ALB
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I can’t see why it is the “nature” of a mobile phone to “replace” face to face conversation any more than it’s the nature of an ordinary phone to do so. It’s a useful tool for communication between humans. And how do mobile phones deprive you of the option of face to face conversations?
ps texting is a good innovation too.
What’s wrong with mobile phones? A great invention. Means I can respond to criticism of them from wherever I am at any time.
That’s what preliminary results had suggested and what you would expect — that with a hassle-free payment people would feel less stress in terms of financial security (relative of course) and not having to prove to the authorities that they were not looking for work all the time. It’s simpler and cheaper for the authorities to administer too.
The trouble is that, while paying the same amount to every citizen whether working or not avoids means testing for the unemployed, this would be hugely expensive and have a perverse effect on the wages of those in employment. It is also politically difficult as the unemployed are not a group that is universally popular ( which might explain why when UBI was put to a referendum in Switzerland 70% voted against).
UBI would only work if you took the U out ( or made it stand for Unemployment rather than Universal ) and so as a reform of the welfare system (poor law). To avoid means testing it would have to be paid to anyone not working even if voluntarily. The rate would have to be minimal (€560 is only about £125 a week) so as not to undermine the wages system by encouraging too much voluntary unemployment. £125 a week would seem low enough for that but nobody could live on that amount unless their housing was free or subsidised (and so back to means testing!). Such a reform might work if a government could get the political support to bring it in ( which is not automatically evident).
There is nothing wrong with the idea that everybody should have access as of right to something they need — that’s the basis for distributing goods and services in socialism — but is of limited applicability under capitalism. And even under capitalism doing this directly by providing something free is probably better than doing this via a monetary payment.
“Why should socialists worry about a surveillance state? We’re not conspirators.”
Agreed the Party has nothing to hide from anyone including the State except the membership list (some employers might not like to employ socialists). But I would have thought we were against the State monitoring the activity of its subjects, socialists included. Or do you like the DWP snooping to see if you are genuinely seeking employment? Or your personal life being tracked?
That article you say Mason is touting says there are three Marxist criticisms of UBI,one of which the author says is;
“They interpret economic support for citizens as a subsidy to employers, rather than seeing it as the means by which people can strengthen their negotiating position with employers.”
I don’t see this except perhaps for the lowest paid who wouldn’t have to take the first shitty job on shit pay offered. In most cases the employer will be able to say : you don’t need a pay increase or so much as the government is already paying you £5000 or whatever it is a year, and this will be enforced by the play of the law of supply and demand in labour markets. This would also be taken into account when increasing and fixing the legal minimum wage. It just a pipe dream to imagine that it would be paid in addition to existing wages or benefits. The economic laws of capitalism don’t work like that.
I read that it’s not going to work properly on iPhones anyway. Another government cock-up by the sound of things.
MeanwhiIe I see from today’s Times that Liberty, the former National Council for Civil Liberties, thinks that “for our freedom of movement to be possible only by submitting to mass surveillance is a step too far.” A bit ambiguous as I don’t think the government is thinking of saying you can’t move freely unless you download the app. Or are they? If they are, what about those who haven’t got a smartphone?
I see that his opponents have brought down professor Neil Ferguson and completely humiliated him. It can’t be accidental that it was the Daily Telegraph, which favours putting the health of the economy first which he got the government to abandon with his criticism of the herd immunity policy, was the one wot did it. Dave B should be pleased too.
Incidentally, although he was not found out (as far as we know) via his smartphone but the usual methods employed by scumbag journalists, finding out that you had visited your mistress or vice versa is another reason (warning irony) why I don’t want my movements and meetings tracked.
That’s what I suspected but thought I had opted out of that. Apparently not:
https://www.wired.com/story/google-location-tracking-turn-off/amp
They don’t know who I meet. Or do they?
I don’t know about the rest of you here but I’m not going to download that app allowing my movements and who I meet to be tracked. It is just completely unbelievable that the intelligence services won’t be able to access this information if they need to.
If I catch it or anybody I’ve met does I’m prepared to disclose this of course and I’m not going to discourage others from downloading the spy app but I’m not going to.
So, ironically perhaps, I’m an Obstinate Refuser on this.
Here’s Bregman’s new book, Human Kind. It’s about “human nature”:
I think he was trying to be satirical but he comes across as spouting postmodernist nonsense. We were always taught in the party’s Speakers Class to avoid irony as people take you literally.
Yes. A guaranteed income scheme already exists in Britain — the tax credit scheme. At least this is a subsidy only for employers paying the lowest wages. A basic income scheme, as a government handout to everyone, would be a subsidy to all employers.
How can its advocates be so naive or economically ignorant as to think it would have no effect on wages. Even the government realises that their income support scheme has this effect and is why they have introduced minimum wage legislation as a way of reducing the subsidy to employers.
Actually, Rutger Bregman is the best of them as he sees it as the basis for a new society, a “utopia”, taking account of the fact that enough could be produced to ensure that everybody could have enough of what they needed, and not just a reform of the poor law. He should take a step further and become a socialist.
Book Reviews: ‘Utopia for Realists’, & ‘A Place of Refuge – An Experiment in Communal Living’
I think he has since written a new book which might be worth us reviewing.
The proposal for a universal basic income must be one of the silliest reforms ever conceived. Its proponents seemed to have never heard of Speenhamland and so don’t realise that they are proposing a wage subsidy to employers, which would result in all wages tending for fall by the amount of the basic income, in the Scottish proposal by £5,200 a year.
Revealing interview in today’s Times with one of Trump’s top military advisers, which shows that he is as more stupid than that king in the Ivory Coast who at least didn’t believe that the present pandemic and resulting slump is the result of a conspiracy:
“The fact is China knew it had an epidemic but continued to allow international flights out of the country, even from Wuhan, after they had closed the city down,” General Jack Keane, an influential military adviser to President Trump, said in an interview with The Times.
He added: “The Chinese Communist Party did a good job protecting their political and financial power centres but they consciously let those flights [abroad] continue, knowing that it would spread the virus. They wanted other economies to suffer.
“They didn’t want their economy to be the only one to suffer. That was a conscious decision. I think they wanted to make certain that countries around the world would suffer ecnomic retraction.”
I don’t suppose that Trump, the politician, really believes that China really took action to try to deliberately provoke a world slump (though, as they say, all is fair in love and war). He is just giving the impression that he does as this election year for him. But it is quite possible that some bonehead general does.
We beat the Grauniad to this, with this article and a talk on Discord:
The Compass proposal is just a stunt to publicise this reform, as if in the present state of finances the government is going to pay everyone an extra £60 a week (over £3000 a year) even those who kept working ( and billionaires who live off profits).
Not that the proposal is that generous. It would only bring up what a single jobseeker would get to the level of the basic state pension. In giving people a cheque for $1200 (£950) Trump was paying them the equivalent of £60 a week for 4 months.
The Compass proposal also mixes UBI as a reform of the poor law with the old failed Keynesian policy of the government trying to stimulate growth by increasing consumer spending, which was what Trump was trying to do too.
