Also, Elon is quote tweeting Carter now.
it hasn't sunk in for most people. we already live in a post-scarcity society. UBI is already here.
basic package: disability, medicaid, food stamps etc
bonus package: literally getting paid for staying at home and hanging out with your relatives
extra bonus: if you are willing to commit fraud, pretend your kids are autistic and get paid for that. get paid for watching your neighbor's kid. pretend you are taking care of your grandma. fake hospice clinic. fake rehab clinic. fake therapy clinic.
giga bonus: during a time of crisis take advantage of PPP or CARES and open a fake business and get paid for existing
people are shocked when they learn that defense is the FIFTH largest line item in the budget. ahead of defense: social security ($1.6T), interest on debt ($1.1T) medicare ($1T), medicaid + ACA ($1T), AND THEN defense ($0.9T)
complain about defense all you like, but healthcare fraud is a way bigger factor. hundreds of billions per year.
this is only going to get worse, because the fraud is a structural part of the system – payouts to client groups in exchange for votes (normally D).
in the US, only 47% of the population actually works (fully 14% of the population is working age and does not work). retirees are 18% and children 22%.
the system I described above subsidizes 50m non-working people absolute minimum, but really it's far more because people that are paid to stay home and take care of their relatives are considered "workers"
of that 47% of "actual workers" maybe one third does real work, the rest are shuffling papers around or doing fake email jobs. so you have, rough math, 50 million actual workers supporting 300 million dependents. that's the nature of the economy today. it will only accelerate. eventually you will have 10 million using AI tools to do all the work and 340 million dependents.
the reason no one roots out the fraud is because it's the system that keeps our extremely fragile polity intact. the fraud is the UBI. the purpose of the system is what it does.
of course, it's a deeply unfair system, because you are allowed to commit fraud if you are a politically protected client group of the democrats. DOGE was killed faster than any government program ever, because it attempted to root out the fraud. if you are honest and unwilling to commit fraud, you are a huge loser in this system. your neighbor will have their mortgage subsidized by some government program. they will get favorable SBA loans due to DEI. they will open a fake hospice or autism clinic. they will get paid for taking care of their neighbor's kid and vice versa. the primary skill in the labor market is learning how to extract money from state and federal government programs, not gaining skills or making yourself employable. if you are just trying to work an ordinary wagie job you are a huge sucker. you are paying 40-50% effective all in taxes to everyone else who is a net taker.
the sad part is because AI is such a substantial productivity boost, it will actually keep this system going for a while longer, and maybe in perpetuity. AI boosts the 15% of the population that is actually productive so much that the remaining 85% can coast by. no one in charge will change this because they can't think of anything else. the political costs of a real UBI program are too great and we don't have the money for it anyway. so we will keep this covert fraud-based UBI program running indefinitely. unfortunately, if you are an honest wagie, you lose.
I was engrossed in this article, nodding along, when I realized it only addressed public fraud.
The fraud occurring in the private sector is even more severe.
While we often criticize the Federal Reserve, it’s important to recognize that it’s neither federal nor has any reserve. It’s the largest fraudulent system ever created, so it’s no surprise that the fraud Nic highlights is allowed to persist.
Furthermore, this piece focuses solely on the fraud that garners public attention. I understand the temptation to resort to whataboutisms, but fraud is pervasive. Humans are morally bankrupt. In today’s society, we have billionaires receiving numerous tax breaks and even worse, hundreds of millions of dollars to construct football stadiums where a team may only play in 8 or 9 times a year.
Consider the case of Warren Buffett, who has amassed over $300 billion on his balance sheet yet wants to lay off workers at GEICO, providing them with inadequate severance packages simply because margins are declining.
Nic is focusing on minor issues while neglecting the real crisis we face in America.
I thought you were gonna comment on Nic's shitcoining and VC backing Quantum while going into Maximum OverFUD.
Great points!!
Do you think that in a much less distorted market, one that could better be described as free, that such things as fraud or nepotism would be less common?
