Update: Why couldn’t the UN do something like this and unscramble the modern world and ethnic and class conflict in general? Is there a reason?
I wish everywhere here could forget about Yang for a minute.
— #YangGang GIFs (@yangganggifs) March 17, 2019
Focus on the idea itself. I want you to think of UBI as like a sail harnessed to capitalism for the benefit of the distressed public. The sail captures the wind. Some of the wealth that is created by technological progress starts to rain down on you. It makes your life easier, right?
How on earth would that not ease social tension? Suppose for a second that UBI starts at $1,000 bucks a month. You would have an instant end to wage slavery. It would increase your well being. As time goes on, the economy will continue to advance, generate wealth, automate and displace workers. The wealth could simply be distributed to everyone through a debit card. This social dividend could be gradually increased over time and it would free millions of people to be more creative.
Is this a threat to whatever we call “conservatism” in America? It has conserved literally nothing for decades, BUT all of these displaced people would still have an important job to do. They could focus their labors on improving our culture and ending moral degeneration instead of doing whatever their bosses want them to say and do. The Freedom Dividend would stimulate conservatism. How much more time would people have to be social with other people in their communities?
Imagine if the conservative brain trust had the freedom and the time to figure out any of our major social problems and weren’t constrained by economics or taboos like the Alt-Right. We’re not employed by any of their donor funded institutions so we spend our time reading and reflecting on ideas. Unlike Conservatism, Inc., we’re also strongly committed to world peace, truth and a love of our own people.
You say that is immoral? Shame on you
Q: Would Jeff Bezos work less hard if Amazon were taxed at 70%?
A: No. He’s a megalomaniac. Crushing all commerce in America is his obsession. He’s a NEET at heart and would do it for subsistence wages.
What I most liked about being on disability, after I got over the shame, was no longer pretending that my work was important. I was another wage slave at a cubicle on the digital plantation. I dealt with paperwork of increasing complexity, which was a justification for false pride in my importance and worth. But did my work matter? Objectively, I have to say of course not. I’ve known for some time about how much more we moderns work compared to ancients, but it was one of those things you don’t think about if you want to feel good about your situation and life. Conservatism is the ideology that makes you feel your slavery makes you strong. It’s just conditioning that benefits the lord of the manor, telling you that being a peasant scything in the fields is somehow like being a knight. We’re all just economic units, you know, so what does it ultimately matter? Be productive for the sake of productivity, for the sake of the investors. Or for the sake of your materialism, for those holding your debts. That’s not much of a life.
That is a nice, straight forward way of looking at things. Thanks for an insightful, refreshing, post.
“Some of the wealth that is created by technological progress starts to rain down on you. It makes your life easier, right?”
that’s what would have happened without mass immigration.
productivity increases from c. 1970 onwards all went to capital because immigration kept wages stagnant.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-20/divergence-root-most-american-economic-problems
Reduce immigration then.
quite
Democrats want voters and Repubs want cheap labor. That’s why nothing is ever done.
Even though globalism is declining and manufacturing is coming back to the US, robots are taking the jobs:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-19/death-globalization-accelerates-global-trade-declines
“robots are taking the jobs”
then we need to completely halt immigration right?
Even if Koch/US CofC won’t need the workers, the Dems still want the illegal votes and welfare clients. For now. Personally, I’d like to send back every illegal and legal immigrant home via the cheapest way possible. Somalis can pile into rubber rafts and get a push away from the Atlantic shore, for example. I’ll even shell out the big bucks and give each raft an oar. Any raft turning back will get accidentally hit by Naval and Coast Guard ships doing impromptu target practice. Due to budget constraints, I’m sad to say that no rescue operations will be mounted.
A thousand dollars a month is not really enough to pay the rent, make the car payments, maintain the car, pay the utility bills, buy food. Studio apartments, even in lousy run-down areas, go for $600 to $800 a month. It should be two thousand a month, not one thousand. Yang should offer two thousand a month
[ so should all the other presidential candidates ]. It’s all fiat money anyway. They can print billions and trillions of fiat dollars for their wars and for their various other bullsh*t, they can print some more fiat dollars to give everyone two thousand a month. With the cost of everything being what it is, basic income should be at least $24,000. a year, not $12,000. $ 12,000. a year is not enough to supply the basics of life, not really.
I like Yang. At least he’s thinking about the American workers who will be very soon losing their jobs due to robotization of the workforce.
i think the problem is semantic.
you’re right that the way forward is the top-left of that graph (economic protectionist + social conservative) which if you take away the historical baggage is natsoc.
problem is a lot of people in the US have the non-ideological version of libertarianism in their DNA which GOPe manipulates into support for muh capitalism and the word socialist or anything that sounds like it triggers them.
so how can you get round this?
call it national capitalism instead.
(which is actually what the original was – they only called it natsoc cos that was better marketing in their context)
TBTB- within the current judaic system- will never allow the White working- and middle-class to be gifted $1K/month/person so just put it out of your minds.
2016: Right-populist scam
2020: Left-populist scam
Joe has it exactly right.
What Real Rate of Return (RRR) is there on the trillions spent on wars America wages, on supporting Israel, on foreign aid, on bailing out the banks? No one challenges these expenditures at elite levels in media or finance.
The answer on the RRR is a big fat ZERO. In fact it is less than zero. American national debt is now so big it can never be repaid anyway.
The fiat money spent on a living wage would be spent IN America so that means it would be BETTER spent.
Based on a family unit distribution there is a rough correlation of one trillion dollars per year if $1,000 was adopted, so two trillion if $2,000 was adopted, and so on…
Forget about comparing your household budget to the national one. YOU cannot print your own money like the government can you? Nor do you have the right to create it out of thin air with a simple book entry, like the banks do.
The government finances now have been so mismanaged for so long that these sort of numbers fit comfortably in the range of current wasteful practices and financial incompetence. Yang’s offer is very doable. Consider it.
In fact an economy drive pushed through the American military and the foreign aid budgets alone, could pay for the wage without a problem. That is, you would be no worse off. Put it that way.