#ubi

[liberalsarecool]

UBI works. 88% success rate.

[audley-and-cherry]

My least favorite things about anti- UBI discourse is always the techbros whining that "nobody is going to work anymore! People will just watch Netflix all day!" and I have 2 responses:

1) Who the fuck cares. Who the fuck cares what people do with their time! That's kind of the fucking point!

2) People aren't going to stop laboring. Housework (look, it's right there in the word!) will still need to be done. So will maintenance on our homes and personal spaces. Children will still need carers, as will the elderly and disabled. There are millions of examples of ~work~ that we do all the time, uncompensated, that won't suddenly stop because we aren't forced to sell our labor to provide corporation's profits.

I'm not surprised that what is traditionally women's work is invisible to these dipshits, but it never fails to anger me.

Anyway. Join the IWW.

[azspot]

So the city decided that all of the $1 million in basic-income funds would go to a single, vulnerable group: formerly incarcerated residents.

Many taxpayers were not happy about this. As the program neared its launch in March 2022, Middleton's inbox and mailbox were flooded with messages filled with epithets. They came from white residents in the more conservative counties near Durham to recent transplants from liberal strongholds like New York City and the Bay Area. They demanded to know why the city was underwriting criminals, disincentivizing work with free handouts, and spending public dollars to help people who, in some opinions, might not deserve help.

Middleton's answer to all criticism was steadfast, simple, and by his own admission, "very selfish."

"We're going to have to pay for these people one way or another, either in incarceration, benefits, homeless shelters, whatever it is," he told me. "It seems to me that spending more money up front makes more sense than housing folks, monitoring and feeding them, and taking care of their healthcare in prison."

He encourages skeptical taxpayers to look at universal basic income from the same "selfish point of view." "By virtue of your humanity, your citizenship, and your residency," he added, "there's a certain line we will not allow you to fall under because it's good policy for us."

Though the data is still nascent, basic income has proven to be good policy everywhere it's been tested in America. The Durham program would be one of its greatest tests yet.

[politijohn]

Source

Let’s go

[ralfmaximus]

A Seattle-area guaranteed basic income pilot gave low-income residents $500 a month to help reduce poverty. Employment in the group nearly doubled, and numerous unhoused residents secured housing. The Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County launched a 10-month guaranteed basic income pilot program with 102 participants in fall 2022. New findings by research firm Applied Inference reveal that the $5,000 total payments improved participants' quality of life, housing, and employment outcomes.

Oh gosh look: another successful UBI pilot program.

Not only was employment doubled in the test group, their savings increased, and health & life insurance coverage tripled. Many participants got health insurance for the first time.

It's time to roll this out nationwide and with more money. The return on investment is undeniable and would be huge if it applied to everyone.

[dioptasesystem]

Among other things, obviously.

[whereserpentswalk]

There are UBI advocates who say that UBI won't make people work less. And I think if it doesn't make people work less than it isn't enough.

[sanguinifex]

I think Robert Pattinson is a good case study for what could happen post-universal basic income. Guy made so much money from Twilight that he’s now able to be in whatever movie he wants without worrying how much it’s going to pay. The result? He stars in increasingly weird movies that contribute to the diversity of art instead of in big blockbusters that are all basically the same and never take risks. Imagine if all actors could do that!

[frozenoj]

Have you heard about the nonbinary third party presidential candidate Jasmine Sherman and their indigenous vice presidential candidate partner Tanda Blubear?

I have! Jasmine Sherman is one of the only candidates (for any office, not just president) I've seen that still cares about covid.

Here's one of their tiktoks about their platform for anyone who isn't already familiar!

[metamatar]

UBI is not communism. It is a limited, national welfare reform. Barring economic concerns like the inflationary pressures that any gains from UBI will be constantly under threat of and the fact that most UBI pilot programmes are not enough to live on, there's more fundamental problems.

States in the global south will not be able to afford it under the debt burden imposed mostly by the Bretton Woods institutions. Without the transformation of the nature of imperial production and the borders it requires, it will just be another nice thing for imperial core citizens to have.

Fundamentally, a vision that stops at UBI for me, is a post ideological vision of society. It views citizens as disengaged and offers them no power except survival, a payment from the coffers of the very rich to ameliorate pain. A vision of UBI that involves hoping capitalists concede to taxes is very much a bit of noblesse oblige.

Without transforming the relations of production, workers will have no power to organise society. We cannot stop companies from pumping out oil, we cannot stop them dumping effluent into our rivers, we cannot stop them from spying on us, we cannot stop wars being fought for a hungry military industrial complex, we cannot put an end to the profit motive continuing to destroy our lives without power. Without abolishing the wage form as the organising principle of societal relations, capitalists will be the only ones to have the power to determine the world that everyone else lives in.

UBI will help the working class. Please do not view UBI as communism.

[barrydeutsch]

Unions Have Always Done The Impossible!

A new cartoon for May Day! This has been an incredible year for unions in the USA - may next year be even better.

Transcript, comments, and supporting blah blah about this cartoon are at https://www.patreon.com/posts/103291731 .

My labor is paid for by hundreds of supporters pledging low amounts - $1-$3 - and that's just how I like it! patreon.com/barry

[liberalsarecool]

Let's have the conversation about UBI.

Let the actual data and facts end the bad faith arguments.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Jessie Golem has spent much of the last six years sharing the stories of participants in Ontario's basic income pilot program.

A former participant herself, the Hamilton photographer says the promise of three years of guaranteed income was life-changing. 

