I see arguments against UBI, that it's just the ruling class trying to remain in power, that your landlord will just raise rent by that much. Couldn't the same arguments be used against raising min wage? See, here's my thing, I think UBI would just be the capitalists desperately putting the system on life support but why are leftists so against UBI but not against raising min wage? You're not a liberal, you know better that you can't vote for or against either one. If those in power conclude that's what they need to do they'll do it. It won't matter if you agree or disagree or who's in office. To me that seems like one of those societal contradictions like Mao talks about. Under fuedalism those in power were naturally the only ones with the power to change society, but they had no incentive to so they did what they could to remain in power as long as possible, but ironically the way they solved those contradictions either changed society or set the stage for societal change.
I just can't get worked up about UBI one way or the other, that's not a materialist way of viewing it. A materialist way of looking at it would be to figure out, is this going to be what the ruling class conclude to be the way they stay in power? If so, what effects will that have on society?
Pretty much all of the modern UBI plans that have been proposed come at the expense of other social services
This right here. There's a way to do UBI that would transition us towards a post-scarcity society. The early non-US Green New Deal plans had UBI as a way of allowing us to de-industrialize, but plans like Yang's and most neolibs' are poison pills meant to dismantle social services.
How UBI would do a de-industrialization?
Why people want to de-industrialize anyways? Yeah a lot of industries are meant to produce shit nobody actually needs, but we also need a lot of industries to produce things we do need and don't exist.
We have a limited budget of carbon we can expel into the air (that we've probably blown past.) The idea being that we can pay people to stay home while we transition away from a society of bullshit jobs and instead focus on shit that would actually help us going forward; building up renewable power sources, high speed rails, letting developing countries skip the hardships of industrialization and straight to the renewable shit being developed, etc.
Imagine what we could have accomplished back during the lockdowns if the US had implemented a UBI and a proper safety net so that people wouldn't have been in a hurry to 'get back to normal'. All those empty roads and the projects we could have fast tracked. Lol just kidding, have an endemic.
Lmao "We must secure the existence of our rivers and a future for our ecosystems"
I think the materialist argument is that working class power comes from doing labor, and thus having the power to withdraw it (strike). This is how we threaten the capitalists to accept our demands. With UBI we would no longer work (to the same extent anyway) and thus not have this power. But there are other problems too, notably how it would necessitate increased exploitation of the peripheral countries.
The day the working class is no longer needed by the ruling class is the day the ruling class starts discussing why they keep us around.
I mean, they have been not only discussing that, but implementing it, for a while now
UBI has its origins among (right) libertarian economists, probably better understood as embarrassed neoliberal economists, and their goals of destroying social services and social spending and replacing them with a cash payout.
Instead of Medicaid, you get to buy insurance at "market rate".
Instead of food stamps, where you can compare "amount for food" vs. food prices, it's now part of your total poverty budget.
And on and on and on. It was meant to replace basically every social service, therefore privatizing them and obfuscating social spending into a single cash payment.
You'll notice that Yang's plan doesn't even try to pretend otherwise, it forces recipients to stop taking various other benefits.
A much better idea is universal basic services: you are guaranteed food, housing, healthcare, and so on. Then the focus is on the quality of those services and not a constant battle against inflation and profit margins.
It would be better than what we have now, but it's not a long-term solution. And there's better ideas out there like a jobs guarantee.
UBI is a far better policy than a jobs guarantee. A jobs guarantee is functionally the same thing as welfare with work requirements (it's just that the government will get you hired), while UBI is welfare without work requirements. There is absolutely no left-wing case for a jobs guarantee being better than UBI. A jobs guarnatee might have second-order effects that harm unions as well: workers on a jobs guarantee will almost certainly be paid less, can't bargain for wages, and can have their job role changed at any moment. That will pressure existing public-sector unions.
I know Bernie ran on a jobs guarantee and Yang ran on UBI and obviously Yang is an asshole and Bernie is cool but sometimes :heartbreaking: . A jobs guarantee is the natural conclusion of Clinton-era welfare reform, locking people out of their livelihoods if they don't work full time.
Maybe you're right, I haven't studied either in depth. I'm for any plans that provide a decent living for everyone without means testing.
