Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Alaska destroying state institutions to better find direct cash transfers is the future UBI people want. Every political fight after UBI would be the right marshalling popular support for increased cash held-in-person and decreased capital held-in-common.

— Blood Music (@IlllllllllllllI) July 6, 2019

I find it bizarre how hard the UBI "left" work to ignore this. Any UBI paid out below subsistence returns *immediately* to capital. What would you do with an extra 3 grand? Pay off debt and buy products. It's money laundering for a massive privatization of state property.

— Blood Music (@IlllllllllllllI) July 6, 2019

Isn't most of the left anti-UBI?

Isn't it conventional wisdom UBI is the ultimate libertarian scheme?

if tech industry dickholes like something it's probably bad is how I break it down to an extent

historically speaking, unconditionally giving everyone means of material security has been a core tenet of the left since the beginning

maybe because some tech guys got into it that will now change. But it would be a big twist and so far seems mostly confined to twitter

xpost also a core tenet of free market purists/chicago school jackasses afaic

maybe it’s the wrong thread for it but what is the ilx chapo bro consensus on like, welfare/transfers?

in the US aside from foodstamps it’s basically impossible to get transfers if you are not employed. (and trump is trying to add work requirements to SNAP). this is very different from the way it works in Canada and Europe. i think it’s desirable for those transfers to not be conditional on work, since often the most vulnerable populations can’t work (for a living wage, or at all). suspect most of you agree? once you agree to give people who don’t work money, UBI is the extreme argument that they shouldn’t depend on income, either. i think not depending on income makes sense at least to a point; if you’re making 20k per year UBI and decide to work part time but they take away your UBI you’ll just end up back at 20k. so maybe we don’t go all the way to the extreme of UBI, maybe you keep your 20k and your UBI and then it gets clawed back by progressive taxes.

i think there’s a strong political impetus to remove conditions on income support in the US, and kinda hoped the left would be the ones to do it. but maybe not?

Yeah maybe it’s another thread but generally speaking I have no problem with basic income given to citizens in need of an extra lift, regardless of employment status. I just don’t understand why it must be ~universal. Dunno why we would give free handouts at a whole lot of comfortable households with say private health insurance and a solid mortgage.

i’m fascinated by the anti-UBI left

historically speaking, unconditionally giving everyone means of material security has been a core tenet of the left since the beginning

― flopson,

Yes, but I think theres maybe a growing realization that UBI isn't that - if it was, why not do Universal Basic Services instead?

Andrew Yang gave the game away, unwittingly, when he let slip on Rubin(!) that once UBI was in place, you could start to cut welfare, because you would give people the choice. I'm not anti-Yang per se, but this is a huge problem, and in his core policy. Trojan horse laid bare (and thats before you get into whether its inflationary or not)

But the bigger question is....why UBI and not UBS? Maybe you think both, but it seems cart before horse to me. Universal Basic Income without Universal Basic Healthcare seems a poor band-aid

I just don’t understand why it must be ~universal.

I'm fine with the universal part (same w free college, healthcare) - any universal benefit is harder to remove once its out in the wild and in use. But this is why it works better as service rather than income, at point of need.

maybe I'm wrong on UBI, I don't really have a solid position on it, but I've definitely moved from a "sure, why not, give it a go" position to "hmm, I'm not so sure about this" over the last year or two.

it's exciting and useful as a way of reframing welfare/transfers and I can see why it's particularly appealing and charged in the US. as a side-effect of that some ppl have got overexcited and sometimes it's oversold. I also think there's a whiff off its hype in the tory govt's new 'universal credit' scheme which is currently further immiserating the most vulnerable ppl in the nation through bureaucracy. afaik the most successful transfer programmes have been targeted cf. brazil where they paid money to mothers of poor families and had v good results.

One of the points of it being universal would be that it massively cuts down on the bureaucracy - as soon as there's an 'in-list' and an 'out-list', it's a target for the right in a way that, say Medicare for All isn't.

This is obviously UK-based, but I think it's of more than no relevance to the US:

https://www.thesocialreview.co.uk/2019/06/18/new-labours-lessons/

my concerns are mostly about the limits of this individualist approach to welfare. all the non-cash-transfer parts of the welfare state are already getting fucked for funding, lots of ppl have needs that require more than whatever the basic income will be and it's not hard to see how they would get squeezed to protect a big inflexible expense. plus lots of vulnerable ppl aren't so hot at managing their money, and there's an argument that the bigger project for the left should be bolstering public/common ownership

the rub is in the implementation -- SV venture capital/libertarian types are sold on it because the fine print in their proposals implies that the total expenditures would be less than the existing welfare programs

there's also strong interest in it being a federal program that includes a multiplier to adjust for differences in cost of living by location. so in california, and specifically the bay area, the amount of federal expenditures would be higher than in less populous/affluent areas

the hunter biden riff was v funny

if I was that kid I’d probably be smoking crack, too :(

Felix really seems like the only one who's not a complete nightmare to deal with in real life.

this from a jezebel takedown of red scare made me lol:

Audrey Gelman of The Wing tagged herself as a “longtime listener,” and her buddy Lena Dunham excitedly shared her fandom in a now-deleted tweet. This is despite the fact that both women have been ruthlessly mocked by Khachiyan and Nekrasova; Dunham announced that she enjoyed the show despite the pair calling her a “human beanbag.” (Gelman’s husband was also a co-host of a short-lived podcast of men recapping Red Scare, a kind of irony so circular it disappears immediately into its own collective ass.)

