This reminds me of a quote from the Grapes of Wrath, (which is set during the great depression):
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
Yes things were really bad before Keynesian economic policy was invented. But fortunately they figured that out.
Since then most famines have been caused by political instability. The largest famine in the world since we figured out economic policy happened in a socialist country (China).
While socialism is beneficial in some sectors of the economy, historically socialism doesn’t have a reliable track record when it comes to food production and distribution.
Keynesian economic strategies have never been implemented. We almost did that in 2020, but the rich saw what was happening, namely them losing control, and they stopped the stimulus packages world wide, for the poor. They kept the handouts for themselves
I've never gotten around to reading that book. Never knew enough about it to be interested. At the same time as I was eating on $50 of food stamps per month, I was the person who had to take out all the expired meat and stale bread and unsold, entire cakes down to the dumpster.
Had I taken anything and been seen, I would have been fired. A coworker was fired, for handing it out to the homeless shelter across the street instead. I've never forgotten that.
A friend of mine ran a grocery store in the 70s in Texas, and tells me it was routine at the time for grocers to hand out their unsold just-expired meat and vegetables out at closing time. There was always a line to a Dutch door where someone handed out the food by the bag.
It was also known to reduce shoplifting.
So yes, it’s interesting that the practice of tainting discarded food has become acceptable again.
One of the USDA’s responsibilities is to track food waste like this, since 30%-40% of all food in the US is wasted, and discarded food makes up the largest factor in our managed solid waste. I can’t say it is a crime to mass-dispose of food in the US, but it is regarded as a harm, at least by the USDA.
It is certainly regarded as harmful when grocers and restaurants taint their disposed food to deter dumpster diving. But this is done to deter homeless people from trying to forage, e.g. disregarding the humanity of those desperate enough to eat discarded food.
Not only do they refuse to distribute wasted food, they’ve laid the blame on the people, stating that they can’t distribute it for fear of an overly litigious populace.
Which we’ve solved federally, I think during the Clinton administration. Businesses and people are protected when donating discarded food in good faith, let alone letting dumpster divers pick what they want.
There have been some pretty extensive studies that indicate that when you give poor people money, they become less poor. When you give poor people enough money to live on, they stop being poor. It’s a radical concept, but it’s also the truth.
I read a study arguing that each time someone utters the letters U, B, and I, currency devalues itself by one thousand fold, chunks of the sky rain down on metropolitan centers, and everyone instantly becomes fat, lazy, and uninterested in any activities except playing video games.
I never said you didn’t. Money is a great way to barter labor for luxury when you exist in a system where you can never starve. Nobody is saying the government should cover Wagyu beef for every meal, or free yachts for people.
Agreed! This thread is specifically following that “cash in hand” is not what guarantees people quality of life - housing and food are. If someone has all a reasonable quality of life provided for free, “extra cash” is less urgent.
I mentioned elsewhere that I think a government run supermarket would do a lot of good for grocery pricing. My thought was that we’d all get EBT (no means-testing) and the government could save money by running its own supermarket, while simultaneously forcing down the prices of private supermarkets. That is a good compromise that lets us keep a cash basis for food stamps (like everyone seems to prefer over vouchers) while still preventing any concerns people have with EBT affecting prices.
I’m fairly confident that corporations would argue that corporations are people, and therefore should get their allotment of UBI at a rate of one full income per stock share, and they’d probably win that argument too, considering the state of our legislature. Then they would argue that actual people getting their share of UBI is harming corporate profits and get UBI cancelled for everyone except the largest corporations. We still have land reaping subsidies not to grow crops from the New Deal, and all that land has made its way into the hands of the wealthy.
There are real risks of a badly-designed UBI, and it unfortunately locks us more into capitalism instead of less, but innovators giving up on innovation is not one of them.
A badly designed instance belonging to any class may be bad, regardless of the class.
I advocate for UBI, and also, I advocate for UBI that is not badly designed.
Whether the working class seeks to leverage its advantages to depose capital depends on the will and resolve of workers as a class, but in the meantime, advocating against saving, improving, and empowering workers is some combination of apologia and accelerationism.
A badly designed instance may be bad, regardless of the class of designed entities to which the instance belongs.
Not many “designated entities” cost more than quarter of a nation’s GDP, nearly the entire current tax burden of that nation and wouldn’t meet most people’s economic burden. The problem with a UBI is how much of a systematic overhaul it really is. The cost to simply feed, clothe, and house all Americans is an order of magnitude cheaper than a modest UBI. About the only win UBI might have is by “tricking” the Right into supporting it when they’d go nuclear against something reasonable… But the loss UBI might have is by “tricking” the Left to support it when it secretly reads like a Right Wing fantasy. Pro-capitalism, excuse to remove or hobble other protections. And “personal responsibility” BS when an addict uses the UBI check to buy alcohol or fentanyl instead of food.
I advocate for UBI that is not badly designed.
Got an example? I used to be a HUGE fan of UBIs, but every time I read one, I struggled with these massive gaps. The three biggest issues I see with UBIs are:
In the US at least, the primary taxpayers are also the highest cost of living. Many of those in poverty in places like Manhattan or Boston are likely to have their economic position unaltered from UBI (and in the case of Yang’s plan, would have to opt out of UBI). The common answer I see to this is “move to a Red state”. I don’t want to tell a poor minority they need to move away from their family to Arkansas to make ends meet.
Many UBIs are inordinately financed by the poor and/or middle-class. This is not a win to me me.
I’m of the position that the biggest problem with the economy is “market inefficiency”, or to be specific, the profit margins of businesses. The reason the “everyone has housing and food” cost would be $2T, but a conservative UBI would be $4T is the $1T going in the pockets of an entire chain of middlemen, wholesalers, and resellers. If we fix that, UBI becomes less important because we’ve already started socializing. If we don’t fix that, I don’t see UBI being effective.
advocating against saving, improving, and empowering workers is some combination of apologia and accelerationism
You overplay here. I actually agree that the one unquestionable benefit of a UBI is worker leverage. But I think questioning a MULTI-TRILLION-DOLLAR plan that might do nothing but create worker leverage among one class of workers is extremely reasonable, far from apologia. And on the contrary, I think a UBI plan could itself be accelerationism.
And I say “one class of workers” because I mean it. The farther someone gets from their State’s minimum wage, the less leverage a UBI would provide. I’m not talking people making $1M/yr, but people making $45,760 (the US Median Wage). Someone making that much money doesn’t get much (any?) labor benefit from a UBI, but they are likely to be contributing to it in their taxes. See my problem?
EDIT: I’d like to re-summarize. For the cost of every UBI I’ve seen, we could afford to provide food, clothing, homes, and healthcare to every man, woman, and child in the United States, while still having billions or even trillions to spare. A check for $1000/mo, even $2000/mo can’t afford all those things.
For the cost of every UBI I’ve seen, we could afford to provide food, clothing, homes, and healthcare to every man, woman, and child in the United States, while still having billions or even trillions to spare. A check for $1000/mo, even $2000/mo can’t afford all those things.
The cost is the same. Money is the commodity created as the universal exchange. There is no other kind of asset suited for universal distribution that would empower everyone to access the essential commodities distributed through markets.
In fact, framing the issue in terms of cost is misleading. UBI is not the creation of any new resource or asset with intrinsic value. It is simply a political declaration, enforced administratively, that corporations and oligarchs may not hoard to such a degree that others are needlessly deprived.
Before replying to your points, I’d like to clarify that you missed the opportunity to win the discussion with a single answer. I’ll offer that again. Show me an actual UBI plan that I would not see as broken or secretly a Lib-Right utopia. Yang’s isn’t it. I’m not against the concept of a UBI. I’m against every version I’ve ever seen, and YES the price of every version of it.
The cost is the same. Money is the commodity created as the universal exchange
That’s simply untrue. Medicare is proof of that (approximately 143% higher per capita cost for equivalent benefits). Social Infrastructure that does not seek profit will consistently beat infrastructure that does by a large margin. Every day of the week. No need for marketing costs, for wholesale costs, etc. No need for stock prices or a happy board. Hell, I just have to compare the price of my wife’s garden-to-table tomato sauce vs the price of buying a jar. $5 in tomato seeds and 5hrs total of her time makes us about 100 jars of sauce. Even including the price of the jar and transport, there is a gap between material+labor cost and retail cost larger than the cost itself. UBI continues to feed that gap, but socializing can whittle it down. There was once a day that capitalism was about “we can be more efficient at scale, so it’s cheaper to buy groceries than make them yourself”. B2B still works that way. But consumer purchases do not, and never will again.
We could feed every American a balanced diet for approximately $25B/yr with socialized groceries. We can house every American for approximately $100B/yr (extrapolated cost to end homelessness by the homelessness rate) by making government housing something “not just for the poor”. Universal healthcare is conservatively estimated to cost about $1T/yr in the net (progressive estimates argue it’ll overall be a net societal gain within a year or two due to how much money the government has to subsidize various parts of the healthcare industry anyway)
Combined with incidentals, that’s less than $1.5T. Where a $1k/mo UBI would cost $4T and nobody honestly estimates it will solve the above problems.
In fact, framing the issue in terms of cost is misleading. UBI is not the creation of any new resource or asset with intrinsic value
With all due respect, I don’t know what you’re trying to argue now. Of course UBI is not the creation of a new resource or asset. It’s just a plan that taxes America to redistribute wealth blindly. And the fact that Jeff Bezos will probably get a larger check from UBI than he is taxed is on nobody’s radar.
It is simply a political declaration, enforced administratively, that corporations and oligarchs may not hoard to such a degree that others are needlessly deprived.
I’ve yet to see a UBI that would cost oligarchs even a penny, and nowhere in the UBI philosophy would it hit corporations at all. And it’s not “simply” anything. The “simply” political declaration against oligarchs is a strong millionaire tax. The whole goal of UBI is to fund people, so I find it interesting that you just described it in terms that didn’t even mention that.
I’d like to clarify that you missed the opportunity to win the discussion with a single answer. I’ll offer that again. Show me an actual UBI plan that I would not see as broken or secretly a Lib-Right utopia.
You are framing discussion around an appeal to purity and an argument from ignorance.
Why are you going this direction? Can we please keep to good-faith?
My complaint is that UBIs don’t work, and my citation are UBIs that are genuinely terrible. I keep offering you the opportunity to show one that isn’t terrible so I can effectively steelman UBI instead of strawmanning it. If there were a good UBI, I wouldn’t resist it.
