Another cool video compilation with brief commentaries as usual outlining the clips and digging deeper … and with your option to join the discussion… Shiny main topic: Universal Basic Income (UBI)…
Topics:
- Universal Basic Income (UBI)
- Defensive Mentality of the Privileged
- Media War: Never Tell the Truth
- Historic Truth vs Socialism-Smearing Myths
- Bernie Interview by TYT
- Bernie fighting for our Social Security…
- News: Amazon Cancels HQ2 Deal With NYC
- World: Yellow Vests Docu & Venezuela News
- Medicare for All
- Conversation: Tim Black & Graham Elwood Discussing Identity Politics
- Election Integrity
- Global Corporatism Destroying U.S. Education & National Cohesion
- Our New Feudalism
- America’s 3rd Gilded Age
I. Universal Basic Income (UBI)
Unemployed future & the capitalist version of UBI:
Don’t be put off by the SF-time-travel-staging. Once the intro is over, this guy gives a very astute analysis and warning of how the UBI (universal basic income) could be abused:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “A Message from the Dark Future of Capitalism”)
Comment: So, why do I push for a UBI (which I like to call a citizen dividend)? It’s because I always couple it with a reshaping of our wealth-power-and-income pyramid into a broad house on stilts where excessive wealth is taxed away from the money aristocracy to eliminate it, thus not only financing the UBI but ending Big Money in politics right at the source.
Funnily, here the same guy makes arguments for a UBI without realizing it:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “How capitalism KILLS art and science! | How Anarchism Works – Part 4”)
Comment: I, for one, have been stuck in this trap all my working life and wish I could retire from the rat race (by surviving on a UBI) now to spend the few remaining years I have writing meaningful blogs and books (both non-fiction for a better world and fiction for fun), something one rarely makes money with. Another point to make: the generation that came before me could live long enough to retire and retire in good financial circumstances (maybe even owning their home) — all things that have been denied to me: no owned home, no retirement money or decent Social Security income ahead of me, and a stressful life lacking healthcare which makes it actually not very likely I will ever reach our current Social Security retirement age.
UBI = a social inheritance:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Why the U.S. Should Provide Universal Basic Income”)
My response to possible “problems” mentioned:
– “It might lead some people to stop working particularly older workers, younger workers, and the parents of little kids.” — And how exactly is that a problem when we keep struggling with growing unemployment and retirement-ready sick old folks being currently forced to keep working way into retirement age to make ends meet or help their struggling relatives? Or when parents are forced to pay astronomic suns for childcare so they can keep going to work since they MUST keep going to work to either make ends meet now or in the foreseeable future when a parent who took time out to raise their kids might have trouble being allowed back into the workforce?
– “It might create inflation with prices rising since everybody would have more money to spend” — I don’t think so. Simply regulate against price gouging in rentier markets like housing and raise interests. Raised interests make spent money scarcer reducing inflation and at the same time allows regular folks to earn interests in their saving accounts again, which has been taken away from us by Wall Street and the bankster bail-out. More likely, more money among the people would simply stimulate the economy than simply drive prices up. (I am not an economist, but I think I may actually get that part right by now.)
Well put: UBI = a social inheritance instead of those rare private inheritances of the rich supplying them throughout their lives.
A picture is worth a thousand words (on the UBI):
The same goes for a graphic video explanation. While the claim made in the early part of the following clip (namely that we love our jobs) is total BS for many or most of us, and while the BAI/NAI suggestion in the third segment is quite naive if not done together with a plutocracy-tax (a steep tax and cap on excessive wealth and beyond-the-pale incomes is necessary to avoid rigging from the top), the middle segment makes the financing of a UBI quite easy to understand:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Automated Economy Explained: Mechanics of a Basic Income”)
The UBI makes such total sense that even “conservatives” and libertarians agree with it (“directionalist” vs “destinationist”):
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “An Alternative to Welfare”)
Conclusion:
So, yes, you have opponents to the UBI on both the political right and left, but their arguments are not as sound as the supportive arguments on both the left and right. The point is: If done correctly, it will be a blessing, even the salvation from our impending doom of extinction. If it’s done wrong, it will merely secure the ruling class a bit more while feeding the rest of us some scraps to calm us down.
And one more clip:
Someone agrees with me that a UBI would be good for us but that by itself (namely without being financed by a plutocracy-eliminating tax on the rich) won’t uncorrupt our system:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: ‘Why Tech Billionaires Want Basic Income & to “Change the World”’)
II. Defensive Mentality of the Privileged
Video set to the start where it really gets interesting (16:50):
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Prof. Richard Wolff: Sports Empire and the Gospel of Inequality”)
III. Media War: Never Tell the Truth
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “MSNBC “Terrified Of Anti-War Voices” Says Fired Anti-War Host Phil Donahue”)
IV. Historic Truth vs Socialism-Smearing Myths
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Why was East Germany so ‘Poor’?”)
