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[Alzwards Corner] Never could happen here
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Things like UBI is part of the propaganda you're complaining about.
It's a poison pill promoted by wealthy people like Andrew Yang to distract from the need for increases in minimum wage.
If minimum wage increases corporations have to pay. With UBI, then the government pays and it doesn't cost the corporation.
But they already know it's not politically viable and will never happen anyway. Even if it does, they still don't going to pay out. Classic Xanatos Gambit.
But the main point of UBI is to get people that would normally push for an increase in minimum wage to push for UBI instead. Then the right wing can say "these clowns just want free money from the government." Centrist don't go along with it and it never happens. And neither does an increase in minimum wage which is much harder to argue against, but nobody is arguing for because of the distraction that is UBI.
UBI is all about making people take up a losing cause instead of raising minimum wage which would be a winning cause.
You swallowed the poison pill of UBI, so no minimum wage increase is happening. Their propaganda worked.
Your counterpoint to UBI is a higher minimum wage? Yes, lets ensure everyone must work for the capitalists; that will free us. Wow, you are the poison pill.
Wow, I don't usually find myself on this side of the argument, but..
Did you even read what he said?
In a republic, which we are, people have to agree on policy and their representatives vote for what the people who elect them want.
The Overton Window dictates what we can feasibly pass with popularity within a system like ours. Like it or not, the majority of voters' opinions fall within this window, and by definition, what is acceptable for our politicians to run on falls within this window. Also, the Overton window of the US has been shifting right so that actual leftist policies are outside of that window (see how little it takes for someone here to cry about how socialism is ruining everything)
Raising the minimum wage is just inside the left border of the Overton window right now. It's acceptable to talk about and most people with a clear understanding of how poverty works agree that it's a viable solution to remedy one of our nation's biggest problems.
You know it's inside of the window because various states have actually passed those changes. It's acceptable to talk about that happening on a national scale when we can see it work on a state scale.
UBI is so far left of our Overton window that it isn't implemented anywhere here (in the mainland) and can be ridiculed easily, and that's the point.
I'd like to expand my point for anyone who is interested in further reading, to address the "Capitalism vs UBI" point that the person I responded to was making:
You can't just replace capitalism. It's not a good system, we can all agree on that. But short of violent revolution, no system is changed except from within the system.
You can't just say "well the alternative to UBI is just letting people suffer under capitalism" because there is no alternative to capitalism right now. Not unless we as a group of leftists work the overton window back far enough left for the masses to seriously consider abandoning capitalism in favor of something that benefits everyone.
The problem is, capitalists have known about that possibility for about 50 years and have had that much of a head start undermining any effort to do so.
It can be done, but it has to be done in smaller steps like legalizing weed, cementing abortion rights, raising the minimum wage, etc. until the masses are ready to hear that UBI might actually be a good thing.
Statements like "If UBI isn't implemented then people will just suffer under capitalism" are virtue signaling at best and the people who say those kinds of things don't have a clear understanding of how to actually affect change.
Louder for the people in the back.
I like the downvotes I've got. What I said was objective truth. Like it or not, change doesn't happen here unless enough people are behind it to make it happen.
So those downvotes just.. Don't like it? It's like the guy in the scroll of truth meme yelling myehh at the end
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/24/universal-basic-income/
I can tell you just grabbed the first result of a Google search "why basic income works" because you linked an article with a pay wall that doesn't actually allow you to read it, leading me to believe you didn't read it either. So thanks.
However, just the title and first paragraph I was able to skim highlight the point I'm making: it doesn't matter if a system works if not enough people are willing to adopt it. Which is what the concept of the overton window is built on.
Lul, skill issues, unsurprising
I'm not going to unfuck your source because you're too lazy to check it. The skill issue is yours, my friend
Despite the minimal effort I put in, I still managed a rebuttal. Where's yours? Oh right, you aren't interested in actually understanding the problem. You just Google a response without checking it and let other people affirm your flawed views.
🤡
That's what I thought
🤣
Actually, before I leave you to congratulate yourself on not actually saying anything, I just want to point out how funny it is that you mic dropped an article that makes the same point I did by mistake because you didn't read it. And now you're trying to flex on me because you still haven't read it.
I'm just happy I could be part of this exchange. It's not often that someone I argue with proves themselves wrong with the very first and only point they make, and then doubles down so hard that they're just sending emojis.
Thanks for that. Later
😂
ubi isn't the poison pill, yang was that for ubi, and you swallowed it apparently. there has barely been any push for ubi, mostly just academic discussion, and it has had absolutely zero effect on amount of campaigning for min wage increase, so like, wut?
ubi is the way welfare should be because means testing kills and wastes money and everyone deserves that safety net. everyone. nevermind coming mass automation.
imho andrew yang's whole purpose in politics was to be a dumbass awkward out of touch dickhead and spoil everything he promoted, mainly ubi. you fell for it.
Political capital is finite, and the wealthy people understand this. Right now we're arguing over UBI instead of creating a common front to raise minimum wage. Exactly as intended. The person that made the comic promoted something that won't happen instead of something that could happen, exactly as intended.
Yes, nevermind coming mass automation. You're presupposing future problems can't be solved in the future. Future problems stemming from future mass automation (as if that's something that didn't start with the industrial revolution) can be solved in the future. Low minimum wage is a problem we have right now and it's not being solving now because too many people are fantasizing about a future that may not even happen in our lifetimes.
Right now we gotta fix our energy infrastructure to solve global warming (which is a real future problem we need to work on right now) and that's going to take a lot of labour to accomplish. Our survival depends on us having a productive and healthy workforce to solve very real problems.
I like Star Trek too but we aren't going to get to that world if we can't solve present day problems.
This is whataboutism of the most laborious kind.
Disagree. AI will make UBI the only way forward besides mass deaths.
People have been saying machines will eliminate all jobs since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Right at this moment there are people that are doing minimum wage jobs that don't have enough money to survive on. How about we solve the present day problems instead of worrying about the problems of some sci-fi future world? We can worry about the problems of the future in the future you know.
And machines have been eliminating jobs since the dawn of the industrial revolution. We've just been finding more jobs that need doing to keep up with that. No guarantee that that treadmill will run forever.
You contradicted yourself in two sentences. People being unable to survive on what they can earn is a present day problem, not "some sci-fi future world." The problem that UBI is attempting to solve is already here. It's just going to grow worse over time.
I sure hope that this was written by ChatGPT. Because if a living breathing human both believes this and took the time to write it out the system has failed
No, the system has succeeded.
...Wow
The one that offends me is the belief in "infinite upside." Like somehow we'd lose out on some great works of social progress if we made peoole's bank accounts peg once they hit a certain number of zeroes.