Left and Right Unite! – For the UBI Fight!
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There's a meeting on this at the Party's premises in London next month:https://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/events/244255066/
Another overly-approving article on UBI once again demonstrating that it is simply a re-structuring of the tax allowanceshttps://www.socialeurope.eu/universal-basic-income-definitions-details
Yet another trial proposed in Scotland. Four councils face the task of turning basic income from a utopian fantasy to contemporary reality as they build the first pilot schemes in the UK, with the support of a £250,000 grant announced by the Scottish government last month https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/25/scotland-universal-basic-income-councils-pilot-schemeThe independent thinktank Reform Scotland, which published a briefing earlier this month setting out a suggested basic income of £5,200 for every adult, has calculated that much of the cost could be met through a combination of making work-related benefits obsolete and changes to the tax system, including scrapping the personal allowance and merging national insurance and income tax.
Came across this Trotskyist take on this (it's the Militant lot that stayed with Ted Grant and are in the Labour Party) from last year. It makes some good points but on the whole is not that good. But at least they are not prepared to unite to try to get it:http://www.marxist.com/universal-basic-income-utopian-dream-or-libertarian-nightmare.htm
Left united is always left disunited
A more realistic view of the UBI from those directly involved.https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/jan/12/money-for-nothing-is-finlands-universal-basic-income-trial-too-good-to-be-true
Quote:“It’s not really what people are portraying it as,” said Markus Kanerva, an applied social and behavioural sciences specialist working in the prime minister’s office in Helsinki. “A full-scale universal income trial would need to study different target groups, not just the unemployed. It would have to test different basic income levels, look at local factors. This is really about seeing how a basic unconditional income affects the employment of unemployed people.”Kanerva describes the trial as “an experiment in smoothing out the system”Authorities believe it will shed light on whether unemployed Finns, as experts believe, are put off taking up a job by the fear that a higher marginal tax rate may leave them worse off. Many are also deterred by having to reapply for benefits after every casual or short-term contract. “It’s partly about removing disincentives,” explained Marjukka Turunen, who heads the legal unit at Finland’s social security agency, Kela, which is running the experiment. The benefit system is simply “not suited to modern working patterns”, Turunen said. “We have too many benefits. People don’t understand what they’re entitled to or how they can get it. Even experts don’t understand. For example, it’s very hard to be in the benefit system in Finland if you are self-employed – you have to prove your income time and time and time again.”For UBI purists, the fact that the monthly Finnish payment – roughly equivalent to basic unemployment benefit – is going to a strictly limited group, and is not enough to live on, disqualifies the Finnish scheme.The Finnish experiment’s design and objectives mean it should perhaps not really be seen as a full-blown UBI trial at all, cautioned Kanerva: “People think we’re launching universal basic income. We’re not. We’re just trialling one kind of model, with one income level and one target group.”
The right-wing Adam Smith Institutes promotes UBI
Quote:UBI is politically feasible, socially desirable and financially sustainable,” the report says…Even if it gets implemented, UBI won’t solve all our problems. Its parameters, scope and size will have to be fiddled with for a long time to come. But no one can deny that it’s a feasible reform that can nudge our society forward.”Report author, Otto Lehto, explained,
Quote:“A UBI streamlines the provision of welfare services and improves the autonomy and incentives of individuals. Allowing poor people to spend their money as they see fit stimulates a bottom-up market solutions and cuts down on the bureaucratic red tape. All this pulls resources away from wasteful rent-seeking into wealth creation”.Sam Dumitriu, the head of research at the Adam Smith Institute, said
Quote:Attempts to protect jobs through luddite regulation will backfire and mass retraining schemes have a shaky track record. Cash transfers are our best bet at ensuring the benefits from coming technological change are felt by everyone.“We now need to experiment with different ways of doing it – should we tweak the tax credits system, should we introduce a ‘Negative Income Tax’, or is a Universal Basic Income the best approach?In case we have forgotten, the UBI advocates are still active in the mediahttp://lethbridgeherald.com/commentary/opinions/2018/03/24/lets-lift-all-canadians-out-of-poverty/
In a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post titled “Here’s how block-chain can reduce inequality”, Nicolas Berggruen wrote bridging inequality in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) will require rewiring how we currently allocate capital. Meaning, governments should change their focus from redistributing wealth to “pre-distributing” capital.The emphasis hence should not be on “universal basic income,” but “universal basic capital.” In Berggruen’s own words, “Why not give a share of everything to everyone within a society? For example, imagine a society in which a third of its goods are owned by society itself, a third is owned by workers and a third is owned by capital — so that everyone has a share of everything.” And of course he believes “blockchain” is the game-changing, self-regulating technology that can make this possible.https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2018/03/350206/capitalism-age-ai
But not everyone is in favour of UBI…other people propose other schemes – the Federal Job Guarantee – a minimum annual wage of $24,600 plus benefits, and an average expected wage of $32,500—a figure at least three times the highest proposed universal basic income.https://www.alternet.org/economy/red-and-blue-voters-alike-could-rally-around-radical-job-growth-idea
ALB wrote:And they call us utopian !and some members left the socialist party to join a reformist trend
Probably, they do not understand Engels concept of being utopian.
Transhumanism is more modern and more beneficial movement than UBI, some of their goals are:"life extension (even immortality), massive economic growth, and super-abundance of material prosperity for eveyonehttp://transhumanist-party.org and https://hpluspedia.org/wiki/Main_Page are their web pages. Transhumanists are the most strongest advocated of technological developmen I am aware of. They expect zero-cost marginal. I feel that UBI can be only a transitory movement before people are ready to accept the already achieved opportunities provided by technology.
acke wrote:Transhumanism is more modern and more beneficial movement than UBI, some of their goals are:"life extension (even immortality), massive economic growth, and super-abundance of material prosperity for eveyonehttp://transhumanist-party.org and https://hpluspedia.org/wiki/Main_Page are their web pages. Transhumanists are the most strongest advocated of technological developmen I am aware of. They expect zero-cost marginal. I feel that UBI can be only a transitory movement before people are ready to accept the already achieved opportunities provided by technology.Both want to continue the existence of the wage slavery and the continuation of capitalism. It is just another Beauty Parlour for capitalism. The only single solution that we have for all our problem is a world society based on the common possession of the means of production, stateless, wageless,, moneyless and without any class division
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