Just finished "Bullshit Jobs" and it ends with advocating for a UBI, explicitly as a plausible first step towards fixing/dismantling capitalism.

Its a pretty solid argument, as long as you put the caveats of the goal to be to expand the benefits of society universally, not to consolidate the welfare state and reduce cost.

There are a lot of issues and technical details that one can imagine, and ultimately if the goal is to liberate all humans and save the world from capitalism, further steps would have to be taken. But a UBI does seem like a reasonable first step.

Though I guess the only would world the capitalist class would ever let a UBI happen is the world where we force them to, since even the $2000 one time payment basically is never going to happen.

So UBI as a advocating tool or a rhetorical device, but I don't think it should be a goal in of itself. A UBI is the compromise position and leaves the Capital class in place. Something closer to Universal Equal Payments (working title) should be the goal.

    • WalterBongjammin [they/them,comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Completely, which is why I think UBI is kind of a dead end by itself. It might be useful for getting some people on board with a left platform, but the only chance that it'll happen in a way in a meaningful form is if a movement is built whose success has begun to shift the balance of power between capital and labour. Otherwise it'll just be a subsidy that allows corporations to pay poverty wages, like any other benefit in a social democracy.

    • Janked [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      There's literally no indication of any sort of healthcare being provided in the US anytime soon, in the middle of a global fucking pandemic.

      To think that UBI would ever happen without things that aren't happening now (and should be) - massive general strikes, violent demonstrations, riots - is ignoring reality.