Ben Shapiro’s Problem with Universal Basic Income Vs. My Problem with UBI – April 6, 2019,

A lot of humans make the assumption that because Andrew Yang is Asian, that he’s a good business person, however, it’s a good idea to learn about the type of entrepreneur Andrew Yang was, prior to getting into politics. Firstly Andrew Yang is from New York, secondly, his career focus has been in education, Yang worked as CEO for Manhattan Prep prior to starting his own company Venture for America, mission is “to revitalize American cities and communities through entrepreneurship” by training recent graduates and young professionals to work for startups in emerging cities throughout the United States. Now clear, if you follow Yang’s career path it’s pretty obvious why he’d come to the conclusion that Automation is something to fear when in fact it’s not. Elon Musk is another person who believes in UBI and their reasoning for this revolve around regulations and minimum wages.

Both Yang and Elon Musk might not understand this but it’s the truth. The main reason why most U.S companies abandon doing their manufacturing in the U.S in pursuit of countries like China revolve around price controls created by the government. The minimum wage price control allows countries like China to undermine tariffs and also allow countries like China to also sell their labor for less money than American labor. Price controls like minimum wages as an example, give rise to an excuse not to work. If minimum wages didn’t exist, there would be no excuse not only to work, but there’d be no excuse to start your own business.

Minimum wages mean that as an entrepreneur you lose flexibility, especially in an economic downturn. In the stock market, you hear about it all the time, stock prices go up and stock prices go down, because demand goes up and demand goes down. The creation of minimum wages doesn’t allow wages to go up or go down, which is obviously great for employees but shouldn’t be confused with automation taking everybody’s job. Automation existence is primarily fueled by wage-price controls as well as other government enforced regulations.

Now, if you listen to Ben Shapiro’s Problem with Universal Basic Income it appears to be rooted in a social component. I grew up Protestant and Ben is obviously Jewish, being part of a religion is volunteered act of submission, which means the existence of our religions are based on volunteerism. Price controls aren’t volunteer based, they’re based on force, if a person or legal entity pays a wage lower than the minimum wage that person or entity would be sent to jail or have their business shut down.

Now, the thought process for most humans is that capitalists are greedy, when in fact the truth is that automation has actually made it less expensive to start a business. The truth of the matter is if there were more business people or more people able to start businesses, there would be less poverty and more purpose for people’s lives. I’m a Christian, sure I’d like more people to accept Christ, but let’s say they didn’t, well if the cost to start a business was less and there were an abundance of entrepreneurs, the reverse of what’s happening now would be happening, especially as smarter graduates graduate from school.

Currently one of the hottest things for young people to create are APP’s Applications for phones, most young people know what other young people want in an APP, therefore more young entrepreneurs are being created, however even entrepreneurs in America, know that it’s probably wiser to work with a foreigner instead of working with someone in the United States, because the American worker has been trained to feel like they’re entitled to an inflated wage, which of course leads to a high cost of living, because again the fundamentals of the market don’t exist in the minds of the average American worker. I’m not only picking on American workers by the way, but this is also true in most of the western world and it’s primarily true because the minimum wage has assisted greatly in creating the welfare state.

You give people a reason to be on welfare and many will take it, especially the people who don’t believe in Christ! Morality can only be understood in a freedom based society or a free market atmosphere. In modern day society, it’s very hard for most people to see the value in Church or in Christianity. If the perception is that the Government is providing for the welfare of the poor why wouldn’t an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a Bernie Sanders appear to be realistic options as political leaders? Price controls fuel welfare, welfare fuels totalitarianism because as the moral fabric of the nation shifts to a more atheistic belief that the government can provide all things, each individual starts to imagine themselves as ruler of the economy or the ruler of the world which for obvious reasons makes more and more people susceptible to collectivism.

Christianity is rooted in individualism and volunteerism, an ill-informed secular state is rooted in collectivism and totalitarianism. You remove religion from society and countries like China are put into a better perspective. Because America began as a Christian nation, for many the mere thought of a government having full control over the people seems laughable and unrealistic, but from a Chinese perspective, especially for the people that have taught from their infancy that the Chinese Communist Party trumps all religion, putting any subjective God before your government sounds like a recipe for disaster, so although in China their Government seems corrupt, the thinking is, do you have a better and more sustainable idea? Because in China like it or not their communist party has produced some results. Sure China would be far better off without the Chinese Communist Party, but the people have China have been taught otherwise.

I bring up China because minimum wages have been engraved into the fabric of American society to the point that to even think about abolishing it, sounds ridiculous! Which is why you’ll get a lot of the Conservative and classical Liberal types trying to attack economic arguments in the social sphere making an otherwise easily debunkable topic complicated.

America can’t even measure poverty properly as long as there’s a minimum wage. Poverty in America is different from poverty in Africa. Poverty in America is often measured in comparison to the richest people in American society when in fact it should be measured in comparison to poverty all over the globe. A lot of people in America could be solving global poverty, but they’re stuck in America trying to find clever ways to rise above the price control game. The main problem with minimum wages is that it creates a lot of employees, who instead would be entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs tend to solve more problems than do employees. By enforcing minimum wages, you’re creating less American entrepreneurs, who instead good be a larger presence in ending economic ignorance.

I disagree with both Ben Shapiro and Andrew Yang regarding Universal basic income. The need for it, in my opinion, is a complete myth that’s rooted in our entitlements as first world nations

Interesting times ahead.