever they’re trying to investigate.

    All that being said, this is just in the abstract. I don’t have any idea of whether it’s warranted in this situation. But it’s going to be something to keep in mind when designing policy for undercover officers – one cannot permit for that easy litmus test to exist.












  • Yeah, trying to blacklist everything you don’t like seems like an endless game of whack-a-mole. Easier to just whitelist what you want.

    EDIT: Another reason to subscribe is that you will only see traffic from a remote community on All if at least one person on your home instance has subscribed to it. So if you just browse All, you may never see some stuff at all, and if all the people subscribed to a community unsubscribe and the community isn’t on your home instance, you’ll stop seeing new material from it. If you subscribe, then it’ll show up and keep showing up.





  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Protection_Act

    Sunshine Protection Act of 2018: Died in committee in House and Senate

    Sunshine Protection Act of 2019: Died in committee in House and Senate

    Sunshine Protection Act of 2021: Passed Senate, died in committee in House

    Sunshine Protection Act of 2023: Referred to the Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce

    Numerous polls have found that most Americans believe that a standard time should be fixed and permanent—as many as 75% favor no longer changing clocks twice per year.[18] One of the most common observations among researchers of varying backgrounds is that the change itself causes most of the negative effects, more so than either standard time or daylight saving time.[1] Researchers have observed numerous ill effects of the annual transitions, including reduced worker productivity, increased heart attacks and strokes, increased medical errors,[19] and increased traffic incidents.[3]

    The debate over the bill mainly concerns whether it is better to have more sunlight in the morning or the evening. A 2023 YouGov poll found that half of Americans supported permanent daylight time, 31% were in favor of permanent standard time, and 19% had no preference or were not sure.