Pitchforkreviewsreviews.com

https://pettycartographyhome.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/img_8500.jpg

the sex pistols and nazi symbolism, finally back together again

i was a teen who read vice in the early-mid 00s and they often referred to the 90s as this period that was stultifyingly pc which the mag was a reaction to; i wonder if in the '20s we'll see a similar alt-reactionnary 'correction' to '10s wokeness and red scare is just an early example

it's inevitable

imagine Borat coming out today - or in 1991

i was born in 1991 and actually have no idea whether the 90s were actually pc

the 90s weren't pc

whether or not an era was considered pc is more about whether assholes were butthurt about being exposed to the opinions of minorities. since they are butthurt about this all the time, EVERY era is pc

in the 90s there were lots of dramas where "the battle of the sexes" is a big thing and men bemoan women making them want to marry, and how they don't want to be "modern men" and all this crap and act super sexist but you're supposed to sympathize with them

this is the kind of advert companies made in the 1990s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHP3V25pkNY

now they're making ads about stopping toxic masculinity

lol that ad kinda rules, no?

it's kind of emblematic of the approach to male sexuality that was rife in the 90s, and which is not congruent at all with the current zeitgeist

A variation of every reactionary backlash happening today was happening in the '90s... and the '00s and the '80s and so on.

feel like american culture was more conservative in 00s than 90s
operative word here "feel"

beer commercial music has improved at least
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/Aqfj/michelob-ultra-get-up-song-by-james-brown

Its like you can’t even screech in a bagel shop that women won’t let short men smash without someone making a tweet about it anymore

I don't see a lot of difference in American culture between the '00s and the '90s. 1999 lasted until the iPhone came out, pretty much.

feel like american culture was more conservative in 00s than 90s

Murphy Brown becoming a single mom and Ellen kissing a woman once were major national news stories (because the right flipped their shit).

Its like you can’t even screech in a bagel shop that women won’t let short men smash without someone making a tweet about it anymore

― space invaders are smokin penises!!!! (Whiney G. Weingarten)

lol

xp I know, and don't ask don't tell, DOMA, other celebrities that stayed (glass) closeted. what did the first/second wave of political correctness hit? just academia? sincerely asking. I read Roth's The Human Stain earlier this year, and now Sabbath's Theater, and it feels utterly of the moment despite being from 2000 and 1995 respectively.

the 90s ended on 9/11

People have been complaining about political correctness since the mid '80s and it was used before that in a different manner. It feels utterly of the moment because it's all been the same play over and over with different actors and slightly altered scenes.

The '90s didn't end (culturally) on 9/11 by any stretch. Even politically, the Bush era was just the fruition of the 1994 House election.
2008ish you get Obama/iPhone-Youtube-social media culture in ascendancy/Great Recession.

my formative years, turning 18 in ‘99, were the 90s

by our definitions now, it was not amazingly progressive. it’d be like asking someone in the 90s if the 70s were progressive and then showing them a tv show where some guy is like “wow, a broad in the office? and she’s my manager! gee, wiz!” and they all wink at the camera. the difference is the wink goes away and maybe no one calls her a broad

the 90s were “pc” in the way a lot of things were given lip service and token social changes happened but there was no follow-through. as always, maybe

There was "PC" stuff on campuses in the 90s, but it kind of felt as much a a reaction against boomer permissiveness as against entrenched patriarchy etc. There was a lot of "Hey, superstar former hippie professor, stop grabbing students' breasts!" which caused a bunch of oldsters to believe the thought police were coming for them.

i'd had drinks and i'm not sure where i was going with that post

in any case, the 90s were notionally progressive in some ways, but you generally can judge the progressiveness of any particular era by the norms adopted that were, in the immediately prior era, pushing social boundaries. the norms didn't change a whole lot, and the things that seemed like they were really pushing boundaries seem pretty quaint by 2019 standards

Matt, Virgil, and Brendan were at the Netroots Nation thing today and dropped on Majority Report, midway thru this clip:

https://youtu.be/jfjaxQrCdb8

the return of brendan would be sweet, always enjoyed his guest appearances/producer insights

biggest get yet, no?

👑 CHAPO X Ilhan Omar 🤩 pic.twitter.com/RmzRpth1Lt

— Chapo Trap House (@CHAPOTRAPHOUSE) July 14, 2019

well it’s just bc they were all at netroots nation right?

Why are you doing this to her

— Member of D.S.A.—“Drinking Some Ale!” (@90sSlowJamz) July 14, 2019

The 90s version of PC was mocked the most for the phrase "vertically challenged" iirc

re: Ross Perot?