Another YouTube channel is amid the process of reuploading Hakim's videos, but I'm uploading this one earlier because it is an extremely important part of an...
I think that’s right. The UBI discourse frustrates me immensely because some proposals using that moniker are so obviously very dangerous, and there’s a tendency to naively advocate for it as if it were one single policy. The pro-social versions of it are very unlikely to be implemented in this real world that we live in.
That said, while the NHS has been under sustained attack for the last 50 years, it does still survive. And it survives because the middle classes fucking love it. The NHS and child benefit are the only two survivors from the postwar settlement and both still struggle on because it is politically impossible to abandon policies which benefit the middle classes, with their loud voices and sharp elbows. Universal benefits are much harder to dismantle than means-tested benefits.
Pessimism is warranted. But I don’t think dismissing UBI is anywhere near as useful as pointing out what makes for a UBI which benefits the masses and what is just a neoliberal’s wet dream.
And the specific reason I think it is vital for the discourse to encompass all these nuances is that the period of history we are currently living through echoes the one that ultimately delivered the NHS and thirty years of (mild) social democracy. If history does repeat itself, we need to make sure we implement policies that benefit everyone but the ultra-rich because those are the only policies which survive reform without revolution. And reform without revolution might be the best we can realistically hope for.
Articulating the obvious is extremely important.
Helps us plebs out there for sure.
I think that’s right. The UBI discourse frustrates me immensely because some proposals using that moniker are so obviously very dangerous, and there’s a tendency to naively advocate for it as if it were one single policy. The pro-social versions of it are very unlikely to be implemented in this real world that we live in.
That said, while the NHS has been under sustained attack for the last 50 years, it does still survive. And it survives because the middle classes fucking love it. The NHS and child benefit are the only two survivors from the postwar settlement and both still struggle on because it is politically impossible to abandon policies which benefit the middle classes, with their loud voices and sharp elbows. Universal benefits are much harder to dismantle than means-tested benefits.
Pessimism is warranted. But I don’t think dismissing UBI is anywhere near as useful as pointing out what makes for a UBI which benefits the masses and what is just a neoliberal’s wet dream.
And the specific reason I think it is vital for the discourse to encompass all these nuances is that the period of history we are currently living through echoes the one that ultimately delivered the NHS and thirty years of (mild) social democracy. If history does repeat itself, we need to make sure we implement policies that benefit everyone but the ultra-rich because those are the only policies which survive reform without revolution. And reform without revolution might be the best we can realistically hope for.