Neither UBI or a job guarantee will make someone happy. Happiness comes from within, not from outside.
Not really the place for full policy plans. Short answer:
most of the required change is social - a turn away from Gordon Gecko’s “greed is good” and toward the basic morals to which we currently only pay lip service
As for policy changes, the most fundamental would be ammending the constitution to include a posistive assertion of human rights, equal representation, and abolishment of corporate rights. Easier to pass would be a piecemeal collection of rolling back the expansion of corporate rights and money in politics, reinstituting antitrust and regulation, and reinvestment in public goods (health, education, infrastructure, food, housing). People look at problems like lousy, expensive education as though these aren’t problems we’ve fixed before. Investment in public ed worked, investment in infrastructure worked, breaking up monopolies worked, communities working together towards common benefit worked. Other parts, like divesture from wall st., take longer
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That’s not busy-work, is it? I remember hearing stories of people paid to “dig holes so other people could fill in the holes,” but I suspect those are anti-socialist distortions.
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It’s almost like they started giving us raises, in the form of loans. And they keep the interest on it. Job guaranty, Amazon Fullfillment Center Nomad?
Hmmmm
And the US is an exception to the norm when it comes to healthcare, rather than the norm. I’m not sure where else in the world has such a punitive outlook on maintaining body and mind. Certainly, the places I’ve lived - mainly England, France, and Germany - have made such maintenance practically guaranteed, rather than something that could render you homeless.
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Phillip Jose’ Farmer covered UBI in his novella ‘Riders Of The Purple Wage.’
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Worked fine during the Great Depression. Also, they do already employ thousands of Americans in good jobs with good benefits. You’re just flat out wrong on that assertion, I’m afraid.
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I’ve wonder if this is a more effective strategy, but that’s a hard sell, given the realities of a capitalist society as it stands. Maybe a UBI/Job program could be a step to something like this.
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Education is stagnation?
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There are plenty of ways to make this (or other ideas) work that don’t involve a totalitarian regime, though. We shouldn’t let the obvious failures of the past impede finding solutions for the future.
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This is what worries me most about the current proposals for UBI - how is this going to benefit corporations at the end of the day. The fact that the elite of the tech sector champion this proposal makes me very wary of it. I think it’s worth looking critically at the various UBI proposals to see where the limitations are.
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So, basically, free up corporations from regulations that protect workers?
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This fellow enjoyed his time in the CCC, but I doubt you or I would:
'Reveille at 6:00AM, the camp leader blew a whistle as he strolled through each of the four (4) barracks to awaken the men. 6:30AM, we fell out doors, and stood at attention in front of the flag pole for roll call, and the daily ritual of raising the American flag.
We returned to the barracks to make-up our bunk-beds, also “wash-up”. Monday to Friday was the work week - we dressed in our work clothes of denim. At 7:00AM we marched to the mess hall for our morning breakfast - at 7:45AM a daily inspection of the barracks by a camp officer - we had to have our bunks, foot lockers and clothing gear in a military precision form. At 8:00AM a whistle gave notice to report to our work assignment. This was handled by the U.S. Grazing Service, with a foreman in charge of a 30 man crew.
As we boarded the stake-body trucks for our job site, we were given brown paper lunch bags - the lunch never varied, the same old:
1 Baloney sandwich,
1 Peanut-butter and jam sandwich, with a piece of fruit…’
Vs. literally no opportunities in the private sector at the time. I think you are underestimating the depth of the problem caused by the depression regarding jobs.
Also, these programs did things such as build up southern infrastructure and give us oral histories of former slaves that we can all now access in the national archive, among other things.
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At least you’ve gone from claiming that the state has no idea how to create useful employment to making the claim that the state has no idea how to create enjoyable employment (although you might have enjoyed building athletic facilities for a WPA programme given your expertise in goalpost shifting).
The experience of someone “lucky” enough to be doing unskilled or blue-collar labour for a for-profit employer during the 1930s might have had similar or sometimes worse workplace experiences. This was still the era of company towns and sharecropping, for example.
Perhaps the need for those extensive New Deal employment programmes wouldn’t have been necessary if unemployment didn’t reach 20% thanks to the previous administration’s approach to a serious economic crisis hadn’t been “let the market sort it out.”
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I personally think UBI will create a lot of new entrepreneurial ventures (both for-profit and non-profit alike); as people will be free to construct their own self-guided lives that reflect their personal passions. I think this will really benefit communities, as people will be able to take the time to organize to address problems, have the time to understand what’s causing the problems, and be able to create adaptable solutions.
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I’ve been thinking that it might be good to combine UBI with national service so that those who want to continue to work or contribute to “earning” their UBI could do public service work on a voluntary basis. Might be a good compromise.
In addition, my vision of a future economic system would combine Gandhian economics, non-violent and non-exploitative economics, with Elinor Ostrom’s work on the sustainable governance of the commons or common pool resources.
Lastly, for those who are interested in a succinct definition:
“What is Socialism? It is business operated for public benefit instead of private profit.”
Art Young’s Political Primer
from November 1, 1918 NY Call, the Socialist daily
Sounds like a “B” or Benefit Corporation to me.
True enough, but poverty and the lack of the ability to have one’s basic human needs met causes a lot of misery in the US. It would be great to do more to alleviate some of that misery, and then leave inner happiness up to the individual.
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One also should consider that people like those lottery winners who scale back their hours rather than quitting their jobs are doing so within our existing social structure. It’s hard to predict how social attitudes and personal beliefs will change when or if work becomes pointless. It’s also a pretty bizarre proposition that if people are no longer working for an employer that they will no longer be doing work. That doesn’t jive with history. There have been many different periods in different societies where significant numbers of people did not need to work and did not work for employers. Those people pioneered research, produced classic artwork, built marvels, wrote enduring works of literature, etc. The belief that people won’t do that again is, I think, just a particular sickness of thought inflicted by the Protestant Work Ethic that was arguably useful under substantially different circumstances, but is rapidly becoming destructive.
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