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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
4 is significant because it would allow broader pooling which decreases the cost of insurance. It also helps to glide path toward single payer, which I think is an inevitability and would create significant economic gains.
5 is huge because it eliminates a huge barrier to new business formation. Credentialism and licensing are parasitic except in circumstances where absolutely necessary (doctors, pilots, etc.).
8 sound small, but it's not. I'd prefer forgiveness and a removal of the federal govt from the student loan market (no more backing the loans and no more administering them, as this TPA/Guarantor structure only encourages education providers to raise prices), but I'm not sure that will happen any time soon to the degree needed. If we allowed bankruptcy as an option, it would at least cause rates to rise. And as rates rise, they limit ability to borrow, which causes the cost of tuition to freeze or perhaps even drop. (This is an alternative or lead-in to a more broader form of forgiveness.)
6 I include because elimination of the costs of administration of the current programs that provide benefits which will be redundant to UBI is a big chunk of what pays for UBI. Believe it or not, a number of wonks argue that we should continue all the programs and simply add UBI on top. So a person getting a transfer of X to cover necessities would now get XX, and the administrators of the program and the administrators of UBI would do the same job. That's insane inefficiency.
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You are so neoliberal. Seriously, listen to yourself. If Hillary Clinton ran for President on this platform, you would vomit all over it.
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Delivery of large scale infrastructure at the fed level can work. The feds can be efficient. The state govts, OTOH, are filled with low talent low quality decision makers. We should scrap most state procurement codes and allow for more public/private partnerships that use currently cheap capital. This provides a benefit to the banking sector, cuts costs to the state, and delivers projects at twice the speed and 1/4-1/3 discount off the cost of traditional state controlled delivery (where contractors disciplined only by state employees of limited talent can feast on change orders). Europe has already adopted this model and it works nicely. Compare their airports and highways to ours.
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You are full of great ideas about how to better spend money that Republicans don't want to spend. I don't particularly care how the government spends money on infrastructure, but it's a public good and needs public investment. If you want to create jobs, build train lines and roads and sewers and airports and create good blue-collar jobs in the process.
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I think you favor light regulation on finance, but not on much else.
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I don't think I favor "light regulation" on finance, whatever that means. I tend to think that much of what's happening in finance is a tax on the rest of the economy.
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Your view that the govt should spend on infra rather than exploring creative solutions using private capital is a good example. You've faith that govt can deliver best and should control. I think in some regards that's true, but in just as many others, govt involvement is the very problem that needs to be eliminated.
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You just said the feds are efficient, so I'm not sure which Sebby to disagree with here. The government has a lot of capital. It can borrow money cheap, and can print it too. The only reason to use private capital on infrastructure is a hostility to using tax dollars -- it's not about anything to do with the actual provision of infrastructure.