V. Bernie Interview by TYT
Maturing our discussion on wich flaws to fix and how:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “The Conversation – Bernie Sanders (Full Interview)”)
VI. Bernie fighting for our Social Security…
… and “Democrats” officially jumping on his band wagon (while quietly intending none of this?):
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Sen. Sanders Introduces Bill to Expand Social Security”)
VII. News: Amazon Cancels HQ2 Deal With NYC
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Amazon Cancels HQ2 Deal With NYC”)
VIII. World: Yellow Vests Docu & Venezuela News
Documentary on the Yellow Vests
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “France’s yellow rebellion – a movement against Macron | DW Documentary”)
Venezuela – Another U.S. Empire’s Coup
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “MSM Ignores Millions In Support Of Maduro & US Uses CIA-Linked Plane To Smuggle Weapons To Venezuela”)
IX. Medicare for All
Paying for healthcare with taxes just like we do with national defense makes more sense than paying for it with private insurance premiums. We all end up paying for our healthcare, but when there is a middleman in th transactions (namely private insurances whose goal it is to make maximized profits for their owners), then we pay twice as much than people in other countries, and frequently for worse outcomes. The middleman makes healthcare unaffordable for millions upon millions of Americans, and even those who can afford insurance plans or luck out in their job search geting an employer’s private insurance healthcare plan still get the healthcare they need denied countless times by these profit-seeking health insurances. It’s why I have always called our healthcare system the Wild West of Healthcare.
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Pod Save America Gaslights About Medicare For All”)
X. Conversation: Tim Black & Graham Elwood Discussing Identity Politics
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Tim Black On Kamala Harris And Identity Politics — The Political Vigilante”)
XI. Election Integrity
The common U.S. practice: cheating in elections on behalf of the establishment:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Why Did Bernie Abandon Tim Canova & Election Integrity”)
… and the FBI wants kings instead of presidents.
XII. Global Corporatism Destroying U.S. Education & National Cohesion
Democracy needs an educated public which is why our founders regarded it highly. Corporate exploiters (a.k.a. the robber billionaires) dislike democracy that can interfere with their aristocratic power. They only want well-trained workers. Hence the warping of our education (eliminating civics from our curricula, focusing on technical education instead; eliminating critical thinking and replacing it with memorization…), and they want training or education only where they put people to work: China and such cheap labor places, not the U.S. anymore. So, does the constant cutting back on our school budgets seem like a coincident in a fake democracy run by corporate interests? And private/charter schools only exist for corporate profits (poaching education). And there is more…
Other topics:
- The politics-controlling two major parties both are pandering to their respective small base, ignoring the American majority and what’s good for us.
- Police used for politics, managing some consequences of inequality rather than curing the inequality.
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Economic Update: Police & Policing in the US”)
Comment #1 (labels): I recommend not to varnish selfish privileged antisocial right-wingers with flowery terms like “conservative”. That’s been a disguise that status-quo supporting neocon right-wingers have been wearing for a long time to make themselves look acceptable. True conservatives would live by the principles of our founders: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ALL (incidentally also the goal of true progressives not to be confused with identity-politics-wielding incremental-no-change-politicies promoting neoliberal fake progressives). The divisive labels we have been indoctrinated to use only serve to confuse and divide us.
Comment #2 (immigration): There is a proven way to curtail undocumented immigration: the law that is already on our books making it illegal for employers to employ undocumented immigrants. It worked while it was in effect. It hasn’t worked ever since Ronald Reagan stopped enforcing it (an all his successors, including Trump, have left the law-breaking employers alone).
XIII. Our New Feudalism
Capitalism: Winner Take All.
Fake Democracy: Not Working for the People.
A system designed to destroy most people’s dreams and block their potential. Our new feudalism:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “The New Feudalism”)
Quote: “The ability to believe in fake things is essential to upholding the kind of system that we have. Otherwise how do you explain, in a democracy, a system that doesn’t work for most people?”
XIV. America’s 3rd Gilded Age
A look back (in 2014) at the two prior gilded ages, how they were fought, and a recommendation for now. The latter is insufficient, of course, because it is only political and history has shown that purely political barriers don’t keep the corruption from creeping back in. For that we will have to erect an additional barrier or two: one economical (eliminate the hoarded Big Money so it can’t corrupt in the first place) and one mental (good education, public rather than corporate media, and a shared fundamental principle of a good life for all)… Still, this is a cool historic refresher course with a bit of a surprise:
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Lincoln didn’t fight the civil war to free the corporations: Thom Hartmann at TEDxConcordiaUPortland”)
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