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my position is that rent control in and of itself can be a good policy, but that the fact that UBI needs a very controversial set of policies to function at all makes it politically fragile and probably not worth the effort, which i also explain in the post you quoted i also really don't see UBI as a policy worth working towards, for reasons i've expounded itt at length at this point, because i am a socialist and would like to work towards socialism, which i do not believe to be harmonious with supporting the massive political endeavour that is UBI; part of this is because i think it would be trivial for the conservatives to subvert and exploit it to their own ends, part of it is because it encourages further overconsumption (which we really don't need from an environmental perspective) and part of it is because it further encourages the social atomisation that we're seeing which renders us easy prey for inexorable institutional forces and political manipulation. socialism only has numbers on its side, and those numbers are meaningless without organisation, which takes a certain amount of social cohesion
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May 30, 2019 23:47
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Nevvy Z posted:There's a mix of weird and unclear assumptions going on like "UBI means we have to pay for healthcare again" but that isn't necessarily the case. We can do UBI and nationalized healthcare where you aren't spending your UBI on healthcare. Literally addressed in the post you quoted. BougieBitch posted:Even if you want to pretend that interest is less than inflation, the benefit of this policy comes from imposing a corresponding TAX on the wealthy, not from the checks sent out. All a non-means-tested version of UBI does is make a flat cut to every individual's tax contribution. It's basically saying that the government can't come up with any actually useful policy, so instead they'll just refund everyone. It's not useful or beneficial in the long-run to do this. MixMastaTJ posted:Rich people don't typically ride the bus or eat at soup kitchens... Edit: Basically, UBI in the US is brought up as an alternative to unemployment/disability/social security/medicaid, and it is facially worse than each of those things in every measurable way on a benefit/dollar basis. Any money spent on UBI would be better spent on any program that differentiates between the haves and the have-nots in principle or practice. I specifically brought up public transit because in theory it is the sort of policy where the people paying for it out of their taxes can see benefit from it- however, in the US at least, it usually ends up being completely impossible because of the rural/urban divide and the lack of service to areas that need it most. This is as much an issue of strategy as anything, however, and in theory it is possible to make it happen on a broad enough scale to receive popular support- the New Deal and the highway system managed to get through, after all, and even though its clear that the wide adoption of cars was as harmful as it was helpful, it has allowed for much better access for rural areas that previously were underserved by the government. BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 00:37 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 00:28
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Somfin posted:You talk about revolution the same way evangelicals talk about the Rapture. This bold words from the guy who also just posted this pile of techno-singularity-savior complex. Somfin posted:I mean, ideally you'd end up with something like the Maker from Transmetropolitan, and double-ideally anyone could have as much of the "matter" stuff as they could reasonably suggest that they have use for. The idea of rationing out portions from a centralised or distributed manufacturing complex that produces finished goods is already starting to fracture with the incremental popularity of home 3D printing. How long will money last once utility fog is a thing? Honest even, the utility fog concept is straight science fiction. At least revolutions have occurred!
