How to make easy money through social media

So I've been drunk-tweeting tonight (maybe my followers have noticed), and to be honest drunk tweeting is the only tweeting I do (and drunk blogging is 90 percent of the blogging I do). Yet I am getting ever closer to getting some real cashola from my social media presence and you can be too! If my plan works, you and me can both be making a livable income just from social media (with some caveats).

So my strategy is to take advantage of a huge social media phenomenon, which will help to build your presence. I've gotten more likes on Twitter tonight than any other night and it is all thanks to the #YangGang. You see, the #YangGang is growing and is  in large part tech-savvy. So this brings me to my 3-step plan to use the #YangGang to make money:

1. Establish yourself as a #YangGang member. The obvious way to do this is to post Yang memes and hashtags on social media, and post to the r/YangForPresidentHQ subreddit. Bonus points if you donate and/or phonebank for those sweet flairs.

2. Grow the #YangGang. Spread the word to your friends, family, coworkers, etc., but don't be annoying about it. Remember, you want them to tell others about it too and spread the word farther. So always be courteous, and most importantly human. Nobody wants to follow a machine or a jerk. There are some great resources at https://yanglinks.com/ that can help you spread the word.

3. Vote for Andrew Yang in the primary and the general election, then support at least some of his policies. If Yang loses the primary, guess what; goodbye gravy train. So you need to vote for Yang any time it is legal for you to do so, and get as many of your followers as you can to do the same. If we do this right, we can be making money that we can truly feel we earned for a long time to come.

What do we stand to earn? At least 1000 dollars a month, since that is what we'd get under Yang's UBI proposal, and if we can get more through our social media presence, that's just a bonus.

I am not qualified to be president

So last night I came up with a bunch of topics I could write about, but then ERB released a new video, and YouTube comments pissed me off, (damn trolls, why do I even read those), and that gave me an idea for yet another topic, this one more pressing.

But first, a little housekeeping. If you're reading this (a huge if, I guess), then you may have seen my last post, a fake news article meant to subtly undermine the Project Veritas claims by hinting that if, as O'Keefe claims, all of the violent and racist elements of Trump's supporters were Clinton plants, his real support would be tiny. My plan, and I admit this may be unethical, was to push the post as if it were "real Trump supporter news" on right-wing sites, but after 1 post I decided against that for 2 reasons. 1: I don't want my site to be overrun by trolls, and 2: I can't handle the things being said on such sites, let alone feed into them. If that post later gets some popularity because I'm running for office and people want to use it against me or Trump supporters get more desperate and somehow see it as good for their candidate, I just wanna be on record here as saying that it is parody (as it is tagged), and that it's not even great parody at that.

That (slightly) leads into my next point. I have never run for public office, though Bernie's campaign has made me consider it more heavily than I have before. And I certainly have not run for president, nor would I at this stage in my life, even if the legal issues of me not being 35 and the monetary issues of me being a broke man with principles were magically taken care of. And there is a very simple reason for that: I am not prepared to be the president.

I hate to admit this, but when Gary Johnson was shamed for not knowing what Aleppo was, I felt shame too, because I also didn't know what Aleppo was at the time. And although I have since learned that, as well as more about Syria, Iraq, Iran, ISIS, and the middle east in general, I am not nearly an expert. I have some thoughts on when war is acceptable but I don't know how to handle the delicate situation in the middle east, with ISIS using chemical weapons, refugees seeking asylum (at least that should be a fairly obvious yes vote. Have some compassion), and so on, and that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my ignorance.

What do we do about immigration? I think we should keep families together and provide a path to citizenship, but I don't know enough about the existing laws or the situation on the ground to draft or even judge the finer points of a bill on that issue. The same is true of healthcare, trade deals, drug laws, law enforcement, etc. I have strong opinions, and varying levels of knowledge, but I don't have the kind of experience or training required to be the person overseeing the whole apparatus, nor do I have the connections to appoint a good cabinet, a bunch of judges, and pretty much the whole executive branch. I am absolutely not (yet?) prepared to be the president. However, I am more prepared than Donald Trump.

