How would this be corporate welfare? It’s been shown that a UBI is less expensive than what is wasted on the overhead of need-based welfare systems, and eliminates the poverty trap where making more money (such as from overtime or a small raise) disqualifies your household from a higher value of welfare benefits that you would otherwise qualify for.
Because it allows companies extracting extreme profit from labour, paying their upper management exorbitantly and their labourers starvation wages to just keep doing that.
Edit:
There seems to be a significant misunderstanding of my post.
The question posed was “How could one understand this to be corporate welfare”, in conjunction with the previous qualifier of “If the rich aren’t subsidizing the program”
I’m not against UBI.
I AM against record profits. Profits are the extraction of surplus value from labour. Profits are unpaid wages.
The fact that we have an environment where a working person can not meet their basic needs while their employers take in record profits is a massive problem.
If the wealth transfer happens by way of increased wages, fine. If it happens by way of government transfers via UBI paid for by those same corporations, fine.
The premise to which I was responding was one where the wealthy were NOT the ones footing the bill.
Not every step that makes it slightly easier to exist as a poor person that doesn’t solve capitalism is corporate welfare. Celebrate the steps in the right direction or you’ll make progress impossible.
Never say “It’s not good enough” when you could say “that’s good, what next?”
Employees who have UBI to fall back on aren’t forced to accept that starvation wage. UBI gives everyone a small amount of fuck-you money. Employers paying starvation wages would find themselves with a lack of qualified employees because people can afford to quit and look for a better job.
If you believe that you must believe all programs to help poor people are corporate welfare. And you’re missing three essential other half of the equation that makes UBI possible: increasing taxes in the rich. If a direct transfer of wealth from the upper class to the lower class is corporate welfare, then what isn’t corporate welfare?
So I’m curious, and this is a legitimate concern of mine, but what happens when corporations (and the local mom and pop) raise prices, because you can now afford to pay them more? Should there be a limit enforced by the government to have a freeze on the price of goods? Wouldn’t it be equally effective to skip the UBI and just do the freeze?
In line with the freeze on the price of goods, wouldn’t it be beneficial for the government to demand lower medical costs as well, since the exact same medical and pharmacy companies are selling their stuff in other countries for cheaper than in the US?
This is just another way to keep up the mythical “infinite” growth. Just a little bump as things are starting to stagnate. More money to people = more business = growth.
I think this is the reason why capitalism will keep working properly. Can’t keep growing if you can’t find more people who can pay for your goods or services.
The only possible way I can see someone interpreting this as corporate welfare is if you’re already so corpo pilled that you think a corporation should be required to pay for an employee’s social services instead of thinking that a human’s basic needs shouldn’t be tied to their employment.
I’ll try to explain my concern with UBI, because I’m genuinely curious:
It seems like it lets employers off the hook for paying a living wage; in this sense, it’s like food stamps in the US: we’re socializing the costs of underpaying people
If it isn’t paid for by increasing taxes on the top earners, this would be even more the case, since everyone but the wealthy is pooling the cost?
I’m also confused as to how it isn’t inflationary: without either price controls on necessary goods and/or public options for housing, wouldn’t this result in companies raising the floor on prices and eating up the benefits of UBI?
And this is the part that worries me, as someone who knows people on ODSP (Ontario, Canada’s disability-payments system): what’s to stop some jackass right-wing politician from freezing, means-testing or cutting UBI when they want to “balance the budget”?
I like the idea of UBI in principle, but my concern is that it–especially without curbing runaway inequality on the top-end and a pivot away from neoliberal “the market does everything” policies–it doesn’t really solve much at best, and at worst it’s yet another way to transfer money to the wealthy and absolve government of actually providing services.
It seems like it lets employers off the hook for paying a living wage; in this sense, it’s like food stamps in the US: we’re socializing the costs of underpaying people
What about people who do not have employers? What about people who have disabilities that prevent them from working or building up an employment history that would let them work? What about the elderly? What about children?
Not everyone in society is an employee.
Making employers pay for basic human needs, like Healthcare in the US, means that if you lose your job and get sick you what, can just go die? In this situation it’s not employers underpaying employees, it’s the government acting as a buffer in the system that disconnects basic human needs from your employment status.
