Restricted movement is ineffective because viruses move. Goods move or your country dies. People jump borders--not just the unauthorized immigration about which Trump keeps whining, but do you think anyone wasn't desperately trying to evade the prohibition from leaving Wuhan? Everyone in Wuhan wanted out of Wuhan. Border guards contact these people and get the virus; physical barriers prohibit anyone who doesn't have the determination to go over, under, around, or through, and don't change their tactics as people compromise them.

It's not ineffective because you did it wrong; it's ineffective because it doesn't fucking work.

Yeah, I made 26% today in the first 40 seconds of market open. I'm out right now looking for a directional signal. If we don't seem to be hitting recession, I'll jump in on a triple-leveraged position and take another 60% growth in a week.

It's not exactly a risk-free enterprise. I *can* lose 10% in a day (I've done it before). The whole aim is of course to gain more than I lose in the long run. The S&P does that, but look at its movement: up 1%, down 0.9%, up 1%... I don't like those single-day swings. I like 3% over a week, since I can identify when it's shifting its trend and change my strategy. Repeatedly. That means when it goes up 2%, down 3%, up 2%, down 3%, I make 30%.

As you can imagine, the recent growth (with such tiny wobbles) has been not great for me. It's a lot of risk when the movements are slow, since it turns around in 2-3 days and I usually would buy in at the bottom if it only drops 0.5% across the whole span, so I've been out of the market.

But what if you increase productivity and capital and the rent-seekers just soak it all up by raising prices? That's what GPP is suggesting. (This actually happens if minimum wage doesn't track with per-capita income.)

As for increasing productivity, there are a number of ways to bolster that. Negative income tax is actually one way: when you get a liquidity crisis, you lose employment because people who want to buy have no money to pay people who want to work. You can literally fix this by printing money, although I tend to rely on tax-sourced funding--and even then, it moves from low MPC to high MPC. That means NIT flows spending power into geographically concentrated areas of low spending, creating employment, which increases productivity per-capita by increasing labor hours.

Plenty of people drop out of studies and don't return surveys, yet are highly-responsible people. Folks don't necessarily see the same things as a responsibility, i.e. they may see the survey as a triviality and not understand the importance of scientific research.

Here's a fun one: do you think people are more or less likely to do something if you pay them?

We've actually tried this several times. In Sweden, the government did an experiment where they asked various towns if they could put a nuclear waste containment facility near the town. Generally around 45%-50% of residents said yes. They also tried the same survey, but offering the townspeople $4,000, which got them barely above 25% of residents saying yes. Why do these people hate money?

Simple: when not offered money, they had no perception that they weren't offered enough. When offered money, they decided it wasn't enough money.

I get surveys all the time. Sometimes I answer them; sometimes I don't. I only answer the census because I know it matters. I answered an arbor society survey once, then ignored it the next year. I've also held a job for over 6 years straight and never missed a debt payment in my life. Where do I fall in your categorization?

That's right: your existing prejudices and biases inform your ideals about what surveys say about people--or, not really; it's not the survey, but your existing prejudices and biases about giving people free money. That's not human nature; it's a heuristic from recognition of a common archetype: you're the sort who needs downward social comparison so you can feel good about being better than some people.

Can't say they went to college or got jobs or lazed around, is my point.

There's no practical way to enforce many things, like price fixing.

UBI and NIT systems are actually capitalist.

That's actually not what happened. Of the 32 who left the workforce, 29 were in unstable employment to begin with. A great number of those who did leave the workforce--and of the unemployed--went to college or vocational training.

We can't project anything about those who didn't follow up. They could have all gotten better jobs and become disinterested in the survey for all we know. Remember people who don't respond to surveys are a different group: there's some variable that separates them from people who do respond to surveys.

Yes, the recent one in Ontario.

Potentially, yes. Notably, opening new business to capture new revenues when the income base expands isn't profitable if that new income is going to vanish in 4 years. Lower-productivity establishments will open, but nothing with any permanence. Walmart might staff more and restock its shelves faster.

The long-term effects are most likely to be increased GDP and lower unemployment not reflected by these short-term, partial-population studies.

Also there are a lot of food manufacturers and grocery stores. We'll just shop wherever prices are cheapest.

The summary is pretty deceptive. It ignores that many people were in unstable jobs, most of those who switched out of employment were those people, many folks had health problems that made it difficult to work, and a lot of those who left the workforce and who were unemployed to begin with took up education and job training. Going back to school full-time is working, but not employment.

It's notable that longer periods of unemployment are good for the economy. Jobseekers with the resources to stay unemployed longer end up in jobs better fit to their skillsets, thus become more-productive and increase GDP. If people who became unemployed stayed that way for 6 months instead of 3 months, that's a net-gain for the economy. In this case, many of these people became unemployed and stayed that way much longer to develop skills they could match to a better, more productive job.

This argument essentially says that all incomes are the same and the standard of living in a nation can never increase by any means.

Yang's implementation was absolute shit.

Fairness is hard to define. The income effect is such that each marginal dollar has less value: $1 more than $1,000,000 is worth less to a person than $1 more than $1,000.

Although that's backed up by empirical data, the simple thought experiment for this (hey, I'm an economist) is just a look at your purchasing scale. If you have no money, any money you get goes to food, rent, and other basic needs--you need this shit to live! Further money goes to luxuries like television. When you're a millionaire, it goes to more luxuries; but consider: someone making $50,000 can afford a $200 restaurant meal regularly, but they don't do that because they'd lose the ability to buy iPods and fancy phones. The expensive food has less value to them than the things they buy with more income.

So now we have three types of fair/unfair taxes.

First, the flat tax. Everyone pays e.g. $1,000. Well some people can't pay it, and it takes more of the working-hours of the poor than it does of the rich, as well as offending the income effect above.

Second, the proportional tax. Everyone pays e.g. 10%. Everyone is paying the same labor-hours now, but some people are getting more for those labor-hours. They're still keeping tens of thousands of average labor-hours worth of wage, while many are working the same hours and getting a fraction of the average labor-hours worth of wage to begin with. It also offends the income effect.

Third is the progressive tax, which increases with income. The progressive tax affords to those earning less per labor-hour a lower tax rate in compensation, and has those who earn more per labor-hour pay a greater rate in compensation. Progressive taxes top out at a rate that leaves a large amount of income at the upper end in the hands of the individual, even if it's marginally less than is kept by the lower end. The progressive tax accounts for the income effect; yet it also charges people at the top a higher rate of tax than people at the bottom.

You can see how each of these taxes is "fair"--everyone pays the same, the same portion, or a portion proportional to what their money is generally worth to them. You can also see how each of these taxes is "unfair"--the poor are overly burdened, or the rich pay out more of their income.

The progressive income tax works out best given the facts of the matter; that it's technically-correct does not eliminate the base arguments, i.e. we can explain how it's not unfair that people with higher incomes pay a greater tax rate, but people will still question it, and it still looks unfair on the face.