She was one of 4,000 low-income earners who signed up for the pilot in 2017. At the time, she was working four jobs and hoping to start a full-time photography business. The pilot gave Golem the chance she needed, and she calculated that she could launch the business and be earning more than the $34,000 ceiling for the pilot before it ended.

She didn't get that chance. The Ford government cancelled the pilot in 2018, within a year from its start under the previous Liberal government under Kathleen Wynne.

"If the pilot had been allowed to continue, my life would look a lot different right now," Golem told CBC Hamilton this week. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[animentality]

[alwaysbewoke]

[weaselle]

@biggyb I wanted to answer you and then it became so much that i felt it needed to be it's own post.

So, if it was enacted on a large or ubiquitous scale, that is absolutely a concern, that if everybody had more money prices would just increase, rendering the UBI useless.

what would we do about that?

One the one hand that is basically already what happens anyway, which is why cost of living increases etc are a thing. And on the other hand there are a few mechanisms that can curb that, things like rent control laws.

But ultimately, personally, i believe the real answer is to remove the money aspect and provide the basic necessities directly.

When we say UBI we’re basically talking about the government giving us money (which has to come from somewhere, and that probably means some kind of progressive wealth tax, which is really just wealth redistribution at that point but whatever)

Anyway I believe it would be more effective for the government to provide those things directly (but not exclusively). I believe the baseline for society is everybody has free access to:

HEALTHCARE

All forms of healthcare (this is an important one, the very best we can do should be available to anyone who needs it, with no conditions, no barriers to entry like complicated paperwork, if you need health care you should get it, period.

INFORMATION

This means a free press, and education, true, but i also mean internet access, which at this point in our society i think is necessary for equality

NUTRITION

So, not just food, but a complete diet. This can still be very basic, little more than rice and beans, with medical exemption options of course, but it can be enough that it is the bare minimum food types, maybe rice beans and a couple types of dark green veggie and a couple types of vitamin C fruit. Possibly eggs or peanuts or something. Nothing fancy, just good quality ingredients that contain enough nutrition to keep you not only alive but fully healthy. And i think this should be provided in both raw ingredient form and cooked form.

CLOTHING

This one gets overlooked a lot, but kids need shoes, and struggling people need blankets and jackets, and everybody needs access to clothes, actually. Again, can be very basic, maybe government issued overalls, socks, jackets, blankets, and some kind of cheap tennis shoes would be most of it, but everybody needs access to clothes.

And finally HOUSING

So for example, the government would build apartment complexes that were just freely available to the public, first come first serve, you sign for it and the apartment is yours until you give it up or take another apartment.

We already have our government building and running public schools and libraries, we just need to upgrade those a bit. We already have governments building and running hospitals, we just need to do a lot more of that a lot better and get these private insurance companies to fuck off.

And then we just need to provide the clothes, open the Food Distribution Centers and build the housing.

Because then it won’t be money, so you don’t have to worry about the prices of everything going up because everybody has more income, which you are correct, is a concern. So just provide those things directly.

This is much less like taking money from the super wealthy and putting it into the bank accounts of everyone else, and much more the way taxes are supposed to work taking money from those that can spare it and using it to build a society that is better for everyone - even improving things for those super wealthy people (who now at the very least get to walk around safer from the sick and the homeless and the desperate - i mean violent crime alone would probably do whatever the opposite of sky-rocket is. Ground-dive.)

And people will still get jobs and spend money! Like, just because you provide government overalls, doesn’t mean people will stop wanting fashion brands. But now nobody will die of exposure from not having clothes. Same with everything, for example, the government school system is extremely developed, but there are still private schools, right?

That would be true of all this. If you gave everyone access to basic nutrition, there would still be steak houses and sushi restaurants and stuff. But now you could actually have the public boycott foods they felt were sourced unethically, or you could, say, regulate the fishing industry into sustainability even if that meant fish became so expensive that the average person could only eat fish once a year or whatever. Businesses might die from it, but no people would. Not even the people who used to own those businesses.

For my money, no money is where it’s at. But UBI would be a nice stepping stone.

What UBI experiments show us is that when you give people money and they DON’T get a job, but just exist at the minimum level, they are usually only doing so to accomplish something like go back to school for a degree or take care of a disabled or elderly loved one.

And the same would be true if we just provided everyone with the basics (except healthcare, everybody must get the best we have when it comes to healthcare, anything else is a moral failing that doesn’t bear contemplating)

but yeah, there would be people who would only wear government issued overalls, only live in government barracks, and only eat government rice and beans… but UBI experiments show us that it would be a small percentage of the population, and they'd only be doing it either to accomplish something worthy, or because they were in some way impaired. 90% of everyone else would still be out there getting jobs so they could move into a nice house and eat fish, but now with the security to quit if those jobs didn’t treat them well!

imo, THAT’s how you fix the economic issues surrounding UBI, you take the “income” out of the equation and you just straight up provide the Universal Basics themselves.

"but how would we build all these apartments and run these food distribution centers?"

well, this dovetails into my other favorite solution for the united states.

See, we spend a FUCKTON on the military, and we're just never going to make that stop happening, apparently.

So I say, we INCREASE the military. I say double it even.

And then we use them here, keeping them sharp and employed and trained etc by doing public works.

The military is already full of engineers and cooks and doctors and electricians and forklift operators and everything else.

So get them building apartments and running food distribution and supplementing hospital staffs etc.

All that stuff involves, logistics, and teamwork, and knowing how to run projects and accomplish missions, it's all good training even for the combat personnel, which is only 15% of the people in the military btw.

The rest are those other jobs i mentioned. So hire and train even more of them, and then deploy them here, repairing bridges and building hospitals and managing clothing warehouses and stuff.

anyway. Food for thought.