2-News

N

ame one thing that Reddit 
users 
infatuated 
with 

Elon Musk and Twitter 

leftists have in common. Did you 
guess a hatred of Wall Street? If 
you did, I applaud you. Because 
we’ve witnessed something truly 
interesting this week. I don’t pay 
much attention to the stock market, 
but even I heard about the insane 
crowdfunded 
effort 
in 
short-

squeezing to thwart the effort of the 
firms shorting GameStop stock. The 
stock for GameStop, a brick-and-
mortar chain of video game retailers, 
was at a price of $17.25 and in a period 
of stagnation on Jan. 4. 

By Jan. 31, it was at a staggering 

price of $325, a 1,784.06% increase in 
value. It was an absolute dumpster fire, 
with people on both sides lamenting 
losses and reveling in the victory of 
improbable gains. One of the firms 
that was attempting to short the stock, 
Melvin Capital, lost more than $4.5 
billion. This week has been so absurdly 
tumultuous for the stock market 
that the troubles even reached the 
executive office, with President Joe 
Biden and Federal Reserve Chairman 
Jerome Powell debating how to 
approach this reported catastrophe.

Now, how are we supposed to 

interpret this insane string of events? 
It’s a good indicator that the general 
opinion of Wall Street has turned 
sour and that their ever-present 
hypocrisy is on display for everyone 
to see. It’s a clear sign that the stock 
market is an abstraction, completely 
separate from the material well-being 
of the American people. 

What’s shorting, you may ask? It’s 

a practice many investment firms 
engage in, which is essentially betting 
on the price of a stock falling. A 
common “copypasta,” a block of text 
that people copy and paste around the 
internet, is being shared that explains 
shorting in terms of apes, snakes and 
banana prices. But for our purposes, 
it’s basically borrowing stocks, selling 
them to force the price down, then 
buying the stock back at a lower price 
to reimburse the loan and pocketing 
the difference. It’s a slimy operation 
that hinges on the failure of people’s 
livelihoods. 

I’ll give a quick debriefing on 

the actors at play. Reddit is a social 
media of sorts — a collection of 
online forums that specialize in 
many different topics. One of these 
subreddits is r/wallstreetbets (WSB), 
and they describe themselves in their 
About Community page as if “4chan 
found a bloomberg terminal.” It’s a 
pretty apt description — a bunch of 
hyper-insular young men that are 
crass and brazen in both their speech 
and their investments. They think the 
“stonks” meme is still funny by proxy 
of Elon Musk using it on Twitter, 
which is all I really have to say. 

Recently, 
they 
noticed 
a 

few 
investment 
firms 
shorting 

GameStop. In all their brazen lunacy, 
they decided that they would short-
squeeze the companies. It worked, 
amazingly, and has many scrambling 
to find a way to minimize losses. Elon 
Musk even joined in on the fun, using 
his status as an idol for many who use 
Reddit to bolster WSB’s efforts.

However, 
despite 
their 

reprehensible 
predilections, 
they 

have caused Melvin Capital to 
lose billions in assets, along with a 
staggering $19-billion loss for the 
multitude of firms interested in 
shorting GameStop. In turn, these 
companies have made a mad dash to 
protect their assets and find any way 
to stop people from investing. 

Robinhood, 
an 
application 

for trading at the stock market, 
controversially stopped its users from 
trading GME nearly instantly after 
the stock shot up. As of now, as some 
sort of concession, they allow their 
users to trade only one stock of GME 
at a time; a handful of other stocks are 
also limited.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange 

Commission put out a statement on 
Jan. 29 saying “the Commission will 
work to protect investors, to maintain 
fair, orderly, and efficient markets, 
and to facilitate capital formation. The 
Commission is working closely with 
our regulatory partners, both across 
the government and at FINRA and 
other self-regulatory organizations, 
including the stock exchanges, to 
ensure that regulated entities uphold 
their obligations to protect investors 

and to identify and pursue potential 
wrongdoing.” To many, this seems 
like a way to cater to both sides, or to 
side with the investment firms rather 
than the individuals.

