ALB
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I suppose it could be seen as a mini version of it except that the consumers are not being given money which they can do what they like with (for instance save it). The NI scheme is handing out vouchers that cannot be saved (or spent on gambling) and which have to be used by a certain date. The aim is rather less ambitious too. It’s to help local shopkeepers rather than to try to relaunch the economy through stimulating consumer spending.
I would say that it has more in common with local currencies, as the aim of both is to help local shops. Also some local currencies devalue if they are not spent within a given time period.
I don’t know if this qualifies as UBI but it is a universal and (very) basic income — everyone over 18 in Northern Ireland who applies is to be given vouchers worth £100 to spend in local shops.
This is not new as it had been done in Taiwan quite a few times.
The Northern Irish vouchers have to be spent in October and November, so that £50 a month or £600 a year if it really was a permanent UBI. Which realistically is about what UBI would pay if ever introduced as a universal payment to everyone.
They’ve gone and done it again , the idiots:
“M25 traffic: Thirty arrested and drivers delayed after climate activists block parts of motorway in rush hour
Protestors blocked at least five junctions, causing miles of queues along the motorway. Footage shared on social media showed angry drivers attempting to drag the protestors from the road.”Reading through an article from the Socialist Standard from 1905 which refers to “any female over 18 years of age, who has been vaccinated” being able to be a teaching assistant, it seems that there is a precedent for compulsory vaccination (in this case presumably against smallpox) to carry out certain jobs. This would have made sense.
There were anti-vaxxers even in those days as a report in the October 1905 issue of a debate against the S.D.F. that had taken place in August, records the S.D.F. speaker is as saying:
“He was an anti-vaccinist because he objected to having his child poisoned. This was not Socialism, but a question of human well-being.”
I see the Taleban have announced a government, “inclusive” in the sense that apart from mad mullahs it includes a few bandit leaders. It looks as if they are going to come unstuck trying to run a capitalist state according to pre-mediaeval laws as well as in the interests of one particular tribe. Serves them right.
Are you sure that’s right? According to the papers, the new tax is going to be paid only by people in work including any pensioners who are:
“The tax will begin as a 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance from April 2022, paid by both employers and workers, and will then become a separate tax on earned income from 2023 – calculated in the same way as National Insurance and appearing on an employee’s payslip.
This will be paid by all working adults, including older workers.”So you should be alright. This is a chance to make a distinction between the view that “workers don’t pay taxes” (a view sometimes attributed to us) and that “taxes are ultimately a burden on profits”. Workers do pay taxes out of their pockets but in so far as this increases the cost of living will tend to be passed on to employers in the end as higher money wages. However, this doesn’t apply to pensioners and others in receipt of a non-work income.
I noticed this from that newsfeed;
Johnson claims Brexit is leading to pay rises in low-wage sectors.
Back in the Commons Boris Johnson told MPs a few minutes ago that wages are now going up in low-income occupations “in exactly the way that those of us who campaigned for Brexit hoped”.
I don’t remember them promising that but, if that was at the back of the minds of the financiers who funded the Brexit campaign, then they didn’t mind going against the interests of the employing capitalists.
Of course Johnson says anything and everything but, if wages in the low-wage sector do go up, many won’t benefit because their tax credits (the subsidy that the government pays low-wage employers) will go down, leaving them no better off. All that will change is the proportions of their income that come from the state and from their employer.
HGV drivers, on the other hand, who are not on the lowest pay, will be better off. Good luck to them.
Revealing that the authorities in Hong Kong have started to use against trade unionists and others laws that were passed at the time Hong Kong was a British colony:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2021/09/05/commentary/world-commentary/hong-kongs-sedition/
The 4 September 2020 issue of Jacobin magazine reproduced a revealing tweet from UK XR:
“Just to be clear we are not a socialist movement. We do not trust any single ideology, we trust the people, chosen by sortition (like jury service) to find the best future for us all through a #CitizensAssembly A banner saying ‘socialism or extinction’ does not represent us.”
XR sees talk of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ as politics while they see themselves as ‘beyond politics’ urging all people to bring pressure on governments to do more to tackle climate change. This means that they are basically a pressure group employing direct action and civil disobedience tactics to get capitalist governments to adopt a particular policy.
Leaving the way-out to citizens assemblies is a cop-out. For all the merits of such assemblies, today most citizens will have the same ideas as they express in elections, i.e that they see no alternative to capitalism and so would come up with proposals to be implemented under capitalism.
Sounds like a barrel of fun. South London branch are organising an event at Head Office that day so I think London members will rather go there.
Meanwhile one of the founders of the ICC who later evolved beyond this sort of thing has died. “Internationalist perspective” was the only useful outcome of this idealised “Left Communism”.
They are still essentially a gang of bandits led by mad mullahs. It will be interesting to see how they manage presiding over the operation of capitalism (which is a thousand years in advance of their ideology). Another form of government to add to republic, monarchy, dictatorship, bourgeois democracy as political forms that have failed to make the capitalist economy bend to their Will or benefit the majority.
That’s an odd thing for XR to protest about. I thought they thought humans are a blot in the planet. But, then, they are all over the place.
You’re right. There is some good stuff there if you ignore the quotes from Lenin and talk about capitalism being “restored” in Yugoslavia and the former USSR. “Critical race theory” is a load of dangerous nonsense that by “racialising” everything itself encourages racism, is in fact as the article says a form of “racial sectarianism”.
Incidentally, I think the reference to the Frankfurt School is not to the original pre-WW2 lot but to their current descendants Adorno and Horkheimer. I have tried to read them but have to confess that I gave up, so convoluted is their style of writing. I suspect that they are really just a couple of naked emperors.
Here is former 1960s student and Trotskyist leader Tariq Ali’s view of events in Afghanistan:
Afghanistan war a huge ‘political and ideological failure’: Activist Tariq Ali
Prominent activist and author Tariq Ali has told Al Jazeera it is time for Western powers to learn from their mistakes.
“The first thing which has to be said very clearly and bluntly is that this has been a huge political and ideological defeat for the American empire, for NATO, and for the allies. It will bring hope on that level, to many others who are still struggling, like in Palestine and other parts of the world that this is possible. This can be done,” he said from London.
Ali noted that trillions of dollars had been wasted in the war and the conflict only benefitted “the large corporations linked to the military-industrial complex”.
