singular_me
29th April 2017, 10:10 AM
the devil is in the details.... again.... all the roads lead to the powerful $tate
I just learned about Hayek's pro-BI view while reading a socialist website... likewise it is always good to read from every platform. What does it mean? it means that the pro-free market theories are a joke, ((they)) know that markets will always defraud/breed a bottom feeders. And that BI is meant to FAIL.
Sure what is deemed incompetence causes bankruptcies but that is how Nature's zero sum game translates. People must band together to secure their positions, so having a top 1% is unavoidable.
=====================================
Basic Income and the Left:
The Political and Economic Problems
David Bush
Should the Left and labour support a demand for a Basic Income (BI)? This simple question has provoked a fervent and confusing debate. The discussion over BI touches on real political and economic anxieties. The attack on the social welfare state, the depreciating power of organized labour and an economy producing increasingly low-wage precarious jobs have led many to search for alternative mechanisms and policies to address these problems. It is no wonder that BI with its promise of streamlined access to minimal economic security has attracted many adherents on the Left.............
Politics and the State
The major political problem with BI is that it views that state as a neutral apparatus governing relations between workers and employers. The state is, when stripped down to its core essence, a reflection of the interests of the ruling class. The state relies on the smooth functioning of capitalism and its policies aim to achieve this (balancing the competing interests of capitalists and placating any possible rising working class movement). The state, its bureaucracy and the political class, have no real interest in upending capitalist social relations and the basic functioning of the labour market.
The capitalist state is used to push policies that facilitate the continual accumulation of profits by capitalists and foment stability (there are of course differences about how best to do this). A progressive version of BI runs counter to the basic objectives of the state.
Wages and the State
Faced with a period of systemic slow economic growth it is not hard to imagine that the state could adopt a version of BI that aims to subsidize low-wage work. Indeed, in places like the United States this is the defacto situation with Walmart workers surviving only by accessing food stamps. A modest BI, of say $10,000 (which would not be enough to empower workers to stay out of the labour market for long), would essentially be a top-up of wages for low-wage employers. It would be a weapon for employers to keep wages low, as they could argue there is no need to pay workers more because of BI. In this scenario why would employers not just pay the minimum wage if there was a BI top up?
BI as a wage subsidy for employers would have the effect of distancing workers’ labour from their wages. Instead of being paid directly for their work, part of the wage of workers would come from their own tax dollars in the form of BI. Workers are powerful because of their social location in relation to production. But having the state subsidize employers’ wages clouds the relationship between workers, employers and their profits. Instead of pushing against employers in relation to their profits, workers would have to formulate their demands in terms of a social wage. This would have the effect of obscuring class division, exploitation and capitalist social relations in society. A state subsidy of wages could easily disempower workers as a class relative to employers by blunting the class struggle and turning it into a technocratic argument over the level the state should subsidize employers’ wages.
Added to this very real possibility, is likelihood that the state would use BI to attack public sector unions. Workers who staff and administer social programs could easily loose their jobs if services were cut to make way for BI, which is why public sector unions like OPSEU oppose it. Other public sector workers would also face increasing pressure of concessions to wages and benefit as the state would scramble to minimize costs to pay for BI. Governments would likely pit public sector wages and benefits against BI for the public. If BI subsidized low-wage employers this would have the effect of putting added downward pressure on all unionized workers.
Political Struggle and BI
The debate over the social usefulness of BI is largely conducted in the realm of abstraction. Policy is dreamed up, calculated, and debated with next to no appreciation of how the political struggle could and would shape the proposed policy.
By subtracting the political from the equation of BI, its proponents treat the economy as a neutral object that can be simply rearranged. This approach engages in the worst kind of academic idealism that shuns any serious political analysis. As John Clarke notes:
“I've yet to see, quite bluntly, any serious attempt to assess what stands in the way of a progressive BI and what can be done to bring it into existence. It simply isn't enough to explain how just and fair a given model would be if it could be adopted. In order to credibly advance BI as the solution, there are some questions that must be settled.”
As parts of the Left flirt with idyllic visions of BI, the right-wing is busy actually using the renewed interest to push their own political agenda. In Finland, the right-wing government is supporting BI, which is now in its testing phase, as a way to rollback the social welfare state and curb the power of trade unions.
In Ontario, the Liberal government is moving ahead with its BI pilot project. The pilot project would put a select group of low-income people on a BI. The Liberals have been using this idea to delay any meaningful action toward reducing poverty in the province. As Clarke argues:
“If the concept is being advanced in Ontario by the very provincial government that has led the way in program reduction and austerity, it is not because they want to reverse the undermining of income support, the proliferation of precarious employment and the privatizing of public services but for the very opposite reason. They are looking with great interest at the possibility of using Basic Income as a stalking horse for their regressive social agenda and it will be the version that Bay Street has in mind that will win out over notions of progressive redistribution.”
