#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.

[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!

[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!

[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.

[liberalsarecool]

Let's have the conversation about UBI.

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

[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

[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]

[gnome-punk]

Text: When someone asks my political views

Picture of a book titled "Everybody has a house and everybody eats"

[alwaysbewoke]