In my opinion, the best line Hillary Clinton delivered this election ( which was sadly left out of Epic Rap Battles' take on it) was this line about preparation. This is a great line, because Hillary Clinton has not only wanted to be president for a long time, she has made an effort to achieve that goal. A monumental effort. She has gone through law school and has been the first lady, a senator, and the secretary of state. She knows the law, she has dealt with legislation, she has dealt with diplomacy and war, and she has connections. Though I have disagreements with some of her policy, if anyone is qualified to be president, she is.

Now contrast "The Donald". He has been a real estate mogul, a casino owner, and a reality TV star. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew as little about Aleppo as Gary Johnson and I did at the time. He has no legal training, no experience in foreign affairs or domestic affairs, no knowledge or experience with the legislative process, and he doesn't even have the will to learn or the patience to prepare. He's surrounded himself with the same kind of panel of sycophants and yes-men as Douglas MacArthur (who he often praises) did and he is even more likely to ignore intelligence to the detriment of himself, his country, and the world. (KERA Think did a piece recently on Douglas MacArthur and the Korean war that I enjoyed. I recommend looking up the podcast if you haven't already.)

Donald Trump wanted to ignore the issues before October 8. He wanted to be as vague as possible to hide the fact that he knows nothing about policy. After the infamous tape came out, he started saying we should be focusing on the issues, because he thinks that no one will take him up on that proposition so he can pretend he's taking the high ground by proposing real solutions to the problems facing America and the world, even though his most substantive issue is a stupid wall. But I think we do need to take him up on his challenge and call him out not just on his lack of ethics, but also on his lack of substance, policy, and experience. I already used the early voting available in Texas to vote for Hillary Clinton (and democrats down-ballot, but that's an issue for another post). I hope many of you will do the same. Get out there and vote for the qualified candidate.

Will a rise in minimum wage lead to massive inflation or job loss?

When I talk to my friends about the need to increase the minimum wage, the main arguments I hear (other than "I don't want to talk about politics") is that raising the minimum wage to $15/hr will lead to massive inflation, and that a higher minimum wage will lead to less jobs available. These are common misconceptions, and at the surface level they make sense, but deeper analysis shows they aren't true.

The basic argument for a higher minimum wage causing inflation is that when minimum wages rise, other wages rise as well. Companies lose so much in paying their employees that they have to raise prices and fire employees to remain profitable, and as the prices of gas and materials go up, the prices of goods and services using those go up, with everything balancing out in the end.

There are a few flaws with this argument, however. Firstly, while anyone making less than the new minimum gets their wages raised, wages don't usually go up very quickly for those making more than the new minimum already. In particular, wages of CEO's, shareholders, and other executives don't go up immediately in response to minimum wage laws. So the immediate effect on the cost of labor goes mostly to businesses that rely on documented low-wage workers, such as restaurants and retail. The restaurants may raise their prices a bit and the retailers may try to do the same work with less people, but the effect isn't huge. The oil industry tends to have higher paid workers, and the agricultural industry tends to use undocumented workers, so the cost of food doesn't rise quickly as a result.

With more people able to afford goods and services, the economy grows. If current businesses are unwilling or unable to keep up with demand, new businesses come in. This is why unemployment doesn't see a huge uptick after minimum wage increases. Because all the rhetoric given about large corporations being "job-creators" is backwards. Businesses respond to demand, one way or another. Consumers are the real job-creators, because they are the ones actually paying for the result of the labor being done. Also, as people build up wealth, they are more likely to start their own businesses, and to negotiate for better wages. This does then lead to inflation, but it is inflation due to growth, which is good in the short term.

However, this is only a temporary fix, since growth can't continue forever. What we really need is a guaranteed basic income and a shortened work week so that we can have a society that moves toward opportunity equality while shrinking to or maintaining a sustainable economy. But that's a topic for another post.