Monday, April 08, 2019

A Truly Global Universal Basic Income

The global GDP stands at around 90 trillion dollars. The total wealth in the world stands at 280 trillion. There are eight billion people in the world.


If you were to install a Universal Basic Income for every person on earth of $100 per month, the cost comes to 800 billion dollars per month or almost 10 trillion per year. That is not a small sum. A 3% wealth tax would pay for it. Considering much of that 10 trillion would be spent, that would lead to a rise in GDP, wealth and income. The rich might harvest it all back. So the 3% tax would be a great investment.

But this would require a world government, a biometric ID for everyone on earth, fast broadband everywhere on earth, and universal access to digital money.

The US should also follow Modi's lead and announce demonetization. That would bankrupt numerous illicit organizations.

This 3% wealth tax is of existential importance. Too much inequality is like climate change. It will lead to collapse.


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Sunday, April 07, 2019

विपक्ष की अहं भुमिका कन्हैया कुमार अकेले अदा कर रहे हैं

लोकतंत्र में विपक्ष की अहं भुमिका होती है और इस चुनाव में वो रोल कन्हैया कुमार अकेले अदा कर रहे हैं। बेगुसराय तो वो जित जाएंगे। और चुँकि वो अकेले हैं तो इसका मतलब निकलता है कि मोदी फिर से सत्ता में आएंगे। लेकिन चुनाव के बाद कन्हैया देशव्यापी दौड़ाहे पर जाते है कि नहीं, संगठन विस्तार करते हैं कि नहीं, इससे बहुत फर्क पड़ सकता है। भारत में कन्हैया का चुनाव जितना अमरिका में पिछले साल अलेक्सांद्रिया ओकाजिओ कोर्टेज का चुनाव जितने जैसा हो सकता है। चुनाव मोदी जित जाएँ लेकिन मीडिया कन्हैया के वाहवाही में लग जाए, ऐसी नौबत आ सकती है।


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New Political And Economic Paradigms For The Age Of Abundance

Right now I am thinking Kamala Harris for President, Beto for Vice President, Tulsi Gabbard for UN Ambassador, and Andrew Yang for Secretary of Labor with the mandate to implement the Universal Basic Income. And AOC as the campaigner to reach the 18-28 crowd in the Fall of 2020, with Pete accompanying.

The young Florida Republican who is championing a Green Real Deal is an ally. He is emphasizing the tech entrepreneurship aspects of the Green Deal, which will be at least 70% of the Green Deal, if you think about it. Perhaps the Green New Deal and the Green Real Deal need to be fused to create a Green Deal.

But people who are really, truly falling behind are academics. Politicians go shopping. It is academics who are to theorize new ideas. Politicians shop among those ideas.

The bad news is not that robots and AI will be capable of numerous jobs. That ought to be good news. But that abundance absent new political and economic paradigms will give rise to mass slavery like in The Hunger Games.

The inequality in America has to be talked in the same vein as climate change. Both are existential threats.

Andrew Yang is blowing Silicon Valley-style fresh air into the political discourse. But he is too apologetic. The Universal Basic Income money does not have to be a fiscal move. It needs to be a monetary move, a quantitative easing for the people. Pass a new law that says the Fed is now also responsible for administering the UBI.

If all educational material can be online and free, why is the cost of education not dropping dramatically?

True, you can not bring all eight billion people to America. But who needs to? What is America but an idea? Once there is fast broadband every spot on earth, land or ocean, that opens up a new paradigm. Biometric ID is more powerful than a US social security number. Digital money is more convenient than $100 bills.

The UBI should truly be universal. Give every human being on earth a biometric ID, and give everyone a UBI of $100 a month to start with, paid for by their data wells. All data any company gathers on any individual is owned by the individual. Commercialization of that data pays for the UBI, to start at $100 a month and then to go upwards.

It is obvious you need a world government. America does not want immigrants. But America will also stand in the way of a true world government. You can not have it both ways.

I am for taxing the rich. I am for a wealth tax.

But the bigger problem is how money gets parked in tax havens. Trillions of dollars are idling in the tax havens of the world. And the tax havens exist for the simple reason that a world government does not exist.

Digital money is very different from physical money. It is as different as steam is from water. Digital money asks for a rethink on the fundamentals of finance. Couple digital money with the Blockchain and now finance asks for physics like thorough thinking.

