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#ubi
There's a better idea than letting a few thousand greedy lunatics grab more money than they can ever spend, while the vast majority don't have enough. #UBI
https://www.commonweal.scot/articles/magazine-ylzyz
Hat tip to @muminitaly
My article in this week's Common Weal Magazine
A new German study into Universal Basic Income found many of the same positive impacts as every other UBI pilot to date.
Imagine, instead, this had been a study into the impact of removing someone's UBI to try to convince us to create the world we live in today.
"Here in Scotland, there is currently a Parliamentary majority in support for a Scottish UBI (the SNP, Greens and Lib Dems both support UBI as party policy..."
California's senator Scott Wiener proposed a bill that would've let wildfire victims sue the oil companies for causing the climate crisis.
Guess who teamed up with the Big Oil execs to defeat the bill?
Unions.
Specifically the unions representing oil industry workers. In other words, the workers collaborated with their class enemies: their bosses.
I'm not opposed to unions. I've been a union organizer for decades. But goddamn, these blockheads are acting just like Mr. Block (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Block). They somehow forgot the first rule of labor: the boss is NOT your friend. Be suspicious. Don't trust them. And sure as hell don't collaborate with them to help enrich them even further, especially not on your backs, nor in ways that further destroy the planet.
"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.... Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth."
-- preamble to the constitution of the IWW
That last line, added to the original 1905 preamble to the IWW constitution in the late 1980s, might sound a bit vague and "crunchy." But it was an attempt to acknowledge that some types of work simply shouldn't exist. That's not to say those who currently work in those industries (e.g. Fossil fuel extraction) should be thrown under the bus. Everyone should be allowed to do something productive that they enjoy. And everyone should have all the material necessities to live a safe secure and meaningful existence. But saving the planet from climate collapse will certainly require many changes in the types of work that are available. Coal mining, for example, has been on the decline for years because there is so little left in many regions that it's not profitable for the bosses to continue paying miners to mine ît anymore.
In a sane and compassionate world, we'd provide these workers with free Healthcare housing, UBI, and retraining so they could transition to some other productive endeavor. And union leaders would recognize that the interests of their members are much more closely aligned with, and linked to, those of the rest of the working class. (Continued burning of oil will contribute to more climate disasters, more wild fires, and possible the loss of their own members' lives or homes).
https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/04/california-oil-union-climate-bill/
Elon Musk’s net worth fluctuates around $220 billion — more than the GDP of over 130 countries. But what if that wealth did more than fund rockets and cars? Here are 10 ways a person of his wealth could change the world and cement a lasting legacy. 
#ElonMusk #billionare #Society #Health #UBI #cyber #Enviroment #Climate #Education #Water #Hunger #Vaccine #Trust #Legacy
Tired of being lied to? Well, too bad because the lies will keep coming and there will continue to be truthbombs blowing them up. #Germany ran a 3-year study on #UniversalBasicIncome and have once again proven that people keep working. Period. #UBI #economics #mentalhealth https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/04/12/0351222/germanys-universal-basic-income-experiment-proves-it-doesnt-encourage-unmployment
@JugglingWithEggs cutting PIP flies completely in the face of the huge body of research supporting #UBI
Cutting benefits in general is policy based on prejudice, not solid research .
The article points out that UBI will boost local economies because low-income households will spend additional income immediately, stimulating demand, but I think there's another very significant boost: freeing potential entrepreneurs to risk start-up.
I worked in business development for many years, and it was clear that many people with great ideas and abilities - including people disabled in other ways - just couldn't take the risk of losing their current income. Not only is this a huge loss for local economic development - it is unjust and inequitable, because of course the already wealthy are not held back by the risks.
How many of these #UBI experiments do we need until we believe that UBI does, in fact, improve the human condition, and does not actually turn people into bums? https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/114333889015062301
@brenttoderian.bsky.social #UBI has a proven track record. There is absolutely no reason why Canada should have the high level of homelessness we do. #PMMC, it’s time to end homelessness. We know #PeePee would prefer to jail these #LazyBums, as he would call these people who have fallen on hard luck times, because the #Cons don’t believe in helping society. They label the homeless as useless, addicts, criminals, etc. The only Cdns that #Conservatives care about, are themselves
@brenttoderian.bsky.social #UBI has a proven track record. There is absolutely no reason why Canada should have the high level of homelessness we do. #PMMC, it’s time to end homelessness. We know #PeePee would prefer to jail these #LazyBums, as he would call these people who have fallen on hard luck times, because the #Cons don’t believe in helping society. They would label the homeless as useless, addicts, criminals, etc. The Canadians that #Conservatives care about, is themselves
If we in the #USA manage to get our country back from the current #dictatorship, and we still think government is a good idea (I'm not trying to resolve the question of #anarchism right now), we need to recognize first of all that we can't go back to the prior status quo. Certain core aspects of that system got us into this mess, and will require fundamental change.
