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"if we’re going to organise for a better world, we need to know who we’re organising against" Most vehemently against UBI are the trade unions. Their existence
by vlehto 11y ago
"if we’re going to organise for a better world, we need to know who we’re organising against"
Most vehemently against UBI are the trade unions. Their existence depends on unemployment being nasty ordeal. If unemployment was OKish, employees would vote with their feet. No unions needed. Next worst is McJobs companies.
Minimum wage making unemployment more prevalent and the employed more comfortable is furthering trade union goals like nothing else. These ideas may look the same, but they are completely opposed.
"how, for example, can we can open all the borders without eventually replacing countries with a global government?"
Nobody can, nor should. Currently somewhat open borders and somewhat good social security is already causing big problems in my country. The easy solution would be UBI for citizens, easy visas for everybody else. Everybody would be better off, except for the people who migrate only to get government benefits. Companies could hire foreign workforce easy, total incoming numbers would stay relatively low, people actually coming from war zones and escaping bullets would find safety.
The immigration fear mongers are against this, because solving this problem would end the justification for their existence. Also the left are against this, because they could not run around calling people "fascist" anymore. And the do-gooders would implode, as small numbers of poor third world citizens would keep on being poor, but now they would do it here! It's so nice to have them out of sight.
- tdaltonc 11y ago> Also the left are against this, because they could not run around calling people "fascist" anymore. By the same reasoning, you wouldn't like to see a UBI because then you couldn't bash unions or McJobs anymore. Sometimes when people say they want to see something go away, they mean it.
- vlehto 11y agob-b-but I like unions and McJobs. I just don't like them having too much power. The crux here is that I'm a person. Union member is a person too, many of them probably would genuinely like UBI. As group they would probably not admit they don't like it. But organizations tend follow the incentives of the organization more than they follow opinions of the members.
- specialist 11y ago"Most vehemently against UBI are the trade unions." Huh. I'll poll my union friends. This would surprise me. (FWIW, apropos of nothing, union halls are temp agencies with collective bargaining.) "The immigration fear mongers are against this..." I assume nowadays economic immigrants mostly want to make their fortune and then go home to retire. I read a study that tracked immigration to/from Puerto Rico. Many (the majority) return home or plan to. Asking all my immigrate coworkers, I get mostly the same answers. About the nativists: hater's are gonna hate. Just route around them.
- vlehto 11y agoEconomic immigrants who work are completely different breed than economic immigrants who come for unemployment benefits. Currently in Finland if you can ~800e/month from the government if you get asylum. That's not "rich", but it's lot better than most things available in Iraq right now. The fear mongers (perussuomalaiset) won the last election and got to the government. Their performance controlling the situation has been very lackluster so far.