Basic income

interesting critical-left take on how basic income in ontario is working out. seems to confirm my instinctual fears that, under the current deregulatory, technocratic conditions, UBI might well be an excuse for cutting other basic social provisions and creating a permanent underclass who keeps head just above water. I suggest skipping to the "Ontario’s BI Test Run" section

http://rankandfile.ca/2017/06/29/ontarios-basic-income-bs/

I was thinking about UBI when one of the politics threads started discussing how 'welfare reform' turned into 'fuck it, throw everyone on disability'

https://joincircles.net/

https://github.com/CirclesUBI/docs/blob/master/Circles.md

Universal Basic Income is one of the most cross-culturaly appealing political movements of the modern era. It has attracted the support of thinkers from every background including Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Elon Musk, Martin Luther King Jr, Stephen Hawking, and Noam Chomsky.

uh

me not having the economic nous to critically assess UBI, plus it attracting people like that, is why i'm deeeeeeeply suspicious of it.

The only way UBI would be fair and equitable would be if there were an additional safety net for people who cannot meet their basic needs within the given basic income and cannot possibly supplement that basic income to cover their needs. Otherwise you could call it GED (Guaranteed Euthanasia for the Disabled).

And that is absolutely the future the tech-libertarians want.

The eugenics/T4 element that could easily be allied to UBI would explain why lots of appalling people rep for it. And I'm guessing the same people would say the Universality of it would need a bit of fine-tuning as well.

I'm not entirely on board with Andrew Yang, but he's raising the issues.

Mr. Yang, a former tech executive who started the nonprofit organization Venture for America, believes that automation and advanced artificial intelligence will soon make millions of jobs obsolete — yours, mine, those of our accountants and radiologists and grocery store cashiers. He says America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal meltdown, including handing out trillions of dollars in cash.

“All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society,” Mr. Yang, 43, said over lunch at a Thai restaurant in Manhattan last month, in his first interview about his campaign. In just a few years, he said, “we’re going to have a million truck drivers out of work who are 94 percent male, with an average level of education of high school or one year of college.”

“That one innovation,” he continued, “will be enough to create riots in the street. And we’re about to do the same thing to retail workers, call center workers, fast-food workers, insurance companies, accounting firms.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/technology/his-2020-campaign-message-the-robots-are-coming.html

Seems obvious there needs to be a system by which the gains reaped by automation are distributed to all people on Earth (break it down to world=primitive small village. If we all rely on Joe to reap and harvest corn, but now robots can do that, Joe shouldn't be the only one to have his workload diminished or eliminated, while everyone else has to work same amount performing the other tasks that make society function). Also seems obvious that is very unlikely to occur.

unless we force it

i mean this is what society has been doing more or less if you take the long view. how many people grow their own food or build their own computers?

I recommend this

http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/

I believe its free to read

very eye opening

I know left-of-center-or-better people who know and think highly of Yang, and I believe in part on that basis that he means well, and that there may be value in the introduction of the issue, but I share the skepticism expressed above about not just the workability of the concept, but its potential use as anti-welfare-statist sword by the libertarian right, to which I don't believe Yang belongs, but do believe he is probably insufficiently wary as a tech industry utopian. While he's probably just another nobody candidate with more rich and/or famous friends than the usual of his ilk, I'd also be concerned about his potential siphoning of votes and/or dollars from left-of-center young and/or tech-inclined types.

yeah, I'm more interested in the coming disaster than his program.

There may be a coming disaster, but while I do tend optimistic by nature, I think I'm right in suspecting that it's further off and different in nature than he at least rhetorically anticipates as a tech insider who overestimates the timeline and uptake of self-driving technology, e.g.

under capitalism we would only see UBI implemented as a pacifying measure in the face of outright revolt, I believe.

He says America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal meltdown, including handing out trillions of dollars in cash.

Narrator: They didn't.

some people will never be convinced that automation is a threat to their job. i have a left-leaning relative who has worked as an engineer in the auto industry for 20 years and he told me that he doesn't think automation is affecting jobs in the auto industry "at all".

