
Alaska’s universal basic income problem - Ygg2
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/5/20849020/alaska-permanent-fund-universal-basic-income
======
mojomark
"[Author] Robyn Sundlee is a research fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on
Communication Leadership and Policy. She was the campaign manager for Alaska
State Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D) in 2018."

Interesting article, but I recommend reading knowing with this information up
front.

~~~
kwhitefoot
I read it without knowing that. Now that I do know it my opinion of the piece
has not changed. Do you mean that I should discount the parts that seem to be
statements of verifiable fact (call her a liar) or that I should simply not
put exessive trust in her opinions (which pretty much goes without saying when
you read something on the net written by someone one has never heard of
before)?

Those of us not steeped in the minutiae of Alaskan politics in particular and
US politics in general would need a lot more than that tiny fact to form any
strong opinions either way.

Most of it seemed unexceptional to me except for the suggestion that the PFD
is universal basic income. It's universal by definition but as far as I can
tell most proponents of basic income are proposing an amount of money that is
enough to live on (not live well but not starve or be homeless). The Alaskan
PFD is a long way from that so while it gives strong hints about how UBI might
work or not work the sheer scale of UBI is likely to throw up other
challenges.

~~~
mojomark
I was just highlighting the fact that the author led the campaign for the
candidate who lost just last year to the candidate proposing the PFD hike.
That's certainly reason to suspect an unfair bias towards the implication that
the PFD system is broken. I'm not saying it's not, but I would not hang my hat
on this piece alone without more information and possibly giving more than a
year to see how everything actually shakes out. If I were the author, I would
have inserted a disclosure statement at the beginning.

It all sounds logical, I'm simply stating that the author is far from an
impartial reporter.

