Left and Right Unite! – For the UBI Fight!
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We know one-time aspiring president Chang, a tech billionaire, supports a form of UBI, but so does Twitter chief, Jack Dorsey.
Twitter boss Jack Dorsey donates $15m for income support – BBC News
He is donating $15 million to fund UBI projects in 30 US cities. They offer varying degrees of support. For example, Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania said it plans to give 200 residents $500 a month for two years, while in Compton, in California, help will go to 800 families, with support varying depending on factors like number of children.
Hat-tip to RobertS links
I think this topic can be incorporated in this thread
The Case for ‘Universal Property’ – Scientific American
Perhaps the term “universal property” should be one that we begin to use even if those who use it still impose capitalism’s exchange values on it
“neither private property nor public property”
Former Goldman Sachs CFO Marty Chavez thinks that income redistribution via Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the only way to stave off revolution as the wealth gap continues to increase.
“At the same time, I’m a big proponent of a universal basic income. My personal view is that if you’re just being pragmatic and looking at inequality – and not thinking about some abstract concept of justice – you don’t want the inequality to be so extreme that it leads to revolution. So you ought to be prepared to pay to decrease that probability. This is what I say to, you know, friends who you might call ‘oligarchs,’ right? Why it would make sense for everybody to have some baseline income and why we should all pay for it.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/former-goldman-cfo-marty-sachs-calls-universal-basic-income
“Perhaps the term “universal property” should be one that we begin to use even if those who use it still impose capitalism’s exchange values on it”
Finding a term in the English language is difficult, a harsh parole.
Common Ownership
Propriety (common)
Universal Property
They seem not to shake off the notion of ‘chattel’.… But then there is ‘utility’
Common Utility: universal utility.
Sound okay… or back to the drawing board!On: “you don’t want the inequality to be so extreme that it leads to revolution”
The historical forces of the class struggle can’t be sedimented. They are fluid and work around any obstacle: money can’t pay off social evolution.There is also the term “no property” which would be a state of affairs where no individual or group of individuals can exercise ownership rights over any of the productive resources, natural or human-made, at the disposal of society.These would simply be there to be used under various forms of democratic control.
“no property”
Then no term is needed.
We seek a word, but perhaps none is needed. The absence of one indicates no ownership
ALB- you are a star!Words are important …public ownership, social ownership, collective ownership, common ownership. We can split hairs on the understanding of those.
Ursula Le Guin coined the term propertarian to denote those who support private ownership.
How do we communicate what we mean to our fellow-workers when the pro-capitalist media are astute at co-opting words. For example how the free-marketeers usurped the term libertarian from the anarchists.
Just how many of us having explained that socialism equates to communism actually use that term? We know it has negative connotations we wish to avoid. I’m starting to use the phrase cooperative commonwealth as a substitute for socialism but that also is not without problems.
An on-going and never-ending part of our battle of ideas.
Talking about words, it seems that many of those who say they support UBI haven’t understood what the U stands for : Universal or, sometimes, Unconditional.
All proposed pilot schemes and the actual ones that have been done have not been universal but have targetted a particular group such as those who are unemployed or who are on other welfare benefits. Which of course means that they are neither universal nor unconditional.
No scheme has yet experimented to see what would happen if everybody living in a particular area, even (in fact especially) those with jobs, were to receive a regular unconditional payment from the state for, say, a year. After all, this is what UBIers propose should be done nationally and permanently.
What this means is that most of its advocates are just proposing a change in the poor law system.
Andrew Yang runs for mayor of NYC on UBI platform
“As mayor, we will launch the largest basic income program in the history of the country. Right here in New York,” Yang said. “We will lift hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers out of extreme poverty, putting cash relief directly into the hands of the families who desperately need help right now.”
This isn’t pure UBI of course and Yang himself at least in this quote calls it only “basic income”.
It’s not universal as it won’t be paid to everyone living in New York and it’s not unconditional in that you have to be poor to get it and presumably will have to be means-tested to prove this. It is possible that once you meet this condition there will be no other conditions such as seeking a job or being sick. No doubt it will replace some existing benefits.
So Yang is clearly on the tweak the poor law wing of the “U”BI movement. It’s not clear that he is on to a vote-winner here as many workers with a job resent money being given to those who are not working.
It’s not clear that he is on to a vote-winner here as many workers with a job resent money being given to those who are not working.
..and sigh! they will equate it with ‘socialism’.
One point being made from the pandemic relief of several countries and that is State money, practically without conditions or means testing, is being accepted as a legitimate social policy even by much of the Right.
I think we too could benefit from the case for “according to needs” …the rent abatement rules, the debt postponement, the argument that vaccine distribution should be free, that healthcare should be free.
Most of the actions required to mitigate the pandemic’s effects are out of the socialistic game-play book, not the the laissez-faire capitalism’s. I’m surprised it has not put the nail into the libertarians’ coffin but it hasn’t. I’ve read how the pharmaceutical industry’s response justifies capitalism – contrary to the actual facts.
Not sure if this is useful here?
Unilever has said that by 2030 it will refuse to do business with any firm that does not pay at least a living wage or income to its staff.
Marmite maker Unilever to insist suppliers pay ‘living wage’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55735108
My BBC alter ego Prolerat said:
“Poverty is relative. We need to abolish the wages and prices system and create an advanced post-capitalist, commonly owned, production for use, free access, world without borders, run by us all, an administration of things, without governments over people.
What was originally meant by socialism.”
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