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May 31, 2019 00:39
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nepetaMisekiryoiki posted:Honest even, the utility fog concept is straight science fiction. At least revolutions have occurred! drat your right, I wonder if the post you quoted addresses science fiction ideas edging inexorably toward reality I'll ask my AI-driven robot butler whether or not I need it to order more pringles to be delivered to me via another robot while I contemplate how science fiction is stupid garbage for idiots
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May 31, 2019 00:56
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BougieBitch posted:Edit: Basically, UBI in the US is brought up as an alternative to unemployment/disability/social security/medicaid, I wasn't and these are more of the assumptions I was referring to. BougieBitch posted:That's the point. If the government is giving money to millionaires to do whatever they want with Giving the money to millionaires, taxed back at a higher rate, lets us get rid of lots of lovely make work means testing jobs. I think we should stop means testing food stamps too. Somfin posted:Like, take a position, is rent control a good positive possible step that we should work toward alongside UBI, or is it something that's going to be too difficult to achieve and should therefore be shelved until it's moot because we've all been delivered to the promised land? I'm finding that "what if shitheads make it bad" is a poor argument against ideas. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 02:14
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CAPS LOCK BROKEN posted:In this country it would turn into workfare where unemployed people get forced to work at Amazon warehouses and the state pays the wage instead of amazon. Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 02:27 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 02:21
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Nevvy Z posted:I think we should stop means testing food stamps too. gently caress food stamps as a concept, give that same amount out as money and oh hey is that even more UBI I think it just might be
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May 31, 2019 02:30
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Somfin posted:gently caress food stamps as a concept, give that same amount out as money and oh hey is that even more UBI I think it just might be This. Really tired of supposed lefties arguing against just giving people stuff they need to survive without making them jump through hoops. Especially justifying it by saying "well it takes too much political effort, have you considered revolution instead?"
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May 31, 2019 07:43
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I mean a decent option would be an unemployment system that's actually usable. Like, pays out 10-20k per year and kicks in automatically when you haven't payed any federal income tax for a month or if your income reported is below what your monthly unemployment would be (underemployed). But I feel like that's just as hard, if not harder of a sale than UBI.
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May 31, 2019 08:25
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Yeah that's the problem, nobody's gonna sign on for a system that literally only helps people who aren't in work. They don't sign on for the incredibly punitive ones we already have.
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May 31, 2019 08:36
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I think the reason people on the left opposed UBI is the reasonable fear that life will become Vonnegut’s Player Piano. We have a bunch of stuff for free and money to spend on treats, but a couple of guys still own everything and ultimately everything, including UBI, is designed first and foremost to funnel more money into their pockets. Which means it is sub-optimally designed to meet actual people’s needs.
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May 31, 2019 14:57
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Yeah but the alternative isn't getting rid of that system, the alternative is even more lovely forms of welfare. You're not expending your revolution points on getting UBI.
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May 31, 2019 14:59
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Nevvy Z posted:
Okay, but you are burying the lede here. The progressive part is the taxation, not the UBI. The policy you are actually pushing for is higher taxes on the wealthy, the UBI is just a low-effort way to spend whatever is collected. It's not targeted, it isn't doing anything to directly solve problems except insofar as those problems can be solved with money (which is admittedly a pretty good way to solve problems, presupposing capitalism). However, bang-for-your-buck is always going to be better buying in bulk. That's why replacing private insurance with public insurance is better, and it's part of the reason why UBI isn't actually good policy. Essentially, if you already know that X% of the money doled out by UBI is going to go towards paying rent, the government could instead spend that X% on publicly-owned housing and achieve long-term goals instead of short-term ones. Similarly, if Y% is going to go towards medications, it is more efficient to spend that Y% on buying out patents so that they can be provided at cost. UBI papers over the fundamental problems of capitalism in the least-effective way possible because it isn't doing the things that only governments are capable of doing by throwing their weight around.
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May 31, 2019 15:29
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Except that the next government is gonna sell the public housing to win points.
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May 31, 2019 15:31
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OwlFancier posted:Except that the next government is gonna sell the public housing to win points. Okay, then the next government is going to eliminate progressive taxation. What's the point of this? Yes, any policy can be reversed, that's not an argument against which policy actually accomplishes the stated goals.
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May 31, 2019 15:35
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BougieBitch posted:Okay, then the next government is going to eliminate progressive taxation. What's the point of this? Yes, any policy can be reversed, that's not an argument against which policy actually accomplishes the stated goals. I am repeatedly coming back to the point that UBI is universal. And there is lots to suggest that universal policies are the ones that have the biggest long term effects for people. As opposed to policies that are, as you say, targeted, because the problem with that is that they are very easy for successive governments to take away. Not all policies can be reversed with anything like the same ease. If your goal is long term changes then this repeated war of social democratic targeted charity programs followed by reversal seems like a big waste of your political efforts.
