Thread by @rohangrey

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary We get into it a bit here:

inthesetimes.com/features/job-g…

inthesetimes.com/features/unive…

Its important to be clear about the term UBI to understand our objections.

A UBI is a) a check for everyone, b) for a fixed amount, c) that is enough to live on independent of other income.

In our

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary understanding, you cannot eat dollars, dollars are valuable because you can use them to buy things other people made - by working. That means that for a cash check to have meaningful value there must be an underlying economy of production supporting the money system already.

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary So already we need to ask: are the right people working the right amount on the right things? If not, we need to fix that to ensure we have the most optimal and equitable/just production system to undergird whatever consumption justice we want to enact through $$ tranfers.

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary In our view, at the minimum, that requires two components: a) ensuring everyone who is willing and able to work has opportunities to do so that earn decent pay, protect their rights, privacy, and decency, and match their capacity with genuine social need/value as best possible.

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary From our perspective, a JG is necessary to achieve this - to ensure differently abled people have adequate work opportunities, that people aren't forced to work for exploitative profit-seeking private employers, that there is enough common production to meet society's needs.

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary That's why we support a JG and consider it central to *any* vision of a good economy. In terms of UBI, in our view: a) it enhances inequality to give $$ to rich and poor, since poor consume their dollars and rich invest, compounding the difference; b) in many instances it is an

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary inferior way to provide the public with necessary goods and services versus direct public provisioning (think school vouchers vs public school), and further centers the cash nexus and profit seeking markets as the dominant mode of production; and c) it creates a false narrative

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary to divorce consumption justice (ie 'what a UBI check can buy') from production justice (ie 'whose doing the work to make the stuff'). Either it gives the false impression everyone can stop working (ie the 'robots will do the work' myth), or it shunts the responsibility to the

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary workers in an imperialist way ("let Americans eat their UBI check that buys Nike made in sweatshops abroad, backed up by the US's global economic and military hegemony"), or it simply sidesteps the messy conversations about a) what work should be done, and b) how it should be

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary best completed in an equitable manner given the working-age population constraints the world has. In many instances that will mean working less/fewer hours in extractive and exploitative industries or in the service of capital/bullshit work. But it will also mean an increase in

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary other kinds of work (care work, environmental restoration work, etc). And we need to be honest and upfront/clear about how we want that work to be done, who should do it, in what ways, and how that work can translate into a suite of universal basic services, cash transfers etc

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary in a progressive way that resists the further commodification of daily life and/or the centering of profit motives in public goods provisioning processes. Unfortunately a UBI moves us away from those goals and towards a vision where all we need to achieve justice is put cash in

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary people's hands, let 'the market' do its magic and turn those dollars somehow into stuff that can be purchased at walmart or on amazon, and boom suddenly everyone will be liberated from the job market and can devote their time to self actualizing through part time volunteering etc

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary It's not macroeconomically sound or coherent and in my view at least is a regression from the insights of Marxian economists who emphasized the need to transform the relations of production to truly transform the economy, and that just redistributing income wont cut it.

@DanielJCamacho @amalgamary All of which is not to suggest opposition to all cash transfers. Just appropriate realism about what kinds of problems are and aren't best solve with cash transfers vis-a-vis other policy tools and approaches available to us.

Hope that makes sense!