Twitter Thread on UBI: "You just want people to not have to work?" "Yes. Yes, I do."

[Saviolo]

Really excellent thread here:

Link to tweet

?s=20

MadLori
@madlori
When discussing Universal Basic Income, inevitably the retort comes: "So you just want people to not have to work, is that it?" Accompanied by a smug smirk, expecting me to backpedal and hem and haw, say "Of course not, that's silly." Except...yes. Yes, I do. 1/11

Full text below:

When discussing Universal Basic Income, inevitably the retort comes: "So you just want people to not have to work, is that it?" Accompanied by a smug smirk, expecting me to backpedal and hem and haw, say "Of course not, that's silly." Except...yes. Yes, I do. 1/11

People shouldn't HAVE to work. People should WANT to work. Sharing in the labor of building and maintaining a society because it benefits everyone should be desirable, not forced. It shouldn't be something we do because we'll die otherwise. 2/11

Imagine a society where survival didn't depend on a job. Imagine how that would alter the fabric of...everything. Imagine if you could leave a job without fearing the loss of income or health care. Imagine the power of the worker in that society. 3/11

If a person could survive without a job, imagine what employers would be like. They'd have to treat their workers fairly, and make themselves attractive to entice workers. They'd have to offer a better option than other employers, and make people want to participate. 4/11

Places that have offered UBI have seen the results: most people do want to work. The people who choose not to are generally young parents, students, people with disabilities and the elderly. people have a desire to contribute, for our lives to have purpose and to be useful. 5/11

And before you say it, yes, some people will take advantage. That is true for absolutely everything ever. You think people don't take advantage of the economy we have? Like, say, the 1% who grow wealthier while their employees have to work three jobs and use food stamps? 6/11

They can only do that, by the way, because people are so terrified of losing a job and the destruction that would follow that they tolerate mistreatment, disempowerment, the destruction of their unions, healthcare, retirements and even their bodies to avoid it. 7/11

That would not be the case if everyone were guaranteed a baseline survival income. Your boss couldn't treat you like shit because he knows you can't leave. You CAN leave, and you will. 8/11

What if desperation didn't motivate everything? Imagine the impact on health, relationships, parenting, well-being, crime, violence, progress. When you aren't desperately scrabbling for the rent, you can spare a neuron to contemplate long-term problems. 9/11

Imagine a society where terror of destitution wasn't a constant thrum underneath everyone's existence. Imagine the creative works that society could produce. Imagine the children it could raise, the elderly it could care for. Imagine the inventions it could produce. 10/11

Now, imagine knowing all this and thinking "NOPE. We can't have all that, because someone I don't like might benefit from it. So to avoid that, the rest of you can all hang." And there you have modern conservative thinking. 11/11

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. K&R to every word in this.

[gtar100]

2. That is absolutely correct.

Maybe conservatives are afraid of welfare because the are projecting what they would do if given assistance. That is how they think. They're afraid others wouldn't work because they themselves would exploit the system, they'd be the ones abusing the good will of the people. Heck, they do that already.

They also don't think things through as there are always rules and regulations around public assistance to combat fraud. That wouldn't change with UBI.

[canuckledragger]

6. It's kind of funny

how detailed the scams are they accuse others of, almost as if they's had first hand doing it themselves and are just scapegoating others...

[ms liberty]

3. I would rec this a thousand times if I could. K&R. n/t

[lostnfound]

4. Imagine also, labor and invention of a million ancestors - modern society derived from THEM

Medical technology, the space program, pharma, the internet, agriculture methods, tools and more... society pretends that only “capital” deserves the legacy, deserves the fruits of those labors.

Thus, when it comes to the descendants of laborers, what matters is if you work and how much you earn; but the descendants of capital are entitled as surely as aristocrats in medieval Britain were “en-Titled”.

The descendants of the researchers and carpenters are given no legacy, it is only the owners whose wealth is intergenerational.

[stopdiggin]

5. laid out well

Last edited Wed Jul 24, 2019, 02:44 AM - Edit history (1)

and there are actually a lot of other possible benefits. Compounded with .. any futurist, or indeed thinker or scientist, I've ever come across almost immediately stresses that we WILL come to a point when MANY of us won't have jobs. It's pretty much inevitable .. so why not start now with imagining the kind of things people will be doing when they don't have to harvest potatoes or make airplanes. But, again .. I really like the argument you have laid out. THANKS!