Your tactics are not supportive of productive discussion.
Not really. Trying something that you can’t quality for 10X the cost of a confirmed solution is absolutely worth resisting. We have a clean, price-tagged way to solve all but 1 of the problems that UBIs actually try to solve. How exactly does it “not support a productive discussion” for me to invoke that fact? Are you looking for a “yes man”?
You have also attempted to negate conceptual relations that are essentially beyond controversy through statistics and Gish gallops.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I’ve been fairly consistent, but for the sake of dismissing your accusations of gishgallop, let me summarize my points.
For the sake of solving the needs of the many, UBI is demonstrably proven more expensive than socializing. I gave reasons and numbers. THIS is the bullet point that made me stop supporting UBI. Socialism, even light-socialism, is just dramatically better at achieving the goals with less societal disruption.
For the sake taking money from the rich, UBI is irrelevant. To quantify better than I have before, it’s irrelevant because it is a mechanism to distribute money, NOT to fund it. The “how to fund” part of UBI would more effectively be used to inject money into non-means-tested social programs that are targeted at problems to solve.
UBI is vaporware. This is not an argument from ignorance. I am actually proposing that a reasonable large-scale UBI might well be entirely impossible. The MINIMUM cited cost for a bare-bones $1000/mo UBI wouldn’t just rise to being the single most expensive social program in US history, but it will be 5x the cost of our military spending and at least 3x more expensive than our current welfare spending. Again, for a barebones UBI that simply isn’t enough money for many households to survive.
Those are my bullet points. Please feel free to show me any point above where I seem to have moved away from that, and I will either concede them or defend why they are relevant. One thing I agree is that neither side should be gish gallopping.
And more importantly, if we’re going to toss around accusations. I keep challenging you to define your UBI. And I continue to do so. Are you pushing for a UBI that guts Welfare, that takes that $1.2T welfare pile to help fund? Are you on-board with “pick food stamps OR UBI” strategies? Are you pushing for a specific tax on the rich? What is your reasoning that the distribution would go smoother to put $1000 in a homeless person’s pocket than to give them a house and food without being shamed? Does you have any plans/answers for drug addiction?
I have spent a lot of time educating myself about UBI because I care about the redistribution of wealth and the QoL of all Americans, and also because I CARED about UBI. I’m genuinely open-minded that I could go back to supporting UBI, but I need more than accusations that I’m gishgallopping by someone who isn’t actually engaging at all.
So please, give me the benefit of good-faith like I’m giving you. Engage me with reasons.
EDIT: And let me ask you another question I should’ve asked earlier.
Is UBI the goal for you? Sometimes I end up in discussions where end goals differ. Maybe you don’t care about the quality of life of the poor nearly as much as the idea of everyone getting that $1000 check. Obviously if “I want UBI” is your end goal, it’s going to be hard for us to have a discussion. My goals are quantitative and flexible. If yours are qualitative and inflexible, of course we’re not seeing eye to eye.
And that’s OK. I have to admit that I would prefer Universal Socialized Healthcare even if it wasn’t as efficient as the ACA. To me, the goal is Socialized Healthcare whether or not it’s better for individuals. I have few philosophies where the plan is more important than results, but I can respect them.
My complaint is that UBIs don’t work, and my citation are UBIs that are genuinely terrible. I keep offering you the opportunity to show one that isn’t terrible so I can effectively steelman UBI instead of strawmanning it. If there were a good UBI, I wouldn’t resist it.
I cannot change how you decide what is terrible. You hold a belief that UBI is terrible. The belief is yours. As long as you hold it, your challenge to me is meaningless.
I repeat my objection about the appeal to purity and an argument from ignorance.
UBI is simply a regular transfer of money to each household. It works by doing exactly as it does, providing money to households.
What do consider as personally convincing for UBI?
Such is the crux of your participation in the discussion.
For most of the population, the meaningful difference from UBI would be expanded security, against loss of income. Those who are currently in poverty also would benefit more immediately, from additional income.
Trying something that you can’t quality for 10X the cost of a confirmed solution is absolutely worth resisting.
The amount of food being discarded exceeds the amount needed to resolve insecurity and deprivation.
No other observation is required.
All of your statistics are only sidestepping the obvious observation.
UBI is simply the net transfer of money from those that who have too much food to sell, to those who have too little money to buy food.
Once the disparity is resolved through a more favorable distribution money, which is simply the universal medium for commodity exchange, the commodity market for foods would be used for the hungry to purchase food.
The problem of cost is illusory, because the commodity of food is not genuinely scarce, and money is simply the universal medium for commodity exchange.
The same principle applies to other commodities, such as clothing and housing.
I cannot change how you decide what is terrible. You hold a belief that UBI is terrible
So are you saying your idea of a good UBI is Yang’s?
I repeat my objection about the appeal to purity and an argument from ignorance.
I think we’ll agree to disagree, and I confronted this directly. Your reply doesn’t seem to respond to that direct confrontation. That’s not on me.
What do consider as personally convincing for UBI?
A median quality-of-life increase and normalization. No major detrimental effects to lower- or middle-class (and ideally even lower-upper class, but I’ll give in on that one). A net gain for the economic outlay that meets or exceeds using the same $4T on social programs (or showing that you could do a worthwhile UBI for less, that in a way you can’t do social programs for).
That is, you’d have to show why UBI is "actually better "than social programs. I live in an area where that $1000/mo isn’t going to get someone a shitty studio apartment. So what kind of UBI are you pitching that succeeds in any way? Or, as I asked, is UBI your GOAL, and it doesn’t matter how good it achieves other goals?
For most of the population, the meaningful difference from UBI would be expanded security, against loss of income
What am I missing then? For all of the population, having guaranteed quality housing, food, and healthcare (and let’s throw in mass transit coverage) would have that same effect, with fewer gotchas. Flip-side, nothing will likely be able to stop UBI from being garnishable for debt collection. I won’t get into that topic (since you have already accused me of gish-galloping), but you seem to be arguing “UBI vs nothing” and not “UBI vs any other social use of that money”.
All of your statistics are only sidestepping the obvious observation.
UBI is simply the net transfer of money from those that who have too much food to sell, to those who have too little money to buy food.
Except it isn’t. That’s not a meaningful or accurate definition of UBI. UBI as a concept doesn’t even cover where the money comes from (what you claim is “those who have too much food to sell”), nor does it state how that money will be used by recipients. When Jeff Bezos gets that $1000 check, he’s not spending it on food and we both know it.
The thing that fits that definition would be a form of universal EBT. I’m 100% for a universal EBT.
Once the disparity is resolved through a more favorable distribution money, which is simply the universal medium for commodity exchange, the commodity market for foods would be used for the hungry to purchase food.
Care to prove this? I look at what $1000/mo will buy in my state (since you aren’t objecting to that UBI number), and it doesn’t cover food and housing.
Sorry, I AM adding a new bullet point here. In my view, every UBI plan I’ve seen will redistribute wealth from Blue States to Red States… That is not a partisan point; it redistributes wealth from states that net produce and have higher poverty to states that net consume and have lower poverty. In low-cost-of-living states with low poverty, it provides every individual with a Middle Class income. In high-cost-of-living states with high poverty, it inordinately taxes the middle class while not providing enough money for the poor.
SO my problem with UBI is that the homeless people near me stay homeless, where alternative solutions would give those homeless people homes and food while still giving middle-class QOL to people in the lower-cost-of-living states… and having a significant amount of money floating around to do something else with. (HOPEFULLY no more for the military)
The problem of cost is illusory, because the commodity of food is not genuinely scarce, and money is simply the medium for commodity exchange.
This is interesting. The fact that food isn’t scarce is actually a point I use for socialized food, and NOT UBI.
If you are still not understanding, then I doubt further clarity would be possible.
One group in society consolidates immense wealth. It has more money, food, and other assets or resources than are necessary or even useful for its members.
Another group in society holds wealth generally only supporting access to resources personally necessary and useful to its members.
Some within the latter group are so severely deprived that their survival is threatened by inadequate access to money and food.
Even so, the total capacity supports survival of everyone.
UBI is simply a transfer of wealth from those who have hoarded to those who are desperate.
From your reply, I think I understand fully and that it is you who are confused.
You’re still talking about UBI as if it’s a tax on the rich. It’s not. You talk about wealth redistribution as if UBI were socialism. It’s not.
I’ve asked you time and time again to tell me what features YOUR vision of UBI has, after listing the iconic features that I hate about UBI. Why haven’t you addressed any of the features you want or the features I dread?
I’m going to ask you a hard question. Do you actually know anything about UBI? Or is it a buzz-word for you of the simple vague idea of things being better?
You accused me elsewhere of coming across as nebulous. I’m going to use that same assertion against you. I know what the UBI I’ve objected to is about, but you haven’t addressed my objections as if they aren’t relevant to your UBI. But you’ve also not told me anything more about UBI than “It’s a transfer of wealth from those who have hoarded to those who are desperate”.
But if I called UBI strict socialism, the seizure of the means of production such that everyone owns everything and private property becomes a fiction, I don’t think you’d stand with that (since you’re standing against universal EBT over a $1000/mo check). So UBI is not the definition you’re trying to use, even to you.
Why haven’t you addressed any of the features you want
Tax the rich, and distribute cash transfers, to enforce a guaranteed income floor for each adult, and a further amount for each dependent child.
or the features I dread?
Your characterization is just a straw man, like a car with no wheels, or one you think should fly.
If you remove the features you dread, and include the ones you like, then all will be well.
If your objective is to create an idea you feel convinced will have catastrophic consequences, then you doubtless will succeed, as such a task would be trivial for anyone.
Tax the rich, and distribute cash transfers, to enforce a guaranteed income floor for each adult, and a further amount for each dependent child.
Ok. Is it your opinion that an income floor is more important than a QOL floor? If people are still homeless or starving, and others wealthy, is that acceptable to you so long as there’s an income floor?
Your characterization is just a straw man, like a car with no wheels, or one you think should fly.
What’s with the aggression? What exactly is a strawman about my characterization?
These are my fears. If you think they’re wrong, ADDRESS them by name with reasoning instead of insulting me vaguely.
EVERY UBI plan seems to punish the middle-class or poor in some way. Yang’s is the only truly mature UBI plan I’ve ever been presented, and it punished the poor pretty badly because it required opting out of welfare to receive. Tax-balanced UBI plans constantly start to turn into a net negative right around the Lower Middle Class line, meaning >60% of the US suffers for the UBI, with the middle-class and upper-middle-class suffering the most.
