Left and Right Unite! – For the UBI Fight!
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Another article that discusses UBIhttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/13/should-we-scrap-benefits-and-pay-everyone-100-a-week-whether-they-work-or-not
Quote:‘Inventing the Future’ authors, Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek, will be appearing at this year’s Glastonbury. “Demand full automation, demand universal basic income, demand the future.” This tangled history contains a few warnings about different political conceptions of the UBI idea. “The right tends to see it as a replacement for the welfare state,” says Snircek. “Basically, in their conception, UBI is a way to do away with benefits and marketise everything. And, obviously, that has to be warded off completely.” He says he also has concerns about interpretations of the idea from some parts of the political left. “UBI has to be universal: it has to apply to everybody,” he says. “It’s problematic for some people that it includes the rich as well, but universal benefits have a political power that means-tested benefits don’t. It has to be unconditional. It can’t be means-tested. Everybody gets it, no matter what. “The other aspect is, it should be as a high as possible. It can’t just be some middling level, like the Green party was proposing at the last election.” Their idea, he explains, was to pay everyone around £72 a week, roughly the same level as Jobseekers’ Allowance. “That would help people, but they would still have to go out and find a 40-hour job to survive, so it doesn’t do any of the political things that are so important.”Just how close is the ideal to our own of from each according to ability, to each according to needs? How can we relate and convey our aim to the UBI goal? Is one possiblist and the other impossiblist?
This is a very thought-provoking critique of UBI. A bit too long for me to take in all at once so i'll be returning to it everytime i come across a UBI article on the "progressive" websites It is also too long and complex for me to summarise but i think it explains a lot from our standpointhttps://gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/en/what-wrong-free-money/
Another part of the debate. It will weaken the trade unions.http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/guaranteed-annual-income-opinion-1.3547324
Another proposal for the citizens income, this time from the Fabian Society and it is a compromise alternative, not the full idea.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/universal-basic-income-fabian-society-uk-policy-what-is-welfare-reform-report-arguments-corbyn-a7216791.html
Quote:Tax-free allowances should be scrapped and the money used to pay a flat-rate benefit to all adults…The report’s authors reject the idea of a “fully-fledged” universal basic income –… They warn such a plan would create too “many losers and not reduce poverty or improve the incomes of those with the least”. But the Society’s researchers say a similar flat-rate “individual credit” for all adults that sat alongside the existing benefits system could “significantly reduce poverty and increase low and middle incomes”. They say child benefit could also be integrated into the same system, with a “child credit” paid to a child’s main carer.“At this time there is not a good case for integrating universal credit, tax allowances and child benefit into a single flat-rate payment for each individual (ie a ‘basic income’),” the report’s authors write. “There is growing interest in the idea, which has the merit of reducing the employment disincentives, complexity and intrusion associated with means-testing. “But a basic income has significant disadvantages – any revenue neutral reform would create many losers and would not reduce poverty or improve the incomes of those with least today. Reform would be very unlikely to eliminate the need for means testing and conditionality.“Instead, the tax-free allowances and child benefit should be converted into an ‘individual credit’ for all adults and a ‘child credit’ paid to the main carer. Unlike a basic income, this payment would sit alongside universal credit and as a result would significantly reduce poverty and increase low and middle incomes.Left and right are two wings of the same bird known as capitalism. Taxation is an issue that does not concern to the working class. It looks like the left wingers do not know where taxes come from.They will go to the streets to be beaten by the police asking for reduction of the surplus value of the capitalist class
Owen Smith the Labour leader contender comes out against the UBIhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/universal-basic-income-not-credible-idea-labour-leadership-contender-owen-smith-a7226051.html
Labour will research the radical policy of universal basic income, which would replace means-tested benefits with a flat-rate payment.http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/14/jeremy-corbyn-to-launch-review-into-universal-basic-incomeA recent Compass report on the issue argued that a transitional system could be created at an annual cost of £8bn a year, which would leave many means-tested benefits in place.The tax-free personal allowance, currently worth £11,000, would be abolished, and tax rates would rise; but every adult would receive a payment of £71 a week – or £51 for pensioners – and £59 for children. The authors claim such a system would cut child poverty by 45%, and that 60% of those in the bottom fifth of the income distribution would gain more than 20%
The latest issue of Kittens mentioned in the Announcements section here contains a definitive criticism of the Universal Basic Income reform from a Marxist perspective:https://antinational.org/en/what-wrong-free-money/Here's an extract where thet criticise the position of "post-autonomist Marxists" who campaign for this reform:
Quote:In the name of realism these radical supporters of a Universal Basic Income want to end capitalism while presupposing its continued existence. If people are free from any compulsion to work for a capitalist company, this would destroy the capitalist mode of production. This, after all, relies on the workers to produce the products which are turned into profits. It also relies on the exclusion of workers from these products so that they can become profits. However, at the same time, the same supporters also ask the same capitalist firms to produce the profits to pay for freedom from them in the form of a Universal Basic Income. They want both: the continued existence — for now — of the capitalist mode of production where the reproduction of each and everyone is subjugated to profit and the end of this subjugation by providing everyone with what they need. They want companies to make profits, which relies on and produces the poverty of workers, while at the same time ending mass poverty. They want to maintain the exclusion from social wealth through the institution of private property and end this exclusion by giving everyone enough money.Not possible of course.
Beat you to linking to it on message #17, ALB, way back in April. The article is well over a year old now…
The provincial government of Ontario is to run a pilot project aimed at providing every citizen a minimum basic income of $1,320 (£773) a month. People with disabilities will receive $500 (£292) more under the scheme, and individuals who earn less than $22,000 (£13,000) a year after tax will have their incomes topped up to reach that threshold.$25m (£15m) project over the next two months, which could replace social assistance payments administered by the province for people aged 18 to 65.Inside the article it clarifies that it is only a pilot project of $25m (£15m) over the next two months, which could replace social assistance payments administered by the province for people aged 18 to 65 on three distinct sites: in the north, south and among the indigenous community of Ontario determined by high levels of poverty and food insecurity should be chosen for the test project. It is due to launch in spring 2017, will be voluntary and promised “no one would be financially worse off as a result of the pilot”.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/canadian-province-to-give-every-citizen-1320-income-boost-to-overcome-poverty-a7411281.html
Here's the take of the "Freeworlder" (who stand for a money-free world) on this proposal:http://freeworlder.com/2016/11/06/universal-basic-serfdom/I'm not sure that the motive behind the proposal is to head off any moves towards getting rid of money (as opposed to streamlining and saving costs on the so-called welfare system). But he does make a valid point against those who, on the contrary, see it as a move in this direction:
Quote:As my good friend Rafi succinctly put it; “how does more money get you to no money?”An interesting interview focussed on the current popularity of the UBI. Mateo Alaluf is the author of the book Universal Basic Income. New Label of Precariousness (Allocation Universelle. Nouveau label de précarité), and co-editor of the anthology Against the Universal Basic Income (Contre l’allocation universelle).http://dissidentvoice.org/2017/03/universal-basic-income-a-fast-track-to-precariousness/
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