I see arguments against UBI, that it's just the ruling class trying to remain in power, that your landlord will just raise rent by that much. Couldn't the same arguments be used against raising min wage? See, here's my thing, I think UBI would just be the capitalists desperately putting the system on life support but why are leftists so against UBI but not against raising min wage? You're not a liberal, you know better that you can't vote for or against either one. If those in power conclude that's what they need to do they'll do it. It won't matter if you agree or disagree or who's in office. To me that seems like one of those societal contradictions like Mao talks about. Under fuedalism those in power were naturally the only ones with the power to change society, but they had no incentive to so they did what they could to remain in power as long as possible, but ironically the way they solved those contradictions either changed society or set the stage for societal change.
I just can't get worked up about UBI one way or the other, that's not a materialist way of viewing it. A materialist way of looking at it would be to figure out, is this going to be what the ruling class conclude to be the way they stay in power? If so, what effects will that have on society?
Pretty much all of the modern UBI plans that have been proposed come at the expense of other social services
This right here. There's a way to do UBI that would transition us towards a post-scarcity society. The early non-US Green New Deal plans had UBI as a way of allowing us to de-industrialize, but plans like Yang's and most neolibs' are poison pills meant to dismantle social services.
How UBI would do a de-industrialization?
Why people want to de-industrialize anyways? Yeah a lot of industries are meant to produce shit nobody actually needs, but we also need a lot of industries to produce things we do need and don't exist.
We have a limited budget of carbon we can expel into the air (that we've probably blown past.) The idea being that we can pay people to stay home while we transition away from a society of bullshit jobs and instead focus on shit that would actually help us going forward; building up renewable power sources, high speed rails, letting developing countries skip the hardships of industrialization and straight to the renewable shit being developed, etc.
Imagine what we could have accomplished back during the lockdowns if the US had implemented a UBI and a proper safety net so that people wouldn't have been in a hurry to 'get back to normal'. All those empty roads and the projects we could have fast tracked. Lol just kidding, have an endemic.
deleted by creator
Lmao "We must secure the existence of our rivers and a future for our ecosystems"