90% of people used to be farmers. i think it's pretty rad that there are other options available to people now. is basically how i break it down to an extent. driving trucks fuckin sucks.

i guess he's just a much more optimistic person than me, but

https://i.imgur.com/GDRM88Q.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/woN5qT9.jpg

£10,000 proposed for everyone under 55

universal services >>>> universal income

yep

I suppose if you don't have a job you qualify for welfare right so that's basic income?

in some countries that is kinda how it works!

under capitalism we would only see UBI implemented as a pacifying measure in the face of after several decades of incredulous handwringing following outright revolt

I'm choosing to define "outright revolt" in this context as something considerably rowdier than what we've seen to date.

buncha commies

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/375587-gallup-poll-americans-split-on-giving-a-universal-basic-income-to-workers

90% of people used to be farmers

otm

it's fascinating to me that the least good argument for UBI is the one that is most salient among people

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/13/16997188/alaska-basic-income-permanent-fund-oil-revenue-study

News: @SenGillibrand tells me she supports a job guarantee. “Guaranteed jobs programs, creating floors for wages and benefits, and expanding the right to collectively bargain are exactly the type of roles government must take to shift power back to workers and our communities."

— abolish ice. send homan to the hague. (@SeanMcElwee) March 19, 2018

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-democrats-should-embrace-a-federal-jobs-guarantee/

universal services >>>> universal income

otm

We modeled support for a job guarantee nationwide. It performs stunningly well. Democrats can run on a job guarantee everywhere. https://t.co/Uk3GR5Eu6Q pic.twitter.com/N4YPSY1Xpb

— abolish ice. send homan to the hague. (@SeanMcElwee) March 20, 2018

more on the idea, which is currently backed by Gillibrand

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, for example, recently released a paper arguing for a job guarantee through a national infrastructure bank that would set a floor on wages and benefits. The Center for American Progress has also crafted a job guarantee proposal it dubs “a Marshall Plan for America.”

The CBPP plan envisions an infrastructure bank that would fund vital projects and ensure that jobs are well-paid with health insurance and paid leave. The National Investment Employment Corps would guarantee a minimum annual wage of $24,600, with opportunities to advance and health and leave benefit. The plan’s mean expected wage of $32,500 a year is more than three times the highest proposed universal basic income.

The government would also be able to use this job-creating ability to expand jobs in sectors where the market won’t currently invest. “You can imagine greening the entire United States,” said Darrick Hamilton, an economist who co-authored the CBPP paper. “The ideas of the jobs go far beyond my imagination, and the NEIC allows communities to have a say in the projects they need.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-democrats-should-embrace-a-federal-jobs-guarantee/

Sounds like a plan

No let's just keep going on this road we're on I'm sure it'll work out great, you'll see

sometimes I feel as if the jobs that were once "you will never make a living doing that " will be the future jobs of demand and high salary such as "artist"

since all the other jobs like lawyer doctor could soon be replaced by AI

this probably belongs on the democtratic thread but this jumped out from the nation piece:

With a guaranteed-job proposal, Democrats could win three working-class white, black, and Latino voters for every rich white voter they lost. “It’s rare to see an issue with such a strong income divide. Republicans who make less than 25,000 per year are more supportive than Democrats who make more than 150,000,” said Michael Sadowsky, a data scientist at Civis.

i'd expect that support to regress a bit once republicans realize what's going on and begin their permanent campaign against it by calling basic income by its true, evil name - welfare for lazy people - and take their message to talk radio/fox/etc. but in the end i'm hopeful that the proponents of basic income will still carry the day. lower-income republicans have been voting against their own interests for about 40+ years now, maybe they'll finally see the light.

that’s jobs guarantee not basic income

Yeah, a jobs guarantee is much tougher for them to oppose on purely ideological grounds, I would think.

seems pretty easy to me, just call it communism

^ bingo. you know it would be labeled as communism and mocked as giving everyone a broom and fifty feet of street to keep clean.

I don't think everyone needs to "work" for a "wage". I really need to move to a nordic country.

hope you're white, in that case

a jobs guarantee plus a decent safety net for disabilities is functionally equivalent to a basic income, no?

also wtf silby

"guaranteed" jobs to ppl who can't compete in the marketplace? literally buying votes from minorities because.. government work camps? um no thx lol