2020 US Election (Part One)

[rah]

If you want to decouple value from work, I think you need to take the word income out of the name.

 

[Gori the Grey]

If you want to decouple value from work, I think you need to take the word income out of the name.

Why?

All I mean is in-come is not etymologically or logically related to either work or value. It's just resources that come-in to you. What matter how?

Then once you answer, I'll say another thing.

 

[Takhisis]

Oh, that's absolutely correct. But you're not going to get any leverage for UBI by saying "everyone should be allowed to work as little as rich people work, so let's take the rich people's money and give it to everybody." Again, I'm not engaging the logic of the rationale for UBI, just making my own prediction about how hard it's going to prove to sell it. Its proponents, I think, don't know what they're up against, what basically reflex-reactions of the Western mind presently are to certain ideas.

Oh yes, it's a hard sell because it'll be propunding a rational argument against a skewed, fake reality. First you have to take down the reality and, whatever crap many if not most pople in the US might say about bootstraps and being self-made and so on, what they aspire to is to achieve a disproportionate income for their effort (being corporate lawyers, company executives, that kind of thing).
UBI depends on destroying that dream of prosperity, even if millionaires can become philantropists the people who want to become millionaires certainly won't.

Then once you answer, I'll say another thing.

You do tend to do that.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I do, don't I? It's almost as though I fancy myself on some kind of discussion forum.

 

[rah]

Why?

All I mean is in-come is not etymologically or logically related to either work or value. It's just resources that come-in to you. What matter how?

Then once you answer, I'll say another thing.

Too many people will make that association and I agree that it will make it more difficult to sell.

 

[Traitorfish]

That's all I mean. That's a thing, deeply embedded in the Western mind: in the sweat of thy brow shall thou eat thy bread. A lot of people are going to balk at just giving bread and not tying it to work. I'm not saying it can't be overcome. I'm just saying the proponents of UBI are going to have to find a sales strategy for overcoming this association. It's deeply embedded. The freethinkers on a site like this can cast if off as an outdated relic: to get it voted in as a national policy is going to be a lift.

That's kind of a hocus pocus, though, because there is no mechanism by which wage received corresponds to labour input. And even if there was, modern work is so complex, so social, that it's impossible to assign a meaningful objective price value to most work. It's a market, with both worker and employer trying to get as much as they can for as little as they can. The idea that we still, in some indirect way, produce the means of our own subsistence is a moral story we tell about modern society, rather than a material description of how that society actually works. It's ideology, and given that most people in the United States did not participate in the nexus of wage-labour until well into the nineteenth century, it's necessarily recent ideology.

 

[inthesomeday]

Gori seems to agree. His question, as I read it, is “how does one intend to campaign for a policy that implicitly contradicts this incredibly popular and widespread ideology?”

 

[Tristan_C]

It's just clear that:

[1] Americans don't like policy much
[2] Media will cover things in a non-policy way
[3] The occasional dogbone major media throws to policy is usually dumb and milqutoast

[1] is passably accurate for the population as a whole if you are cynical, but unclear for the likely voters, and definitely untrue for the ones who vote in every election and midterm, which is a bit shy of a quarter of the whole population.

[2] and [3] are unambiguously true. Note that the institutional trust rating for newspapers and news channels has plunged in the past several years, though. It is likely that Americans are more policy-minded than the media's reporting strategy allows-for.

 

[Imaus]

Do you guys think Biden will drop like a stone or be a rock in stormy waters?

Bernie seems to be slipping. He keeps trying to put economic welfare before social welfare. Old Left meets New Left - Bernie keeps waving at a hypothetical 'rising tide lifts all boats'/new deal 2.0 scenario, but identity politics and groups, such as blacks which he was talking to this week, want something a bit more committed and specialized towards their needs and concerns. And who can blame them? The New Deal itself, could be said, was almost choked to death because it might had helped 'them' rather than the white workers, the USA has undergone a huge reaction towards a black president and a black-focused movement for a good third? of the 21st century so far (2013+) with few perceived victories or concessions.

