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?

  • sokopsisss [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I think it's something the US will eventually have to do. In the red states especially, many of the aid programs are already sabotaged and when they tried to allocate money to help people with rent, the states were able to block it and let it sit doing nothing. So the obvious solution becomes to bypass this in general by doing universal programs at the federal level with the money we were going to spend anyway.

    Personally, I don't think there is a strong argument against it. The left was just scared of Yang siphoning young voters away. There are already states that essentially don't have unemployment or any accessible public housing and I know I wish I could have just gotten 1k to sort things out instead of trying to go through all these hoops trying to get money out of intentionally horrible programs.