There is a lot to unpack here. But let me try and do this here:
1) UBI cannot achieve what it sets out to achieve, namely:
- to free ppl from poverty
- to give people freedom to choose to work or not to work.
It can’t do this bc if it was to provide *everyone* with a dignified level of income it would be financially prohibitive. Causing inflation & denying UBI dependents with access to the goods/services they need to live. This is why UBI income proposals have so far been very low.
This means people would still need to look for employment, which means they can’t choose not to work.
The objective is also flawed. Work isn’t just the shitty things capitalists often offer. Work is more generally the collective efforts of individuals in a society to provide for and care for each other. We need to care for our sick, our elderly, our children, we need…
education, culture and so on. We need many things that are currently not being provided. These are jobs that have to be organised collectively and we cannot rely on individual initiative (I.e. rely on the market) to provide it for us.
There are many other needs at individual level that UBI does not provide, related to social inclusion, self steem and connection to others.
Our objective should be to create good quality inclusive employment that will improve our collective wellbeing.
A job guarantee provides an opportunity to democratise work, so that it stops being merely a means for capitalists to make a profit. It can offer a decent wage, holidays and sick leave. It can also help us enact a 4-day work week, and help us provide universal basic services.
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I don’t know who needs to hear this but Socialists should not “cost” their policies. It gives the Right an excuse to divert attention away from the issues those policies are meant to address and towards dead-end discussions about ‘unaffordability’.
It is predicated on an acceptance of the enforced scarcity generated by austerity. And it forces activists into framing working class gains as an inevitable loss to someone else. As good as Corbyn’s manifesto was, costing it was its weakness, it was unorthodox & unnecessary.
There are some who find the manufactured scarcity instrumental in making a case for taxing the rich. But that is short sighted and unimaginative. There are plenty of ways of arguing against inequality without staking the whole progressive agenda. Fight the two battles separately.
Why conceding the ‘scarce money’ narrative just to tax the rich is a bad idea. They hit back with this
“If we tax those investments we end up with less produced, less produced means lower wages and lost pensions, that means a worse life for all of us.” bbc.co.uk/news/business-…
We see it time and time again:
Right: “we want to reduce deficit”.
Left: “I agree it’s necessary let’s do it by taxing the rich”.
Right: “good you agree it’s necessary, so best make sure we don’t spook the investors who have all the money. Let’s not tax the rich”
Once you concede you are dependent on the rich for investment you also undermine your argument for limiting their profits.
That’s why Thatcher made sure people believed the Government had no money of its own.
I never thought I’d see the Chancellor of the Exchequer predict unemployment and poverty with a smirk. As if he wasn’t directly responsible for any of it. #recession
Raising wages of nurses and other public sector workers could have gone some way into avoiding this recession. They chose not to.
Increasing universal credit entitlements and reducing waiting times could have helped avoid this recession. They chose not to.
Offering emergency cash, rent holidays and job guarantees in the public sector could have helped avoid this recession. They chose not to.
Reminder that The UK Govt wasn’t “bankrupt” after the 2008 crash.
The Govt bailed out the banks, not the other way around. And austerity was neither necessary nor good.
No. The U.K. wasn’t “bankrupt” in the 1970’s. It ran down its foreign reserves foolishly trying to target a foreign exchange rate. And the IMF deal simply served to masquerade politicians support for austerity by helping them pretend it was imposed on them.
Leavers in particular should understand this. Bc it’s also what the EU does.
#MMT At it’s core it’s just a description of how money works. How money was created as a means for authorities to command resources (in the old days kings etc, but now more democratic govts).>