UBI has a ceiling. A $1000/mo UBI will double the entire federal outlay, but $1000/mo is not life-changing for most poor and middle-class Americans. It’s ONE FOURTH the living wage. So it does nothing on its own, while costing so much money that social programs come off the table. Unemployed people still need to work or starve to death. People. Still. Starve.
Those are true concerns. So true that you don’t seem to be willing to look them in the eye. You haven’t discussed specifics at all. This is the 3rd or 4th reply since I accused you of not actually knowing what UBI even is because you haven’t shown any such knowledge.
If you remove the features you dread, and include the ones you like, then all will be well.
Absolutely. If the UBI comes in the form of food+clothing, housing, and healthcare instead of cash and doesn’t cost the US $4T, then all will be well. But that’s not a UBI anymore.
If your objective is to create an idea you feel convinced will have catastrophic consequences, then you doubtless will succeed
Most of my critiques come from the only UBI plan ever seriously considered for the United States. You’re making it look like my concerns are contrived, but they are the only concrete example the world has ever provided. Have you actually read Yang’s UBI plan? As asked above, do you even know enough about what a UBI is? I’m willing to concede the possibility that there’s a workable UBI that’s just alien to those I’ve seen, but you seem unwilling to show me what. UBI feels like the wrong answer to the problem of poverty, the same way “clean coal” is the wrong answer to the problem of global warming.
In fact, your defenses have been so vague, I could probably put the words “clean coal” wherever you wrote UBI, and the argument would make more sense.
So please, stop treating me like I’m a bad guy, and show me what you see about UBI. Is it ignorance, or do you know something about UBI that I don’t? We both clearly want everyone to have access to food and shelter. I’m just convinced that the way you’re pitching will starve people. And I have no idea what your problem is with the way I’m pitching.
Not just against everything associated with the same label as what you fear.
UBI is a fairly concrete concept, cutting a check to every single person or household. While its implementation has some variants (is it a tax refund or a stimulus? Is it means-tested or means-adjusted?) that’s the heart of what you need to do to be a UBI. I try to envision the BEST possible, or at least best realistic UBI, and that’s what I try to consider. What comes out to me from that are all the concerns I have. Yang’s plan isn’t trying to kill welfare just for reasons of his capitalist ideology, it’s also because he knows his plan is prohibitively expensive. That’s what everything boils down to. I used to be all-in with UBI, but I genuinely have never been able to dial in on a possible UBI plan that’s any better than the society we have now.
Also, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
This saying doesn’t really apply when so-called Good might be worse than what we have, or harder to implement/maintain than perfect. “Perfect” is downright affordable except for the conservative mindset against “giving people things for free”. The best UBI plan I can imagine is less likely to get votes, more expensive, and less effective than just taking means-testing out of welfare. BOTH are impossible in this climate, but why shoot for “Bad” when it’s 10 miles off the coast of “Perfect”?
But you say you see something in UBI. I want to see it, too. That’s why I’m asking about it.
UBI would represent a great advancement for the working class. It should be plain.
My whole point for the last 20 comments has been specific, detailed reasons why I think it’s not an advancement for the working class. Is there any reason you won’t address them? If it were plain, there should be answers to my criticisms.
Fighting makes a stronger contribution than analyzing details that are currently only hypothetical.
So how often do you fight for things you think are harmful? Why should the Left be flocking to a plan like UBI, one that is often seen as a “centrist compromise” between welfare and laissez faire capitalism? In the US at least, we’re already further to the Left than UBI in many ways, and the working class have better than UBI (even if there’s miles to go to proper socialized welfare).
Your objections were against details that are narrow, undetermined, or hypothetical.
I declined to address your objections on their merits, because I find in them no merit.
The solution to a car not having any wheels is applying wheels, not lamenting that all cars are dysfunctional because none may ever have wheels.
The constructive response to any problem is addressing it at the time it occurs, not obsessing over it while also refusing to begin any action.
Workers who have little income gaining more income, or workers who have precarious income gaining secure income, is obviously not harmful, yet you seem determined to fixate on some particular scenario that makes you feel threatened.
Workers need income to survive. UBI helps ensure security for everyone.
Your objections were against details that are narrow, undetermined, or hypothetical. I declined to address your objections on their merits, because I find in them no merit.
So the majority are too stupid and unworthy to get explanations, and evidence/studies don’t matter? I mean, these are not contrived or uneducated objections.
The solution to a car not having any wheels is applying wheels, not lamenting that all cars are dysfunctional because none may ever have wheels.
A car with only 1 wheel isn’t going anywhere, and there’s no UBI out there offering to give even 2 wheels. But I specifically named plans that come "all-4-wheels-included’ and your response was to insult me as “narrow, undetermined, or hypothetical” with “no merit”.
The constructive response to any problem is addressing it when it occurs, not obsessing over it while also refusing to begin any constructive action.
So you’re saying we need to run blindly to the Right when the Left already has proven answers? Why? Capitalism is the problem. Cutting everyone a check in capitalism is still capitalism.
Workers who have little income having more income, or workers who have precarious income having secure income
So pay them a living wage not to work (no-questions-asked unemployment) and let their stability leverage better wages. That’ll actually work and cost less than what you’re suggesting.
is obviously not harmful
Your use of “obviously” is bad-faith. My whole argument is that blindly cutting a not-nearly-enough check for everyone is “obviously” quite harmful, just like Bush’s tax cuts were.
yet you seem determined to fixate on some particular scenario that makes you feel threatened.
I don’t feel threatened. As upper-middle-class I personally do better under UBI than I would under any full-socialization of resources. I don’t care because I have no problem with getting passed over for aid if it’s going to those who really need it. I don’t want a $1000 “Make Welfare Conservative Again” check.
Workers need income to survived. UBI helps ensure security for everyone.
Or we can just put wheels on that car and ensure that everyone can survive with or without income. Instead of feeding the alt-right machine.
I’d like to reiterate (not that you read my replies) that my whole point is that you’re trying to fix a solved problem with an untested capitalist answer that, at best, is 1/2 as good as the solutions we already know will work and for 5x the price.
And it looks like you have no desire to let all of those on the Left who think UBI is the wrong tool know why we should reconsider. That’s all I’ve been trying to do, give you that opportunity.
EDIT: Is there anyone ELSE reading this who would be willing to give a good reason why a SocDem or socialist should support UBI instead of just be confrontational? I used to love the idea of it, but I’m really sold on it being the wrong tool of late, and I have to be honest that Yang was a big part of my reasoning for feeling this way.
For purposes of resolving that UBI helps the working class, your objections are not germane.
I disagree.
Everyone having some income and especially adequate food is better than some having none.
That’s like saying “everyone having a Ford F150 is better than some having none”, but money is just bloody paper. Nobody is eating a dollar bill. So no. Everyone having some income is NOT better than some having no income but everyone having a home, food, and healthcare. It IS an either/or choice according to every serious UBI advocate. SHOW me a plan with a non-trivial UBI that also expands welfare, and then we’ll talk.
It should be extremely uncomplicated.
Then demonstrate it with uncomplicated facts instead of treating my objections as if only a moron would make them. If you treat the Left like morons, you’ll never get further than Lemmy comments.
After all this time of you showing non-stop arrogance towards my views, I’ve continued to treat you with respect and try to coax the actual logical basis of what you’re trying to push for. At what point do I just give up and conclude that I was right, that you don’t actually know much about UBI at all?
So despite the fact I would love to be convinced that UBI would work, you’d rather just keep insulting me. Have a great day.
You are either deliberately obstructing reason and consensus, or too confused to follow either.
In almost 30 comments now, you haven’t given ONE GOOD REASON why anyone with a brain should consider UBI. I’ve begged you for them while you insulted me and my intelligence. I’ve gone past giving you the benefit of the doubt and simply made myself look the fool giving you chance upon chance.
I guess I’m just “too confused to follow” because being insulted didn’t change my mind :-/
you haven’t given ONE GOOD REASON why anyone with a brain should consider UBI
They gave you dozens, your capacity for cognizance might not be so derelict if you had adequate education, but you lack that for the same reason you choose to lack an understanding of UBI; you’ve never been privy to the resources to allow you to dissuade your ignorance, and you’ve mistakenly assumed your ignorance is as valuable as someone else’s knowledge.
Wheels on a car, the economy is fiction, and anyone who hates UBI is against progress. Those reasons? If those are the only reasons for UBI, the Yang centrists really got nothing for us.
your capacity for cognizance might not be so derelict if you had adequate education
You’re right. Librul Elite College screwed with my brain. I just can’t see “cars need wheels” as a solid argument, and “fuck you” as reasonable counters for my genuine critiques.
but you lack that for the same reason you choose to lack an understanding of UBI
So do bloody tell. I’ve been openly asking people to convince me that UBI is worth considering, and they keep just telling me I’m a fucking moron. It’s like walking up to the crazy street preacher and saying “I really do want to learn about your religion” and all they do is spit at you and call you a devil.
you’ve never been privy to the resources to allow you to dissuade your ignorance,
College, economics classes, law class (only one of those, admittedly). I read Yang’s UBI plan in its entirety, as well as both the pro-arguments and the con-arguments. I was ALL FUCKING IN at first. Then I had a question. And when I asked it, everyone acted like this guy, like I was some stupid moron (and worse to Yang UBI-fans, a Socialist) who was just trying to tank their goal. So what else should I look into? I’ve spent (feels like wasted at this point) hundreds of hours on UBI. What more do you need before I can kiss your feet?
and you’ve mistakenly assumed your ignorance is as valuable as someone else’s knowledge
Is this how you feel about all Leftists, or just the ones who won’t throw away socialism for capitalism?
To be clear, I have no issue with most people working while others do not and live off the system. I think most people will still want to do that something.
UBI isn’t going to do that.
You can point to a handful of small scale studies that show more money works, and yes, on a small scale that is exactly what you’d expect to happen.
This does not work when everyone has that same income. It’s not a matter of 99% of people making smart choices, because I concede that the vast majority of people with sudden access to additional income would spend it wisely.
The issues are twofold.
A) when the people who’ve made it their career to suck every penny out of every possible person know that there are suddenly more pennies to be had, they’re going to raise prices. It’s frankly foolish and shortsighted to expect prices to remain the same or only raise a little. This issue is not raised with small scale experiments. So regardless of their obvious success, they’re not telling the whole story.
