Andrew Yang secured enough unique donors to enter debate stage

[Bofferbrauer2]

Mnementh said:

fatslob-:O said:

It's not about the value of currency. We need to realize that currency by itself has no intrinsic value attached to it ... 

The economy itself has value because it is productive. The economy doesn't have value because there's money in it. It's a near unanimous myth among society in the belief that a fiat currency's primary function is supposed to be a store of value but they aren't all that good at that objective! Money is only meant to be a medium of exchange and a unit of account, giving more of it doesn't magically increase productivity ... 

We need to decouple the idea that money is somehow connected to productivity when there's no relationship between the two so a UBI doesn't address the underlying problem that we still have scarce resource economy ... 

If we want a credible social safety net then we'd ought to have some sort of discount system in place to subsidize abundant goods or services like in America's case some food items, shale gas or in the future share some automation services because like it or not some industries are more productive or plentiful than others ... 

Yeah, you are right that money is a pretty bad indicator of economic value. But thing is, it is among the best we have. We could measure work (in hours for instance), but that would result in a less automated economy being more valuable than a more automated one - which can't be right. That is the reason GDP as measurent stuck as much as it did. Because we have pretty much no better indication.

Ever heard of the Big Mac index? That one started completely as a joke - until someone remarked that it's actually a pretty valid way to calculate people's purchasing power parity, even though it has it's limitations (a Big Mac is pretty cheap in industrialized countries, but in third world countries that's sometimes a whole day's pay, even with the lower prices there).

So yeah, GDP (per capita) and PPP (Purchasing Power Parity, also per capita) are the best ones we have right now. Even though they are inherently flawed, they are less flawed than the alternatives.