There is a consistent and powerful conservative policy threat to left unity. Not about supporting or not supporting the Democrats but more fundamental.
Conservatives — and the establishment economists whether they consider themselves liberals or conservative — see the Guaranteed Annual Income or Basic Income Guarantee or Universal Basic Income as a way to deal with lack of jobs and the advance of robots, digitization and artificial intelligence. This I find frightening, for it appeals as well to those with poor job prospects or no job prospects, pacifying them in the struggle over fair income distribution. It splits the population into those willing to settle for scraps and those with a profound resentment of those willing to settle for scraps. Endless resentment on both sides, yet not directed at capitalism. Milton Friedman was a champion of Negative Income Taxes. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) was and is an introduction to this but only for those with income in the first place. A more recent proposal, popular in the WSJ, was a plan to head off a fight against globalization by reducing the employees’ share of payroll tax. Many economists have even more recently proposed a universal income as a way to deal with productivity gains eating jobs. The Universal Basic Income (UBI) as it is being called in today’s NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/technology/plan-to-fight-robot-invasion-at-work-give-everyone-a-paycheck.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth®ion=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below Conservatives recognize the income distribution issue as a deep threat and seek to have the public discussion about UBI rather than the alternative of cutting working hours with no cut in pay. The 1% can keep their money and let the 99% fight over who gets a decent job and who gets subsistence. And fight as well about what is the minimum subsistence to keep the pitchforks from coming out. Even worse, the UBI does not lead on to changing the system but preserves it. Cutting working hours is a path to system change. On these lists we spend much time disputing supporting or not supporting Sanders as a Democrat. Supporting or not supporting Universal Basic Income is a discussion we should be having. The alternative for dealing with the job shortage is to sharply reduce standard working hours to raise wages and redistribute income. Separately, cutting working hours is the most promising way, the only promising way to deal with global warming. Gene _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