2). UBI does absolutely nothing to address the problems it’s actually trying to solve. All it does is print a check every month as a bandaid for some serious problems that will certainly persist. You can’t fix housing without building housing. Individual healthcare will still be tied to your job. College education will be prohibitively expensive and require staffing a lifetime of debt, and we’ll still throw away an obscene amount of food, and people will still go hungry. The only thing that will probably get better is more children will have a secure diet.
And none of that assumes prices would inflate the way they absolutely will. Because even if UBI happened, the people who want all the money the working class has aren’t suddenly going to think it’s ok to leave dollars unspoken for.
The cost of college will steadily increase by about the amount kids are expected to have been able to save by the time they get there. Rent prices will go up to accommodate the new found freedom of spending. And that’s the stuff you have a choice on. You think Comcast will see people with so many extra dollars a month and think “well our customers don’t have another option but we’ll let them keep all that money?”
UBI is just a ticket to absolute dependency on a government check for 99% of Americans, and less financial freedom.
Address the actual problems, don’t just slap a half baked bandaid on it
If you check my post history everywhere, I’m pretty anti-UBI. But the reasons you pitched are both problematic to me.
You “A” point… I don’t like capitalism, but when there isn’t a monopoly, increased customer-base doesn’t have the effect you’re thinking without scarcity. More people able to afford more means more businesses can compete for business. The price increases would come from paying for the increased worker leverage, and those wouldn’t be drastic.
The opposite effect is true in some sectors. Studies suggest (consistently) that UBI cause so-called “wealth-flight”, which reduces the value of housing and reduces the cost of living… But also reduces quality of life by reducing availability of things. The thing is, a little bit of socialism would counteract wealth-flight, as would a situation where the wealth is not in a position to leave freely.
Your “2” point is false. There are a lot of MAJOR cons to UBI, but studies suggest UBI would have a positive effect on housing affordability and worker leverage. Other than healthcare, your concerns don’t seem to match the models and the studies. My add-on concern, however, is addiction. Poverty starvation isn’t a risk under most UBI plans, but addict starvation still is.
When “what can I afford to pay” is one of the dominant market forces on anything but luxury, capitalism becomes dangerously fragile and businesses know it. They want to maximize profit, but they do so against demand and competition.
And none of that assumes prices would inflate the way they absolutely will
Most economists don’t think UBI would cause all that much inflation. Increasing a customer-base is not the same as increasing demand. There’s no addition of scarcity. Food prices don’t go up if we don’t run out of food - and we have so much food going to waste that isn’t going to happen. Same with housing and rent. The question isn’t “how much can the sucker afford to pay me”, it’s “how much can we get for this?”. Affordability is only one factor in that, and generally considered a “problem” to all parties when that factor applies. So long as businesses are not MORE consolidated (see above UBI concerns) prices are still market-driven - driven by competition and acceptability.
It’s valid to not LIKE capitalism. I hate it. But we should still understand it before criticizing things.
The cost of college will steadily increase by about the amount kids are expected to have been able to save by the time they get there
This is simply not factual. One thing people miss is that college profit margins have been on a slow decline (and in the single-digits since 2016). They’re NOT charging more based on how much they think they can sucker out of people. They’re charging what they do based on the friction of “making enough money to thrive” and “charging low enough that people are willing to come here”. Yes, cost of college might go up slightly, but not in the way you’re talking. Again, the issue is that “affordability” is a terrible market force and rarely the one these types of businesses care about.
UBI is just a ticket to absolute dependency on a government check for 99% of Americans, and less financial freedom
There is no study or model that says UBI will give us LESS financial freedom. The real argument is that it won’t give more financial freedom to most Americans, and the cost is prohibitive for that limited gain.
Address the actual problems, don’t just slap a half baked bandaid on it
Short of “no questions asked unemployment benefits for life”, there aren’t really any solutions to many of the problems on the table. Ultimately, all Americans, all humans, deserve a life of all necessities AND some luxuries.
At this time, nobody is seriousliy trying to solve for luxuries except UBI, and nobody is seriously trying to solve for organic worker-leverage except UBI (unions will never be the full answer).
The claim of UBI leading to runaway inflation is a myth given by reactionary propaganda.
UBI would represent a major advance for the working class. Advocating against it seems impossible to reconcile with any attitude that is not accelerationist.
Much of your commentary seems to reproduce mythical tropes such as of the “welfare queen”.
Seeking meaningful contribution to society is a robust human tendency. Doing so under constant threat from greedy employers is not necessary.
I responded to the text of your comment, and my concern about your opening sentence is not its lacking truth, as much as the litany of untruthful claims you later made in contradiction.
I would think UBI would be implemented to track inflation. I also assume it would be funded by progressive taxes, not just spinning up the printing presses (which would cause inflation). Effectively, it would be a wealth redistribution program cycling money from corporations and the rich down to the poor.
I really don’t trust the government (which is pretty much captured by corporations) to implement it well though. They’d probably give everyone just enough money to barely survive, without health care, in a van down by the river or something.
South American experiments with printing money make the studies hard to believe. You can’t simply give people money without causing a devaluation in said money. You have to take it away from the market somehow (so, tax the shit out of the rich)
You can’t simply give people money without causing a devaluation in said money.
The government surely can.
The government has the power to levy taxes.
The government has comprehensive powers for regulating the value of currency, through control over the money supply.
At any rate, the government printing money for workers cannot possibility be worse for workers than the government printing money for businesses, as it is doing now.
I suppose, though, you might take comfort in how inflation now is being so effectively prevented, instead of causing needless human suffering.
Ok, this time I am following you. Because I feel really strongly like there’s a lot more we’d agree on than disagree.
In this case, I agree 100% with everything you said.
And I think one common factor in both of our goals is that we shouldn’t be afraid of the government stepping in and preventing capitalism from grinding our poor into dust. We should be fighting for a government that cares more about the well being of its people than the Nasdaq.
Can’t agree with this enough. It drives me crazy when people think the Government should be run like a business. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, and really shows that people don’t use their critical thinking skills.
first of all where the fuck did you get that statistic
second: Lotteries are rotten to the core, did you idiots really think you could avoid the punishments of capitalism by being magically whisked away by millions that are unlocked if you have the magic number?
False analogy? People get free money all the time with lotteries and welfare. UBI is another word for welfare. We clearly know what people do with welfare. The lottery is like a big welfare check. And we know what they do with that too.
These people can never actually think. They always assume Means from Ends, and pick the Means they want to suit their narrative.
If a puppy, a leftist, and Hitler were in a room, and someone opened it to find a dead puppy, they’d assume it was the leftist that did it even if Hitler’s hands were stained in blood.
BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T EARN THE MONEY. This isn’t hard. There are numerous articles, papers, and podcasts on the topic. When you don’t earn something, you don’t respect it. I thought your question was rhetorical because it’s so asinine.
Are you aware of any cases of unearned income or wealth that would not strongly support your generalization, particularly any that may relate to the themes mentioned in the post?
Yeah UBI would solve this. This might be a criticism of contemporary capitalism, but it isn't a critique of capitalism more broadly because in principle, capitalism can have a UBI.
More fruitful anti-capitalist critiques emphasize workplace authoritarianism, the employer's appropriation of the whole product of a firm, monopoly power associated with private ownership especially of land and natural resources, and inability to effectively allocate resources towards public goods
This could have negative effects similar to what has been seen in communist countries where vendor lock-in leads to weakened quality control if not every company can accept those food vouchers.
It’s good to allow people freedom of choice.
UBI would be at its best as a static lump sum of money.
How about any small business? If the process of being able to accept food stamps has bureaucracy, you’ll end up locking out small companies unable to meet requirements or who cannot afford it.
Food stamps at scale could also lead to stores opting for the cheapest alternatives. Salaries will ultimately scale down through supply and demand to a point where people will have less money, but now they’ll have stamps. This in turn can hurt innovation and competition as newer products tend to cost more and people will need make stamps suffice for daily food.
A money-based UBI is safer as you’ll ultimately see smaller salaries, but the amount of money you’ll have per month will remain static. This gives freedom of choice. Not to mention people also need homes, clothing and other daily goods in exchange for money.
Any business selling food can accept food stamps. There’s no barrier to accepting them. I’m not sure why you think any food-selling business would be left out.
I actually think if we added universal EBT/SNAP we could have the same effective pros of vouchers by having government-run supermarkets pop up. The “public option” would actually work for groceries, unlike healthcare (which should be universal).
EBT would save money building their own retailer and negotiating their own prices (or even enforced price regulation for them), which would force for-profit grocery stores to permanently compete against a non-profit-seeking competitor they would never be able to run out of business.
Good news is that a UBI doesn’t provide enough for most people to keep striking.
What would really kill them if if that money were focused on unemployment. Actually incentivize people to not work (permanently if they want) so they have free automatic leverage. You wouldn’t mean minimum wage anymore because companies would be begging you to work.
I prefer “plans for all” in most things, but I actually think housing+food+healthcare for all but Basic Income for unemployed only would be ideal.
Imagine if one day every minimum-wage worker woke up and was told they’d make $30k/yr by putting in their resignation. Bet you workplace quality would skyrocket and companies would start offering living wages yesterday.
Course, that’s why that won’t happen either, I guess.
EBT is a flat 200 a month at most and the ongoing application process is humiliating Kafkaesque bullshit I wouldn’t wish on anyone after experiencing it, so I think it would work just fine to shut it down and fold it into a UBI, would be nice and simple and without complications. Health insurance on the other hand, cost varies wildly by circumstance but is generally more expensive, and because of incentives, price negotiations, all the bullshit involved with the system would be way more efficient and cost effective to have a universal healthcare program instead of giving out money to buy into a private insurance industry.
Fortunately, this seems to be recognized in most serious discussions about UBI. Almost everyone quickly acknowledges that the idea of replacing healthcare programs in particular with UBI is stupid. The UBI proposals I’ve seen that got any attention were explicit that it does not replace those. I don’t think it’s realistic they would actually try to replace Medicare with UBI.
SNAP benefit in my state can easily exceed $1000/mo for a single mother. Nobody has a UBI plan that pays for children (at least full). Housing subsidies in my state average around $750/mo. We’re nearing twice what a typical UBI plan gets you. And that’s the stable stuff. If UBI is replacing welfare, some people are either screwed or have to opt out, while still being on the hook for paying for it in their taxes.