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May 31, 2019 15:37
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BougieBitch posted:Okay, then the next government is going to eliminate progressive taxation. What's the point of this? Yes, any policy can be reversed, that's not an argument against which policy actually accomplishes the stated goals. All of the policies that have been name-dropped in here so far would be easy to reverse the second they started working. Efforts are already underway to further undermine progressive taxation, usually by lying about who benefits in progressive taxation systems. UBI is different. Reversing UBI will hurt literally every voter, and unlike something as abstracted as food stamps, it's super loving easy to just point at a number that is making a person's life better and say "That will go down, any questions?" Even if you want to think ~*tactically*~ about this poo poo you should still think about it in terms of "how hard is this to reverse once progress is made" and UBI is gently caress-off hard to reverse.
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May 31, 2019 15:40
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The line of thought is pretty easy really. Once you have UBI your fight becomes price controls, and once you have that (a difficult policy actually worth fighting for) you have people spending government money on government controlled goods. Why do you have money at that point? And to be clear, this isn't an either or, if you want to attack the market you need to pursue something like price controls whether you have UBI or not. UBI does not necessitate price controls, price controls are needed anyway. UBI or some other form of universal provision is the other half of attacking the market.
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May 31, 2019 15:43
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What will actually happen if UBI is passed is the opposition party will say "We are going to give everyone a tax cut!" and then take the money to do so out of the UBI funds. This is exactly what happened to the funds for ACA, and it'll be the same thing here. There's nothing special or protected about UBI- the only real argument that makes it harder to cut is popular support. If that's the case, then the better solution is to figure out how to package the actual answers (public transit and such) in a way that also garners popular support. UBI is watered-down socialism in the same way that the ACA is watered down universal health care. Edit: Let me also clarify, because again the argument is on two divergent paths. Somfin is saying that progressive tax brackets are already being eroded. Given that, what is the benefit of UBI? How does UBI redistribute income literally at all if tax is assessed at a flat rate (in literal terms or in practice through deductions or tax havens)? UBI is insidious, because it sounds like a progressive policy in and of itself, but the point that literally has not been addressed for some reason is that the progressive tax rate does all the heavy lifting, UBI does virtually nothing on its own. Giving everyone $500 isn't better or worse for any specific recipient, and that's all UBI is if you discount the funding mechanism. BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 15:51 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 15:46
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Public transport isn't a matter of "packaging" it's a matter of material reality, if you want to replace private vehicles with public transport in the US you need to radically restructure how basically everything works, because the country's had decades of growth based around the car. Even in the UK you would need to take central control of jobs, housing, infrastructure, all kinds of poo poo to get most people using public transport in such a way that it's secure and sustainable, to say nothing of free passes for everyone. Public transport as is is simply not practical for a large amount of the job market, you're never gonna get people to use it properly without solving the problems in the job market first. Which I think would seem like another one of those scary policies that you're sure can't be done. Right wing governments are gonna cut taxes anyway, again this has nothing to do with UBI, you're just listing things that right wingers normally do. BougieBitch posted:Edit: Let me also clarify, because again the argument is on two divergent paths. Somfin is saying that progressive tax brackets are already being eroded. Given that, what is the benefit of UBI? How does UBI redistribute income literally at all if tax is assessed at a flat rate (in literal terms or in practice through deductions or tax havens)? If I give someone with $0 $100, and I give someone with $20000 $100, who benefits more? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 15:55 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 15:50
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I feel like I'm going insane when the argument is constantly that any policy that fits neatly into the "capitalism still exists" slot is summarily dismissed. It smacks ironically of the same weakness the Democrats have been exhibiting for the past 40 years, that the process of how we get there is somehow more imortant than if we actually help people. Start with this and suddenly this debate seems historically trite: http://what-when-how.com/the-american-economy/family-assistance-plan-fap/
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May 31, 2019 16:00
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BougieBitch posted:UBI is insidious, because it sounds like a progressive policy in and of itself, but the point that literally has not been addressed for some reason is that the progressive tax rate does all the heavy lifting, UBI does virtually nothing on its own. Giving everyone $500 isn't better or worse for any specific recipient, and that's all UBI is if you discount the funding mechanism. It literally is, though, because that's how the value of money works. $500/month in the hands of someone making $15k/year is actually drastically more valuable than it is in the hands of someone making $1,000,000/year. Any program which provides a flat amount of money to everyone will always benefit the poor more than the rich, even if you aren't using progressive taxes to recapture any of that money. It's not even wrong to say that UBI isn't a compromise. It's totally a bandaid on capitalism and I'd personally prefer an extremely strong jobs guarantee, but a good jobs guarantee is so massively disruptive to our current system that it's hard to see it happening any time soon. A bad jobs guarantee would arguably be more dystopian than a poorly implemented UBI.