You can't eat money. If you give everyone a basic income, that doesn't magically make houses appear and be maintained. It doesn't make food come out of the ground or make medicine.
Bro, somebody has to do something. Money does not have "value", food, medicine, houses, etc do. Just handing people a check causes market distortions. What we need is just to give people houses, subsidized food and fuel, etc. De-commodification, not magic beans.
What we need is just to give people houses, subsidized food and fuel, etc. De-commodification
well, I do agree with that part.
I don't see leftists against UBI so much as saying that it won't solve all problems with capitalism like its biggest proponents seem to think so. And it won't.
it won’t solve all problems with capitalism
These radlibs literally support UBI because they do not want to solve any problems, they just want to turn off their brain so they can listen to Joe Rogan. Like putting on a bandaid and forgetting about it forever
While rent control is good, the rent problem isn't a thing that actually exists. Rents didn't go up $1400 this March when the stimulus checks hit. Rents did not go up $300 a month overnight last month once the Child Tax Credit kicked in.
Yang's proposed UBI, while it would have plenty of problems, would still lift millions out of poverty. We should be pushing for the good parts of Yang's UBI plan (free money is good) and fighting against the bad parts (gutting other parts of the welfare state). The US welfare state is terrible, and it's hard to wring more than $1000 out of it every month beforehand. It also removes the administrative burdens and means testing attached to existing welfare programs. No more demeaning trips to the welfare office, humiliation at the grocery store when the food you want isn't allowed for food stamps, filing paperwork that you're working every month to keep your food stamps, etc. The left should fully embrace unconditional cash transfers, which are easier to administer and less paternalistic. They're also harder to claw back.
Replacing food stamps with a cash benefit would be a gigantic win for the working class, and I'm puzzled at the mental gymnastics some leftists (I'm not accusing you of this, but there are people on the left who believe this) do to convince themselves it wouldn't be. Those leftists sound like Bill Clinton-esque welfare reformers.
And people not dependent on food stamps getting free money is a good thing, not a bad thing.
While rent control is good, the rent problem isn’t a thing that actually exists. Rents didn’t go up $1400 this March when the stimulus checks hit. Rents did not go up $300 a month overnight last month once the Child Tax Credit kicked in.
Isn't the issue that these types of things tend to take years/decades and we've seen things like minimum wage and other social services seriously lag behind? I don't know enough about Yang's UBI to know if there's any mechanisms to combat this, but I feel like we'll just eventually see a scenario where UBI is painfully insufficient and politicians drag their feet about increasing the "burden on tax payers" etc.
I honestly don't know enough about the second or third-order effects of UBI or direct cash transfers decades down the line. Yang's UBI proposal - while a net good - had serious problems when it came to other social services lagging behind, but there's no reason the left can't both organize for UBI and against welfare cuts at the same time. It's not a zero-sum game.
What we do know is that direct cash transfers historically have lifted millions out of poverty in the immediate term, and I don't see the point in fretting about second and third-order problems that won't manifest for years or decades when these policies do so much good in the short term. If those problems manifest years down the line, we can organize against those problems when they happen.
Rents did on average go up across 2020, faster than inflation.
Yang’s proposed UBI, while it would have plenty of problems, would still lift millions out of poverty.
The problem here is that we're defining poverty as a certain arbitrary number, and solving it the way the World Bank does, i.e. letting the number go out of date or otherwise completely decoupled from the costs of living. Every time you want to update it, that's another parliamentary battle.
Free money is good but $1k a month on its own comes out to like 21% of GDP. We'd be better off struggling for other things, especially things that have use-value.
pros: UBI kind of means you might not become homeless if you can't find a new job fast enough
cons: usually UBI (at least, maybe in Andrew Yang's case) comes without everything Bernie promised, sometimes while revoking things we already have.
I'd say it's an interesting pallet of bricks, but if somebody handed you half a wall worth of unassembled bricks you wouldn't call it a home fit for use.
If those in power conclude that’s what they need to do they’ll do it. It won’t matter if you agree or disagree or who’s in office
The ruling class' self-preservation instincts aren't the most trustworthy, so they might reject UBI adamantly even if it were their last chance to preserve capitalism. So, yeah.
