THREAD: Hearing protestors chant in unison "#ICantBreathe," is something that hits viscerally. It's a call for the importance of our individual lives. We have the right to life, and we want to stay alive. George Floyd was dispossessed of the air he needed to exist. He was killed.
Withholding air is also not the only way of dispossessing someone of their rightful access to what they need to live. We all need air, but we also all need food. We can't breathe if we can't eat, and understanding that is understanding that poverty itself is injustice. It kills.
Poverty is misunderstood as a lack of resources, but poverty as it exists today is a legal status. It's a violent act of dispossession that creates poverty. Hundreds of years ago, there was no such thing as having nothing, because we had the planet as a shared natural resource.
Free access to the Earth is a form of natural wealth. We destroyed that, and we did it on purpose. Or I should say some people did it on purpose, because they recognized it as wealth, and saw that if they had it and others didn't, they could force others to do what they wanted.
This is why racial justice and economic justice are so inextricably intertwined. By dispossessing people of their natural inheritance that is rightfully theirs, and thus their access to what they need to live, they can be subjugated. We will do what we must to eat and breathe.
We will never live up to the founding principles of this nation so long as we withhold access to the basic needs of life, on the conditions of those determined by those with control of the resources. The laws are written to recognize that we are all equal. We must make that real.
Achieving racial justice within a monetary system requires economic justice. We must make sure that as we are all equal under the law, we are also all equal with a minimum access to resources. We have to eliminate the poverty we created. We must stop withholding access to basics.
Unconditional basic income ends the poverty we created. It returns universal access to what we need to live. Instead of access to the Earth, it provides that access via money. That access not only ends poverty. It also ends the theft of power that resulted from dispossession.
If no one can legally prevent our access to food anymore, existence is secured to a degree that only the rich have ever experienced and inherited. If race is no longer a line between those with more access to food and those with less, that is racially a redistribution of POWER.
Black Americans have never had that kind of power. UBI is about so much more than money. It means the power to refuse being subordinate, to refuse to work for racists or buy from racists. It's the ability to donate to black candidates seeking local and national office.
UBI is the time to run for office or to volunteer to help others run for office. It's the ability to pay for legal defense & lawsuits and to avoid being jailed for lack of money. It's the power to strike, the capital to start & support black-owned businesses, and to build wealth.
Economic justice requires UBI because nothing else is UNCONDITIONAL UNIVERSAL access to resources that treats everyone equally. A floor underneath us all is the act of repossession and the return of natural inheritance, and thus the return of power.

It is the breaking of chains.

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More from @scottsantens

Jan 27
What if everyone spent every waking hour making really cool things? How cool would that be? Well consider also that there would be no hours spent enjoying anything created because everyone would be creating not enjoying.

Are the things actually cool if no one gets to enjoy them?
6-day weeks used to be normal. Then 5-day weeks became normal. It's past time for 4-day weeks to become normal. There's just so much stuff being created, and increasingly by machines. Humans need more time to actually enjoy all the stuff and life itself. We need to shift gears.
But what about all the jobs going unfilled? Paying people more per hour for fewer total hours per week would make many jobs more attractive, and the people filling those jobs would be less exhausted and more productive. Plus they'd have more time as consumers to create more jobs.
Read 11 tweets
Jan 11
Interesting threat. Basically, Mitch is like "Look here, everyone. If you make it easier to debate and vote on legislation, we're going to start debating and voting on legislation, and none of us here want that, right?"

yahoo.com/news/republica…
Mitch is framing it like a bad thing, for Congress to actually debate and vote on bills, because some votes could make legislators look bad to their constituents, but the lack of that is exactly the problem. If a lawmaker votes yes on unpopular laws, then voters SHOULD fire them.
Right now, elections have less teeth, which is helping drive polarization. People just vote for their favorite team, and because of gridlock, people win based on what they say. If they start actually doing unpopular things, that could change who people actually vote for.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 6, 2021
I chatted with @JENFL23 the other day about UBI, MMT, ranked-choice voting, the @Fwd_Party, and about incentives in general and how what @AndrewYang is trying to do is to get people excited about reforming systems with reforms that don't typically excite.

Getting people excited about the possibility of starting to receive $1,000 a month is a lot easier than getting people excited about the prospect of being able to vote for more than one candidate, and ranking them to convey preferences. But the former may just require the latter.
To those not steeped in politics, especially those turned off by it, it's really challenging to get people excited about reforming a process they aren't interested in, but we need to try, and that's what Yang is attempting to do. He's trying to mobilize the disengaged.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 21, 2021
We must break out of our current understanding of taxing to spend that limits our ability to spend, when the only real limits we have are our real capacity limits. The issue isn't lack of money. It's what to do in addition to spending to manage inflation.

vocal.media/theSwamp/why-w… Image
We are watching what happens in real-time of this belief that we can't somehow afford $3.5 trillion in spending, despite being our own currency issuer. Means-tested stuff gets more means-tested. Stuff gets axed. Other stuff expires faster. It's the wrong discussion to be having.
We shouldn't be arguing over what to save and what to cut and what to trim. The debate should be on how to best design the programs, and then how to best manage the impacts of that spending on the economy. What kind and amount of taxes? How to best improve supply chain issues?
Read 4 tweets
Oct 11, 2021
67% of over 1,000 Americans surveyed in new poll support #UBI. Support was strongest among Democrats (82%), Gen Z (79%), Finance and Insurance (71%), non-college grads (71%), and those earning under $25,000 (77%).

skynova.com/blog/what-woul… Image
The top benefit of UBI according to those surveyed was that it would decrease both poverty and inequality, and help those with poor health and disabilities.

The top concerns were that it would reduce the incentive to work and increase the national debt by costing too much. Image
When asked how people would use their UBI, most people said they'd save it for retirement, or save it for emergencies, or buy groceries, or pay off debt.

GenZ with the strongest support for UBI is the most likely to pay off student loan debt with it.

13% would buy a house. 🏡 Image
Read 5 tweets
Oct 9, 2021
We just ran a huge unemployment experiment. Half the states reduced UI, it didn't increase employment compared to the states that kept UI. Then the UI expired and it didn't increase employment. Obviously UI isn't the issue but they REALLY want to force people to accept low wages.
These people want so badly to exploit others for their own benefit, that they don't seem to see that they're making things worse for themselves too. You can't cut incomes in a consumer economy and expect employment to rocket up. Consumer spending is what fuels our economy.
If we want to increase employment, we need to realize a pandemic still exists, and that's the main issue to tackle. We also need to make sure everyone has money to spend, and that they can afford things like child care to make employment make sense.

We should also automate more.
Read 6 tweets

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