Rare miss from Hakim. The first half of this video a gamut of poisoning the well against UBI, which would be a phenomenal win for the working class if implemented correctly. Furthermore, this video uses a lot of right-wing logic dressed in Marxist language. It's not a good video, which is rare from him. Hakim is usually one of the best left-wing Youtubers out there.
He starts out by saying that UBI is reformist, which is worse than the more preferred option of revolution. Sure, whatever. But that isn't an argument against UBI, it's an argument against any form of social reform. You could easily make that case against Medicare for All, climate change action, or whatever. Saying "but pressing the communism button is better" anytime someone brings up a reform just shuts discussion down. It's technically true, but it's worthless sophistry. You don't need to make the case for revolution by punching left at reformism, especially when you load your video with conservative arguments against UBI.
The next argument he makes is that it might come at the expense of bureaucratic social welfare programs. Bad argument. Replacing bureaucratic nonsense with universal, non-means tested programs is good. Take food stamps for example. Would you prefer a system where a person has to fill out dozens of forms, provide tax returns, prove they don't own a car, nice bed, any savings account, etc (SNAP has asset tests in some states) in exchange for a gift card for grocery stores, or one where a person gets money to buy food? Of course you would prefer the latter. Replacing bureaucratic, degrading, broken welfare programs with cash benefits is a good thing. Bureaucracy just forces welfare recipients to do the labor of navigating the bureaucracy before receiving benefits. The left should oppose this.
To give an example, saying "UBI might replace food stamps" is like Joe Biden saying "Medicare for All might replace Obamacare." Good! Replacing bad reforms with good reforms is a good thing!
His comparisons between stimulus checks and UBI is bad. Saying "what's stopping debtors and capitalists from seizing your UBI" is a bizarre argument, since it's not an argument against UBI as much as it as an argument against debt forgiveness. Would Hakim argue against striking for higher wages because debtors can garnish wages? Of course not. The argument he makes with regard to student loans is even worse, since that industry has been nationalized (at least in the US). UBI to pay off student loans is functionally no different than student debt cancellation. Would Hakim oppose student debt cancellation? I doubt it.
"UBI would just cause the rents to raise"...come on, man. This has been debunked a thousand times. It is literally an argument against people having disposable income. Matt Bruenig's demolition of it is better than anything I'll write, so I'll drop it here: https://mattbruenig.com/2017/11/15/weird-ubi-argument-about-rents/
The argument at 3:00 is literally the same argument Mitt Romney or Joe Manchin would make about UBI. It's literally a "how do you pay for it?" argument. I didn't realize I was watching Pete Buttigieg at a Democratic debate.
The next point he makes - that it would probably be paid for by VAT taxes or something other than raising taxes on the rich or corporations is also a bad point, but it's more understandable. Leftists get scared of raising taxes on the middle class or anything else that might get perceived as "regressive." This is wrong, and it's fundamentally a neoliberal talking point not a leftist one. It's like Joe Biden saying "I won't raise your taxes if you make under $400k a year." When you look at a tax scheme you should look at both the tax and transfer. Downwards transfers of wealth are good, upwards transfers of wealth are bad. A VAT is a regressive tax on its own, but a VAT used to fund basic income is still a huge downward transfer of wealth. If you imposed a 10% VAT to finance $1000 a month UBI, you come out on top if you spend under $120k a year and lose out if you spend more than $120k per year. Poor people do not spend more than $120k in a year. I don't want to sound like Andrew Yang (who does suck), but people have done the math on this.
The next point he makes is "what about people removed from UBI" (prisoners, undocumented people, etc). Another bad argument. Those people are already excluded from existing welfare programs. They shouldn't be, and the left should be fighting to include them, but that has nothing to do with UBI. The next point is "what about people who already receive disability or benefits that currently exceed UBI". Which, yeah? We shouldn't fight to replace disability payments with UBI? No UBI proponent - not even Andrew Yang - supports this? This is just making up a guy and getting really mad at that guy.