If it isn’t paid for by increasing taxes on the top earners, this would be even more the case, since everyone but the wealthy is pooling the cost?
Everyone but the wealthy is already pooling the cost of mass homeless and addiction crises, and people not having the social support and safety nets that they need to be able to meaningfully improve their lives.
I’m also confused as to how it isn’t inflationary: without either price controls on necessary goods and/or public options for housing, wouldn’t this result in companies raising the floor on prices and eating up the benefits of UBI?
Giving consumers money is not inflationary. Full stop.
Companies raising prices and price gouging is inflationary, and that does not happen in the face of consumers having more money, that happens in the face of inelastic demand or markets that are broken in other ways. A truly competitive market will still keep prices low even if consumers are wealthier since they are competing and undercutting the firm next to them to get your business.
Broken non competitive markets that are dominated by massive corporations will price gouge and do their best to suck up excess consumer profits, but that has nothing to do with UBI and by that logic why give consumers money at all or ever try and raise their standard of living? Two things need to happen, we need to empower regulators and competition laws to prevent corporate consolidation that causes inflation and sucks up excess money in the system, and we need to provide people with enough money to achieve a basic standard of living. Both need to happen and both cannot and will not happen simultaneously with one stroke of a pen so you may as well start working on one of them if not both.
Housing is slightly trickier and requires different solutions, since you don’t want to encourage limitless growth into nature (hence greenbelts), which constrains supply of inherently in demand resource (and might suggest that maybe capitalism, a system based on limitless growth, isn’t the best system of resource allocation when it comes to housing) but again, this is already an issue with corporations and landlords increasingly profiting off of consumers in the current market, giving consumers more money doesn’t change that.
And this is the part that worries me, as someone who knows people on ODSP (Ontario, Canada’s disability-payments system): what’s to stop some jackass right-wing politician from freezing, means-testing or cutting UBI when they want to “balance the budget”?
That’s a problem sure, but that’s a problem right now with all other social programs. ODSP has effectively been frozen since Doug Ford got into power / has slid backwards since those payments are not tied to inflation or cost of living.
I’ll watch that when I’ve been awake more than five minutes, but the question that immediately comes to mind is why do governments collect taxes at all? Sure, they could just print money to pay for everything, but I can see some problems with that approach.
Are we going to tax the wealthy to pay for it?
Because otherwise this is basically corporate welfare at best, and inflationary at worst.
How would this be corporate welfare? It’s been shown that a UBI is less expensive than what is wasted on the overhead of need-based welfare systems, and eliminates the poverty trap where making more money (such as from overtime or a small raise) disqualifies your household from a higher value of welfare benefits that you would otherwise qualify for.
Because it allows companies extracting extreme profit from labour, paying their upper management exorbitantly and their labourers starvation wages to just keep doing that.
Edit:
There seems to be a significant misunderstanding of my post.
The question posed was “How could one understand this to be corporate welfare”, in conjunction with the previous qualifier of “If the rich aren’t subsidizing the program”
I’m not against UBI.
I AM against record profits. Profits are the extraction of surplus value from labour. Profits are unpaid wages.
The fact that we have an environment where a working person can not meet their basic needs while their employers take in record profits is a massive problem.
If the wealth transfer happens by way of increased wages, fine. If it happens by way of government transfers via UBI paid for by those same corporations, fine.
The premise to which I was responding was one where the wealthy were NOT the ones footing the bill.
Not every step that makes it slightly easier to exist as a poor person that doesn’t solve capitalism is corporate welfare. Celebrate the steps in the right direction or you’ll make progress impossible.
Never say “It’s not good enough” when you could say “that’s good, what next?”
Man, what a beautifully positive outlook
Employees who have UBI to fall back on aren’t forced to accept that starvation wage. UBI gives everyone a small amount of fuck-you money. Employers paying starvation wages would find themselves with a lack of qualified employees because people can afford to quit and look for a better job.
If you believe that you must believe all programs to help poor people are corporate welfare. And you’re missing three essential other half of the equation that makes UBI possible: increasing taxes in the rich. If a direct transfer of wealth from the upper class to the lower class is corporate welfare, then what isn’t corporate welfare?
pvsrh@lemmy.ca wrote:
Wilzax@Lemmy.world asked:
The line of questioning was specifically about if the programisn’t funded by the wealthy.
