ALB
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On the face of it this is against the new UK-EU trade agreement, which provides for a level playing field. But there is a let-out clause — it must be demonstrated that any change gives the UK a competitive advantage. Since most of those affected will be low paid workers on two-day or zero hour contracts (who will have their already meagre holiday pay cut) they won’t be working in industries that export to the EU. The EU is therefore unlikely to invoke the clause that allows them to retaliate by imposing tariffs.
In any event, it shows that the Tories are still openly the party of the rich. But it’s a measure which, if implemented, could cost them votes in the ex-Red Wall seats. So maybe it won’t be.
This isn’t pure UBI of course and Yang himself at least in this quote calls it only “basic income”.
It’s not universal as it won’t be paid to everyone living in New York and it’s not unconditional in that you have to be poor to get it and presumably will have to be means-tested to prove this. It is possible that once you meet this condition there will be no other conditions such as seeking a job or being sick. No doubt it will replace some existing benefits.
So Yang is clearly on the tweak the poor law wing of the “U”BI movement. It’s not clear that he is on to a vote-winner here as many workers with a job resent money being given to those who are not working.
Relevant comment in Granthan’s prediction by Simon Nixon in today’s Times (of London). He says that there is no doubt that there is a bubble (pointing the soaring price of Bitcoin among other things but
“the big question is whether it is possible for the current bubble to burst without triggering a crisis. Jeremy Grantham, the founder of GMO asset management and one of the most respected Wall Street watchers, earlier this month likened the current situation to the South Sea Bubble or the global financial crisis of 2008. But not all market corrections result in crises; neither the stock market burst of 1987 nor 1994 led to a deep recession.”
A point to bear in mind.
Another conspiracy theory circulating is that the Democratic Party, representing the old gang establishment, let it happen so that they could discredit Trump and get rid of him for good.
In any event, that woman Pelosi’s publicising the fact that she had contacted the chiefs of staff to ask them to stop Trump pressing the nuclear trigger was pure theatre. Trump is not that mad (his main concern is himself). Also, as an Isolationist (another reason why the establishment hated him) he was in principle against involvement in further military adventures. It is much more likely that Biden would press that button or start a war as his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is said to be in favour of military intervention on so-called “humanitarian” grounds (as the bombing of Serbia under Milosevic in 1999).
Compare those results with the 2.4% obtained by the leftwing third party candidate, former Vice President (under FD Roosevelt) Henry Wallace, for the Progressive Party in the 1948 US presidential election.
No wonder “progressives” prefer to bore from within the Democratic Party.
“At last, people are told to wear masks at all times outdoors. About time!”
Where? Sounds like fake news.
Vegans could take the next steo and become nutarians — as long as they only eat nuts that have fallen to the ground.
Talking about words, it seems that many of those who say they support UBI haven’t understood what the U stands for : Universal or, sometimes, Unconditional.
All proposed pilot schemes and the actual ones that have been done have not been universal but have targetted a particular group such as those who are unemployed or who are on other welfare benefits. Which of course means that they are neither universal nor unconditional.
No scheme has yet experimented to see what would happen if everybody living in a particular area, even (in fact especially) those with jobs, were to receive a regular unconditional payment from the state for, say, a year. After all, this is what UBIers propose should be done nationally and permanently.
What this means is that most of its advocates are just proposing a change in the poor law system.
There is also the term “no property” which would be a state of affairs where no individual or group of individuals can exercise ownership rights over any of the productive resources, natural or human-made, at the disposal of society.These would simply be there to be used under various forms of democratic control.
This is about a possible stock market crash rather than an economic recession. Stocks and shares might well be over-priced but any bubble is not likely to burst until central banks stop the “Quantitative Easing” which has fuelled this.
There is no sign of this happening. In fact it is being stepped up in the pandemic and could be a reason why it is unlikely to be reversed (as in the theory behind it, it is eventually supposed to be). If/when it were to be, that would provoke a downturn in bond prices as the central bank sold off those it has been buying and also in share prices as this would be taking money out of financial markets.
Actually, Robbo, there was a talk on Discord a month or so which brought out that point. It can be listened to here:
It seems I may have been too pessimistic as a headline in today’s Times reads ”US unlikely to overturn Assange extradition ruling.” Obviously lawyers can make a better judgment than me but I still find it hard to believe that a British court will want to rule that, as a fact, US prisons are worse than UK ones (as by all accounts some of them seem to be).
Obviously BLM is not a threat to elections — it’s a simple expression of the view that all humans should be treated equally. Antifa, on the other hand, is another matter. They are openly contemptuous of the electoral process abd would love to have been able to mount a stunt like this. The only trouble from their point of view is that they have far less support and no police sympathy than the Trumpists.
Heads are no doubt going to roll over this, even perhaps of the deranged monomaniac himself. But millions throughout the world will be experiencing a feeling of schadenfreude at seeing the self image of the US state as a beacon and bastion of democratic practice tarnished. A bit of a taste of their own medicine after encouraging those favourable to their interests to do the same in the Ukraine and applauding the storming of the Hong Kong legislature. Reduced to the same level of any tinpot African state where the losers traditionally cry “fraud” and “stolen election”.