Rather than raising the rates for social assistance, increasing the minimum wage or spending more on social services the government is touting its BI experiment. The Liberal's advocacy for BI also comes at the same time as the Changing Workplaces Review, a full-scale review of all labour law in the province. By propping up BI the Liberals are looking to stoke confusion and division amongst those pushing for paid sick days, a $15 minimum wage and stronger union rights. The Liberals are not alone in this effort.
In its effort to weaken labour laws, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce has made support for BI one of its key proposals in the Changing Workplace Review. This of course is not some noble gesture, BI in reality dovetails perfectly with its worldview.
BI is not just a left-wing idea, it has also long been advocated for by parts of the right-wing, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. The goal is to use BI to do away with the social welfare state. Instead of social programs, citizens are given minimum cheques by the state and then purchase their social needs on the market. BI will not be used to decommodify social relations, but used to desocialize state services.
VERY LONG
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1402.php#continue
=======================
. A. Hayek: Enemy of Social Justice and Friend of a Universal Basic Income?
Until recently, I had only read the first two books of Hayek’s grand trilogy Law, Legislation and Liberty. People told me that the third book was the least interesting. The real action, they said, was in the first two books. I decided to see for myself whether they were right. After finishing the book, I admit that much of the analysis is straightforward public choice theory that others had already carried to a higher level of sophistication. Further, the conceptions of law, spontaneous order and the critique of social justice are best articulated in the first two books. However, Book III has a number of interesting elements. One of them is Hayek’s insistence on a universal basic income while vehemently rejecting the idea of social justice. On this blog, we sometimes tie the two together. So what gives?
Let’s consider the relevant passages:
The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born (55).*
So Hayek is for a minimum income. This much is clear. But notice the next passage:
It is unfortunate that the endeavor to secure a uniform minimum for all who cannot provide for themselves has become connected with the wholly different aims of securing a ‘just’ distribution of incomes (55).
What? Isn’t the point of the UBI to secure a just distribution of incomes? Isn’t the UBI legitimate because people it is owed to people in order to justify the social order as a whole?
I think Hayek’s critique of social justice does not apply to the evaluation of the rules that govern a society’s basic structure. Instead, Hayek meant to refute the idea that we can make specific claims about whether certain domains of goods and services are justly distributed
LONG
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/05/hayek-enemy-of-social-justice-and-friend-of-a-universal-basic-income/
I just learned about Hayek's pro-BI view while reading a socialist website... likewise it is always good to read from every platform. What does it mean? it means that the pro-free market theories are a joke, ((they)) know that markets will always defraud/breed a bottom feeders. And that BI is meant to FAIL.
Sure what is deemed incompetence causes bankruptcies but that is how Nature's zero sum game translates. People must band together to secure their positions, so having a top 1% is unavoidable.
=====================================
Basic Income and the Left:
The Political and Economic Problems
David Bush
Should the Left and labour support a demand for a Basic Income (BI)? This simple question has provoked a fervent and confusing debate. The discussion over BI touches on real political and economic anxieties. The attack on the social welfare state, the depreciating power of organized labour and an economy producing increasingly low-wage precarious jobs have led many to search for alternative mechanisms and policies to address these problems. It is no wonder that BI with its promise of streamlined access to minimal economic security has attracted many adherents on the Left.............
Politics and the State
The major political problem with BI is that it views that state as a neutral apparatus governing relations between workers and employers. The state is, when stripped down to its core essence, a reflection of the interests of the ruling class. The state relies on the smooth functioning of capitalism and its policies aim to achieve this (balancing the competing interests of capitalists and placating any possible rising working class movement). The state, its bureaucracy and the political class, have no real interest in upending capitalist social relations and the basic functioning of the labour market.
The capitalist state is used to push policies that facilitate the continual accumulation of profits by capitalists and foment stability (there are of course differences about how best to do this). A progressive version of BI runs counter to the basic objectives of the state.
Wages and the State
Faced with a period of systemic slow economic growth it is not hard to imagine that the state could adopt a version of BI that aims to subsidize low-wage work. Indeed, in places like the United States this is the defacto situation with Walmart workers surviving only by accessing food stamps. A modest BI, of say $10,000 (which would not be enough to empower workers to stay out of the labour market for long), would essentially be a top-up of wages for low-wage employers. It would be a weapon for employers to keep wages low, as they could argue there is no need to pay workers more because of BI. In this scenario why would employers not just pay the minimum wage if there was a BI top up?
