An addendum to the idpol is cancer post

 So recently I expressed that my distaste with SJWs has reached a critical level and I will no longer even try to consider those who espouse such politics as allies. I've had a strained relationship with that part of the left for a while, and while I still retain that academically, those politics have validity, I've come out against them in actual politics. Mainly because of the common complaints I have against them.

The fact is, I believe these politics are cancerous, and that the proponents aren't always acting in good faith. However, I do want to clarify something, after listening to Andrew Yang talk on Krystal, Kyle and Friends. Andrew Yang, much like me in recent months, expressed the fact that he tends to struggle with categorizing his belief system. I settled upon indepentarianism given my strong UBI and anti work views, but Yang might be a little different. Anyway, he mentioned looking back at political thinkers that influenced him, he said Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader. This is pretty well known in UBI oriented circles, but King actually came out in favor of UBI late in his life, and advocated for building a coalition with poor white voters to achieve common goals. 

And this made me think if I was too harsh recently, and painted too broad of a brush. Here's the thing. I'm not necessarily against the aims that a lot of those activists are for, and I think some of them are good people. And previously, I believed we could build coalitions with each other to achieve common goals. And as long as we can do that, I'm willing to work with them. It's why come election time I end up voting green. They do idpol too, but they aren't so self righteous about it they push away white voters who want progressive change. My problem with modern idpol really boils down to the fact that it seems to be attempting to undermine my goals. It pushes things I'm for in such a corrupted, divisive, watered down way, that it actually just alienates me. It insists that I have to be on board with their agenda, when they're not on board with mine, where they constantly talk down to me and engage in bullying behavior. I ain't taking those peoples' crap. I'm sorry, I'm not. Like Hillary Clinton saying that breaking up the banks doesn't solve racism. Sure, maybe it doesn't, but economic reform isn't a good thing? I'm willing to work with others on goals I'm not necessarily super hardcore or enthusiastic about, as long as they are willing to work on mine. A lot of my burning bridges with the idpol crowd really comes down to a lack of reciprocity and bad faith arguing. So I do want to make that clear. I'm fairly neutral on a lot of these issues. If I lean one way or the other, it depends on the issue, how its framed, and how it fits in my larger philosophical framework. I might be against affirmative action and hiring quotas, but very sympathetic toward, say, Colin Kapernick's free speech rights. And I can even compromise on stuff I don't like that much, if I get something in return. The problem is these politics are used in bad faith to make the entire discussion about them, explicitly at the expense of my politics, and that just doesn't fly with me. If you don't care about my issues why should I care about yours? I just wanted to clarify that.

Creating the blueprint for a post work society

At this point, I think it would be a good idea to expand on concepts that I discussed recently involving basic income and antiwork politics and try to come up with a basic blueprint to achieve a post work society, or as close to it as possible. 

First, it would be a good idea to define what I mean by post work society. I don't necessarily mean abolishing all work, as I suspect that would be impossible, and would displease many anyway. Rather, my politics is about reducing coercion as much as possible to ensure that all work (defined as paid employment) is voluntary and that any undesirable work is either automated or done by volunteers who are compensated well for it. 

While our current society has a 60%+ labor participation rate and our economic system basically forces as many people as possible to work 40 hours a week, a post work society as I see it may have a roughly 20-30% labor participation rate instead, or potentially higher with shorter work weeks. Work would be done by volunteers who do it simply because they either derive purpose from it, or desire higher standards of living than the basic income allows.

My blueprint, in actuality, does not seem very different from John Bentley's "Full Unemployment", but I do cede that some work simply cannot be automated, and that some people actually do desire to work, and think their lives would be empty without it. I really don't seek a post work society that wishes to deny anyone the opportunities to make extra cash or do something that gives them purpose, rather, I just want to remove the economic coercion from the equation, and help us begin to transition toward a post scarcity society. While post scarcity is the ideal, it may never be reached, but it should never stop being strived toward. But, in order to get there, we need to change our system from one that relies on some form of reciprocity carrying an obligation to work or other forced labor economy. 

So how do we get there?