The problem isn’t just about healthcare, unfortunately. UBI has many fatal flaws unless you put it on top of universal-life (housing, groceries, necessities, health). But once you have all those other things for free, there are valid arguments that society has paid at least part of its due to you. So sure, a $100-200/mo UBI so everyone can afford some luxury. I’d be into that.
The core issue, btw, is that cost of living is inconsistent. In some areas, $12,000 is Middle Class. In others, $48,000 is “living wage”. So under a UBI, some poor people get rich, sure, but some poor people get poorer.
Nobody has a UBI plan that pays for children (at least full)
The partial ones are all more than SNAP benefits for a single child.
Housing subsidies in my state average around $750/mo.
Who is getting a free 750 for rent? I’ve never heard of anyone getting a deal like that, I sure never got government assistance with rent, I assume whatever that’s for is hard to qualify for, and there are many many people who need/deserve that kind of help but won’t get it. One of the biggest issues with any government benefits program is that, if you know the people who need it most and what they’re capable of, and know what it takes to go through the process, it’s clear they’re never getting it. The system is designed to keep them out.
On the other hand, housing subsidies in particular could synergize very well with UBI, because the biggest mandatory expense for most people is housing, and anything incentivizing the creation of new housing will bring costs down, thus decreasing the necessary amount to allow people to live off it. So it would work better to have those kinds of programs in tandem instead of replacing them, although I would also like a direct focus on new construction and crashing the housing market.
The core issue, btw, is that cost of living is inconsistent. In some areas, $12,000 is Middle Class. In others, $48,000 is “living wage”. So under a UBI, some poor people get rich, sure, but some poor people get poorer.
Unfortunately this one is a pretty tricky issue, because any regionally targeted benefits induce market distortions. It is impossible for everyone who would like to live in NYC for example to be free to live in NYC, access is gated by money currently, and must be gated by something due to the impossibility of fitting enough people to satisfy demand. Giving everyone the ability to live most places regardless of income is itself a massively good thing, even if it doesn’t enable everyone to be in their preferred location (which currently the vast majority can’t anyway, people get priced out of regions constantly). Ultimately I don’t buy the idea that there’s a significant population of the poor that would be getting poorer, I think the majority of people now struggling financially are not really getting much help outside of healthcare.
The partial ones are all more than SNAP benefits for a single child.
Except not really. I have a friend who used to work in SNAP. I picked a lot of random “anonymous” family samples and a surprisingly large number of them would be forced to opt out of Yang’s UBI. That’s actually what got from from all-in on UBI to “show me one that works”.
Who is getting a free 750 for rent?
For eligible families, Massachusetts Section 8 housing subsidizes 100% of the difference between 30% adjusted family income and the FMR of the household. The highest FMR in Massachusetts is $3,608 (Suffolk County 4BR… probably need 3 kids to qualify). If you make $48,000/yr in Suffolk County that means you are eligible for approximately $2,600 in Section 8 rent assistance.
Note, Section 8 makes an apartment 100% means-priced, so anyone can move in to any apartment in the state so long as it’s section 8 approved and their income is under the somewhat generous thresholds. Here’s a summary.
And the thing is, while that’s the highest, numbers at or above $1000 are typical Section 8 figures. There are a lot of cons to Section 8, but for those who utilize it, it is always going to blow Yang’s UBI out of the water. Which means if declining all welfare is a requirement to accept UBI, nearly 100% of poor people in Massachusetts would find themselves opting out of the UBI. But most of them would still be taxed for it.
hard to qualify for, and there are many many people who need/deserve that kind of help but won’t get it
Not really. But it’s hard to qualify landlords for. It’s one of those rare situations where landlords have to prove they’re a viable residence, and many don’t have any interest in Section 8 because they’ve been burned by the increased risk of renters damaging things. But there’s always available rentals.
EDIT: To clarify, it’s still means-tested with red-tape. I am a strong advocate to remove all means-testing and the stigma around welfare, to grow it to a QOL baseline instead of a safety net. Importantly, even without means-testing it has certain advantages like guaranteeing apartment quality and holding landlords to task.
Unfortunately this one is a pretty tricky issue, because any regionally targeted benefits induce market distortions
Exactly. This is why I’m a huge fan of regionally independent benefits, like classic-EBT subsidized food. It can get complicated, but it can cut across the country and prevent someone from getting rich by living in Mississippi while renting a closet in NYC. Something like Section 8 would do a great job of this if it wasn’t means-tested because then anyone would be able to afford to live anywhere they chose. Obviously rich people in Martha’s Vineyard wouldn’t like that.
I use that reference because there IS Section 8 housing available on the Vineyard, and the rich people aren’t dying over it :)
Ultimately I don’t buy the idea that there’s a significant population of the poor that would be getting poorer
Fair enough that you can feel how you want. You probably don’t live on one of the many areas where the math is so clearly one-sided it’s depressing. $12,000/yr is genuinely pocket change in many parts of the US… But those areas happen to have the highest homelessness rates in the country.
$12,000/yr is genuinely pocket change in many parts of the US
I’ve had income less than that most my life so yeah, idk, it seems like a lot to me.
But there’s always available rentals.
Is that really true? So if you’re poor you can basically live in Massachusetts for free? Has to be some catch. So many desperate people around who would want that. And if the answer is that most of them just don’t know about it, that not-knowing must be a part of how it’s able to be sustained.
Ultimately for me the whole issue is about freedom. If someone is trapped in a job or relationship they don’t want, finances shouldn’t be any barrier to saying no. Not understanding how welfare systems work, not being willing to subject yourself to the process or being too ashamed or whatever, should not be a barrier to getting help. People shouldn’t have to be paranoid about anything that might make them more money because they’re going to have to go through a lot of paperwork as a result and maybe end up worse off. It shouldn’t be possible to use someone’s struggle to survive as leverage to make them work.
$12,000/yr is genuinely pocket change in many parts of the US I’ve had income less than that most my life so yeah, idk, it seems like a lot to me.
Let me just confirm with you. Is the topic making “chicken” rich, or about reducing poverty? The places with the highest homeless rate are the places where $12,000 won’t buy you out of the gutter. My niece just got her first tiny little apartment with a roommate. Rent alone is $2,400 a month, and it’s the cheapest thing money would buy, and 2 friends splitting a 1-bedroom is a tight squeeze. She’ll be ok and doesn’t need any aid, but there’s nothing around cheaper than that. A lot of labor jobs are making $15-18/hr (sounds like a lot to you, but that is well under our poverty line here) and they are living with parents or 3-5 people in a 2-bedroom slum. I’ll explain Section 8’s why below.
Is that really true? So if you’re poor you can basically live in Massachusetts for free? Has to be some catch
Yes. Yes. And… Yes :-/
There’s a few catches. But before the catches, understand that section 8 is “tier 2”, for people with some income. Tier 1 are projects. They give Section 8 to people they find more “stable”, and families/elderly, and send the rest to projects.
The first is that Section 8 won’t protect from foreclosure and people with low income often have volitile income. A section 8 landlord is often a beast when it comes to evicting you
The second is that we are trained from childhood to be disgusted by people who live Section 8. Of every 10 poor people I’ve known in MA, 8 are unwilling to apply for housing subsidy. They’ll live on a friend’s couch, or with family, or find the worst slum apartment they can before being on Section 8.
The third is paperwork. We have a lot of homeless in MA, but most of it is because people are unable or unwilling to maneuver the red tape
There are currently about 150,000 Mass residents in Section 8 or Projects. Unfortunately, there are still 15,000 homeless in Massachusetts. Of those, 93% live in shelters (no questions asked). That’s about 1,000 people sleeping on the streets, and that is not ok. But a vast majority of those 15,000, and nearly 100% of those 1000, have severe issues - mental and/or drug-related - that are preventing them from taking the steps necessary to get into the housing they need.
The real scary problem is that THIS MONTH an article came out that the shelters finally hit capacity, and are waitlisting homeless people :(. A $1000/mo UBI isn’t going to get even one of them off the street. Yes, it would give them money for food, drugs, or alcohol. Hopefully the former because Yang would make those homeless people opt out of EBT and (possibly) Masshealth. The UBI wouldn’t significantly help any of the 150,000 people in subsidized housing who would have to opt out of it under a plan like Yang’s.
Ultimately for me the whole issue is about freedom. If someone is trapped in a job or relationship they don’t want, finances shouldn’t be any barrier to saying no
I agree. And you nailed it. The issue isn’t money, it’s freedom. A person being able have a decent place to live and food, no questions asked, is what they really need. And we can do that for about 1/5 of the cost of a $1000/mo UBI. I used to walk by a homeless guy every morning on the way to work in Cambridge. It was terrible. He always had an empty bottle of something cheap next to him. He couldn’t ask for help. He’s the kind of person I see when I think about supporting the poor. What would $1000/mo give him, that homeless guy in Cambridge? Not much of anything. He’s not going to catch a bus to Mississippi where $1000/mo is Middle Class (as much as the more corrupt politicians wish all the homeless would do, but that’s another story). He’s going to sleep on that sidewalk.
If someone walked up to him and said “we have an apartment for you. Don’t worry about paperwork. Here’s the key”. Well THAT would do something.
If someone walked up to him and said “we have an apartment for you. Don’t worry about paperwork. Here’s the key”. Well THAT would do something.
Should definitely happen. Chronic homelessness is another one of those things where there are legitimate reasons it would benefit more from targeted support. It’s not even a cost issue since doing this has been shown to reduce overall related government expense. Still, relative to the total population there are very few people in that situation, and the idea here is to transform how the majority of people are affected by financial pressures and alter the social contract for everyone.
Absolutely. Welfare consistently has over a 100% ROI. We all get richer. Our RICH even get richer. People needing to have someone “lesser” to look down their noses at have led us all to PAY to put people on the streets instead of feeding and sheltering them. We sacrifice so we can make people suffer.
We should be ashamed of ourselves. There’s no real upside to anyone to let people suffer. Bootstraps are nothing but evil.
EDIT: Sorry walked away before finishing. As for the “very few people in that situation”… sure. But the problem is that everyone else in this economic region is in a similar boat. $12,000/yr is just not going to do anything for them.
And it’s great for Mississippi, but there is a correlation between poverty and cost of living. The neediest people are those who live in areas like Boston. The least needy people are in areas like Mississippi. If we’re going to throw around a $4T+ financial welfare initiative, shouldn’t we make sure the neediest Americans aren’t the least helped by it?