This entire debacle has really 

shown to everyone the sham that 
is the market. Sen. Ted Cruz, 
R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria 
Ocasio-Cortez, 
D-N.Y., 
shared 

discourse about this on Twitter, 
seemingly sharing the anti-firm 
sentiment. What seemed like a 
moment where the two agreed 
took no time to dissolve, however. 
But their sentiments seemed to be 
similar. 

Firms have been manipulating 

the market for decades — the 
SEC even admitted so during the 
2008 financial crisis. The status 
of the stock market is completely 
separated from the actual material 
struggles of most Americans. We 
saw this especially clearly last year, 
with the COVID-19 pandemic 
obliterating jobs and unemployment 
skyrocketing to 14.7% in April. In 
December, 
unemployment 
was 

6.7%, still nearly doubled from 
January of that year at 3.6%. 

Despite this, the S&P 500, an index 

of the most profitable stocks from 
500 American firms, displayed an 8% 
year-to-date gain in September 2020. 
There is virtually no connection 
between the health of investment 
firms and the material conditions 
Americans have to endure every day.

Discourse has shown that this 

isn’t even a partisan issue. If Sen. 
Cruz can try and piggyback off 
the sentiment of Rep. Ocasio-
Cortez, then perhaps there’s a 
kernel of truth within the object of 
contention. Since the success of this 
unprecedented and decentralized 
effort, I guarantee we’ll see more 
grassroots efforts to turn the stock 
market on its head. We shouldn’t let 
Wall Street feed off the American 
economy like a parasite, festering in 
its own greed and hubris. 

We’re riding this thing to the 

moon, whether we want to or not.

13 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

SAM FOGEL | COLUMNIST

LIZZY PEPPERCORN | COLUMNIST

SHUBHUM GIROTI | COLUMNIST

Sam Fogel can be reached at 

samfogel@umich.edu.

I 

recently noticed the growing 
stack of books on my desk 
and 
was 
overcome 
with 

disappointment and discouragement. 
There were now eight books stacked 
on top of each other, all of which I had 
started but not finished. The hardest 
part of acknowledging these books 
was that I actually enjoyed them all 
and still wanted to finish them. So 
why hadn’t I? 

During school breaks, visits 

home 
and 
especially 
during 

quarantine, reading is a hobby I 
turn to for learning, relaxation 
and escape. But when I returned 
to campus, I often found myself 
blaming my course load or social 
schedule for leaving me no time 
to read. After checking my daily 
screen time and discovering that, in 
the past week, I had been spending 
over two hours every day on social 
media and virtual entertainment 
applications such as Netflix and 
YouTube, I knew a lack of free time 
was not the problem. 

The importance and benefits of 

reading have been repeatedly praised, 
by both my teachers and my parents 
all throughout my upbringing. Still, 
I could count the number of friends 
I have that read consistently at the 
University of Michigan on one hand. 
According to a 2018 Bureau of Labor 
Statistics study, reading for pleasure in 

the United States has decreased more 
than 30% since 2004 to a low of 19%. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 

levels 
of 
anxiety, 
depression, 

loneliness and stress have increased 
in the student body. Ross sophomore 
Samantha Bakes, who began reading 
a chapter of a book every night before 
going to bed during quarantine, 
explained, “Reading has helped give 
me routine and also made me feel 
more purposeful. I read a lot of self-
improvement books and books about 
religion so that I can try to focus on 
bettering myself instead of feeling 
defeated and helpless by things out of 
my control.” 

Research on the benefits of 

reading shows that leisurely reading 
can reduce symptoms of depression 
while improving overall well-being. 
There has also been a correlation 
found between lower levels of 
stress and reading for pleasure. 
While benefits also include a better 
understanding 
of 
self-identity, 

improved empathy, reductions of 
dementia symptoms and more, the 
advantages are much more likely 
to be seen when the reading is for 
pleasure. Reading assignments for 
school or work do not provide the 
same benefits as a book you choose 
yourself. 

