Re:Germany begins 3-year universal-basic-income trial
by dragonwriter on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @03:49PM
(#24215359)
> Would you say that every country on the planet is either "capitalism with some social features built in" or is currently failing hard?
Yes, if by the overcomplicated first description you mean modern mixed economies (which are more accurately descended from capitalism than actual capitalism), and those groups overlap, too.
> And if all those systems are capitalistic, what specifically pushes UBI over the edge into being something that isn't capitalism?
Nothing, it's well-within the broad outline of the modern mixed economy.
> From an implementation perspective, UBI is simply an adjustment of the income tax rate including allowing that rate to be negative. It has nothing to do with ownership, markets, or many of the other mainstays of capitalism.
I think it's debatable whether downward redistributive taxation/spending does or does not conflict with mainstays of capitalism (I think it doesz in a good way), but in any case that's a feature of modern mixed economies generally, and UBI isn't really a difference in kind. Where UBI perhaps is more at odds with capitalism than traditional mixed economy welfare programs is in weakening the divide between the chronically excluded and the working class (the lumpenproletariat and the proletariat, to use the Marxist terms), which I think is arguably an important feature of capitalism that is underappreciated specifically because Marxist-inspired socialists don't usually directly address it, especially in a transitional rather than revolutionary concept, because they viee empowering the lumpenproletariat as dangerous because they view that class as prone to recruitment as paid agents, though not actual class allies, of the bourgeoisie while not being effectively organizable against the bourgeoisie.
Yes, if by the overcomplicated first description you mean modern mixed economies (which are more accurately descended from capitalism than actual capitalism), and those groups overlap, too.
> And if all those systems are capitalistic, what specifically pushes UBI over the edge into being something that isn't capitalism?
Nothing, it's well-within the broad outline of the modern mixed economy.
> From an implementation perspective, UBI is simply an adjustment of the income tax rate including allowing that rate to be negative. It has nothing to do with ownership, markets, or many of the other mainstays of capitalism.
I think it's debatable whether downward redistributive taxation/spending does or does not conflict with mainstays of capitalism (I think it doesz in a good way), but in any case that's a feature of modern mixed economies generally, and UBI isn't really a difference in kind. Where UBI perhaps is more at odds with capitalism than traditional mixed economy welfare programs is in weakening the divide between the chronically excluded and the working class (the lumpenproletariat and the proletariat, to use the Marxist terms), which I think is arguably an important feature of capitalism that is underappreciated specifically because Marxist-inspired socialists don't usually directly address it, especially in a transitional rather than revolutionary concept, because they viee empowering the lumpenproletariat as dangerous because they view that class as prone to recruitment as paid agents, though not actual class allies, of the bourgeoisie while not being effectively organizable against the bourgeoisie.