ALB
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“I love this music too, and have just watched again the BBC’s 1978 Pennies From Heaven,and ordered more Al Bowlly CDs.“
I thought you would have preferred Doctor Doolittle and listening to Percy Edwards all day.
A typical populist. Not really a man of the people but someone selling himself to one section of the elite to mobilise people against another.
Now getting his comeuppance for getting Boris to suspend Parliament years ago it seems now.
The various studies mentioned here concentrate on the effect on employment/unemployment as those who run capitalism don’t want UBI to undermine the pressure on workers to find a job. They will be pleased with the finding that UBI (as a reform of the poor law system) would not undermine the wages system.
What would be more interesting from the workers’ point of view would be the effect on wages. In 2002 the ILO did a study of the Alaska payment (Permant Fund Divided) which does mention this (and published on the site of the BIEN, the international organisation of those proposing a basic income for all) :
“Even without a PFD induced increase in the labour supply, the PFD could be exerting downward pressure on the wage differential between Alaska and other, lower cost, regions of the United States. If employers could lower the Alaskan wage rate because of the dividend, then determining the impact of the dividend on the distribution of income would be more complicated than simply observing the addition to incomes directly attributable to the dividend. Of course the dividend could also be driving up the wage rate if, in the absence of in-migration, the labour force participation rate fell.”
[Note: The other studies seem to show that the labour supply has been unaffected, i.e., that the labour force participation rate didn’t fall.]
“However, another possible effect of the dividend that has been completely ignored might be a reduction in the Alaskan wage rate by the amount of the dividend. If the labour market worked in this way, Alaska workers would be sharing the benefits of the dividend with business owners, non-workers, and non-residents.”
“The average real wage in Alaska has fallen by about 10 per cent in the last decade, but it is unclear the extent to which that is due to other factors such as a change in the mix of jobs and a fall in the relative cost of living. But it does raise the possibility that the apparent higher incomes from the dividend are being partially offset by lower real wage rates.”
Further research is needed to see whether or not this possibility is a reality but the comment already recognised that the level of wages generally is linked to the cost of living, which UBI would reduce.
Someone from India has sent HO this account of what happened in Bombay during an outbreak of the plague there in 1897, which might give some idea of what might have happened if the government had done nothing and simply let the current pandemic rip — workers following their instincts and leaving the city so creating a labour shortage and employers increasing wages for those left in a bid to keep production going
“Bombay, India in 1897 was a port city of 800,000. Eighty thousand workers in cotton mills, majority being spinning mills for export of yarn to China.
Bubonic plague in Bombay. In December 96 alone 1,271 deaths. By end-January, half of the population fled the city. Ten thousand deaths due to the plague.The bosses doubled the wages, daily payments instead of monthly wages, and daily bonus to run the factories. But by March 1897, weaving was completely shut down and of the over two million spindles only 65,000 were working. The plague subsided in May and workers returned to the factories. Spurt of the plague during monsoons. And the plague continued but workers started taking it as one more fatal disease like T.B. In India deaths due to TB in 2018 were 4,40,000 and in the world 1.5 million.The plague in Bombay affected the labouring population in 1897. The bosses were not affected by the plague and went all out to run the factories.”That’s not a basic citizens income as advocates of UBI themselves have pointed out because it’s means tested. It’s more like the Tax Credits scheme in the UK and like it a subsidy to employers paying the lowest wages, as that news report indicates (anyone with a low-paid job would have their salary topped up to meet the threshold outlined).
I don’t know if this is a coincidence or whether this blogger has been following this thread but here’s what he’s just put up from 25 years ago.
You haven’t even demonstrated the first premise of your argument ie shown that pet owners do call their pets “it”. I think all of them speak to their dog, cat, rabbit, hamster, budgie or pot-bellied pig as if they were human.
The only context in which I have heard pet owners referring to a pet as “it” is when one asks another “is it a he or a she?” I am not sure how a “triggered vegan” would pose that question.
As the discussion on that link you gave brought out, grammar is involved. So somebody referring to an animal as “it” might just be a pedant for “correct” English.
If you go by grammar then in France they must all be animal lovers because they never refer to other animals as “it” but only as “he” or “she”. I imagine it is the same in Occitan and other Romance languages.
Was I being obtuse in finding it weird to call yourself “one”? No, I was having a go at pomposity. Just like everyone laughs at Prince Charles for doing it. The demotic equivalent to “on” in French is “you” , thus “you often hear people referring to their own dog as ‘it’”. Only you don’t.
“Many people one meets refer to their own dogs as “it.”
Shouldn’t trivial points like this be transferred to the Off Topic section? Personally I have never met anyone that refers to their own dog as “it”. But if they did, so what? Someone in the discussion in the link rather cruelly suggests that only “triggered vegans” get worked up about this.
To be absolutely frank, I find it more weird that some people refer to themselves as “one”.
The one about the whale seems plausible. Not too sure about Lulu the pig. The way she reacted to the human’s cries of pain certainly led to the human’s life being saved but to conclude that this reaction was intentionally aimed at bringing this result seems a step too far. A more likely explanation might be that she was frightened by the cries and that’s why she broke out.
These animals stories are nice. I am sure you have plenty about dogs. But what are you trying to demonstrate? We are all animal lovers here already.
That’s a nice story about lions. It’s a pity it’s not likely to be true. Anyway, it ended well as the lions didn’t eat her. Not that if they had we should think any worse of lions for that.
Of course but who said they don’t or couldn’t. The materialist concept of “history” applies to other animals as well as humans— what is crucial for both is how they get what they need to survive (primarily food and shelter).
Interesting study just published on how chimps communicate via lip-smacking:
Of course as linguist Geoffrey Pullum pointed out in yesterday’s Times:
”It is quite plausible that rhythmic organisation of vocal gestures might be, to some extent, among the capabilities of great apes, and necessary for any development of linguistic capabilities. But the distance from rhythmic organisation of vocal gestures to language is huge.”
To be capable of language in the human’s sense required the evolution of anatomical changes in hominids such a throat capable of making a wide range of sounds and a brain capable of thinking with abstract symbols.
Other studies have suggested that human language could have developed out of the survival advantage of being able to communicate more effectively to co-ordinate hunting and other collective work activities.
You can’t help exaggerating, can you? I expect some meat-eaters do eat meat with every meal but I don’t know that the majority do. I certainly don’t. In fact some days I don’t eat meat at all but I am not having anybody telling me from a position of sanctimonious superiority what to eat and what not to eat.
But you’re not content with people eating less meat. They mustn’t eat any and you denounce anyone who does as somebody who wants to be cruel to animals and is favour of big game hunting, bull fighting, etc, etc.
There have always been vegetarians and food reformers in the party but never, in my recollection, anyone as intolerant and hostile as you towards fellow members who aren’t.