(1) Our #voting system needs overhaul. The right to vote needs to be recognized explicitly as a RIGHT, not a privilege for each state to regulate largely as it pleases. In particular, no criminal conviction should ever be able to impair the right to vote; racist abuse of the criminal law has been used to accomplish widespread disenfranchisement of minorities. Also, we need to recognize that winner-take-all voting systems are utterly incompatible with genuine democracy. If you ever have to ask whether you can afford to vote for who you really want, as opposed to voting for the lesser evil, you do not live in a democracy. Something like proportional representation, ranked-choice voting, or instant-runoff voting is not a luxury; some such system is a minimum requirement for authentic democracy.
(2) To hell with "#SeparationOfPowers". Any protection it supposedly offered us has been purely illusory. Indeed, it was never intended to safeguard the people. It was designed by an elite who deeply distrusted the people, in order to safeguard their wealth and power FROM the people. A legislature answerable to the people is the best safeguard for their rights that any government can hope to offer. Autonomy for the judicial and executive functions of government, as separate "branches" outside the control of the legislature, has brought nothing good. Throughout most of its history, an autonomous Supreme Court has consistently defended the most depraved policies of private power against legislative efforts to control them; and now it has aided and abetted the autonomous Presidency in fulfilling its inherent tendency to degenerate into a #dictatorship. Put the courts and all executive functions under full legislative control, to be granted only such limited and conditional autonomy as the legislature sees fit to offer them.
(3) We will need to overhaul our understanding of what the right of #FreeSpeech consists in. I do not like the unclear slogan "money is not speech"; but the right of INDIVIDUALS to speak freely is what must be safeguarded, and if that is to be accomplished, we cannot allow private capital to monopolize control over the media of communication, much less recognize an inviolable right for private capital to buy such control. Also, we may need to place severe restrictions — as #Germany has done — on organized promotion of certain ideas that involve a systematic attempt to suppress the very existence, let alone the free expression, of others. A #fascist march has more in common with a brandished weapon than with a discussion of fascist ideas in, say, a university classroom or a private home.
These changes (1)–(3) will not, of course, be sufficient by themselves. I have not addressed issues as fundamental as who will own the means of #production, whether people should be guaranteed an unconditional #BasicIncome (#UBI), or how (and whether) #policing should be done. But (1)–(3) will still be needed, no matter how a host of other basic questions are to be resolved.
I’m always peeved when headline writers accept and promote conservative framing:
“The effect on their work ethic was surprising”
No, it wasn’t. It was exactly as expected, based on multiple other studies done over decades. The only reason another ‘expectation’ exists is because conservatives have been loudly bleating the *completely unsupported* supposed dangers *without evidence* every chance they get.
It’s past time to reverse that expectation.
Because people would rather work than sit around with nothing to do and get depressed or be homeless.
I can tell you this, as a retired person, having a job gives you incentive to get up and do something. Improves your health too.
If you are retired, you want to find a 'job' even if you are doing it for free[dom].
@Sanderde #UBI has a proven track record of success. #MapleMAGA would have us believe that criminals should be locked up for life with no hope for redemption, residential school victims should learn to get a work ethic and stop complaining, females should pay attention to the ticking of their biological clocks…. This is the #ConservativeCommonSense. A govt that helps citizens, welcomes immigrants, and seeks to end homelessness, meh, the #cons don’t like things like that.
Germany's 'Universal Basic Income' Experiment Proves It Doesn't Encourage Unmployment #UBI
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/04/12/0351222/germanys-universal-basic-income-experiment-proves-it-doesnt-encourage-unmployment
“If people had more money, they would have less incentive to work,” say rich financiers, lawyers and CEOs who still work 80-hour weeks.
#UBI #LivingWage
@Lara I also like the idea of #UBI, specially for picking up those who earn less. But since these are finite pilots, people are probably not going to leave their jobs, knowing that later will have to go searching for one. These results should be taken with a grain of salt.
OTOH once I asked a coworker opposed to the idea what would she do if she didn't have to work as in customer support to pay rent and eat and she left the conversation by saying "surely something else".