[this is probably off-topic for this forum, but I found it on HN so…]
Edit “enjoy” the discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233810
I bloody knew it. Years ago I saw an anarchist say “UBI could just be implemented as a way to destroy the social welfare system and turn it all into one meagre benefit that can be turned on and off, like Universal Credit in the UK”. And here this guy comes …
It’s always been a way to replace all welfare programs with a check, instead of being a supplement to existing welfare programs.
The goal isn’t to help people, it’s to eliminate the welfare system entirely.
In lieu of Mecaid and Medicare, you better hope your $800 UBI check can cover your healthcare costs, because now you’re on the hook for paying for health insurance, too. Same thing with housing assistance and SNAP.
Sorry disabled people, there might be a wide spectrum of disability with different access and support needs, but we’re not going to do any individual assessments to ensure your autonomy is respected and you get the kind of help you want. It’s one size fits all, now. And you can forget about support to enter the workplace…
This is just like the flat tax. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, for every social welfare benefit, there is a “reform” which is simpler, easier, and totally wrong.
Everything before the last two paragraphs is just the ordinary first argument (in the author’s words, freshman economics) people throw out against any form of welfare- “what if people get lazy because they are now treading water at the poverty line, rather than drowning?” Then we get the classic “charities should handle everything so that we don’t have to pay taxes, and the rich people can allocate resources because money == IQ!”
The adjustments the author makes in the second to last paragraph are almost close to something good, in that advocating for needs to be addressed at the level of a local council makes sense. It isn’t good because his recommendations are supposed to be in the context of also having an UBI that is inadequate, which is beautifully centrist in an idiotic way.
Admittedly I don’t know much about the discourse around UBI. I understand by only its name, essentially.
As we all know, the rich have no conflicts of interest with the poor. No siree…
The basic argument for UBI is that means-testing is a humiliating waste of resources and it would be more efficient to just hand everyone a flat payment. Basically it’s better to cut a cheque to the small number of Gates-es and Bezos-es of the world than to force a large number of people to waste time proving that they’re not, and hiring people to make that determination, etc.
In theory, it could work. However in a democracy where people care deeply about how their tax dollars are spent, it’s a very difficult pill. Witness the constant threats to remove even existing means-tested welfare.
Finally, it’s become a bit of a techbro pie in the sky fantasy because they have designs upon creating a large amount of unemployment and would like to try and keep the pitchfork mobs away from their bunkers.
in the UK some people were able to almost use the dole like a UBI during the crushing recession of the late 70s and 80s - take the payments without looking for a new job, and spend the time doing non-profit or low-profit work like art, music or political organizing. What’s changed? UK benefit system is now geared to harrass the long-term unemployed into work, the actual amount of money is much lower than it used to be, and the costs of housing has ballooned due the end of social housing and increasingly hostile laws against squatting.
I think something like UBI will succeed but it won’t look to us like UBI. Like, maybe it seems stupid, but as far as political systems go, the key is persuasion in absurdity and narrative. To persuade people into UBI it has to be dressed up politically as --something else-- in the same way that all kinds of welfare (social and corporate) tends to get simultaneously denied and reinforced with conflicting narratives.
Once enough disparate and contradictory parties are convinced that “more of the good guys benefit from this than the bad guys”, it gets locked in and becomes political cannon. Until later when the political systems feint undoing it again for a different set of points.
Understood.
- Cutting a check for everyone without much fuss makes sense, at least in the short term. Long-term: I am too lazy to think or talk about this in further detail, but in short, I think it’s easy to argue that additional structural changes beyond UBI would be needed for equity in society to be established and maintained.
- I agree that implementing UBI today would be a hard sell to many people, not even accounting for the counter politics from anyone right of centre.
- Also, techbros love simplistic solutions to complex issues that let them stop caring and go back to trying to suck from VC money hoses.
Nobody tell him that Social Security can easily pay out $1600/mo to people today. His head might pop right off!
Last time I ran the numbers, I concluded that the USA can afford to pay $2000/mo to each taxpayer, even if considering marriages as two taxpayers. The economic benefits would easily compensate the small amount of self-borrowing required to jumpstart UBI. Similarly, the USA can easily afford to auto-enroll everybody in Medicare, although the government would have to eat several HMOs and ACOs to ensure coverage and prevent profiteering.
‘people should die if they cannot work’
(I know he said ‘local charities’/local gov but iirc in the USA they don’t even get enough money to keep the infrastructure working, and the USA has an above average racism problem so the default will be starvation for a lot of people).
“local charities” is a libertarian phrase meaning “then perish”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”
“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
I thought it was bears.
if employment rates get too high it’s considered an economic crisis and the government steps in lol
Yeah, and they recently just admitted this, all this work stuff is just a scam!
- make an economic system which is presumed to collapse at full employment
- make it so you have to work to live
- ???
this is the guy who named the neoreactionaries, btw
Serious question: how do you keep track of all these shitweasels and their actions? I mean in the information management sense and possibly also the feed management sense
(It may perhaps not be best suited for here but I’m still curious)
- dump alla this dumb shit into your head
- remember it with the bit of your brain that tells fucking wild but true stories
fuck IQ tests. the only metric that matters is the number of milliseconds it takes my brain to accurately categorize shitheads using a mental database of the worst ideas and opinions ever shared on the internet
As a positive or pejorative term?
The first comment by the first commenter is “Can we suspend Godwin’s Law for a moment?” followed by an explanation of the ways in which The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an accurate description of reality.
Libertarianism is never far from Nazism. The Venn diagram is a circle. The only question is which circle contains the other.
Currently, I think (right-)libertarianism is a subset of fascism. In short:
- Libertarians believe that people with more capital are inherently better than others and deserve all the power in society.
- Fascists, in the abstract, believe that their ingroup is inherently better than the outgroup and deserves all power in society.
Both groups exalt the dictatorship of the market and ownership class and see it as simply the just enforcement of The Natural Order via survival of the fittest.
You can’t have naked market capitalism and violent enforcement of private property restrictions without it being the groundwork for proto-fascism, IMO.
@swlabr @TinyTimmyTokyo libertarians are more likely to end up eaten by bears
Symbolically speaking nazi germany was by and large eaten/def”eat”ed by the bear of Asia AKA the soviet union, so there’s that too
And this right here, take it from someone on disability, is a perfect exemple of why everyone should be very sceptical of UBI.