If UBI is done right, no one will need to work to survive, so they can just quit that exploitative job.
Correct. In fact, this applies wage pressure upward because employees no longer feel the necessity to stick with a shit-paying job.
So I’m curious, and this is a legitimate concern of mine, but what happens when corporations (and the local mom and pop) raise prices, because you can now afford to pay them more? Should there be a limit enforced by the government to have a freeze on the price of goods? Wouldn’t it be equally effective to skip the UBI and just do the freeze?
In line with the freeze on the price of goods, wouldn’t it be beneficial for the government to demand lower medical costs as well, since the exact same medical and pharmacy companies are selling their stuff in other countries for cheaper than in the US?
if the capitalist class isn’t up in arms about all this then there’s a very good, very profitable, reason.
They probably just don’t take it seriously. And they’re probably right.
This is just another way to keep up the mythical “infinite” growth. Just a little bump as things are starting to stagnate. More money to people = more business = growth.
I think this is the reason why capitalism will keep working properly. Can’t keep growing if you can’t find more people who can pay for your goods or services.
Or maybe I’m just too naive.
How on earth is this corporate welfare?
The only possible way I can see someone interpreting this as corporate welfare is if you’re already so corpo pilled that you think a corporation should be required to pay for an employee’s social services instead of thinking that a human’s basic needs shouldn’t be tied to their employment.
I’ll try to explain my concern with UBI, because I’m genuinely curious:
I like the idea of UBI in principle, but my concern is that it–especially without curbing runaway inequality on the top-end and a pivot away from neoliberal “the market does everything” policies–it doesn’t really solve much at best, and at worst it’s yet another way to transfer money to the wealthy and absolve government of actually providing services.
What about people who do not have employers? What about people who have disabilities that prevent them from working or building up an employment history that would let them work? What about the elderly? What about children?
Not everyone in society is an employee.
Making employers pay for basic human needs, like Healthcare in the US, means that if you lose your job and get sick you what, can just go die? In this situation it’s not employers underpaying employees, it’s the government acting as a buffer in the system that disconnects basic human needs from your employment status.
Everyone but the wealthy is already pooling the cost of mass homeless and addiction crises, and people not having the social support and safety nets that they need to be able to meaningfully improve their lives.
Giving consumers money is not inflationary. Full stop.
Companies raising prices and price gouging is inflationary, and that does not happen in the face of consumers having more money, that happens in the face of inelastic demand or markets that are broken in other ways. A truly competitive market will still keep prices low even if consumers are wealthier since they are competing and undercutting the firm next to them to get your business.
Broken non competitive markets that are dominated by massive corporations will price gouge and do their best to suck up excess consumer profits, but that has nothing to do with UBI and by that logic why give consumers money at all or ever try and raise their standard of living? Two things need to happen, we need to empower regulators and competition laws to prevent corporate consolidation that causes inflation and sucks up excess money in the system, and we need to provide people with enough money to achieve a basic standard of living. Both need to happen and both cannot and will not happen simultaneously with one stroke of a pen so you may as well start working on one of them if not both.
Housing is slightly trickier and requires different solutions, since you don’t want to encourage limitless growth into nature (hence greenbelts), which constrains supply of inherently in demand resource (and might suggest that maybe capitalism, a system based on limitless growth, isn’t the best system of resource allocation when it comes to housing) but again, this is already an issue with corporations and landlords increasingly profiting off of consumers in the current market, giving consumers more money doesn’t change that.
That’s a problem sure, but that’s a problem right now with all other social programs. ODSP has effectively been frozen since Doug Ford got into power / has slid backwards since those payments are not tied to inflation or cost of living.
Probably not.
It would be the solution, though. Redistribute excess to those who have less because there is no egregious excess without egregious poverty.
If they’re not planning on taxing the wealthy, where is the money supposed to come from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFhKVCaadzE
Governments don’t raise taxes to pay for things.
I’ll watch that when I’ve been awake more than five minutes, but the question that immediately comes to mind is why do governments collect taxes at all? Sure, they could just print money to pay for everything, but I can see some problems with that approach.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=kFhKVCaadzE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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