this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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I mean, the $200 does encourage me to create a monopoly and simultaneously extract maximum wealth from my opponents while also taking their homes. Not sure if the monopoly analogy is useful here.
UBI is capitalists' best attempt at breathing life into capitalism. The benefits of UBI in the global north would still be at the expense of exploitation in the global south.
It depends on how it's implemented - if it's just enough to patch the system for a while, it'll just become a way to squeeze more out of people
If it's enough that work becomes optional, it'll lessen the pressure enough that consumption will drop. More people will grow food, cook, and DIY everything from repairs to cottage handicrafts. They'll have the time and energy to organize, politically and otherwise
Regardless, UBI is a stopgap measure - it can just extend the game of capitalism a little longer, or it can be the start of a transition
I think that definitionally a UBI is the latter, at least in my opinion. The point is that it elevates everyone to the same playing field, of having all essential needs covered (shelter, food, utilities, healthcare). Anything less is basically just the welfare systems that most countries (besides the US) already have. In Australia, unemployment is not enough to live on, it's purposefully punitive to "encourage" people to find a job. Giving that same amount to everyone isn't going to cover people's basic needs.
Side note: Healthcare is a basic need that everybody has. So, if a UBI were implemented in the US, it would need to be enough to cover people's health insurance. At that point, the government's already paying for it, so why not just implement universal healthcare?
Because private health insurance companies are major donors, and no politician wants to upset the donor class?
And even then UBI is just another form of maintaining this "unemployed reserve army". Guaranteed jobs for every citizen capable and desiring to work, on exchange for a living wage, would automatically eliminate the people's need to stay at shitty jobs or accepting shitty wages, since they can't be easily replaced; it would increase production of goods and services much more than UBI, therefore tackling possible inflationary tendencies... It's really a much better patch to capitalism than UBI
How does guaranteeing jobs make people any less replaceable?
Also we have a crises of bs jobs. UBI would help lower it a lot. Guaranteed jobs would make it ten times worse
Because there's constantly a labor shortage instead of a pool of millions of unemployed people
Why would guaranteed jobs make it worse? Guaranteed jobs could be decided upon (at the very least partially) by local neighborhood councils. Care for children and for old people, cleaning the streets, building new housing... Even if 50% of jobs created were "redundant" (which is impossible), that's still 50% of actual useful labor compared to 0% of UBI
You're just describing communism at this point. We're looking for practical solutions
Practical solutions like the ones we've been failing to implement for the past 50 years of erosion of labor rights and welfare state all over the western world?
UBI hasn't been tried on large scale anywhere. In small scales it's been successful
Exactly my point, it hasn't been implemented anywhere because capital will fight tooth and nail against it, and they're, well, the owning class, so they have plenty of power. My point is we can't reform our way into solving social and economic justice and fixing climate change