UBIs or whatever could be a very important immediate ail for many people, except if the UBI comes joined with gutting any other social safety net, which then it's shit. Think outside the US.
so they might reject X [...] even if it were their last chance to preserve capitalism.
I hope that happens
UBIs or whatever could be a very important temporary ail for many people, except if the UBI comes joined with gutting any other social safety net
This is what I've been thinking, but around here it seems to be "UBI bad, no exceptions". Which is kinda weird, though I do understand concerns that reforms like UBI could discourage dissent against capitalism rather than people going for the full socialism or something.
Sounds like the big socdem question.
If your goal is full socialism or something and they give you UBI as an immediate way to calm the population, that's a win for you and everyone in desperate condition.
But if your goal is to let capitalism do its thing but with the population more calmed so your goal is UBI, then you are doing a moderate-fascism.
No I will not explain.
The particulars of any given policy are largely, but not completely, irrelevant. What matters is the class composition of the ruling power that enacts it.
The anti-UBI arguments on the left are bad. Even if you implemented Andrew Yang's thoroughly mediocre UBI plan from the 2020 election it would probably result in one of the largest reductions in poverty in US history. It would be legitimately life-changing for millions of people.
There's a really bad refutation that people make "if you give everyone $1000 a month the rent will just go up by $1000 a month" but that's abjectly false (welfare states and downwards wealth transfers are historically proven to lift people out of poverty). People come up with other weird, abstract, defeatist crap but like...people are missing the trees for the forest here. Implementing UBI would probably be the single largest working-class victory in US history since the 40-hour work week.
Now, it's true that there are right-wing UBI arguments, usually about promoting "personal choice" by gutting welfare and replacing it with UBI. As we know, both Milton Friedman and MLK both advocated for UBI, but the UBI in Friedman's mind was a lot different than the one in MLK's. I think too many leftists get UBI brainworms because the person who mainstreamed it in the US was a neoliberal tech bro.
Leftists who say UBI is bad because it threatens the existing welfare state sound like Joe Biden saying Medicare for All is bad because it threatens Obamacare. It's pure brainworms.
And I want to be clear I was a UBI opponent this time last year until I read more about it and realized I was parroting neoliberal talking points. UBI good.
UBI would probably be the single largest working-class victory in US history since the 40-hour work week
"here's some pocket change to fuck off and stop being revolutionary class antagonists" :porky-happy:
it’s true that there are right-wing UBI arguments, usually about promoting “personal choice”
"UBI lowers the rate of involuntary poverty to zero" - PMC eugenicist Charles Murray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)#The_Bell_Curve
Implementing UBI (without gutting existing welfare states)
"libertarianism (without the libertarianism)"
And I want to be clear I was a UBI opponent this time last year until I read more about it and realized I was parroting neoliberal talking points.
like you're doing right now? :agony-MMT:
Okay, this is pretty much the gamut of conservative talking points used to get the working class to organize against their own interests (but couched in left-wing language). Let's debunk them one by one.
“here’s some pocket change to fuck off and stop being revolutionary class antagonists” :porky-happy:
If you think expropriating the wealth of the capitalist class to alleviate poverty is anti-revolutionary, then you do not know the first thing about class conflict. Is China a reactionary state for their work to alleviate poverty? Is Lula a conservative for his Bolsa Familia? Were the unions that fought and died for improving working conditions for hundreds of millions of impoverished workers a bunch of class-collaborating liberals? Do you think to foment revolution in the US everyone should join the GOP and push for gutting existing social programs, flaring up racism, and making conditions so bad until the revolution fairy comes around and somehow turns the US into a communist paradise?
You're pushing class collaboration with the wealthy, I'm pushing for expropriating their wealth. Don't get it twisted.
“UBI lowers the rate of involuntary poverty to zero” - PMC eugenicist Charles Murray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)#The_Bell_Curve
A bad person said something right, therefore that thing is now wrong. I'm sure Murray thinks the Earth is round, should we all be flat Earthers now too? And while I'm not disputing the origin of that quote, I'd note it does not appear anywhere on the Wikipedia article you sent me.