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May 31, 2019 16:04
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What is a "good" jobs guarantee because where I come from it's called workfare.
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May 31, 2019 16:05
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OwlFancier posted:What is a "good" jobs guarantee because where I come from it's called workfare. A federal program where if you're out of work you can walk into an office and get a job doing some needful thing, I guess? Cleaning up parks or processing paperwork or repaving streets or whatever else, I would imagine.
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May 31, 2019 16:19
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Yeah that's workfare, like welfare but contingent on you doing make work, typically championed by people who think welfare isn't punitive enough.
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May 31, 2019 16:21
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RuanGacho posted:I feel like I'm going insane when the argument is constantly that any policy that fits neatly into the "capitalism still exists" slot is summarily dismissed. It smacks ironically of the same weakness the Democrats have been exhibiting for the past 40 years, that the process of how we get there is somehow more imortant than if we actually help people. This is kind of what happens when less radical voices are run out of the conversation and the window describing what's controvertial shifts. I'm enjoying the conversation for what it is but IMO we sort of left the realm of what is feasible, desirable, or even coherent, awhile ago.
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May 31, 2019 16:23
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Paradoxish posted:It literally is, though, because that's how the value of money works. $500/month in the hands of someone making $15k/year is actually drastically more valuable than it is in the hands of someone making $1,000,000/year. In QoL yes, I mean more in the sense that giving money without any structure or plan doesn't really accomplish anything directly. In a world where taxes were entirely abolished and the $500 was done through deficit spending, it doesn't actually work out that way tho, because the person with $1 million/year is actually vacuuming up everyone else's $500 in the process. This goes back to how Walmart is the actual reason food stamps haven't been wiped out- it's basically a subsidy paid out to the corporations that the money ends up going to. There's not really any reason to believe that UBI would be allocated in a meaningfully different way- the poorest in the population are still going to need to spend money as they get it, it's still going to be a treadmill. It does nothing to solve the problem of rent-seeking and production-hording that plagues capitalism. I'm somewhat reminded of the push to privatize Social Security way back when, where the Republicans pushing for it realized that it would actually just result in the government owning every company on Wall Street if they did it. UBI has the same problem- for the cost of sending out these checks for X years, you could just buy the means of production instead and give people meds and food and whatever else they need.
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May 31, 2019 16:25
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OwlFancier posted:Yeah that's workfare, like welfare but contingent on you doing make work, typically championed by people who think welfare isn't punitive enough. Philosophical question... If you are able to work and there are useful things that society needs done that are not being done now, why should you not be asked to work and create use value to offset the use value you consume that is created by other people? Or put another way... If you're able to work and people still have to work (ie: we're not in a nanite-paste-and-robot post scarcity society) then why is it reasonable to expect that other people work to support you instead of you working to support other people?
