Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name View Post
Monty...I am a neoliberal. Our climate is already damaged and what we are doing is trying to prevent it from collapsing. So what is his error other than stating the obvious?
UBI in principle is about as left a position as you can get, if you ignore the fact that classical conservatives advocated for it way back when.

Right now my preferences are:
1. Mayor Pete
2. Harris
3. Yang
4. Booker/Biden

Sanders and Harris policies suck too much, they go a little too far for my neoliberal senses. Why does medicare for all have to ban private coverage as well?
Why?

There is a spectrum to the kind of damage we can expect; 2* C is a very different world than 4* C. Giving up now is condemning additional millions, maybe hundreds, to death, for no reason beyond short-term political convenience or ideological self-flattery. Individual market-based adaptation is not adaptation, it will leave most of the population behind. We need collective action because it is capable of averting quite a lot of climate damage and saving lives. Yang's position is one of the worst that can be sold to the public (other than outright denialism), pretty much like Denethor from Return of the King. Besides that he has no relevant experience, is markedly business-oriented, and has a lot of half-baked ideas and little credit for developing the good ones.

UBI can be left wing or right-wing (Milton Friedman was a proponent), as with conservationism. Without getting into this whole debate, from my perspective in new spending: tax credit < cash transfer < guaranteed service.

Harris has put out her own universal coverage policy, and it moderates Sanders' policy, keeping private insurance in the form of 'Medicare Advantage for Those Who Want It'. She started her run trying to appeal to the left wing of the party - including adopting Sanders' Medicare for All legislation as her roadmap - but now her tack seems to be a centrist turn into precariously assembled nudge policy that isn't even sound on the merits. Alongside the LIFT Act she seems to be establishing herself as the candidate of technically inferior policy that may be easier to get passed. That is, I don't know if her policies are actually easier to pass, but she's very clearly keeping procedural aspects at the forefront of her thinking, which I suppose I can appreciate.

If you think even Harris is going too far... hoo boy. Read outside the Economist for a bit! I'm saddened you would rank Yang above Booker, Castro, Gillibrand, O'Rourke, etc. Best quip I saw was that President is not an entry-level job at a tech startup. Have a left takedown of Buttigieg.

Some articles on why eliminating private insurance is technically superior policy.