General Politics Discussion (VI) [ARCHIVED] • Page 376

Having pilot programs locally is where we should start, but unlike issues like minimum wage and marijuana legalization, this shouldn't be a policy that is a city by city and state by state basis. I may be understanding you wrong, but having one state giving out $1,000 a month vs the next not doing anything, feasibly doesn't make sense imo.

As long as you have people advocating for it who don't want to make cuts to crucial programs like Medicare (like Yang), it's fine and should be discussed at the national level because eventually it will need to be implemented nationally

 

Because the concept is completely vorboten among "serious" politicians, so this is likely to start relaxing the stigma, if only a little. Bernie and AOC have been able to do the same with other issues that are only slightly less out there in the context of the mainstream discourse.

 

Read the above article.

 

The Case Against a Basic Income

Appearing at once “liberal” and “social,” basic income, according to a popular view, divides those who still think about class and the industrial revolution in old-fashioned terms from those who recognize that the “knowledge economy” has profoundly transformed our economy and society. For this latter group, full employment is utopian, stable work is an outdated demand, and the old institutions of wage labor — social security, unions, and so on — are obsolete, brakes on progress and individual freedom. For radical left “accelerationist” theorists Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, basic income constitutes a “post-capitalist” exit path, while the self-described “entrepreneur” Peter Barnes, whose bestseller With Liberty and Dividends For All inspired Hillary Clinton, sees it as a way to create a “better-balanced capitalism — we would call it everyone-gets-a-share capitalism.”

The studies, experiments, and debates are multiplying, making UBI once again an idea “whose time has come.”

This is also good, and was written after it came out Clinton wanted to run on it in 2016.

 

I'll try to later, but I'm already aware of the dangers of cynical misuse of UBI to undermine the existing safety net, weaken labor, etc. As others have said, though, it almost certainly will be necessary in our lifetimes. I'm more concerned about the political cost of broaching the topic remaining prohibitive past that point of necessity than I am about Yang actually winning, somehow ramming through UBI in 2021, and having to gut Medicare in a compromise to pass it.

 

To quote from the second article, “That’s why a universal job guarantee and a reduction in work hours still represent the most important objectives for any left politics. Collectively reducing work time is politically and socially preferable to creating a socially segmented pool of unemployed workers, a situation that would have serious consequences for the employed. It’s not hard to imagine how this situation could foster divisions within the working class — as it already has over the last several decades.”

 

I guess I need to read more about the best ways to implement it.

 

4 day work week imo

 

I just want my job to not start so goddamn early in the morning, like 3 hours before teen brains are even actually functioning.

 

I completely disagree with this idea about human intelligence and "distribution" of it. This sounds like one step away from measuring skull density or something.

People who perform labor aren't dumb people, they can be trained for different jobs. We don't need to unnecessarily keep around jobs that can be more efficiently automated just to give people jobs like they'll never be able to do anything else. Education can elevate more people and are society as a whole. The only real problem with the kind of automation we have now is the stagnation of wages as labor has become more efficient for decades, and UBI doesn't address that at all.

 

4 day work week.

I just really want a remote job that I can do from home.

I nerd tk finish my resume and start applying I've been way too lazy being on severance.

 

ubi is bad and dumb. there's a reason some technocrat dork like Yang is proposing it and people like warren and bernie would rather push for a jobs guarantee.

 

Enjoy the ride.

 

I'm not set on UBI as the short-term or even medium-term panacea. But I still have real reservations about where some of the visceral opposition is coming from. First, paid labor cannot be synonymous with meaning and dignity in the long term, and decoupling them (if we ever do) will be a long process. Second, any program that involves guaranteeing work irrespective of the practical need for said work is hard to defend, at least for me (I'm not specifically accusing any policy mentioned here of that, just saying in general).

If automation intrudes into the labor market to the degree more alarmist voices are warning of, then in the inevitable political upheaval I see things breaking down along lines different than our current politics, and this thread seems to support that. Like, for me, mass scale automation and the near elimination human labor is a laudable long-term goal, where some on the left seem to disagree passionately. But again, in the (probably long) interim transition period, I'm not committed to UBI. Scaling back the work week and spreading what labor is still needed thinner and wider across the population makes a lot of sense, in fact. But on the most fundamental sticking points (meaning/dignity, how to structure society, etc.), it's still kicking the can down the road, so I'm happy to see UBI talked about if only to raise those issues and start breaking down psychological barriers.

 

people like yang that are so onboard with UBI are the same people that bring up "crony capitalism" or whatever when reports of wage stagnation or millennial non-existent savings account come out. at the end of the day if you're not willing to just admit the problem is capitalism and that the only way to address the issues it's created is to completely dismantle it, then creating programs like UBI is at best giving us scraps and at worst giving the rich another program to defund to starve and kill those who depend on it.

 

As someone who largely works from home I can tell you from experience this sounds way better than it actually is. Twitter is no cure for loneliness.

 

If there’s gonna be a UBI it needs to be way way way more than the 1k a month Yang is proposing

 

The evil lady wasn't more evil only because it was super illegal

 

Kurzgesagt does a good job going through some negatives of a UBI if you haven’t seen it

 

This will go well

Before Nielsen's abrupt resignation, hardline Trump adviser Stephen Miller was reportedly handed total control of border policy

 

Haha eat shit Bernie

 

Between that and his BS response on open borders

 

what is there to say but: yikes