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May 31, 2019 16:25
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wateroverfire posted:Philosophical question... I feel like "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" answers the philosophical part fairly well. The contention is that government welfare programs are extremely bad at figuring that out, often deliberately so. The UK for example is currently engaging throusands of people to boot as many people as possible off disability welfare by declaring them fit for work, because the government is ideologically opposed to the concept of welfare. Conversely they are utterly disinterested in purusing tax evasion because they're all doing it.
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May 31, 2019 16:30
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OwlFancier posted:I feel like "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" answers the philosophical part fairly well. Ok but whether it's imperfect at achieving that ideal (because nothing is going to do that perfectly) or not, what is wrong with a program that lets anyone walk into an office and get a job doing something useful for a fair wage?
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May 31, 2019 16:31
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wateroverfire posted:Ok but whether it's imperfect at achieving that ideal (because nothing is going to do that perfectly) or not, what is wrong with a program that lets anyone walk into an office and get a job doing something useful for a fair wage? Because 1. Why is the wage likely to be fair? 2. If the job was useful why is it not already being done? 3. If it's just an exercise in government spending then why not just do that either by giving people free money or employing people normally to do useful things rather than through this weird last resort poo poo? Also mister capitalist I'm not sure you should be complaining about the ethics of sustaining yourself through the labour of others.
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May 31, 2019 16:34
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Some quick back-of-a-napkin math to better illustrate what I'm saying about UBI: How much does UBI cost? Well, we haven't had a Census in a minute, so let's just use whatever the first google result is for projected US pop - 327 million. Now let's pick a number for our UBI- we were throwing around $500/month, which is $6000/year, so let's use that for now. Let's say we only want to give UBI to people over 18, just to make the numbers a bit smaller. Census estimate says 22.6% under 18, so 77.4% above it, and then multiply it all out and we get 1.5 trillion annually. I'm not a Republican, so I don't really give a poo poo where it came from, but I do care about how we spend it. Let's say we decide we want to parcel out that money a different way. For example, maybe we want to make a supply chain to provide free food to the entire population. Our first question is how much do the meals cost? It's difficult to come up with an exact figure, but we can start with something straightforward like the cost of a school lunch, which is between 2 and 2.50. Let's use the high end of that range, so 2.50 three times a day for 365 for the entire population. That comes out to 895 billion. Now we have to figure out how we are distributing it. Let's assume that the free market has already found a good solution, and just buy Walmart. As I write this post, Walmart's valuation is at about 288 billion, but of course buying out a company probably costs a bit more than just the current price times number of shares, so maybe it'll take 500 billion. That's still less than one year of UBI at the rate we set. Of course, Walmart is a one time purchase, so we can push forward what we have left for this year, add what we have for the next two years, and buy Amazon/Whole Foods too, just to increase our distribution network. Maybe after that we can buy CVS (valued at 68 billion), Walgreens (45 billion), and Eli Lilly (113 billion) to control drug prices and distribution of medication to people who need it. The point is, UBI is a horribly inefficient way to accomplish goals that we are only even talking about because government buying out businesses is seen as gauche. It's not a good policy in terms of getting people what they need, and even if you object to my specific numbers it should be exceedingly clear why printing money and mailing it out is a bad way to really resolve that problem. I don't disagree necessarily that UBI is more likely to happen in my lifetime, but it's not a good use of money, and I'm not talking about from an austerity perspective but a practical one. Edit: I think a big part of everyone looking down on soup kitchens and such is because it is specifically marketed as a means-tested thing. All you have to do is say "government-sponsored Blue Apron" and suddenly it's hip. Maybe you package it as a fight against the obesity epidemic and heart disease. The point is, if you say "Meals on Wheels" people respond one way and if you say "grocery delivery service" people respond another, and it has nothing to do with the contents of the box and everything to do with the label. BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 17:02 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 16:51