“libertarianism (without the libertarianism)”
If you think expropriating the wealth of the rich to fund poverty reduction is libertarian, I'd direct you to Wikipedia.
like you’re doing right now? :agony-MMT:
Forcibly taking the rich's wealth away to alleviate poverty is not a neoliberal talking point.
They did the latter, and it worked great! We don't need to put basic income/direct cash transfers and infrastructure spending against one another, they've both historically been used to lift millions out of poverty!
There are very few states in history that have implemented UBI. So instead, let me step back a little bit and talk about direct cash transfer programs in general, because that's my real argument (that the left should embrace forking over as much money to the poor as humanly possible). I like UBI because it's a direct cash transfer program. And when direct cash transfer programs have been set up in the past, they've worked:
The Bolsa Familia program in Brazil is a great example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsa_Fam%C3%ADlia . Bolsa Familia is Lula's magnum opus, where any impoverished child is given a direct cash payment. The payment will be enough to guarantee they will be lifted out of extreme poverty, although it doesn't go far enough to eliminate non-extreme poverty. It's means tested (I wish it weren't!), but even means-tested direct payments work! Within a couple years of this program being instituted, poverty in Brazil dropped nearly 30%. Employment surged and real wage increases followed.
In the US, the Child Tax Credit introduced in 2021 will likely reduce child poverty by a third. This is basically a UBI for children that excludes the very wealthiest. Heck, look at the effects of Social Security on senior poverty! Seniors in the US would have triple their current poverty rate were it not for Social Security, and there are thousands of problems with SS. Most notably, that it's funded by a tax on the poor and middle class. But even with that crappy funding scheme it's doing a phenomenal job of cutting poverty.
If you want an actual UBI program, check out the Alaska Permanent Fund. Alaska pays out a UBI to its citizens and, despite being governed by Republicans and having one of the most right-wing tax schemes in the US, ranks second-best of all states in fighting wealth inequality.
If you want other examples of child allowances, glance over the Wikipedia page for them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_benefit The tl;dr is that they pretty much universally work.
For smaller examples, here's an academic study in Canada where they just forked over $7500 to homeless people. It worked. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/new-leaf-project-results-1.5752714 People found housing twice as fast as those who didn't receive the money, spending on substances of abuse decreased, and spending on other social services dropped because they were no longer needed.
I want the left to get pilled on "just fork over cash to poor people (or anyone, really)." Direct cash transfers are one of the single best ways to empower the working class, liberate them from poverty, and provide for the general welfare of citizens. And they absolutely would still exist under socialism, especially for those unable to work.
The two UBI pilots programs in Canada (one in Manitoba in like the 70's, and one in Ontario recently) worked well, but Conservative governments scrapped them the instant they got into power in the respective provinces.
“here’s some pocket change to fuck off and stop being revolutionary class antagonists”
This has to be a joke right? I mean do you think the USA is filled with people that could be described as even close to that?
Isn’t UBI just giving first worlders an extra $1000/month so they can enjoy more treats provided by exploitation of the imperial subjects? I don’t see this as a step towards liberation — it’s more likely to end in pacification.
Maybe it would make people’s lives more comfortable. It puts me in a difficult spot because I know people are hurting but I see this program as a purse-string that hangs over the head of the working class.
“Behave yourself!” They will say, “because not everyone gets UBI and if you engage in anti-social behavior we can pull yours away.”
:porky-happy: controlling all the levers of society but we all have a little more $$ doesn’t seem like something to hang our hat on.
Isn’t UBI just giving first worlders an extra $1000/month so they can enjoy more treats provided by exploitation of the imperial subjects? I don’t see this as a step towards liberation — it’s more likely to end in pacification.
This isn't an argument against UBI, it's an argument against literally all welfare. While the US engages in imperial plunder, there are non-imperialist nations that have implemented direct cash transfer programs extremely effectively and there is absolutely no rule saying a welfare state has to rely on imperialism. The idea that welfare can only come through imperialism is just a differently-worded conservative "how do you pay for it" argument.
UBI is literally just the expropriation of capitalists' wealth to lift millions of proletarians out of poverty. The left really needs to stop pretending it's anything different.