Yeah I think so. Nic’s employment data makes it seem like no one in America wants to work but in my experience most people do want to work but can’t find a job that pays well.
This essay fails to recognize how globalization lead to the UBI and fraud he’s mentioning.
People don’t believe hard work and merit can help you rise the economic ladder when companies systematically race to cut costs by any means necessary.
but I think that's his point. more and more people can't provide skills that pay a living wage. but we also can't pass formal UBI politically. so it happens though back channels and fraud is one of those back channels
Yeah because of globalization to drive the cost of labor down to zero
Yes and that's the typical case for supporting higher tariffs
Post scarcity society? nonsense
Galbraith attempted the same trick with his nonsensical book the Affluent Society
Rawls's Theory of Justice is in the same category
Does anyone else find Nic Carter irritating and stupid
On further investigation this is not backstreet boy man nic Carter
lol
Utter bullshit. This is exactly equivalent to saying that imposing a socialist regime generates a post-scarcity reality. All things listed are classic socialist flags, none of which are attained by post-scarcity means, I can tell you that. And that's as true for the US today as it has always been for peronist Argentina.
Mark this words:
Time and time again, I repeat: learn from Argentina. This already happened to us many times: we have had two instances of fantastic economic gains, and in both instances two peronist regimes rose to power and evaporated those gains in the first year, no matter how massive the gold reserves were, no matter how massive our vast farmland production was. Then of course to keep up the illusion of unending abundance, both regimes enslaved half of the population, printed out thousands of times (yes, thousands of times) the monetary base, and amassed suicidal levels of unpayable debt.
Wences Cesares agrees with this comment
and Javier obviously
Never heard Wences Casares takes on these topics, do you have any entry?
No
He has no social media footprint since 2020, living a quiet private life in Patagonia or Palo Alto
https://grokipedia.com/page/Wences_Casares#economic-philosophy-and-bitcoin-advocacy
Wise guy.
This is just another way of saying all roads lead to participation income.
Thank gosh it’s not a uti
Keep paying taxes :)
I think there's some real truth to it.
I can offer two takes on this that offer a slightly more positive / less sky-is-falling take.
That being said, I absolutely don't think we should tolerate fraud and I think fraud should be severely prosecuted. I'm more just making the point that spending funds on health and social assistance isn't necessarily such a bad thing.
Do you think that we currently do tolerate fraud? Or have we built a system so complex that fraud is easy to do and difficult to spot?
I think during COVID everyone became a monkeybrained virtue-signaler when it came to government programs. Whether that's "tolerating" fraud is up to you to decide, but it certainly enabled it.
By tolerating, I suppose I mean that elected officials probably have a good idea what percent of the money they take from us goes to ends other than the stated purpose, but that they accept it because they think it's necessary or they benefit from it.
if that's your definition of tolerating then I would imagine that yes it is tolerated by the political leaders
Everyone knows there is fraud and it's a matter of how much you want to do about it
The Quality Learing Centers in Minnesota seemed tolerated and encouraged from my vantage point as one example.
that's how it looks from my vantage point too
and my wife also works closely with disability services and programs. thus, we see how easy it is to defraud the system
Seems he's engaging with Bitcoin again lately, hopefully this is a good indication BTC will be included in xPay:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038532491422937449
https://x.com/i/status/2038532491422937449
It's good to see Nic and Elon are bonding. They have a lot in common.
Shitcoins
https://twiiit.com/elonmusk/status/2038532491422937449
If Nic were king everything would be better.
Not sure if serious.
(Our democratic processes have gotten so bad that I legitimately am not sure if serious.)
No. I can't take Nic's know it all attitude, even when I agree with him.
Interesting take. All I can say is what we all know. This wouldn't be possible on a Bitcoin standard.
The reason I think this is true because governments would have to tax us in order to get the money to spend so profligately, and people would quickly get angry. Are there other reasons?
Says the VC shitcoin grifter
Is this the backstreet boy man
https://twiiit.com/nic_carter/status/2038636030329303144