The video gets better around the 4:30 mark. Hakim is right that workers want full employment because it gives workers the ability to agitate for what they demand and capitalists want a reserve army of unemployed workers. He then says that a UBI that's enough to live off of would be good for the working class, because it would give them the ability to agitate for what they want without the fear of being thrown into poverty. I completely agree!
And Hakim is right that that is not what Musk and Bezos call for when they call for UBI. There are good UBIs and bad UBIs. Good UBIs are ones that are net downwards wealth transfers. Bad ones are upwards transfers. The left should agitate for good UBIs and against bad ones, which I guess is what Hakim is saying? Like, if this video started at this point it would be a lot better.
The rest of the video is fine. I just don't get why so many leftists hold UBI to such a stupidly high standard compared to every other reform. Yes, there are bad ways to do UBI. There are bad ways to do every other reform Hakim talks about like public transit, universal healthcare, etc. That doesn't mean UBI is stupid, or a dead-end, or whatever. It means the left has to be smart about how we agitate for it. Just like literally any other reform. Because that's all UBI is, a new social program. It can be done well or poorly. It can empower the working class or it can further immiserate it. But you don't see leftists making videos saying "universal healthcare is kinda stupid, actually" then talking about all the ways it could be fucked up. So why do the same about UBI?
He starts out by saying that UBI is reformist, which is worse than the more preferred option of revolution. Sure, whatever. But that isn’t an argument against UBI, it’s an argument against any form of social reform. You could easily make that case against Medicare for All, climate change action, or whatever. Saying “but pressing the communism button is better” anytime someone brings up a reform just shuts discussion down. It’s technically true, but it’s worthless sophistry. You don’t need to make the case for revolution by punching left at reformism, especially when you load your video with conservative arguments against UBI.
The idea is there is an opportunity cost to reformism. When you have a working class that is capable of enforcing the good version of UBI why would you stop at just that? The problem with the left vs the right is that the right sets goals more aligned with their "end game" plans so to say, while the left simply doesn't.
The capitalists would prefer to have slavery and as much suffering as possible. Even when they are not successful they don't shy away from making it explicit this is their desired end result through their actions, the systemic brutality and suffering is the point and you can find so many posts on this site showcasing this.
Leftists who defend reformism tend to set the goal towards what is realistic, rational and more easily obtained, which ends up missing the point of a political movement and the ultimate goal of an ideology. You don't agitate and radicalize to make the world slightly better, we should try to make it the best we can. Perhaps there is a bigger discussion here about revolution vs reform and the Chinese example but even SWCC would not be possible without the revolutionary struggles decades earlier.
Western leftist reformists want to jump straight into reform hoping to pave way for a revolution while the only relevant successful example we have is the opposite, a reform after a revolution.
Indeed the big elephant in the room is history and all examples we had that attest to the short term success but long term failure of reforms that were not followed up by a revolutionary movement, UBI would just be the first of many worker victories and concessions that ended up being rolled back decades later worldwide.
A good example was the minimum wage, it kept up with productivity and inflation but eventually it lost out to both. Now we are hoping that UBI will be stronger than the minimum wage with nothing to back this up but wishful thinking and theory, it is not as if the working class is that strong right now in the US to begin with.
His comparisons between stimulus checks and UBI is bad. Saying “what’s stopping debtors and capitalists from seizing your UBI” is a bizarre argument, since it’s not an argument against UBI as much as it as an argument against debt forgiveness. Would Hakim argue against striking for higher wages because debtors can garnish wages? Of course not. The argument he makes with regard to student loans is even worse, since that industry has been nationalized (at least in the US). UBI to pay off student loans is functionally no different than student debt cancellation. Would Hakim oppose student debt cancellation? I doubt it.
His point banks seized the opportunity to exploit a loophole and take the stimulus check, which proves that capitalists will try and find any loophole to take a bite out of your UBI. I don't think wages fall under the same rationale. Trying to prevent this requires more political power of the government over corporations which is very hard to imagine.