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OwlFancier posted:Because 1. Why is the wage likely to be fair? 2. If the job was useful why is it not already being done? 3. If it's just an exercise in government spending then why not just do that either by giving people free money or employing people normally to do useful things rather than through this weird last resort poo poo? You're being really silly here. Your first question is just nonsense. You can easily rephrase it to "why would a UBI pay enough to be useful?" and the answer is really straightforward: because we're talking about ideal programs. This is like saying that a UBI can't exist unless we cut all other social welfare programs and replace them with straight cash payments, which obviously would be dystopian as gently caress. A good jobs guarantee should pay somewhere above the current subsistence-level definitions of a living wage, because that's kind of a necessary thing for the "good" part. Your second question is also nonsensical unless you're asserting that capitalism is perfectly good at distributing labor and that markets really are the best solution to all problems. There's ton of useful work that isn't done because it isn't profitable. There's loads of useful work that is done and goes unpaid, such as family caregiving. A properly implemented jobs guarantee isn't employment of last resort, which is the entire point. It's effectively a federally mandated floor for working conditions and wages that sidesteps all of the complaints about regulations leading to greater unemployment. If employers can't compete with the better pay that the federal government is offering, then those employers don't get to exist anymore and their workers have a better option now anyway. Ideally you also provide options for training, education, homemaking, etc. If you're having people do makework then the program isn't designed correctly. Coincidentally, this is why it's also arguably better (and drastically more disruptive) than a UBI. A UBI does nothing to deal with exploited labor. It actually risks making the problem worse, since companies can justify lower pay since it's now just "extra" on top of a UBI. A jobs guarantee puts employers of last resort out of business entirely if they don't shape up.
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May 31, 2019 17:22
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I suppose I am significantly more skeptical about the practicalities of "literally get the government to take over half the economy" which would be what a jobs guarnatee at a living wage would be, than I am about "give everyone a bit of free money to establish a floor and increase bargaining power owing to less dependency on work" Even a very marginal UBI would be a good thing, whereas workfare is a thing and it's loving shite. Though I can at least see the idea of what a "good" jobs guarantee would be now. I wasn't considering it cos it seemed kinda far fetched. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:32 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 17:28
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OwlFancier posted:I suppose I am significantly more skeptical about the practicalities of "literally get the government to take over half the economy" which would be what a jobs guarnatee at a living wage would be, than I am about "give everyone a bit of free money to establish a floor and increase bargaining power owing to less dependency on work" I don't even disagree with you, dude. I'm not opposed to a UBI because a decent one will help people and it's probably more achievable. This is why I keep calling a jobs guarantee more difficult and ultimately more disruptive to the status quo. I would prefer a jobs guarantee and I consider it a better policy if I had to choose between the two. That said, I do strongly disagree with calling a jobs guarantee "workfare." They are fundamentally different things and not in the same family of policies at all.
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May 31, 2019 17:32
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I'm gonna keep calling it that until I see some existant instance of it that isn't that.
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May 31, 2019 17:34
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OwlFancier posted:Yeah that's workfare, like welfare but contingent on you doing make work, typically championed by people who think welfare isn't punitive enough. I'm a big fan of having the jobs guarantee be in addition to the robist welfare programs, I would like to be able to just get a job that pays me and isn't a soul sucking exercise in debasing myself for capital
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May 31, 2019 17:39
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OwlFancier posted:I'm gonna keep calling it that until I see some existant instance of it that isn't that. I don't know how to respond to this other than to call it ridiculous. You're essentially redefining an established term because you don't like it.
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May 31, 2019 17:40
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I mean yeah if you were going for a "good" implementation that would be at least necessary but if you wanna talk attacks on welfare programs then "people can work instead" is a really popular one.Paradoxish posted:I don't know how to respond to this other than to call it ridiculous. You're essentially redefining an established term because you don't like it. What do you think the fundamental difference between the two concepts is? Because I still don't see one, in fact the only real difference I see is the pay rate.
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May 31, 2019 17:41
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:robist welfare programs i dont think robots deserve welfare
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May 31, 2019 17:44
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