And yeah, that’s tough when the financing is in “dollars”. But if the financing is in “foods” or “rent” (like Section 8 in MA, but minus means-testing) then nobody can really complain that someone renting in Mississippi gets fewer dollars of benefit than someone renting in MA. They both get a (for example) decent 2-bedroom apartment fully covered wherever they want to live.
You live in Boston or Manhattan independently on $12,000/yr?
The formal Poverty Line for Boston is $50,000/yr. More if you have dependents
I don’t see how you can claim to live somewhere with $500/mo grocery bills and $2000/mo slum rent prices and think $1000/mo is better than having your rent and groceries covered, especially if you have to opt out of all welfare to get the $1000/mo.
You’re saying, today, you would opt out of all future welfare for $1000/mo? And you live somewhere with a poverty line more than 5x that? Why?!? Most people I know on welfare get more than that already.
Did not realize your meaning was “geographic economic region”, so no that isn’t where I live, my mistake for making assumptions. I don’t know if I can get behind what you’re saying though, since the implication seems to be that everyone could have a no-strings, no restraints right to the basics of life on their own terms and at their own discretion, but that is trumped by the right to be living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and a concentration of funds should be allocated there instead of spread out more and to more people. I get that it sucks to have to move away from the places and people you know, but it doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff to me.
And I also want to respond to
But if the financing is in “foods” or “rent” (like Section 8 in MA, but minus means-testing) then nobody can really complain that someone renting in Mississippi gets fewer dollars of benefit than someone renting in MA
Because there are clear reasons why a person might prefer to live in one place rather than another, and why people being stuck in Mississippi in a housing welfare scheme with some lock in would be getting screwed over compared to people lucky enough to have started off in Boston. And it isn’t really possible with zero lock-in or barrier to entry either, because of the previously mentioned finite nature of housing availability vs demand.
First, the implication that “everyone could have a no-strings, no restraints right to the basics of life on their own terms”… That’s not an implication. We even know what it would cost. And it’s a lot less than a UBI would cost. But not if we decide to gut EVERY social program for a half-ass UBI.
And as to “living in the most expensive…” Most people don’t move. One of the common things that come out of UBI discussions is that many UBI advocates are more than happy with forcing people to move 1000 miles away from their family. I am not.
But I also think you misunderstand what an “expensive city” is. Largely, regional pricing has to do with the value of the dollar. Poor people in New Bedford making $15/hr are still living the same life with the same buying power as someone in Mississippi making $7.25/hr. They’re not there because of food, views, luxuries. They’re there because their family has lived there for 50-100 years or more. Or, making a bit more, they might be there because they work a regional trade like fishing. I don’t know of any big fisheries in Mississippi. You talked like living in an “one of the most expensive cities in the world” is a luxury, but instead it’s the same as comparing Mississippi to San Miguel Island. It’s basically just a currency exchange thing.
Speaking of that… Yes, we should be normalizing the value of a dollar across the country. It’s wasteful that it’s cheaper to live in a mansion in the desert with all your resources imported from abroad. But it serves society better to finance someone living in New York than make them move to somewhere like Arizona because it’s cheaper. So we should be solving that problem, not passing yet another “tax break for the rich”.
But let’s look at "concentration of funds should be allocated there ". This is the big one to me. Who do you think is PROVIDING those funds? All of them? The same locations in question are “net taxed”. We already contribute more than we receive by a large margin. You’re suggesting we should make people move to net-receiver states for UBI, but look at what that means. It means a cash waterfall from the poor net-provider states to the non-poor net-receiver states. Do you really think anyone on the Left should be ok with the poorest people in the country paying for people in random non-poor states to live like kings? I don’t think “ok, leave everything and everyone you know and move to a deeply racist state so you can live better” is reasonable.
Because there are clear reasons why a person might prefer to live in one place rather than another
Absolutely. But I will point to the desert states. The environmentalist in me is against rewarding people for living in locations with massive carbon requirements just because “my UBI will let me live rich”. In fact, ANY mass-exodus and breaking-up of families is a con for UBI for me.
why people being stuck in Mississippi in a housing welfare scheme with some lock in would be getting screwed over compared to people lucky enough to have started off in Boston
With all due respect, you seem to be confusing the current cost of living with some luxury. Other than the local government being shit, there’s nothing wrong with Mississippi. And if my family weren’t here, I’d be fine living there. I could sell my crappy house 3 hours from Boston and buy (checks zillow) an 8bd 5ba on 15 acres 1hr out of jackson and no longer have a mortgage because of the price difference. It’s not that my area is rich, it’s that the dollar is weaker. You talk like living in or around Boston is some kind of blessing, but the actual poor people in the US are STUCK here. And $1000/mo won’t get them unstuck. And as a reminder, Massachusetts needs less federal funding because it takes care of its own, so the UBI would be paid for by the taxes of poor and middle-class people STUCK in states like Massachusetts.
And it isn’t really possible with zero lock-in or barrier to entry either, because of the previously mentioned finite nature of housing availability vs demand
I think you’re accidentally arguing my side, now. If you can agree that the clear majority of poor people live in high-cost areas, and you are raising the point that people cannot move, then doesn’t that end the discussion? All of your arguments I replied to above involved either “well they can just move” or some explanation that you think someone is luckier to be on food stamps in Boston (…than what? Since they’re less likely to need food stamps in other states).
But something like national Section 8 would absolutely give more freedom and less barrier of entry than a UBI. And there’s PLENTY of housing availability everywhere. Especially considering it would never turn into “everyone is moving to Boston at once”. People don’t want to move to Boston like that. But also (and I say this as a country boy), it uses less actual resources to support people in cities like Boston than in the country. That’s just simple logistics.
This is what scares me about UBI. Yang’s plan was going to hurt (or just not benefit) a lot of families in New York, Massachusetts, California, and other net-producing locations. The list of those least-benefitting from a UBI matches the list of areas with the highest poverty and homelessness rate. That, to me, is unacceptable.
The moment you have a UBI plan that poor has to contribute to and then opt out of, you just have another system that’s screwing the poor.
Socialism has consistently failed to do that too because it can’t handle outside influence from foreign powers. Let’s just freely distribute technology and let people farm for themselves again doing that. Highly organized societies are nothing but slave mills.
Arguably you are simply suggesting that a population may manage land usage cooperatively.
I would not find much promise, though, in lack of organization. Lands and other resources are finite, and many will want to have a lifestyle or occupation that is urbanized, requiring food to be shipped into cities.
For conflict over land usage not to escalate into harm, it may seem necessary that those affected by its usage participate in organization.
Then let’s just kickstart human expansion into space so resources and land can be unlimited. That would be the only highly organized society you could convince me is legitimate.
We have more than enough land mass for every single human being to have at least one acre to themselves and then some right now, though. We just can’t distribute it evenly because humans are apes that form dominance hierarchies and control over the land goes to the dominant apes. Only when humans are genetically engineered to be egalitarian will it ever change, so I guess our debate is pretty moot.
Give people the technology to meet their needs and survive happily regardless of the surface of the land they’re given. Land that cannot be built on is cut out of the equation. Vertical farms are used to grow crops instead of direct land cultivation. Water is provided in accordance with user use and if there isn’t enough, more is desalinated. Electricity and homeostasis maintenance is achieved with technology attached to the house.
Divvy up land by plains and fields first, then extend from there. Even land in the middle of fucking Siberia can have comfortable housing and farming done on it with the right technology. If it’s too cold or too hot, dome it over. Even the fucking ocean can have artificial islands or floating platforms constructed on it. No one has to go without territory.
Your understanding of biology, anthropology, and history have been limited to the tropes distributed through a reactionary agenda.
Primates are social, and exhibit immensely varied and nuanced behaviors for sharing and cooperation, further enhanced by culture that adapts a particular population to local conditions. Humans share many general similarities with other kinds of ape, but are not constrained by traits that may be observed strictly in such species.
For a point of comparison, suppose we take your suggestion literally, about colonizing off planet. Do you imagine some level of cooperation being required, perhaps even great personal sacrifice, not strongly supported by your caricatured representations of nonhuman species?
Lol go tell that to my detractors who you applaud when they do it to me, in blatant violation of sitewide rules of their own instances, while mods and admins don’t bat an eye.
Don’t pretend there’s any honorability in anything people do, especially not online.
Socialism has not consistently failed to do that. Even in some of the most famous examples of AES which had numerous issues with over the top, brutal Authoritarianism, such as the Stalinist USSR and Maoist China, both countries ended famine following collectivization, outside wartime.
Socialism isn’t a wash just because you want to assume means from snapshot ends, look at the entire context and then judge. One could just as easily say Capitalism has consistently failed to do that because of the Bengal Famine and Irish Great Famine.
There are absolutely legitimate ways to criticize Socialism and its various forms, but ignoring historical context and making blanket statements based on half-truths isn’t the way.
Yes it clearly has and if it hadn’t, they’d be the exceedingly rich countries with massive militaries, but they’re not. The U.S., the corporate oligarchy, is. So their social structure loses, and the one we both hate wins.
And I am sure totally disregarding the subject of conversation to attack me is 100% not concern trolling in any way. Nope, looking for any opportunity to fling emotional barbs at someone you hate is the height of maturity
Now back to debating the merits of socialism while you go on the block list for the umpteenth time
Both China and the USSR were among the most rapidly developing countries in the 20th century. At the same time, both started the 20th century as largely agrarian, even Feudalist societies while other countries were far ahead of them.
Ignoring historical context and inserting your own means to fit your narrative is precisely my point, you do no analysis and just make shit up and say history supports your ideas.
You should learn about China’s construction boom starting during the housing crisis of 2008, and think about how events may have unfolded differently if China had not held up the steel and concrete industries globally.
Let’s look at the context. The US was a developed country before the USSR even existed.
Secondly, the USSR took the brunt of the Nazi assault and took the majority of the damage, while the US was profiting off of weapon trade before finally entering.
The US is at the top because it managed to avoid conflict on their own land in WW1 and WW2, while also leveraging this advantage to press Imperialist control over the world.
The USSR lagged behind because it was a developing country and played a far larger role in WWII, simple as.
As for China, you could say the same in reverse, the US is almost wholly dependent on Chinese production. That’s on top of Deng’s shift towards Capitalistic production over jumping straight to Socialism under Mao.
All in all, you continue to substitute whatever views you want and ignore historical context. You also seem to not understand the concept of related rates, and think anything with faster growth in the past must be ahead of places with slower growth, regardless of starting points.