But then the spiritual is supreme. Enormous rises in productivity will simply lead to enormous rises in chaos if the spiritual is not at the center. The 40,000 Christian denominations need to talk to one another and put out the scriptural fires and become one conglomeration in terms of organization and reach out to the other faiths. If you dig deep enough you will realize that all major faiths are pointing towards the same ladder to paradise.

The Democrats running for president are a formidable bunch.


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Friday, April 05, 2019

The Inequality, The Climate Change

The inequality is as existential a threat as Climate Change. Taken far enough both will lead to a sudden collapse of the country, and civilization. There is ongoing denial on both fronts. Radical solutions are needed for both.

Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed (Part 1)
Over these many years I have also seen capitalism evolve in a way that it is not working well for the majority of Americans because it's producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots. This is creating widening income/wealth/opportunity gaps that pose existential threats to the United States because these gaps are bringing about damaging domestic and international conflicts and weakening America’s condition. ....... I think that most capitalists don’t know how to divide the economic pie well and most socialists don’t know how to grow it well, yet we are now at a juncture in which either a) people of different ideological inclinations will work together to skillfully re-engineer the system so that the pie is both divided and grown well or b) we will have great conflict and some form of revolution that will hurt most everyone and will shrink the pie.


The Next Recession Might Force The US To Do Universal Basic Income

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Tuesday, April 02, 2019

A Tale Of Two Cities



'Unhinged': President Trump and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz trade insults over Puerto Rico relief "Pres Trump continues to embarrass himself & the Office he holds," she tweeted. "He is unhinged & thus lies about the $ received by PR.".... Resuming the argument Tuesday morning, Trump again claimed that "Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane," but it is not clear where he got that figure, and actual spending is not close to that. A FEMA report said it passed the $3 billion mark in public assistance to Puerto Rico in August........Ricardo Rossello, the governor of Puerto Rico, admonished Trump over his false claim of $91 billion......."Mr. President: STOP spreading misinformation!" he tweeted. "#PuertoRico has not received $91b (only 300M in permanent work). It's not 'us' vs 'them'. It's about Americans in need."
Trump claims Puerto Ricans ‘take from USA,’ criticizes hurricane relief funding President Donald Trump claimed Puerto Ricans “take from USA” in a series of tweets Tuesday, despite Puerto Rico being a U.S. territory and its more than 3 million residents are American citizens..... By comparison, $120 billion has been spent on damages from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

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Monday, March 25, 2019

क्या प्रशांत किशोर नरेन्द्र मोदी के उत्तराधिकारी हैं?





मान लो मोदी वाकइ में चीन के डेंग सिआओपिंग के भारतीय रूप हैं और वो लगातार १५-२० साल शासन करते हैं। भारत के अर्थतंत्र को सही नेतृत्व देते रह जाते हैं। जो कि आसान काम नहीं है। भारत लोकतंत्र है। मोदी चुनाव के बाद चुनाव जितते रहेंगे ऐसा कोइ गारंटी तो है नहीं।

लेकिन मान लो वैसा हुवा। वो डेलिवर करते गए। चुनाव जितते गए।

तो उसके बाद उनका उत्तराधिकारी कौन? स्वाभाविक है मोदी के ही जेनेरशन का कोइ नहीं। तो अगले जनरेशन का कौन? अखिलेश, राहुल, आदि हैं। लेकिन उस अगले जेनेरशन के सबसे प्रतिभाशाली व्यक्ति हैं प्रशांत किशोर। राजनीतिक कुशलता के हिसाब से वही दिख रहे हैं।

तो उनके लिए रास्ता क्या है? क्या हो सकता है? जिस तरह अमरिका में अलेक्सांद्रिया ओकाजिओ कोर्टेज राष्ट्रपति बनेगी वैसे ही कहा जा सकता है प्रशांत किशोर भारत के प्रधान मंत्री बनने के लायक हैं।

रास्ता ये हो सकता है कि वो अगले चुनाव में पटना पहुँचते हैं और नीतिश के नम्बर दो बनते हैं। उसके बाद के चुनाव में नीतिश स्वेच्छा से रिटायर हो जाते हैं और प्रशांत को अपना उत्तराधिकारी घोषित करते हैं। और अभी से तभी तक प्रशांत अपनी पार्टी जदयु को लगातार बिहार से बाहर विस्तार करते हैं।

तो एक बार बिहार में मंत्री, उसके बाद मुख्य मंत्री। तब तक मोदी रिटायर होने के कागार पर रहेंगे शायद।

तो NDA की नम्बर दो पार्टी के नेता होते हुवे भी वो उस गठबंधन के तरफ से देश के प्रधान मंत्री बन सकते हैं। लेकिन कमसेकम ५० सांसद तो अपनी चाहिए।

अर्नब की इतनी शालीन इंटरव्यू आपने कभी देखी है? मैंने तो नहीं देखी। फिदा हैं प्रशांत पर।

बिहार २०२५
बिहार 
बिहार २०२५

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Thursday, March 21, 2019

Who Will Win India 2019?