[loyalsister]

7. I wonder when the demeaning term "employment" came into common use to describe labor and work?

The passive nature of "being employed" seems to deny agency.
Another structural problem UBI would address is the flip side of It shouldn't be something we do because we'll die otherwise. For disabled people especially, earning money can ruin a person's life if they lose eligibility status for housing, or healthcare. People should be able to be active and earn some money without being penalized. And, no one should be penalized for not choosing to be employed- used - exploited to support shareholders and massive profits for the 1%.

[alwaysinasnit]

8. Excellent thread. Thanks for posting. K&R

[KPN]

9. Too bad those on the dark side will never

read or comprehend this ... if they can read. A great presentation of UBI.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. Depending on what amount is being proposed for the UBI

most people will still need to work. They just might not have to work at some terrible job they hate, but will be free to do what they'd really like.

[Maru Kitteh]

15. I'm still left to wonder who will do all those hateful jobs though.

Let's face it - there are jobs which must be done that no sane person would do if they were truly "free to do what they'd really like."

Clinical Waste Disposal Worker
Have you ever wondered what happens to clinical waste, including used dressings, needles, out-of-date medicines, denatured drugs, blood bags, amputated limbs, and human tissues and organs? Well, according to UK legislation, they must be properly disposed of (i.e., by incineration) to prevent harm being caused to the environment and human health. In other words, there are people whose job it is to cook body parts for a living basically, and they’re called clinical waste disposal workers. To make things even more disturbing, the scent of ‘cooking’ is apparently described as a combination of burning rubber, bad body odour and smelly feet.

https://www.careeraddict.com/disgusting-jobs-that-you-didn-t-know-existed

We will need UBI at some point due to automation; I'm just not entirely sure how some things will work out. I'm guessing some of the most terrible tasks that cannot be completed by robots will have to be compensated at rates adequate to make it worthwhile for people to consider.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. A lot more automation. Higher wages.

Undocumented immigrants.

Somehow they'll get done.

[hunter]

11. We should pay people to experiment with lifestyles having very small environmental footprints...

... and judge the success of those experiments entirely in terms of "happiness" to the best of our ability to measure happiness.

People can, without a doubt, be happy without automobiles, without 5000 square foot air conditioned McMansions, without a giant chunk of meat on the dinner table every night.

A universal basic income could play a role in such experiments.

Abandoning high energy consumer lifestyles having huge environmental footprints ought to be encouraged.

This thing we now call "economic productivity" is a direct measure of the damage we are doing to this planet's natural environment and our own human spirit.

[paulkienitz]

12. artificial intelligence means that we will see full employment become impossible.

Better start thinking now about how to deal with that.

[0rganism]

13. THIS

AIs are going to define the economy of the 22nd century and dominate the 2nd half of the 21st. people who don't see the need to plan ahead for it are living in the world of 19th C buggy whip makers.

[Duppers]

14. Absolutely!

[Politicub]

16. People would still work. The American pastime of accumulating money

and spending it will not change.

What will change, with UBI and universal healthcare, are the types of businesses that will spring up. Today a lot of people feel locked into a job for the benefits (this was me for a long time). Then the ACA came along and, all of the sudden, the issues with buying health insurance were swept away. I was able to start consulting and doing work I enjoyed doing, on my schedule, precisely because of the ACA. Job lock was a thing of the past.

UBI will help so many people meet the basics and still be able to have a job. Maybe it would help a struggling family pay for daycare. Maybe it would help make ends meet at the end of the month. It could be used to pay for food.

I would love to see something as wonderfully radical as UBI becoming law.

Yang is a quiet, subversive revolutionary. He’s going to have a hard time getting traction, but I’m glad his ideas are getting heard regardless of what happens.

[Xipe Totec]

17. And, let's be honest. Corporations don't want us to work either

That's why they go to great lengths to remove as much labor as possible from their operations. They consider labor a necessary evil.

[Qutzupalotl]

19. Some words of caution.

I am not against UBI in principle, unless it’s being touted as a replacement for Social Security. We need to keep SS intact, since so many have already paid in so much.

Running on UBI will inevitably draw charges from the right that we support a “lazy, entitled welfare state,” so we would need effective counters to that framing, more extensive than just the explanation in this thread.

But most importantly, this might not be the year to run on utopian plans. There is a traitor in the White House tearing down the United States piece by piece, and setting everything we loved about our country on fire. Defeating Trump must be our number one goal — everything else is secondary. I feel the same about Medicare for All: it’s a pretty good idea, but not if it costs us the next election.