As far as UBI against student loans the problem is that he is assuming UBI would come at the expense of social welfare, it would be very shitty if some bank decided to pay a student loan instead of your rent or food specialy if this wasn't your decision and you were counting on the money, being homeless and starving despite earning 1k UBI a month because some bank decided what the money should be used for is not progress and the only way to prevent this would be yet again specific legislation.
They shouldn’t be, and the left should be fighting to include them, but that has nothing to do with UBI.
Imagine you are trying to "sell" UBI and one candidate is making lies about it being cheap because people X Y and Z aren't going to be qualified for it while you sit there as a good leftist trying to propose a more honest but more expensive version of UBI without those restrictions. You are not wrong that those issues are not real issues for a proper UBI proposal but who says the UBI we are going to get and the one the capitalists are going to push are not going to be the ones most people will find appealing. Just look at Bernie's campaign, despite universal healthcare popularity he couldn't/wouldn't do what is necessary to beat the old political game against him.
They managed to convince people that they love their absurdly overpriced and inefficient health insurance. It is prudent to worry about how capitalists will be able to make people "love" literaly the worst version of UBI because I don't know it comes with a big check with a photo of your favorite Washington ghoul every month...
The rest of the video is fine. I just don’t get why so many leftists hold UBI to such a stupidly high standard compared to every other reform. Yes, there are bad ways to do UBI. There are bad ways to do every other reform Hakim talks about like public transit, universal healthcare, etc. That doesn’t mean UBI is stupid, or a dead-end, or whatever.
There is a way implement UBI properly i.e as a policy in a strong worker state what is able to implement UBI along with other social welfare programs.
I am just pessimistic that UBI will be politicized and manipulated so much that any hope of a proper UBI that doesn't fuck up most other social programs is just too unrealistic. UBI supporters tend to just take it as a given that we will get the good version, that we will win the political/media battle etc...
I find the opportunity cost argument also compelling, why UBI and not Universal basic services (UBS), why make people pay for food when you should just make it free and have people take what they need or why make people pay for rent when housing should be a basic right, why pay health insurance, why pay for education at all etc...
UBI ends up not even being the best version of the solution to those problems imo.
I find the opportunity cost argument also compelling, why UBI and not Universal basic services (UBS), why make people pay for food when you should just make it free and have people take what they need or why make people pay for rent when housing should be a basic right, why pay health insurance, why pay for education at all etc…
UBI ends up not even being the best version of the solution to those problems imo.
:this:
A lot of more well-off internet "leftists" have really weird opinions about UBI necessarily being bad
Thank you, good points, I wonder how Hakim would respond to them? Maybe send him an email?
Bruenig thing you linked didn't really demolish anything, he correctly pointed out that with no housing reform or any sort of useful public housing policy that it WILL go to landlords.
Where in capitalism is there good housing policy or even a passable proposal in the works to build more public housing plus rent control. Other than Berlin maybe seizing from the biggest landlord which could be blocked by German supreme Court.
Why do you assume we'd get the good version of UBI, if we weren't critical of democrat health care then we'd get the shitty version instead of the Bernie version.
To me UBI can only be useful after doing a lot of other stuff in which case we'd have enough power to go further.
There is something missing in the video that I belive to be a higly important side effect to the introduction of ANY UBI, be it good or the shitty Bezos one.
The fundamental acnowlegement that just existing as a human should sufficient as a reason to feed (and preferrably house) you.
That is, imo, a mayor win against liberal brainworms and especially libertarianism. If it proves to be popular, which it undoubtedly will be, it will rob the right of the 'you are entiteled to nothing'narrative.
Only requirement would be, that it is truly unconditional.
Sure, a world without money would be best, but it´s babysteps. Establishing socialism will always be preferable, but the thing is that UBI can pass under capitalism. If that UBI than translates to an apartment+food, the new status quo would be that everyone deserves housing+food. If it´s enough for a tent+food even, then it still acnowleges a persons fundamental right to exist. A very low bar admittedly, but lierals are that low. At least it will make it easy to frame it that way, and the positive impact the UBI would have could make expanding it/other social ideas a very popular stance.
