+1 for Pete. He's an optimist and an incredible speaker. The more work he's doing for us, the better

Optimistic By Choice | Substack Enough people are writing about how the sky is falling. I write about what's possible when we dream big and think long-term.

Things are dark right now, but there are plenty of reasons for hope.

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You take that back.

Too real

Thanks for sharing -- I've read the MMT economics textbook cover to cover -- my mind is pretty well made up :-)

I don't believe that's true.

Rent and housing (and healthcare) are the bottlenecks. Definitely. But the issue isn't so dire that the payment would evaporate.

Anywho. Fun discussion :-) This is a "yes and" rather than a "no but" conversation. Given a choice between nothing and a JG, I choose JG

It's easier to administer when it's universal. Most people would come out ahead with a UBI as well. Only the very top (5%? 10%? IIRC) would have a net negative position as a result.

JG just sounds like "we have a plan to make a plan."

But I can respect the notion, and see the necessity and arguments MMTers make. Automatic stabilizers and all that.

6) And I just saved $100 by switching my car insurance to Geico.

🤣

Your move.

4) Modern medicine is incredible.

The black plague wiped out nearly half of Europe. Covid killed one-hundredth of one percent of us.

5) Poverty is a systems failure, not an inevitability.

We have a distribution problem, rather than a production problem. Give it time. We can solve it.

3) Things are better now than, basically, ever. In the last 100 years:

Life expectancy doubled
Extreme poverty halved
Child mortality nearly eliminated
War deaths fell off a cliff
Literacy rates skyrocketed
Electricity became part of daily life (for most)
We survived the cold war

1) Trump is bad at governing. He'll need Congress to make anything truly terrible a reality, and he's notoriously bad at building coalitions.

2) Worldwide per capita carbon emissions are ticking down. Humanity's efforts to combat climate change are making a dent.

If everyone gets a UBI check, every voter is gonna be pissed at the politician who suggests removing or reducing it.

With a job guarantee, I can just see the cable news headlines documenting people sitting around doing nothing.

My gut reaction to the job guarantee vs basic income debate is that just giving people money and letting them figure out what to do with it is better than guaranteeing them a random government job (doing what... exactly?)

The universal nature of the program could help it politically, too.

As a preamble -- I'm on board with MMT. It's bizarre how much pushback the theory gets from the academic economists, but talk to anyone who works in finance and they'll basically say "yeah, that's about right, that's how government financing works." My public finance MPA chair taught Kelton's book.

Wonderful wonderful news.

You'd never know it if you were constantly tuned into the rage machine though.

More of this please! Government should be boring.

Bernie, voice of reason. 👆

Love me some good news.

Lena did a great job. She was one of the best things about the Biden administration.

Here's to hoping the adults will be in charge again, soon.

homer simpson from the simpsons is standing in front of a shelf with stuffed animals and says d ' oh . ALT: homer simpson from the simpsons is standing in front of a shelf with stuffed animals and says d ' oh .

So that's what I was doing wrong.

Too doomer.

"Civilization is doomed because humans are inherently shitty" is a ridiculous stance.

There are perfectly good reasons to be optimistic, despite present challenges.

It was the same in my undergrad dorm.

Never made sense to me -- why was our diversity coordinator/educator person a white girl from a nearly white only school?

🫂

Buckle up y'all

Still, I have hope. I didn't have "thank god our president is ineffective and bad at building consensus and coalitions" on my 2025 bingo card, but it's as good a reason as any to feel good.

Trump is bad at governing.

Which means he will struggle to push his agenda.

Too doomer man. Too doomer.

"Civilization is doomed because humans are inherently shitty" is a ridiculous stance.

There are perfectly good reasons to be optimistic, despite present challenges.

This is the sort of thing that gives me some hope. Trump doesn't know how to make or keep friends, and you need them to get anything done in Congress.

Trump revokes security protection for Pompeo and a former aide, report says U.S. President Donald Trump has revoked security protection for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former aide Brian Hook, both of whom served in his first administration, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

I wonder if people around Trump are paying attention. The guy doesn't treat his bootlickers well when he's done with them.

Yikes.

That headline and subtitle tells me it's just the right amount of unhinged that will keep me reading about bonds.

Subscribed.

I will +1 any article about basic income. It's a great idea.