LSA sophomore David Kinane, 

who claims to have not read for 

pleasure 
since 
middle 
school, 

expressed that he feels as though 
“reading is a time investment that 
does not guarantee enjoyment since 
I might not like the book. It is much 
more likely that I will like a YouTube 
video so it is easier to do that.” 

Choosing a book to read can feel 

like a larger commitment and risk 
than watching videos. However, the 
satisfaction of finishing a good book 
or chapter is personally much more 
rewarding. Further, people who 
use technology before going to bed 
instead of reading report less sleep 
and are more likely to feel the need to 
find time to sleep during the day. 

Relaxing and unwinding before 

going to bed is a large part of most 
people’s daily routine. The form of 
entertainment you choose impacts 
your sleep, contributing to mental 
health and overall well-being. LSA 
sophomore Anna Haase explained, 
“I feel like you get a different type 
of entertainment than from movies 
or television because it’s more 
intellectually stimulating and there is 
more to get out of it.”

Both Haase and Bakes shared 

that they complete all of their school 
readings, which takes them around 
four hours a week. Neither generally 
struggle with school readings unless 
it happens to be an especially boring 
textbook chapter. On the other 

hand, Kinane explained that though 
he should be doing four hours of 
reading for school each week, he 
usually spends less than ten minutes 
a day on course work readings. 

Reading is shown to improve 

attention span and is a skill that can 
be improved by reading more. By 
reading more for pleasure on topics 
that you are interested in, your 

language and interpretation skills 
can improve, and the practice can 
help with actual academic assigned 
readings, easing the stress and 
overwhelming feelings that long 
reading lists often bring students. 

Making the effort to incorporate 

reading for pleasure this semester 
into your daily life may improve 
aspects of student life and health 

that the pandemic has worsened. 
Developing 
habits 
takes 
time 

but reading a chapter or flipping 
through book pages for 15 minutes 
a day is a small and accomplishable 
step that can make a large impact on 
your semester.

I

n 
the 
2020 
Democratic 

primaries, an unlikely and 
unique 
candidate 
arose: 
Andrew 

Yang. Yang, a former businessman 
and entrepreneur, ran to highlight the 
important issue of automation and 
the subsequent job loss associated 
with it. His cornerstone policy plan 
was to guarantee a universal basic 
income to all citizens over 18 in the 
United States — he proposed $1000 
a month to all eligible recipients. My 
reservations lie in how the poorest of 
Americans, whom proponents of this 
plan claim to support, would actually 
be worse off due to this program.

While Yang brings a lot of 

progressive thinking to the issues 
of automation, his ideas about UBI 
can best be described as libertarian 
in 
nature, 
since 
they 
would 

diminish government safety nets for 
individualized ones. The hallmark 
of libertarian ideology is that the 
role of the government is to enable 
individuals to make their own choices, 
which a UBI does effectively. Yang 
advocates for creating a value-added 
tax and critically “consolidating some 
welfare programs” then using that 
funding for the UBI. 

A VAT is described by Yang 

himself as a tax taken at each point 
the product switches hands through 
the supply chain. These VATs exist 
in numerous countries already, but 
not currently in the U.S. This in and 
of intuitive proposal that could work 
to generate large amounts of revenue 
for the U.S. The problem lies in the 
specifics. Yang himself claims that 
this policy would generate about $800 
billion for the Freedom Dividend, his 
policy name for UBI. In reality, the 
Committee for a Responsible Federal 
Budget found that it would only yield 
about $600 billion, which is merely 
one-fifth of the yearly cost of the 
program he proposes: $3 trillion. 

Additionally, even Jim Pugh, a strong 

proponent of a UBI and co-director of 
the Universal Income Project, admits 
that “because the Freedom Dividend 
is funded through a regressive Value 
Added Tax, costs will rise for low-
income Americans, leaving some of 
the most vulnerable Americans worse 
off than before.” It is clear that a VAT 

alone would disproportionately hurt 
poorer Americans, especially if they 
do not reap the majority of subsequent 
benefits. Between this issue and 
concern over Yang’s claims about the 
plan’s financing, there is ample reason 
for concern.