That is how it works. It literally is how reality works. You can see it everywhere. You just don’t want to believe it because you want to live in a working communist nation but it’s just not possible in our Darwinian world where evil triumphs.
If you want to build a social system that reliably and fairly provides people their needs, you have to take the Darwinist nature of existence into account which no social system, including capitalism, really does effectively.
Because it’s nature makes it impossible. We literally tried it as a species and it failed miserably. It doesn’t even really matter why because social systems have to be able to weather any catastrophe including external ones that aren’t really its fault to thrive and last for long periods of time. The USSR didn’t even last a century before other countries outspent it from existence.
In fact, any new nation that wants to thrive has to take that into account regardless of its economic or social structure or system of governance. Sociopaths, for example, have figured out how to break every system we have including capitalism and communism and they will relentlessly continue to achieve power over others as they have done for millennia. Another example is climate collapse. How will any system you propose deal with climate collapse? How will it prevent regulatory capture or foreign powers infiltrating and taking it over like the CIA did with South American countries? How will it prevent uprisings and coups? How will it prevent mass rejection from its people?
Communism doesn’t take issues like that into account and so it fails. Capitalism tries through fascism which doesn’t work at all either.
It absolutely matters why, and you still haven’t explained anything. You just vaguely gesture and insert your own narrative to avoid critically thinking.
I propose production for use, rather than production for profit. Less bullshit consumables like party favors results in less climate damage.
How does it not take it into account?
You can only gesture, you havent made a single point.
It absolutely doesn’t because the fact of the matter is that communism has failed across cultures and capitalism is failing as we speak.
Poor starving families escaping war and famine don’t give a fuck about why the USSR fell or how the U.S. purposefully installed dictators in communist countries to ensure the social structure wouldn’t be a threat to capital, they care about having food and water in their mouths and a roof over their head. And the whole point of you defending communism to your dying breath in an Internet argument is to ensure that happens, so explain to us how you want communism to achieve that without being destroyed from the inside over and over again like it already has been nonstop.
You can’t, therefore communism doesn’t work. It’s as simple as that.
You haven’t made a single point, only further proven that you don’t know what you’re talking about and can’t actually argue against Communism structurally, only that we shouldn’t go back in time and do the USSR exactly as it was again.
You’re just not listening to what I’m saying because it’s not what you want to hear, that’s all.
Capitalism flat out did not work and that’s an observable fact. Nothing you say or do is going to change that.
Now, are you going to actually make a structural point on why you believe Communism cannot work, or are you going to continue to be a less than worthless troll who can’t actually explain their views when asked to?
The growth rate of either country has been high, but the industrial transformation began over one century later than in countries which are often given for comparison.
As a practical consideration, does anyone believe that within either country has passed a period of twenty years in which the basic substance of daily living had not markedly advanced?
It is appropriate to express the various legitimate grievances against the Soviet Union, but not through narratives that are simplistic, dishonest, uncritical, or ideological.
Within the course of half a century, the Soviet Union transformed from an agrarian peasant feudal society to the first civilization to succeed in carrying a human to space and welcoming his safe return. Such is a remarkable achievement in its own right, unequaled before or since, yet more so considering the accompanying context, that within the same period had occurred a political revolution, a Civil War, foreign invasions of one wave during the Civil War, by the great powers, including the US, and of a second wave during the Second World War, by the Third Reich.
I would suggest anyone concerned about food production under socialism look up Lysenkoism to find the real pitfall.
The fatal flaw in any collective system will always stem from authoritarian policies, but all you need to avoid the greatest errors is simply not, you know, rule by terror.
Lysenko was such a dumbass, up there with Mao telling his soldiers to kill the pest-eating, rice-eating birds, leaving an uncontrollable rice-eating pest population.
You’re exactly correct, people assume Means from Ends to fit their narrative.
I am not explaining a risk, though, but rather behavior that has been entirely consistent from the particular participant.
There is no reason to vote down. I am trying to be helpful, by discouraging interaction with someone who repeatedly has demonstrated willful ignorance and obstructive tactics.
I agree with both of you. The USA should stop support in total and let the nations of the world do for themselves. We have carried that burden way too long, as the rest of the world turns it’s back, or complains about what we do.
I get what you’re saying, and I don’t think you deserve the downvotes. However, I’d say the US needs to stop being the world police and be the world EMT. With the logistical power set up already, we could stop with the imperial power and transition to a peace corp that addresses natural and humanitarian disasters.
There is a difference between capitalism and globalization. You can still have radical capitalism, with near sight/profit orientated exploitation of your local system.
Did I misunderstand something in your statement or did you just don’t understand what current practiced radical capitalism means?
I have a complete understanding, but I don’t think what I said supports radical capitalism in any way. I want US dollars spent domestically. Period. Minimal global support, just like every other major nation of the world. The United States should no longer do anything more than the 2nd place country.
Nothing should be profitable except the work of the individual for that individual. Every dollar of corporate profit is a dollar exploited from the supplier, the worker, and the customer.
That’s because we’re used to profit being exploited from our labour rather than being the benefactor of our own value. Under capitalism profit goes to the slave owner, under socialism profit goes to the worker.
Sure, context matters. You’ll hear me say ‘Every dollar of profit is a dollar exploited from the supplier, the worker, and the customer.’ until I’m blue in the face. But everyone understands (or at least I hope they do) that profit is a value beyond the cost of production and that should benefit the worker not the whip cracker should it exist at all.
According to your definition, though, wages plus profit might exceed total value from labor, whereas some would consider wages and profit as the two shares that divide such value.
To a capitalist, labor is purchased at market and construed as an input contributing to the cost of production. To a worker, however, wages are not a component of such cost, but rather only are non-labor inputs and additional expenses.
Therefore, profit remains as a share of value that may in principle be paid as wages, but that rather is claimed privately by an employer, because the worker cannot demand a higher wage.
Functionally, profit is the stolen wages, which would be abolished as a consequence of the abolition of private property.
According to your definition, though, wages plus profit might exceed total value from labor
Correct.
whereas some would consider wages and profit as the two shares that divide such value.
This falls short because it fails to examine how the customer is exploited by spending more than the product’s value for access to the product.
Resources + Labour = Cost
Cost + Profit = Price
∴ Profit = Exploited value
To a capitalist, labor is purchased at market and construed as an input contributing to the cost of production. To a worker, however, wages are not a component of such cost, but rather only are non-labor inputs and additional expenses.
Correct, capitalists have a deliberately belligerent view of total value assessment because it’s not in their interest to share that value with the worker. And the workers are uneducated and rely on a capitalist system to survive so they simply don’t know better.
Therefore, profit remains as a share of value that may in principle be paid as wages, but that rather is claimed privately by an employer, because the worker cannot demand a higher wage.
Correct.
Functionally, profit is the stolen wages, which would be abolished as a consequence of the abolition of private property.
You don’t need to abolish private property in a socialised system, just private exploitation.
Personal profit will always exist through the negotiation of one’s value with their customer but the definitive separation between cost, price, and value dissappears because they become the same thing.
While I am not finding any reason for concern about actual concepts, I feel the terminology you are using generally would be regarded as unconventional. For example, exploitation is often understood as bound to private property, which is any relationship of private control but social utilization for the same resource or asset.
From a standpoint of economics, though, I feel most would understand exploitation as simply the difference in value for negotiated exchange due to a disparity in power, compared to for a relationship of full parity. In the relations of production, it is generally tied to private property, which produces the class disparity embodied in waged labor.
Sure, but that difference in value for negotiated exchange exists between any two negotiates. Whether it be worker and employer, or individual and customer.
The big one is between the existant resources and all life on earth, current and future, and that’s an inevitably unsustainable difference in negotiable exchange.
Not quite. Think beyond class antagonism as being between the owner and worker class, and retrofit it to consumer and existor classes.
As long as resources (existors) are finite exploitation exists because life’s (consumers) consumption limits the potential for other consumer’s consumption. Consumers inevitably must exploit existors for survival, our consumption is temporary and unsustainable, we will consume each other, entropy will claim us all.
Yes, I understand that goes a bit out of scope of base ‘economics’, but you’re right in saying that doesn’t mean we can’t reach some semblance of inter-human exploitation free society, though that will be something for future generations to enjoy while it lasts.
There is 100% of resource, I take it all, you have none. I have exploited your weakness and incapacity for survival. You die.
This is the selfish survival model.
There is 100% of resource, I take it all, you have none. I give you 50% of the resources despite exploiting your weakness and incapacity for survival. We both live.
This is the selfless survival model.
These are the two base conditions for the continuation of life.
The essence of your scenario is the protection of private property.
I identified as the overarching objective the abolition of private property.
Scarcity of natural resources is intractable, yet we still seek, for the social systems through which they are managed, those that best support our shared objectives.
You believe that because your understanding of my position is incomplete and you have chosen this as the point to switch from comprehension to belligerence.
I consider my statements to be objective fact communicated, to the best of my ability, accurately and specifically using socially agreed upon definitions as per the dictionary, ipso facto, I would argue that everyone who cares to genuinely understand and interpret what I’ve stated as intended would share this perspective given the capacity to comprehend it. Just as one understands gravity to the extent of their comprehension.
If you consider any of my terminology as irregular then I suggest you re-consume my existing comments with a dictionary on hand to assist your comprehension. Until you choose to meet me at a point of comprehension there is no point in further discussion, and asking disingenuous questions born of ignorance won’t yield useful answers.
Do you have any thoughts about why food insecurity continues alongside edible food being discarded, or should we keep pretending this is the best of all possible worlds?
Food production IS the best it has ever been, and farming is exceptionally productive.
Do you have any thoughts about why food insecurity continues alongside edible food being discarded
I do know it’s not because farmers are some rich powerful group that wants to throw their product away, like OP seems to be suggesting in this Meme. I also know that having farmers just give their product away for free is not a good solution.
Food production has advanced to such a degree that a substantial surplus is generated by only a fraction of the population.
We are not challenging advancements that support greater worker or resource efficiency, but rather the current systems that organize production and distribution, resulting in severe inequity and stratification across the population.
Under our current systems, the designation of someone as farmer may seem as ambiguous.
Labor in agriculture is provided by workers, often quite poor compared to many other workers. They are waged laborers who survive by selling their labor to agribusiness corporations. Such corporations are publicly traded, and ownership of stock is massively concentrated, the majority owned by an extremely narrow cohort of the population.
Even the few farmers who remain as working their own land have become massively restricted by the practices of the large companies on which they depend for equipment and supplies.