BI as a wage subsidy for employers would have the effect of distancing workers’ labour from their wages. Instead of being paid directly for their work, part of the wage of workers would come from their own tax dollars in the form of BI. Workers are powerful because of their social location in relation to production. But having the state subsidize employers’ wages clouds the relationship between workers, employers and their profits. Instead of pushing against employers in relation to their profits, workers would have to formulate their demands in terms of a social wage. This would have the effect of obscuring class division, exploitation and capitalist social relations in society. A state subsidy of wages could easily disempower workers as a class relative to employers by blunting the class struggle and turning it into a technocratic argument over the level the state should subsidize employers’ wages.
Added to this very real possibility, is likelihood that the state would use BI to attack public sector unions. Workers who staff and administer social programs could easily loose their jobs if services were cut to make way for BI, which is why public sector unions like OPSEU oppose it. Other public sector workers would also face increasing pressure of concessions to wages and benefit as the state would scramble to minimize costs to pay for BI. Governments would likely pit public sector wages and benefits against BI for the public. If BI subsidized low-wage employers this would have the effect of putting added downward pressure on all unionized workers.
Political Struggle and BI
The debate over the social usefulness of BI is largely conducted in the realm of abstraction. Policy is dreamed up, calculated, and debated with next to no appreciation of how the political struggle could and would shape the proposed policy.
By subtracting the political from the equation of BI, its proponents treat the economy as a neutral object that can be simply rearranged. This approach engages in the worst kind of academic idealism that shuns any serious political analysis. As John Clarke notes:
“I've yet to see, quite bluntly, any serious attempt to assess what stands in the way of a progressive BI and what can be done to bring it into existence. It simply isn't enough to explain how just and fair a given model would be if it could be adopted. In order to credibly advance BI as the solution, there are some questions that must be settled.”
As parts of the Left flirt with idyllic visions of BI, the right-wing is busy actually using the renewed interest to push their own political agenda. In Finland, the right-wing government is supporting BI, which is now in its testing phase, as a way to rollback the social welfare state and curb the power of trade unions.
In Ontario, the Liberal government is moving ahead with its BI pilot project. The pilot project would put a select group of low-income people on a BI. The Liberals have been using this idea to delay any meaningful action toward reducing poverty in the province. As Clarke argues:
“If the concept is being advanced in Ontario by the very provincial government that has led the way in program reduction and austerity, it is not because they want to reverse the undermining of income support, the proliferation of precarious employment and the privatizing of public services but for the very opposite reason. They are looking with great interest at the possibility of using Basic Income as a stalking horse for their regressive social agenda and it will be the version that Bay Street has in mind that will win out over notions of progressive redistribution.”
Rather than raising the rates for social assistance, increasing the minimum wage or spending more on social services the government is touting its BI experiment. The Liberal's advocacy for BI also comes at the same time as the Changing Workplaces Review, a full-scale review of all labour law in the province. By propping up BI the Liberals are looking to stoke confusion and division amongst those pushing for paid sick days, a $15 minimum wage and stronger union rights. The Liberals are not alone in this effort.
In its effort to weaken labour laws, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce has made support for BI one of its key proposals in the Changing Workplace Review. This of course is not some noble gesture, BI in reality dovetails perfectly with its worldview.
BI is not just a left-wing idea, it has also long been advocated for by parts of the right-wing, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. The goal is to use BI to do away with the social welfare state. Instead of social programs, citizens are given minimum cheques by the state and then purchase their social needs on the market. BI will not be used to decommodify social relations, but used to desocialize state services.
VERY LONG
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1402.php#continue
=======================
. A. Hayek: Enemy of Social Justice and Friend of a Universal Basic Income?
Until recently, I had only read the first two books of Hayek’s grand trilogy Law, Legislation and Liberty. People told me that the third book was the least interesting. The real action, they said, was in the first two books. I decided to see for myself whether they were right. After finishing the book, I admit that much of the analysis is straightforward public choice theory that others had already carried to a higher level of sophistication. Further, the conceptions of law, spontaneous order and the critique of social justice are best articulated in the first two books. However, Book III has a number of interesting elements. One of them is Hayek’s insistence on a universal basic income while vehemently rejecting the idea of social justice. On this blog, we sometimes tie the two together. So what gives?
Let’s consider the relevant passages:
The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born (55).*
So Hayek is for a minimum income. This much is clear. But notice the next passage:
It is unfortunate that the endeavor to secure a uniform minimum for all who cannot provide for themselves has become connected with the wholly different aims of securing a ‘just’ distribution of incomes (55).
What? Isn’t the point of the UBI to secure a just distribution of incomes? Isn’t the UBI legitimate because people it is owed to people in order to justify the social order as a whole?
I think Hayek’s critique of social justice does not apply to the evaluation of the rules that govern a society’s basic structure. Instead, Hayek meant to refute the idea that we can make specific claims about whether certain domains of goods and services are justly distributed
LONG
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/05/hayek-enemy-of-social-justice-and-friend-of-a-universal-basic-income/