Every study of UBI, and even Yang 

himself, admits that to have a UBI, 
there would need to be some marginal 
tradeoff with welfare programs. The 
problem with this is that welfare 
programs usually directly target 
poorer Americans and, in general, 
have been found to provide monetary 
benefits upwards of the $12,000 a 
year that Yang has proposed. 

On net impact, this would leave 

the poorest and most vulnerable 
Americans in a worse position. 
Economists Hilary Hoynes and Jesse 
Rothstein studied a hypothetical 
UBI in the U.S. and agreed — 
finding that a UBI in the U.S. would 
disproportionately 
advantage 

“childless, non-elderly, non-disabled 
households” when compared to 
existing welfare programs, and 
would direct more money to middle-
income households, rather than low-
income ones that need it most. 

This is because a majority of 

means-tested programs currently 
target 
the 
most 
disadvantaged 

populations, whereas a UBI would 
replace that with a program that 
distributes relatively equal sums to 
all, therefore failing to account for 
already-existing differences. 

Melissa Kearney and Magne 

Mostead of The Aspen Institute agree 
again by defining a few important 
findings. First, they agree that 
existing safety net programs provide 
more money to poor Americans than 
Yang’s UBI-style welfare plan would. 
Second, they found that the only way 
to fully fund this proposal would be 
to completely eliminate several major 
welfare programs, including Social 
Security, Medicare and Medicaid. 

Dwyer Gunn, a contributor to the 

Pacific Standard, finds that elderly 
individuals annually receive about 
$17,400 from Social Security and 
$12,900 in Medicaid and Medicare 
benefits. Cutting those to zero and 
replacing it with $12,000 a year 

would put these individuals at a major 
disadvantage. Additionally, she finds 
that this program will put poorer 
kids further behind their wealthier 
counterparts in schooling and career-
areas. 
Removing 
or 
decreasing 

funding for programs like the 
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance 
Program or the Earned Income Tax 
Credit would disadvantage poorer 
children, 
especially 
since 
early 

childhood nutrition and education 
are essential for later success. 

Children in the U.S. are already a 

low priority for the government, and 
putting them further behind is not what 
we need as a society. While Yang does 
not support these harsh cuts to welfare, 
he does support welfare cuts to some 
extent, including a potential substantial 
cut to food stamps. Regardless, it is 
important to understand what the 
experts have found to be feasible, rather 
than taking Yang’s theoretical policy 
positions at face value. 

It is important to recognize that 

we, at some point, must yield to the 
vulnerable communities in our country 
and do what is in their best interest, 
rather than our own. Cutting welfare 
programs that low-income individuals 
rely on for survival and replacing them 
with inferior alternatives is not the 
right way to go about dealing with the 
very serious problems of automation 
and technological job displacement 
that Yang brings up. Instead, we must 
look to solutions that work for all of 
America, or at the very least those most 
impacted by these problems. 

While Yang and his campaign seem 

to be coming from a well-intentioned 
background of helping everyone 
equally, after analyzing the totality of 
the evidence, it is clear that middle-
income and rich Americans would be 
better off, whereas poorer Americans 
would be hurt by a UBI. 

Instead, we could use the money 

that 
Yang 
proposes 
garnering 

from a VAT and reinvest it into the 
communities and individuals who 
need it most, thus getting closer to 
the end goal of equity and equal 
opportunity for all.

 Apes and bananas: shorting the 

stock market

Bring back reading for pleasure

The case against Yang’s universal basic 

income proposal

Lizzy Peppercorn can be reached at 

epepperc@umich.edu.

Shubhum Giroti can be reached at 

epepperc@umich.edu.

Design courtesy of Man Lam Cheng

DIMITRA COLOVOS | COLUMNIST

“

30 minutes prior to your 
appointment 
please 
take 

either 600mg of Ibuprofen or 

1,000mg of Tylenol.” These are the 
pre-appointment instructions for the 
insertion of an intrauterine device. 
Why are women expected to take only 
slightly higher doses of over the counter 
narcotics to handle a procedure on the 
most sensitive part of their body? The 
answer is years of sexism in medicine. 

