5 ms·

This is a good point, and one that most people haven't written about. UBI means no welfare state other than UBI. It also means you rely on people to administer

This is a good point, and one that most people haven't written about. UBI means no welfare state other than UBI. It also means you rely on people to administer that income themselves. On the other hand, it is socialism, and socialism has a dismal record of success. Europe tried it, and is now bankrupt and having waves of social problems that did not exist 40 years ago. The USA has tried it and now is permanently divided, either 47/53 or 99/1, depending on who you ask. I say go back to natural living. Let government handle defense, roads and environmental protection. Let local governments handle everything else flexibly. But stop trying to solve people's problems. It doesn't work, creates other problems, and discourages people from accepting responsibility for their own futures.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
You're fallaciously posing a dichotomy between the "natural living" of 19th-century American late-feudalism/industrializing capitalism versus the "failures" (failures by what metric, compared to what capitalist competitors?) of "socialism" (actually social democracy). Here are a few facts to the contrary: * Europe is not "bankrupt" from "socialism". In fact, even the most successful European countries (the Nordic states and Germany) are far more social-democratic than the "successfully capitalist" Anglo countries, most particularly the United States of America. * Why is Europe "bankrupt"? Trade imbalances, and a monetary policy aimed at maintaining those trade imbalances for the benefit of the incumbent capitalist class rather than correcting them for the good of all citizens. It's not just net-importer nations like the "PIIGS" undergoing wage deflations and heavy debt, Germany has actually been leading Europe in wage deflation, not to mention that it does actually have a public debt issue. The cause of the Euro troubles, after the Great Recession itself of course, is the German use of mercantilism; the mercantilist system in Europe is not broken but working as (inadvertently, nobody outside Germany intended for Germany to become a mercantile empire) designed. Citation: http://seekerblog.com/2012/01/17/euro-crisis-german-unit-labor-cost-repression-is-the-primary-cause-of-periphery-stress/ http://seekerblog.com/2012/01/17/euro-crisis-german-unit-lab... * When have the successful Western nations been at their richest, in terms of total economic growth and socioeconomic equality? In their peak social-democratic years of the Postwar Consensus, precisely when what Americans decry as "big government" was used to shore up demand for labor and pump productivity into the economy through national infrastructure projects. * Open question: does public and private debt growth have a causative relationship with the use of social-democratic fiscal policies, or with the use of certain trade and monetary policies instead? It's important to note that the late '60s and early '70s switched the entire Western world from the Bretton-Woods regime of trade and currency regulations (not to mention capital controls!) to today's neoliberal, neo-mercantilist regime of virtual debt-money. Today capitalist governments manipulate their currency whenever they want in order to suppress labor wages and increase exports, even despite normal market mechanisms acting against them (as in the cases of both China and Germany, who under "clean" markets would be effectively forced to consume and import more stuff, lest their money degrade into worthlessness from capital glut).

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

You're fallaciously posing a dichotomy between the "natural living" of 19th-century American late-feudalism/industrializing capitalism versus the "failures" (failures by what metric, compared to what capitalist competitors?) of "socialism" (actually social democracy). Here are a few facts to the contrary: * Europe is not "bankrupt" from "socialism". In fact, even the most successful European countries (the Nordic states and Germany) are far more social-democratic than the "successfully capitalist" Anglo countries, most particularly the United States of America. * Why is Europe "bankrupt"? Trade imbalances, and a monetary policy aimed at maintaining those trade imbalances for the benefit of the incumbent capitalist class rather than correcting them for the good of all citizens. It's not just net-importer nations like the "PIIGS" undergoing wage deflations and heavy debt, Germany has actually been leading Europe in wage deflation, not to mention that it does actually have a public debt issue. The cause of the Euro troubles, after the Great Recession itself of course, is the German use of mercantilism; the mercantilist system in Europe is not broken but working as (inadvertently, nobody outside Germany intended for Germany to become a mercantile empire) designed. Citation: http://seekerblog.com/2012/01/17/euro-crisis-german-unit-labor-cost-repression-is-the-primary-cause-of-periphery-stress/ http://seekerblog.com/2012/01/17/euro-crisis-german-unit-lab... * When have the successful Western nations been at their richest, in terms of total economic growth and socioeconomic equality? In their peak social-democratic years of the Postwar Consensus, precisely when what Americans decry as "big government" was used to shore up demand for labor and pump productivity into the economy through national infrastructure projects. * Open question: does public and private debt growth have a causative relationship with the use of social-democratic fiscal policies, or with the use of certain trade and monetary policies instead? It's important to note that the late '60s and early '70s switched the entire Western world from the Bretton-Woods regime of trade and currency regulations (not to mention capital controls!) to today's neoliberal, neo-mercantilist regime of virtual debt-money. Today capitalist governments manipulate their currency whenever they want in order to suppress labor wages and increase exports, even despite normal market mechanisms acting against them (as in the cases of both China and Germany, who under "clean" markets would be effectively forced to consume and import more stuff, lest their money degrade into worthlessness from capital glut).