re: #117 steve_davis

we would have had universal health insurance, but Ted Fucking Kennedy couldn’t bring all his purity ponies with him for the legislation.

The ponies were in line; it was Teddy himself who fucked up by holding out for more and thus ending up with nothing.

I’m also sad that UBI (known then as “negative income tax”), pushed hard by Milton Friedman, didn’t happen. Yang screwed up and destroyed the possibility by trying to explain it as being a response to income inequality and/or automation. Which obviously wasn’t the reason it was first written about by some little-known economist in the 1940’s, and popularized by Friedman in the 60’s.

In Friedman’s view, the point of UBI was to eliminate any need for unemployment, disability, food stamps, public housing, minimum wage, the agencies that administer these benefits, supervise these programs and verify eligibility, etc.