Even a shitty, unconditional, UBI could be a good basis to build on. Now I don´t belive in reform to archive socialism, but a UBI that can get expanded through pupular support can be an incredible tool to increase labor power. It can take away the power of the bosses to starve you to death, but unlike with the other regulations, a UBI would be way harder to go back on. It would fail the moment it gets means tested though.
If the libs seriously pursue UBI it is going to happen and there is no credible way for the left to oppose it. Whatever quibbles about the specifics are going to be countered by the fact that left leadership is millionaires denying money to the poor or that the left has already compromised constantly when it meant career advancement at the expense of the poor.
Hell, UBI Trump is probably the closest thing our politics has to a win button.
Hell, UBI Trump is probably the closest thing our politics has to a win button.
:jesse-wtf:
They're right, a candidate going "i hate those corrupt communists puppeting joe biden's corpse, im gonna kick out all the brown people, and ill pay you to vote for me!" pretty much cannot lose
Calling it basic income is just the same classic move of compromising to the bare minimum before the negotiation even begins.
Right now Basic Income is $0. The proposal is to make it > $0. Happy to discuss the particular political strategy of a UBI starting point. But suggesting "you can't call it basic income because that language is a compromise" is just kinda blind to the status quo.
I'm reminded of the fights over minimum wage, where leftists pretend the minutea of the debate even matters in a national legislature that refuses to do anything good ever for any reason. Give me a national organization with some traction on the issue and then talk to me about what specific bullet points they should include in their manifesto.
The socio-political aspects of UBI will always trump the economic rationale, if UBI is passed it will be implemented by a capitalist regime consumed by decades of neoliberal bias and conditioning, for supporters of UBI to assume that a pro-worker version is in any way likely alot of ideal conditions will have to be meet
There's some serious Keynesian idealism among the supporters of UBI, and just like the first time the problem wasn't the economics, at least not in the short term, it was the inability to square the inherent capitalist revulsion to state guaranteed social welfare, a revulsion that will always lead to cutting, means-testing, and sabotage, and what guarantee is there that the stagflationary dynamic between robust wages, interest rates and profits won't be replicated between UBI checks, interest rates and profits by way of progressive taxation on the wealthy....unless that risk is eliminated entirely capitalists will anticipate and adjust to our detriment
Good UBI can't be implemented without a robust labor movement already in existence, without massive state intervention in markets and without a serious reworking of property rights
Haven't watched the video yet but a lot of the comments here are falling into the mind traps of "UBI could be great" and "it's better than right now". IMO the main problem with UBI is that it enforces the market mechanisms of interaction in capitalist society, which is kinda oppositional to a lot of left projects.
Of course I agree, people having an extra bit of cash in their pockets would be good, but UBI remains a very individualistic solution for systemic problems.
Honestly, I'd be pretty happy with UBI as a welfare system for various forms of unemployment if there weren't any landlords or rentier shareholders, with some added stuff for disabilities. This is, of course, assuming that you still have markets and money, but have gotten rid of the owner class. But that's not what's being discussed here (and certainly isn't the version of UBI that is being pushed by technocratic billionaires)
Not a fan of Hakim's arguments here. The entire first part of his video is operating under the assumption that it would be impossible to pass UBI without seeing equivalent cuts to other social programs, which is not a form of UBI that any leftist I know would advocate for. Even Andrew Yang, who has proven time and again to be a ghoul, was proposing that his version of the UBI be paid for by taxing tech companies.
The second set of arguments he makes don't work either. Arguing that leftists shouldn't advocate for reforms because a reform might sap the revolutionary energy of the working class is just accelerationism. You could apply this argument to literally everything, but I refuse to take the black pill that says that making things better for the poorest in our society is somehow a bad thing.
And then in the last part of his video, he explains that UBI is good actually. What the fuck?
A common trapping I've encountered with UBI advocates is that they have an idea in their heads of what UBI could be, but a lot of them, especially the left ones, tend to overlook the current moment. I agree, UBI could be good under socialism, as could a lot of things, but we're not anywhere close to building socialism and UBI is no guarantee that socialism will happen, so we shouldn't trust the neoliberal capitalist establishment will do our work for us.