A national election in the world's largest democracy is quite an event. It goes on for weeks for one. The campaign itself lasts only a few weeks. It is not a year-long lurch like in the US. But then, at some level, the campaign is never over. There is always a major election right around the corner somewhere in India. Only a few months back the Congress elbowed the BJP out of power in three major states. But then the Pakistan-India ruckus happened, and that was advantage BJP, politically speaking.

Polls are notoriously off in India. Poll numbers have missed the mark consistently over the last several elections. It might be because the majority of Indian voters are out of reach for pollsters. In the 2014 election, the BJP performed much better than any poll had forecast. It ended up with a comfortable majority. It was a replay of the Rajiv Gandhi victory for Congress in 1984.

What will happen this time? It is hard to tell. Has Modi delivered? Yes and no. The land reform and the labor market reform that might have upped job creation were both opposed and successfully, despite Modi throwing his weight behind them. Major work has been done on the infrastructure front. India has climbed up in the ease of doing business index. The jump is huge. Through his relentless travels, Modi has put India on the global map.

But then Atal Bihari Vajpayee lost in 2004. It looked like he might win.

Right now looks like the BJP led alliance, the NDA, will win, and Modi will come back as Prime Minister. But should that not happen do not expect Rahul Gandhi to become Prime Minister. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties will want someone like Mamata Banerjee or Chandrababu Naidu to take the lead. But Modi is still the most popular politician in India by a wide margin. He does not seem to have competition.


NDA to win majority with 283 seats in 2019 Lok Sabha Polls: Times Now-VMR survey
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is likely to come to power with a majority on its own, an opinion poll by Times Now-VMR completed after the Balakot air strikes has predicted. The survey predicted the NDA to get as much as 282 seats - 10 over the halfway mark - leaving the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance ( UPA) way behind with 136 seats. Other parties which include the SP-BSP-RLD and non aligned parties like the BJD, Telangana Rashtriya party and YSR Congress could end up with 136. The predicted tally for the NDA is 54 seats less than what it got in 2014.























