Left and Right Unite! – For the UBI Fight!
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Incase anyone missed it, there’s already a decent text on UBI here: https://gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/en/what-wrong-free-money/
Alan, I never said that the capitalist state will not pay a conditional income to lots of people nor an unconditional income to some — both happen at present. What I said was that the state is not going to pay an unconditional income of a significant amount to everyone as envisaged by full UBIers.
The furlough scheme (which was neither universal nor unconditional of course) had a capitalist rationale — to allow employers to retain their workforce while production was temporarily interrupted and so not having to end their contract of employment and then recruit and train anew. Fullscale UBI does not.
That link Robbo put up to launch the anti-work thread has a link to a candidate in the Korean presidential election in March who appears to be advocating the real thing — a payment to everyone even if a rather modest one.
It will be interesting to see if he gets elected and, if so, whether he will honour his election pledge — and the outcome.
The German Institute for Economic Research revived a centuries-old idea to help tackle wealth inequality.
Universal Basic Inheritance, or Grunderbe in German, would assign €20,000 ($22,720) to each resident upon reaching 18 years of age. The sum would be earmarked to pay for education or training, a property downpayment or for starting a business — not to be squandered.
Around 750,000 German residents reach adulthood every year, the universal inheritance would cost the German government around €22.6 billion per year. It could be financed by hiking inheritance tax, introducing a tax on the ultrawealthy and by reforming property taxes.
https://www.dw.com/en/universal-inheritance-would-20k-at-18-help-to-reset-inequality/a-60375347
More reformist pie in the sky but that’s what think tanks seem to be be all about. Interesting though that there is a group in Britain proposing this too.
I see the situation in Germany is the same as everywhere else:
“The richest 10% own two-thirds of total private wealth (some €12 trillion in assets); the richest 1% own a third, while the richest 0.1% own up to a fifth.”
Why do these people not see that the solution is not a less unequal distribution of wealth but the common ownership of the means of wealth production so they can be used to turn out what people need and not for sale on a market with a view to profit?
Posted on our WSM site. Not the definitive analysis that we need but merely a contribution to the debunking of UBI that some can link to.
https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/2022/01/16/ubi-redistributing-poverty/
Another trial and another selective group
All young people leaving care in Wales at the age of 18 are to be offered the chance to take part in a basic income pilot scheme under which they will receive £1,600 a month for up to two years.
The money will be given unconditionally and participants will be able to earn from paid jobs on top of the basic income with ministers hoping it will help give some of the most vulnerable in society a better chance of thriving.
UBI defended but with caveats
An extra pittance for everyone regardless of need – which is what every economically realistic proposal for UBI I’ve ever seen ends up apologetically boiling down to, given the exorbitant cost – is the worst of all worlds; not quite enough to be meaningful to those who could really benefit, but still too expensive to be politically plausible. Better to start by funding the existing welfare system properly
Although only aimed at a selected group and so a basic income rather than a universal basic income scheme, the outcome of that experiment in Wales could be interesting because the amount being offered — some £19,000 a year — is not trivial. This is higher than many people are paid as wages (higher than the minimum wage without housing benefit). Even so, I can’t see any government making that universal and paying that amount to everyone.
I was really pleasedfor them. I thought it looked pretty good for the category, it was helping.
They, or some of them, will still need the help of ‘wiser’ counsel given their special circumstances.
Another programme for a select few.
https://news.trust.org/item/20220609161124-tq51g/
650 Black women set to get cash transfers with no conditions on how the money is spent under a program organized by GiveDirectly and the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund, two nonprofit groups. Organizers say it is the largest ever guaranteed income initiative in the U.S. South, aiming to help Black women who suffer entrenched economic inequality as a result of systemic gender and racial barriers to wealth.
I think it was the pandemic lockdown payments that brought UBI back onto the table.
Now various proposals on how to deal with the energy price rises in this cost of living crisis is producing a similar impetus to bring the idea to the agenda.
I came across the World Food Programme article that discusses how cash payments are seen as often the best approach to fend off hunger. Over the first half of 2022 alone, WFP has delivered US$1.6 billion in cash to 37 million people in 70 countries.
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-food-crisis-cash-offers-hope-people-feel-heat
Are we getting closer to our slogan, “to each according to need”?
Not technically UBI but another sympathetic article to guaranteed income project, more a generous benefits system
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/nov/02/guaranteed-income-us
Universal basic income to be trialled in England for first time.
Apparently this is a private not a government initiative, by a group advocating UBI, and which has not yet obtained funding (see p. 47). Which means that the results, if the project takes place, will not commit government to doing anything.
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