This might drive the Black voter base, and maybe other minorities, away from Bernie towards other candidates - Warren, Gabbard?, Harris - especially if Bernie doesn't get the memo. Since this is something he faced before, in 2015, maybe he won't.

 

[Zkribbler]

Biden's in.

He announces with a very eloquent denouncement of Trumpism, which gives me pause. This was Hillary's strategy: tell everyone what a jackass Trump is. Everyone already know this.

 

[Berzerker]

he's not an agent of change, he's just another corporate toady with a terrible record on the drug war

but he probably stands the best chance of challenging Trump in the rust belt

edit: he voted to invade Iraq, thats a disqualifier

 

[rah]

Yeah, establishment through and through

But yeah, against Trump he will carry all the blue states and would stand up better in some of the battleground states.

Not my favorite choice.

 

[Berzerker]

I just saw his first ad accusing Trump of calling neo-Nazis at Charlottesville fine people, a majority of people opposed removing the statue of R.E.Lee. It doesn't matter if neo-Nazis were among those who showed up at the protest.

 

[rah]

He'd better concentrate on the other 19 candidates and not get too far ahead of himself.

 

[Ajidica]

It doesn't matter if neo-Nazis were among those who showed up at the protest.

If neo-Nazis show up at a protest to support you, you should probably rethink what you are protesting.
Just a general principle to live by.

 

[Berzerker]

If neo-Nazis show up at a protest to support you, you should probably rethink what you are protesting.
Just a general principle to live by.

A majority of people want to keep the statues. Are they all neo-Nazis? Can 'fine people' show up to protest the removal of a statue? Yes, neo-Nazis showed up too and they got together at night to walk around shouting slogans with tiki torches and we were treated to those constant images in conjunction with Trump's words. He wasn't talking about them, he said there were fine people on both sides of the statue protest the day a brawl ensued. Now, why is it whenever looters and rioters show up at a protest of left wingers the same media tells us the protesters are not bad too because of a guilt by association?

 

[inthesomeday]

Because looters and rioters are good people...

 

[Takhisis]

A majority of people want to keep the statues. Are they all neo-Nazis?

Did they disavow those Nazis, tell them to go away, express any disagreement?

he said there were fine people on both sides of the statue protest

Ah-hum…

 

[Zkribbler]

I just saw his first ad accusing Trump of calling neo-Nazis at Charlottesville fine people, a majority of people opposed removing the statue of R.E.Lee. It doesn't matter if neo-Nazis were among those who showed up at the protest.

They didn't just "show up." White supremacists organized the protest, bringing in neo-Nazis neo-facists, Klansmen, etc. to "unite the right." The government of Charlotte voted to remove the statue; the majority of Americans wanted the statue removed.

https://hyperallergic.com/397792/polls-americans-confederate-statues-removal/

 

[Berzerker]

Did they disavow those Nazis, tell them to go away, express any disagreement?

Ah-hum…

They were there to disagree with removing a statue, how they felt about neo-Nazis wasn't investigated by the media but I doubt they're fans or some would have shown up for their tiki torch parade. Why does it matter?

They didn't just "show up." White supremacists organized the protest, bringing in neo-Nazis neo-facists, Klansmen, etc. to "unite the right." The government of Charlotte voted to remove the statue; the majority of Americans wanted the statue removed.

https://hyperallergic.com/397792/polls-americans-confederate-statues-removal/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...icans-think-confederate-statues-should-remain

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-protests-poll-idUSKCN1B12EG

54 to 27% for keeping them

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confederate-statues-removal-polls_n_599de056e4b05710aa59841c

49 to 33% for keeping them

Those are the polls I saw

Yes I know they used the statue issue to "Unite the Right". That doesn't change the fact people who were not neo-Nazis were there but the media and Democrats are intent on calling then neo-Nazis anyway.