Math Over Popularity In UP, Edge For Gathbandhan: Prannoy Roy's Analysis
the Mayawati-Akhilesh Yadav combo alone could bring down the NDA score in the state from 73 to 37, even if Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity is at the level of the 2014 national election....... The addition of Congress to the mix could have deducted another 14 seats from the NDA tally, reducing it to 23 seats, data shows.
Lok Sabha polls: Modi-BJP show all the way, no chance for Rahul Gandhi as PM, predicts satta bazaar
The satta bazaar predicts 55 seats for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh
The Man Who Predicted 2014 Indian Election Reveals Who Will Take The Throne In 2019
The last election was not about the party but the leader. Similarly, the 2019 election will also be about the leader. The seasoned people are talking about party politics while the youth is focused on the leader ..... the world will be ruled by four nationalist Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu. ....... I am picking data from rural India. How many families have benefited from the cooking gas and electricity? How many have got access to toilets and how many kids are going to school now? When I study this I am getting a figure of fifty crore. Even in forty-fifty crore, being a conservative I divide it by two, it is twenty crore. You know in 2014, the elections were won by a small margin of 1.4 crore and here you have a larger swing. So my calculation says 2019 belongs to Modi.
Why India's Pollsters Will Have A Tough Time Predicting Election 2019 In the last three elections, opinion polls have been significantly off the mark.
in the last three elections, polls have been significantly off the mark. In 2004 and 2009 the victorious Congress alliance was completely underestimated, while in 2014 only Bajaj’s firm predicted the BJP would win an outright majority. ..... if two regional parties already in alliance joined forces with the main opposition Congress, the BJP would be wiped out in the state, almost certainly losing power nationally.
BJP will lose seats but win 2019 Lok Sabha polls, says survey August 21, 2018
According to the India Today’s Mood of the Nation (MOTN) July 2018 poll, the NDA will be back in power with 281 seats, nine seats ahead of the half-way mark in the 543-member Lok Sabha. However, but the BJP will lose its majority and slide down to 245 seats. The UPA will be far behind with 122 seats and the Congress will increase its tally to 83 seats. ..... The BJP, according to the poll, will come down from the 282 seats it had won in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections but will increase its vote share from 31.34 per cent to 36 per cent. ..... The Congress, on the other hand, will increase its seat tally from the 44 it won in 2014 to 83 seats, while its vote share will go up from 19.52 to 31 per cent...... The ‘Others’, who are basically fence-sitters, are predicted to get a whopping 140 seats with a 33 per cent of the vote share in the Lok Sabha. ...... Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to be the favourite for the top job with 49 per cent of the respondents rooting for him while 27 per cent of the respondents favoured Congress President Rahul Gandhi for the post.
Prashant Kishor's PM Prediction for 2019 Polls Will Have BJP Cheering
Prashant Kishor said on Monday that Narendra Modi would return as the Prime Minister after Lok Sabha polls ..... A resident of Buxar district in the state, Kishor shot to fame in 2014 when he managed the poll campaign for Narendra Modi, then the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, which went on to put up its best-ever electoral performance....... A year later, he collaborated with Kumar who returned to power for his third consecutive term after registering a handsome victory in the assembly polls...... Among NDA constituents, the JD(U) is the third largest after the BJP and the Shiv Sena.
2019 Elections in India: Modi Won't Have It Easy January 3, 2019
Contrary to the traditional political punditry that the 2019 elections would be a ritual to re-elect the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the miraculous return of the opposition Indian National Congress (INC) under Rahul Gandhi in state elections has thrown a major spanner in Modi’s works. ...... The INC has thrashed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh (114 of 230 seats), Rajasthan (99 of the 200 seats) and Chhattisgarh (68 of the 90 seats), which account for 65 seats in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of India’s bicameral parliament). In the 2014 general elections, the BJP had won 62 of these 65 seats. ........ When the BJP swept to power in 2014, winning 282 of the 543 seats, it became the first political party in thirty years to win an outright majority in India. ...... The regional and sub-national parties will the x-factor in India’s 2019 election. They would be the kingmakers who will be critical in determining who forms the next government.
Inside India's Colossal, Colorful, Tough-to-Predict Election
India’s elections have been notoriously difficult to predict because of the endless possibilities of coalitions. ...... In 2014, the Election Commission of India deployed 3.7 million polling staff, 550,000 security personnel, 56 helicopters and 570 special trains to conduct a five-week-long exercise in close to a million polling stations. ...... The commission sets up a polling booth for a lone voter in the Gir forest in western state of Gujarat, where lions roam. It also protected a polling station in Chhattisgarh by deploying a medical team to prevent a swarm of honeybees attacking voters....... now 430 million Indians own a smartphone, half a billion use the Internet, 300 million use Facebook, 200 million send messages on WhatsApp and 30 million are on Twitter. It means political parties and candidates will aggressively use new technology and social media to win the hearts and minds of young voters.
Why opinion poll predictions are drifting away from reality
View: Nobody knows anything about India's huge elections
The last elections, in 2014, threw up a result that had been unthinkable for three decades: a clear majority for one party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. While repeating that mandate isn’t impossible, it will be extremely difficult. The BJP doesn’t have much of a presence outside the north and west of India and, for its majority in 2014, it had to win almost all the seats in which it was competitive. In the end, Modi himself only won a little more than 30 per cent of the vote. ...... This time around, Modi faces a more difficult task. Memories of the Congress years have faded. And his own performance as prime minister has been, at best, underwhelming. Government officials may claim that India is growing faster now than it ever has, but few people believe that. What everyone knows is that jobs are hard to come by and that farmers in particular are suffering. ....... He has never stopped campaigning. In 2014, he was an exciting novelty; in 2019 he is an institution. His face is everywhere, on walls and in newspapers, above reminders of one government welfare program or another. He has a radio show, his government can count on support from tame television channels and, of course, he still has Twitter. ..... voters aren’t pleased with the state of the economy or with the BJP’s administrative skills. ..... Few outside Modi’s own circle believed that he would win a majority in 2014. In 1999, the BJP won fewer seats -- after a border skirmish with Pakistan -- than predicted. In 2004, the BJP government was unexpectedly voted out. And, in 2009, the Congress increase in seat strength startled pretty much every observer. ..... Nobody ever knows quite what the Indian electorate will produce on counting day.
Will BJP win Lok Sabha polls 2019? Here's what top pollsters predict
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Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Hasan Minhaj: Patriot Act: Indian Elections Edition

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Friday, March 15, 2019

AOC: The Roadmap



Abraham Lincoln went from the House to the White House. He was never Governor or Senator. John Kennedy went from being junior Senator, an absentee Senator hardly active in the committees, to being president.

