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crazy idea, let's just feed people
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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There have been some pretty extensive studies that indicate that when you give poor people money, they become less poor. When you give poor people enough money to live on, they stop being poor. It’s a radical concept, but it’s also the truth.
I read a study arguing that each time someone utters the letters U, B, and I, currency devalues itself by one thousand fold, chunks of the sky rain down on metropolitan centers, and everyone instantly becomes fat, lazy, and uninterested in any activities except playing video games.
Yup I died because you said it, so thanks for that.
If not myself, then someone else. Blame the system, not the individual.
If it had to he anyone, im glad it was you!
To be clear, I have no issue with most people working while others do not and live off the system. I think most people will still want to do that something.
UBI isn't going to do that.
You can point to a handful of small scale studies that show more money works, and yes, on a small scale that is exactly what you'd expect to happen.
This does not work when everyone has that same income. It's not a matter of 99% of people making smart choices, because I concede that the vast majority of people with sudden access to additional income would spend it wisely.
The issues are twofold.
A) when the people who've made it their career to suck every penny out of every possible person know that there are suddenly more pennies to be had, they're going to raise prices. It's frankly foolish and shortsighted to expect prices to remain the same or only raise a little. This issue is not raised with small scale experiments. So regardless of their obvious success, they're not telling the whole story.
2). UBI does absolutely nothing to address the problems it's actually trying to solve. All it does is print a check every month as a bandaid for some serious problems that will certainly persist. You can't fix housing without building housing. Individual healthcare will still be tied to your job. College education will be prohibitively expensive and require staffing a lifetime of debt, and we'll still throw away an obscene amount of food, and people will still go hungry. The only thing that will probably get better is more children will have a secure diet.
And none of that assumes prices would inflate the way they absolutely will. Because even if UBI happened, the people who want all the money the working class has aren't suddenly going to think it's ok to leave dollars unspoken for.
The cost of college will steadily increase by about the amount kids are expected to have been able to save by the time they get there. Rent prices will go up to accommodate the new found freedom of spending. And that's the stuff you have a choice on. You think Comcast will see people with so many extra dollars a month and think "well our customers don't have another option but we'll let them keep all that money?"
UBI is just a ticket to absolute dependency on a government check for 99% of Americans, and less financial freedom.
Address the actual problems, don't just slap a half baked bandaid on it
The claim of UBI leading to runaway inflation is a myth given by reactionary propaganda.
UBI would represent a major advance for the working class. Advocating against it seems impossible to reconcile with any attitude that is not accelerationist.
Much of your commentary seems to reproduce mythical tropes such as of the "welfare queen".
Seeking meaningful contribution to society is a robust human tendency. Doing so under constant threat from greedy employers is not necessary.
Something is not propaganda because you disagree with it.
I also make it clear in literally my first sentence that people living off the system without working is fine, but that most people probably won't.
I'm not sure you actually read the post you're responding to.
Something is not scientific fact because you declare it to be.
There's scientific facts, economic reality, and then there's the pipe dream that suddenly corporations will be less greedy just "cuz" under UBI.
I have heard many different opinions about UBI.
I have never heard any suggestion that it would make corporations less greedy.
Perhaps your objection is directed at a strawman.
I responded to the text of your comment, and my concern about your opening sentence is not its lacking truth, as much as the litany of untruthful claims you later made in contradiction.
I would think UBI would be implemented to track inflation. I also assume it would be funded by progressive taxes, not just spinning up the printing presses (which would cause inflation). Effectively, it would be a wealth redistribution program cycling money from corporations and the rich down to the poor.
I really don't trust the government (which is pretty much captured by corporations) to implement it well though. They'd probably give everyone just enough money to barely survive, without health care, in a van down by the river or something.
I'm fairly confident that corporations would argue that corporations are people, and therefore should get their allotment of UBI at a rate of one full income per stock share, and they'd probably win that argument too, considering the state of our legislature. Then they would argue that actual people getting their share of UBI is harming corporate profits and get UBI cancelled for everyone except the largest corporations. We still have land reaping subsidies not to grow crops from the New Deal, and all that land has made its way into the hands of the wealthy.
Without capitalism, we don't really need UBI because we can just go more socialist.
You don't need "more money" if society guarantees your quality of life with no strings attached.
You still need a system of currency as individuals should be allowed to use their skills to barter.
Yeah UBI would solve this. This might be a criticism of contemporary capitalism, but it isn't a critique of capitalism more broadly because in principle, capitalism can have a UBI.
More fruitful anti-capitalist critiques emphasize workplace authoritarianism, the employer's appropriation of the whole product of a firm, monopoly power associated with private ownership especially of land and natural resources, and inability to effectively allocate resources towards public goods
A strike can last much longer if workers are not worried about their bread and roof.
Even without organization, a secure worker can bargain harder for higher wages and better conditions.
Aaaaand there it is, the reason they fight so hard to keep you from that security.
Nonviolence won't solve this.
I hope that the worst kinds of conflict prove avoidable, but historically, there is always someone who fires the first shots.
The Haymarket affair illustrates the matter quite well.
Even a UBI specifically for food- food stamps for all- would make a massive change and improve millions of lives.
In principle, and even in it's intended general practical application, I agree with you.
But in America, I can see both parties getting on board with a UBI, only because they'll use it to gut all other social welfare programs.
UBI can't pay for both at once? Tough shit. We abolished EBT and Medicare to pay for UBI.
All must be won by struggle. Elites never surrender privilege only by being asked.
EBT is a flat 200 a month at most and the ongoing application process is humiliating Kafkaesque bullshit I wouldn't wish on anyone after experiencing it, so I think it would work just fine to shut it down and fold it into a UBI, would be nice and simple and without complications. Health insurance on the other hand, cost varies wildly by circumstance but is generally more expensive, and because of incentives, price negotiations, all the bullshit involved with the system would be way more efficient and cost effective to have a universal healthcare program instead of giving out money to buy into a private insurance industry.
Fortunately, this seems to be recognized in most serious discussions about UBI. Almost everyone quickly acknowledges that the idea of replacing healthcare programs in particular with UBI is stupid. The UBI proposals I've seen that got any attention were explicit that it does not replace those. I don't think it's realistic they would actually try to replace Medicare with UBI.
This is what scares me about UBI. Yang's plan was going to hurt (or just not benefit) a lot of families in New York, Massachusetts, California, and other net-producing locations. The list of those least-benefitting from a UBI matches the list of areas with the highest poverty and homelessness rate. That, to me, is unacceptable.
The moment you have a UBI plan that poor has to contribute to and then opt out of, you just have another system that's screwing the poor.
South American experiments with printing money make the studies hard to believe. You can't simply give people money without causing a devaluation in said money. You have to take it away from the market somehow (so, tax the shit out of the rich)
The government surely can.
The government has the power to levy taxes.
The government has comprehensive powers for regulating the value of currency, through control over the money supply.
At any rate, the government printing money for workers cannot possibility be worse for workers than the government printing money for businesses, as it is doing now.
I suppose, though, you might take comfort in how inflation now is being so effectively prevented, instead of causing needless human suffering.
Ok, this time I am following you. Because I feel really strongly like there's a lot more we'd agree on than disagree.
In this case, I agree 100% with everything you said.
And I think one common factor in both of our goals is that we shouldn't be afraid of the government stepping in and preventing capitalism from grinding our poor into dust. We should be fighting for a government that cares more about the well being of its people than the Nasdaq.
Can't agree with this enough. It drives me crazy when people think the Government should be run like a business. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, and really shows that people don't use their critical thinking skills.