Isnt this just buying off the working class so capitalists and their politicians can do whatever they want? Even in global south, isnt this what reactionary dictstorships do with oil profits, just more humane?
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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No. It's the opposite. It's buying off the bosses.
It's making the taxpayer support employed people so their boss doesn't have to, instead of using welfare to support only unemployed people.
I'd feel like a goof for copy-pasting a comment that I've written previously but here's my fairly comprehensive criticisms of a UBI.
I'm not entirely opposed to an UBI but I am extremely skeptical and I think it's a political dead-end (and that's without even mentioning how it could very well be used by sheepdog politicians to coax people into voting for them like AOC does with stuff like universal healthcare.)
Also does anyone have a way to turn threads into something I can download, so they don't get deleted?
Thread Reader App used to be able to do this but the website is behind a paywall now although it seems that you can still ping the bot if you have twitter so idk if that's an option.
Thank you for your contribution and thank you for not being immediately condescending or calling me a lib for sharing a long list of research articles.
I think it's really important to extend a charitable attitude towards comrades and that we should all remember that if our communities have a rigorous culture of critique then it means that we're going to be on the receiving end of it at some point, eventually, and that it's going to be better for everyone—ourselves included—if we don't engage in shit-flinging internally.
Externally, go ham. (I usually give libs one or two chances before I get ruthless with them, unless I think they just need a little nudge to radicalise.)
But internally, I think it's of crucial importance that whatever community you're a part of has a really even-handed approach to criticism in order to have strong, healthy community with any chance at longevity. If we look at Mao's short piece Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?:
Where do correct ideas come from?
Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment. It is man’s social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world. In their social practice, men engage in various kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their failures.
And think about that last bit especially—[people] engage in various kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their failures—then we need to cultivate a culture where we embrace gaining rich experience from our failures especially and where we encourage it in others. Shitting on people isn't the right way of achieving that goal.
And I'm saying this in full knowledge of the fact that I could just as easily be wrong on this topic btw, not to tell you in some condescending way that you're wrong but we should be nice to you regardless; I've had positions that I've felt more certain about which have turned out to be incorrect in the past.
It's about a ruthless criticism of all that exists, not about being a ruthless jerk to all who exist.
Take your UBI and shove it.
I've never heard an explanation for how UBI isn't just a handout to landlords & other owners of real estate. Those costs aren't counted in inflation metrics btw. We've turned a necessity of life into an investment vehicle and it has to generate returns by squeezing people as much as possible. UBI gives it more room to do that. Even if UBI is implemented you think you'll be able to index it to real estate returns??? Even indexing it to inflation sans real estate is unlikely. Minimum wage isn't indexed to anything at all.
ubi would be fine enough if we did some maoism first, but the suck dems and whoever else proposes it won't even call for rent freezes
Fair question! The thread which cites 91 studies does touch on that I'm sure. I'm only just skimming it right now.
ITT: a bunch of liberals don't understand how to not be distracted by obvious liberal bullshit while comrade Nako desperately tries to put some sense into their heads.
Some of you need to actual unironic re-education for real. UBI won't solve any underlying issue and the amount of organization and effort it would take to achieve is better spent on real communist organizing to destroy the imperialist core. This is a false god, do not worship it. The goal is wealth redistribution to the proletariat, not a fucking sucdem handout.
Your response strikes me as odd and needlessly rude and hostile. I have answered and argued for my point of view in this very thread, but you just call me a liberal and then repeat arguments I have already answered. You are also claiming things that I have not said. Why this hostility?
UBI won't solve any underlying issue
Where have I said that UBI will fix the underlying issue? I take it that you mean the issue is capitalism.
better spent on real communist organizing
Which would be what according to you? Because in my personal experience, it is much easier to organize people around a cause rather than a vague endgoal of revolution.
I remember some Charles Goodhart + Michael Hudson paper people got mad about went into this but I never got around to reading it since I'm behind on like 7 topics at once
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/some-ways-introduce-modern-debt-jubilee
@Egon@hexbear.net To save twitter threads, I just put https://threadreaderapp.com pages into https://web.archive.org/save/
Thank you!