AOC has to realize the committee structure in the House is a political swamp. No, she does not owe her constituents endless hours in committee. That is the way of slow political death. All the things AOC wants, they will not be done by committee, at least not by the current committees of the current House. Nancy Pelosi is a fine person, but she is not the answer. She does not have answers. It can be argued, she does not even have the questions.

The way you firmly establish Green New Deal on the 2020 map is by crisscrossing the country. Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement must merge and become one organization. That unified organization could call itself Green New Deal Nation. And AOC has to lead that organization. That organization has to fund AOC's national travels.

There is a minimum amount of committee work that no member of Congress can avoid. And that is fine. But that has to be kept to the barest minimum by someone like AOC. Her appeal is national. Her appeal is the new generation. Her platform is social media.

Granted committee work can also be a great way to earn political capital. One example, this bad guy video.

The Green New Deal is not a policy proposal, not yet. It is a conversation. It is a discussion. It is a grand conversation that has to be made grander. People have to participate. Steering that conversation is important.

AOC has to be proactive, not reactive. Proactive is participating in and shaping the conversation around the Green New Deal. Reactive is responding to every right-wing media zinger and responding to every news of the day. It is tempting. But don't give in.

The goal is to firmly establish the Green New Deal in a way that no Democrat in 2020 can afford to skip that. And committee participation is not how you gain that political capital. For that, you have to crisscross the country. Your personal staff cannot manage that. It has to be an organization.

The Green New Deal is an evolving policy proposal. And we are talking Green New Deal 1.0 right now. 2028 will be time for Green New Deal 2.0.

The Green New Deal is going to be an amazing fusion of technology and politics. Tech entrepreneurs are going to play a major role. In fact, the deciding role. But only vibrant democratic processes will make sure the human being will stay at the center of it all.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Unfavorable Rating Climbs: Gallup The congresswoman’s high profile so early in her term is exceeded only by that of Hillary Clinton in 2001, Gallup says. .... While half of Americans had not heard of or had no opinion of Ocasio-Cortez in September, more than 7 in 10 U.S. adults now know of and have an opinion of her .... The only more-recognized member of Congress so early in their term was Hillary Clinton, who had served as first lady before being elected to Congress .... Just 5 percent of GOP respondents reported that they have a favorable view of her, while nearly 6 in 10 Democrats say they like her. .... Younger adults and non-whites are also more likely to say they have a favorable idea of Ocasio-Cortez. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most famous member of Congress: poll attributing her high name recognition to her outsize presence on social media and intense media coverage..... The main reason for the negative uptick: More Republicans are turned off by the self-described Democratic socialist.....56 percent of Democrats view her favorably compared to 15 percent who don’t.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2019

AOC @ SXSW



The emergence of AOC is existential. Climate change is existential. Inequality is existential. Both lead civilizational ends. But AOC has a plan to combat both.
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Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Narendra Modi And Imran Khan Should Solve Kashmir And Bag A Joint Nobel



India lays claim to all of Kashmir. Pakistan does the same. That right there is the problem. Both should recognize that those are untenable positions. Both should recognize the Line of Control (LOC) as the permanent border. That is the solution. And once the border is normalized, and there is plenty of trade and travel across that border, it will be like Kashmir is now one. That is what will be best for the Kashmiris. India and Pakistan should achieve peace and then focus on trade. Both are ridiculously poor countries. Enhanced regional trade will increase economic growth.

Accept the fact that Kashmir got divided and live with it. Imran could announce this unilaterally. That he is ready to accept the LOC as the final, permanent border if the Indian government will then agree to demilitarize Kashmir. And Modi can afford to get this done before the election in India. He can't afford to back down if there is tension. But he, of course, can afford to make peace. In fact, if he manages to make peace now, he will win the election hands down. So why wait!

In one stroke, by releasing the Indian pilot, Imran Khan brought a release to the tension. War no longer is on the horizon. That was a political masterstroke. How about another Imran!



इमरान ने पायलट को रिलीज़ कर के चौका मारा। अब वो काश्मीर समस्या समाधान करें, छक्का मारें और अपनी नोबेल शान्ति पुरस्कार क्लेम करें।

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