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Discussions about productivity and to a large extent production are really missing the whole goddamn point about whether basic incomes are necessary. Basic incomes are guarantees of survival for the individual and guarantees of stability for the capitalist system which seems to provide neither of those with great reliability.
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Nov 3, 2014 00:47
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on the left posted:You need to talk about productivity because what is money if there is nothing to buy? I don't subscribe to motivational theories which require people to be threatened with starvation unless they go to work or no work will get done.
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Nov 3, 2014 01:16
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on the left posted:An explicit goal of minimum income is shorter working hours and to make it unnecessary for people to work except by choice. Then necessary work will have to become something people chose to do, perhaps by improved conditions and a greater sense of meaning, purpose and control over what they do at work. Positive social relationships between workers would encourage participation and even provide negative enforcement against slacking.
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Nov 3, 2014 01:30
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Paradoxish posted:This shouldn't be too surprising, since one of the beneficial side effects of any form of guaranteed income (along with other social programs like universal healthcare) is to equalize worker bargaining power. There are fewer reasons to put up with bad pay or a poor working environment if you know that you won't starve to death or end up homeless if you're forced into a period of extended unemployment while looking for something better. Yes the sentence should read 'pure ideological fear of the poor getting money through any means except wage labour.' The Enclosure Acts in England and various other Poor laws were all means to make independant existance outside of industry (either as an owner or a worker) either illegal, unpleasant or outright impossible. Various papers by the rising industrialists and Enlightenment philisophers criticise the regular person for their 'idleness' (read: unwillingness to work in a factory for poverty wages) and demanded conditions to be changed to force them into the capitalist system. The tragic part is how deep this mentality has sunk into our society. I do hope that the psychological principle of reciprocity can eventually be turned into support for unconditional basic incomes and such but that requires a rather clear ideological position which unfortunately is generally lacking. namesake fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 19:38
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Ardennes posted:In this case it is a reduction in benefits which is a pretty different, you could always scale it but ultimately it a budgetary sense you need to most likely means test at some point. Yeah it's not a tax at all, it should only be done in a way so the individual has a consistantly increasing income at the end of it. The thing about means testing is a) it requires the creation of administration to investigate everyone to see if they qualify which reduces the cost/benefit ratio of the program and is often just a way of the state harrassing the poor to the benefit of the rich and b) splits the electorate between the receivers and everyone else which politically makes it a target for someone to attack and gut if they're courting those who don't get it. If everyone gets it it's unpopular to attack it. Universal provision has universal popularity once it passes. This is the problem though. A fixed payment to all who qualify (i.e. citizens income to all legal residents) has the potential to do a lot of good while being really popular.
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Nov 5, 2014 19:27
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wateroverfire posted:We should separate talking about welfare from talking about mincome. I believe safety nets are a good thing. Does anyone posting ITT right now disagree with that? Aren't safety nets and money from parents literally the same thing only from the parents mean it's applied on a random basis rather than any moral basis? You might believe in ownership and the freedom to do whatever with what is owned and so believe in the freedom to donate but what does that mean about receivership? Those who have the most now get to decide who receives the most next? Unless wealth equals morality it has to be more complicated than that. Your agreement over safety nets necessarily means that there is a minimum transfer which pays for them in administration and resources and so presumably when voluntary action fails to meet this level some other mechanism must also step in to bridge this gap. If you agree then we must argue specifics about what this safety net must provide and why. If you disagree then you do believe that wealth equals morality and the will of the rich is the will of the just. Quidam Viator posted:As far as I'm concerned, if you can't make a definitive statement defending how human labor will continue to have value, the burden of proof is on you to explain why you're still arguing as if it will. Is it simple short-sightedness, or is it denial? Or do you really have a way to explain how humans will get back into designing computer chips, running stock markets and banks, managing utilities, and of course, doing service work, having displaced their computerized competitors? Oh let's have some fun... Capitalism: Employment exists for selfish reasons; it doesn't rest on costs directly but the gap between cost of employment and revenue gained from the workers actions to entice a capitalist to hire them. Machinery for the most part has a constant cost both in terms of initial expenditure which must be earned back over its life and the cost of providing it with power and effective competition always tries to drive profits generated from the business downwards, but as stated machinery is a fixed cost or a sunk cost meaning it's hard to run them on the cheap. Humans however can be subject to things than machines can't; coercion, social pressures, loss of status and legal action against the unemployed, death, meaning their costs are very very flexible because they will sacrifice all of their long term costs to survive today. Thus human labour can always be manipulated into providing some service below the cost of a machine and if it kills them then someone will take their place at minimum cost to the employer. Even a high tech producer may suffer against an employer capitalist as the public sees the employer as their only means of survival and so award the employer social benefits while the employer makes money from the workers. There will always be jobs under capitalism. Communism: Humans are a social, productive species which likes to feel valued. Even in a world where work is unnecessary in terms of producing materials there will be vast social benefits (such as psychological benefits) to spending time ordering, crafting, designing and seeing those final products in real life and being used. There will always be a positive use for human expression and interaction in the act of production.
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Dec 17, 2014 20:24
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