Comment by phendrenad2
19 days ago
Yet housing costs keep increasing. The working class is being squeezed between employers who are suffering lost revenue and can't pay US wages, and landlords and mega-corp shareholders who won't budge on price. I foresee a slow protracted "collapse" (or really renegotiation) that will bankrupt stuck-in-the-mud billionaires (like Elon) as their means of recourse - law enforcement and the military - come under such powerful social coercion that no amount of money will stop them from siding with working-class-friendly new leadership like Mamdani, as the workers (who, despite what Elon tells himself in his robot fantasies, are still needed en masse), use their REAL voting power - moving their home to jurisdictions that are working-class-friendly.
Furthermore, people are stuck thinking about the world in a worker/employer dynamic. But there are scenarios where everyone in New York state could be paid UBI. There are 20 million people in the state, let's say we pay each one $100k/year. That's $2 trillion. Conveniently, the current GDP of New York state is $2.3 trillion. If they can increase that to 5+, it should be no problem distributing 50% to the citizens. And how can they do that? By charging high taxes on any business that wants to do business in NY. By leveraging their strategic access to the NY harbors. By essentially turning the entire state into a business, everyone inside it an employee or shareholder, and everyone outside a customer.
I don't see any signs of that