In private life, women are still not 

encouraged to talk openly about sex, 
and are subject to intense criticism 
and name-calling if they do. Even 
today, 
women 
being 
excessively 

open and comfortable with sexuality 
is 
considered 
embarrassing, 
yet 

men compare “body counts” only 
to encourage raising the number 
higher. In a society where women 
cannot discuss their sexual lives and 
partners without facing judgment, the 

gynecologist’s office should be a safe 
haven.

Stepping into the office is already 

an uncomfortable feeling due to the 
multiple greeters and receptionists 
a woman will encounter before the 
private visit with her gynecologist. 
But once the doors are closed, this 
discomfort only escalates with the 
unique feeling of full vulnerability 
while in stirrups. Going in for an IUD 
appointment is extremely anxiety-
inducing, and there isn’t much 
conversation about this form of birth 
control to make women feel more 
comfortable during this appointment. 

Ironically, 
gynecology 
was 

considered a man’s work until recent 
years. Though the percentage of female 
OB-GYNs and gynecologists increased 
from 7% in 1970 to approximately 59% 
in 2017 now, the history of sexism in 
hiring women into this occupation 

has perpetuated into a lack of truly 
understanding the female body and 
the psychological and physiological 
effects of different appointments. 
Without a personal experience with 
the female reproductive system, male 
gynecologists created a precedent 
of normalcy for women enduring 
physical pains as an expected aspect of 
their experience in the doctor’s office. 

Furthermore, studies indicate that 

“male physicians take medical illnesses 
more seriously in men than women,” 
which could lead to an explanation as 
to why women’s pain is generally less 
believed by physicians even after the 
demographic shift of this occupation. 
This lack of understanding between 
the doctor and patient creates not only 
pain in the office, but also normalized 
anxiety outside of it.

Birth control is extremely important 

and relevant to many college students, 

especially with the convenience of 
University Health Services on campus. 
Yet, with the gaining popularity of 
this method of birth control, there 
is no growing comfort in having the 
procedure done. Many students may 
choose to undergo this procedure 
due to the predominant sex culture 
in college. Of course, this relates 
back to the expectation of women in 
heterosexual relationships to carry 
a strong burden of birth control over 
the male partner, potentially forcing 
women into painful procedures. 
Though an IUD is not the only option 
for birth control, it is known to be one 
of the most effective methods, having a 
99% success rate. 

Why is a woman’s comfort 

not prioritized during such an 
appointment? 
Women’s 
rights 

outside of the gynecologist’s office 
should apply inside as well, though 

many 
women 
find 
themselves 

nervous to attend appointments 
due to the discomfort experienced 
during them. This lack of care for a 
woman’s well-being and ease during 
an important appointment further 
proves the lack of consideration for 
women’s rights and the continued 
sexism women experience due to 
different standards to which they are 
held. 

Every source I spoke with to 

provide 
a 
personal 
experience 

described the insertion of an IUD as, 
“the worst pain of their lives.” A close 
friend of mine was almost sent to the 
hospital for profuse vomiting due to 
the physical pain she experienced 
after 
the 
insertion. 
Newsflash, 

600 mg of Ibuprofen or 1,000 mg 
of Tylenol doesn’t do much when a 
plastic or metal device is inserted 
roughly seven centimeters into the 

most sensitive part of a female’s 
body. Yet, women are told this is 
normal, that this is the only step 
they can take beforehand in order 
to relieve themselves of some future 
discomfort. 

This notion of women being able 

to endure this amount of pain has 
only been continued through years of 
sexism propelled through the medical 
system, and it only continues to be 
normalized with the acceptance of 
birth control in general. Although 
this method is extremely effective, 
women should not have to choose 
effectiveness through unavoidable, 
intense pain. 

Gynecology and women’s rights

Dimitra Colovos can be reached at 

dimitrac@umich.edu.

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