Food, once produced, is sold by grocers, also large corporations, to other workers who must purchase it from their own wages, from the sale of their own labor to other corporations.
The massive disparities reproduced through such systems have failed at the one objective most obviously essential for any society, of keeping the population free from needless death.
The massive disparities reproduced through such systems have failed at the one objective most obviously essential for any society, of keeping the population free from needless death.
This is blatantly false. I’m not even sure it a possibility for there to be famines.
You objected that supply of produced food is sufficient for the whole population, though such is already explained in the brief text of the post.
I explained that distribution is inequitable, to such a degree that many remain deprived, though such also was explained.
You also objected that capitalism has never been implemented in practice, though the obvious motive of the post, within the context of a tradition of criticizing capitalism, lasting now for approximately two hundred years, is to discuss actual problems that have been ongoing.
Indeed, the name for capitalism was given to describe a social system that had emerged, after it had emerged. If it never had emerged, then of course it never would have been identified or described.
What problems are you finding now, located in the post itself?
Communism and capitalism are terms that describe structures of power in relation to the processes of production and distribution within society.
Neither causes famine.
The Soviet Union and China experienced severe hardships in the aftermaths of their civil wars, the scrambles for power, and the transformations past feudalism. The famines cannot be completely separated from the massive concentration of power within such societies, but neither can they be attributed to actual indifference or malevolence.
No one wanted the famines to occur.
In comparison, famines such as the Irish Potato Famine and the various famines under the British Raj in India are direct consequences of greed and cruelty.
They were not prevented only because of desire not to prevent them.
The concentration of power under Party rule is an appropriate target for criticism, but also is the similar, arguably even more serious, consolidation of power by contemporary corporate agribusiness.
In Canada dairy is regulated. Hopefully all food becomes regulated soon. Real hard push back from the right even though they complain the liberals are doing nothing about food prices.
In Canada, regulation is the reason they dump milk. Regulation creates milk quotas that they are not allowed to exceed. Farmers do not benefit from this, they would certainly sell more milk at a lower price if it was allowed.
True. I believe Newfoundland farmers have more freedoms in who they sell to and for what prices. BC and Ontario both sell their milk through a provincial dairy commission, and since the commission stopped taking in milk, and they can only sell through them, the milk had to be dumped. If they had fewer regulations in BC and Ontario that allowed them to market their product at lower prices to other sellers, they wouldn’t have had to dump it.
Then evidently having 2 to sell to rather than 1 governing board of commissions worked better, right?
Dairy and meat prices still are overpriced over there, so I’m not surprised there’s only 2, but it also makes sense that something as absurd simply dumping excess can only happen when there’s only one buyer who has 0 incentive to negotiate price
But you can sell unspoiled milk for lower prices. Regulation prevents them from lowering price or selling to other marketers. That’s a fact. Regulations restricted sales. Regulation restricted dropping prices.
Regulation causes dumping, free markets cause lower prices. You have not falsified that idea yet.
I mean that’s your speculation, however the contrary of your speculation (companies literally dumping extra product so that they DON’T sell it at a lower price) has already happened. So I don’t think your speculation is accurate.
It’s not speculation. It is a fact that Canada’s dairy is sold at a fixed cost, so farmers aren’t even allowed to lower prices to open up market demand among a population that already way over pays for food. The farmers say they dump it because they can’t sell it, and all reporting around the cases say they are dumping it because they can’t sell it. BC and Ontario happen to be where many of the viral milk dumping videos come from, and they happen to be the most heavily regulated provinces. American corporations do something similar in that they make contracts with farmers, so when excess milk is produced, they have to dump it since they aren’t free to market it themselves anymore.
The problem is clearly market capture, whether its by corporations or the government. There is a clear cause and effect relationship between being told you’re not allowed to sell milk, and dumping milk rather than marketing it. It’s a very straight forward problem we’re seeing.
Please think about why your hypothesis makes no sense, if I can’t sell milk at $10, but I can sell it at a lower price, would that not be favorable to dumping it? If the problem is greed, would greed not incentivize me to make every cent I can out of that milk?
There are some very serious problems with various economics systems around the world. None of theses systems is actually capitalism and all of them feed people.
“Capitalism” is a theoretical extreme form of a market economy which nobody practices. In particular, all the larger economies are heavily regulated and have a lot of social programs.
Food scarcity has been so thoroughly beaten that in “Capitalist” countries the problem is reversed. Poor people can easily get all the calories they want. In many developed countries, poverty tracks with obesity.
The fundamental definition of capitalism is that all means of production are privately owned.
The reason I say that it’s theoretical and hypothetical is that you won’t find any real economies where that’s the case. Just like we don’t find any instances of the platonic ideal of Communism the way Marx described it.
What we have instead is a set of systems with varying degrees of public vs private ownership and various implementations of what should and shouldn’t be considered a public vs private resource.
I’m not sure why you would site “product stratification” as a requirement of capitalism. That literally just means that you sort products into different categories. It has nothing to do with any particular economic system.
Most modern economic theory does involve marginalization, but probably not the way you think. The requirement is just that either consumers have different preference curves or producers have different production abilities. That’s it and there’s nothing particularly sinister about it. Communism makes the same assumptions since those differences are a requirement for, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” to make sense.
Deprivation isn’t a requirement of capitalism either. It’s a basic assumption of economics. The idea is that we have unbounded capacity to consume but bounded capacity to produce. If that isn’t the case you don’t need an economy, everyone just gets everything they want. The difference between Communism and Capitalism is in how they prioritize using limited resources.
You can cite a single statistic on food scarcity but the data is very clear that we’re living in an era of unprecedented food excess. If you look at data sets that cover more than a few decades you’ll see strong trends of decreased malnutrition, both within the US and around the world.
One of the chief problems with getting these facts wrong is that they lead us to making bad decisions. Food donations are a prime example. The US subsidizes food production. That’s generally a good thing since it improves food security. However that screws food prices. The US deals with this by having the government buy up excess food at guaranteed minimum prices. It then has a bunch of food that nobody wants so, in an effort to kill to birds with one stone, it ships a lot of that food to poor countries at below market prices. That feeds some people but it also massively undercuts the local agriculture industry. There’s no way a near-subsistence farmer can come close to competing on price against a modern mechanized farm. That’s theoretically OK if we came up with some alternative economic activity but we don’t.
The fundamental definition of capitalism is that all means of production are privately owned.
The reason I say that it’s theoretical and hypothetical is that you won’t find any real economies where that’s the case.
When we discuss capitalism, we are discussing existing systems that are based on the capitalist mode of production.
We have no interest in fairy tales.
I’m not sure why you would site “product stratification” as a requirement of capitalism.
I believe you misquoted the text. I apologize if I originally submitted an inaccurate representation of the intended language.
Capitalism produces forces that impose systemic inequity across the population, and also, capitalism would collapse if somehow the inequity were resolved.
Thus, capitalism produces and requires inequity, on a massive scale.
Most modern economic theory does involve marginalization, but probably not the way you think.
We are concerned with facts, not just wishes.
The requirement is just that either consumers have different preference curves or producers have different production abilities.
Marginalization is cohorts of a population being systemically separated, disempowered, and disenfranchised.
Deprivation isn’t a requirement of capitalism either. It’s a basic assumption of economics. The idea is that we have unbounded capacity to consume but bounded capacity to produce.
Again, we discuss reality. Capitalism depends on cohorts of the population lacking access to the more desirable opportunities of employment available to others, thereby becoming forced to accept less undesirable employment. It also depends on most of the population needing to be employed to earn the means of survival. Wealthy business owners require no employment to survive, because they survive from the labor provided by their employees.
Thus, capitalist society is structured by a class disparity between owner and worker, and of further systemic stratification across the working class.
Asserting the intractable necessity of similar stratification for any system represents an argument from ignorance.
difference between Communism and Capitalism is in how they prioritize using limited resources.
The difference is based on control over production. Naturally, if workers control production, then they direct it toward their own interests, as the whole public, not the interests of a narrow cohort of society that has consolidated immense wealth and power.
You can cite a single statistic on food scarcity but the data is very clear that we’re living in an era of unprecedented food excess.
Food scarcity is the degree to which certain cohorts of the population have inadequate or insecure access to food, not the total amount of food with respect to need.
Statistics are easy to find if you search.
If you look at data sets that cover more than a few decades you’ll see strong trends of decreased malnutrition, both within the US and around the world.
Much has improved over time, however, precarity and insecurity have exacerbated by most measures in recent years and decades.
The US subsidizes food production. That’s generally a good thing since it improves food security.
The relationship is weak. Food security depends on stability and equitability of distribution. A society producing enough food to support the population is considered as resilient, but such an achievement is not sufficient to ensure security for the entire population.
Inequities in distribution are harmful to the population, by producing food insecurity.
The US deals with this by having the government buy up excess food at guaranteed minimum prices.
Much food is wasted.
Retailers discard food to keep prices inflated, even as many remain hungry. The practices you are describing, of government making purchases to keep prices stable and also distributing according to need, for households unable to meet the retail price, are not occurring in practice, to any meaningful degree, to address the problems.
Interesting, I wuold suggest talking to someone because you should be getting more than that in a 3 person household.
I speak from the perspective of someone who used to live in the hood where every month when food stamps were distributed, there were guys who would buy them for cash on the street corner. Pretty much everyone around me had food stamps and would find ways to make money off of them. Maybe California is different but on the east coast there is a food bank in every town pretty much.
Economists laugh when people believe they’re moving away from the evils of money by not using “Dollar Bills”.
You read a novel about a post-apocalyptic society where the government is giving out food vouchers just to try to maintain order, and people instantly start using the food voucher slips as currency.
Power dynamics, including the power of the person who farms the land, the person who trucks the food to a storehouse, the person who invests time and thought to design and builds the processing factory, can be expressed any number of ways. You just pick your poison about how you express that power.
My point is that the image would have you believe they don’t exist “because capitalism,” when in fact they do have them, and I know this because I volunteer and fucking hate potato day.
Something (intuition I suppose) also tells me that they also exist/have existed in socialist countries, and monarchies, etc, and I’d argue the soviet union’s breadlines were actually an example of a food bank by a different name, seeing as both serve the same function (passing out free food to the hungry), and that “free food locations” by whatever name under whatever communist utopia you envision would also be indistinguishable from food banks, and even if we get the replicators, those are food ATMs (pun, 'cause “bank” lol.)
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