As we know, I define the biggest problems with this economic system as not necessarily being tied to who owns the means of production, but how the market, as its structured, coerces participation in order to acquire resources. And obviously, the solution, as outlined in previous posts on this topic, involves weakening the link between work and income. Now, when I saw weakening, I mean that, a weakening. I don't believe it should be eliminated, because I do count on the profit incentive remaining to encourage work participation, I simply seek to weaken it enough to remove coerced participation. There are two policies in particular that I would implement in order to accomplish this, and these would be universal basic income and medicare for all. Basic income is necessary to ensure everyone has a basic minimum standard of living to pay for housing, food, and other necessities. Medicare for all is necessary due to high medical costs and how a market based healthcare system tends to bankrupt people, meaning UBI in itself would not be enough for financial independence. This system would mirror the system we currently give seniors. Seniors normally get some form of social security, an average of $1500 a month or so, with medicare, which was granted because seniors would go bankrupt from healthcare bills living on social security alone. This system also mirrors Yang's purported top goals in the 2020 race. 

My basic income would only be $1100 a month, designed to be slightly above the US poverty line. Despite my lofty goals, I recognize we have to be realistic on accomplishing these goals. We cannot just shift to a post work society overnight, and we still need lots of human labor. So we need to balance these goals with the practical reality of running an economy. But giving people a poverty line basic income would give them a decent living standard that would equal or exceed welfare in most cases. It would not be as generous as unemployment or social security benefits outright in most situations, but it would get kind of close. Around 2/3 or 3/4 the average amount roughly. This seems fair for an unconditional benefit, and given my math on the matter is, pretty feasible. Some will say this is too generous, some say it is too little, but I think it is just right as a baseline amount given what's practically feasible.

Studies have looked at basic income amounts similar to and less than this, and have found they don't greatly decrease work incentive. Results, generally speaking, seem to range between no disincentive to maybe 15% less than currently exists. 15% seems doable, it would be the equivalent of moving to a 34 hour work week or something like that, when looked at another way. Most losses in the article I stated (yeah, I know, paywall, but I can't find a PDF and I've read it before) seem to indicate the most dramatic work losses among teenagers, housewives (or, in a modern gender neutral context, secondary earners), and single moms, which are groups that you can make an argument shouldn't have to work. The fact is, most people do want to work, and basic income should be just enough to ensure a basic standard of living, without destroying the incentive to desire higher standards of living or the social and psychological benefits that currently come with work. Some would likely drop out entirely, but assuming that this level is low enough to not threaten the productivity of the economy, that is fine. 

These amounts would be enough when scaled up to household size. Two adults (say, a couple or two roommates) would bring in $26,400 a year, which seems reasonable. It would definitely lighten the load on them, and with free healthcare, I'd imagine they would get by, but many would still work to live better. 

So what effect would this have on the labor market?

 Well, as I said, work disincentive would not decrease dramatically, but still, a mild effect may have positive effects on the economy. By giving people the right to say no, it would allow people to more easily quit bad jobs, thus pressuring employers to more equitably treat their employees. This means higher pay and better work hours. This might put more strain on some employers, but the way I see it, one of three things will happen to jobs.

1) They will need to pay their workers better and treat them more fairly to incentivize them to work. Supply of labor goes down, demand remains the same, in moderation, this means higher wages and better working conditions. Currently labor is subsidized by a gun to the head, depressing its true market value. Amazon, for example, wouldn't be able to get away with their crap if workers can walk off the job and survive. They would need to make work more pleasant for their workers, or pay better. 

2) Some jobs might be automated. As technology becomes cheaper, jobs can become more automated. Some fear what this means for the future of the economy. Some claim there will always be more jobs to replace them. But long story short, some jobs will disappear a little more quickly. Good riddance I say. If workers won't work those jobs without being forced, and employers aren't willing to offer jobs at wages and conditions are willing to accept, those jobs can disappear for all I care. 

3) Some jobs and industries might disappear. I don't expect this to happen too much, but if work disincentive is high enough, and employers aren't willing to adapt and cannot automate jobs, some businesses might disappear. This will give a heart attack to the GDP and productivity minded, but the way I see it, if the jobs aren't essential for the economy, and no one is willing to do them, maybe they should not exist. As we know from the pandemic, many industries are not essential. Sit down restaurants, amusement parks, movie theaters, etc. These industries are nice but they don't have to exist. And if their business model is subsidized by coerced labor, then maybe they shouldn't exist. That's up to the market to decide.

So what happens if something goes wrong?

Nothing should go wrong, because ideally these policies would be implemented slowly, perhaps over the course of 5-10 years, allowing time for the economy to adjust or problems to be identified before they become a problem, but let's say it does, what would go wrong and why?

Well, the biggest issue that I know of would basically be that the work disincentive would be too much. Too many people would quit working and the economy would enter free fall. This should not happen if UBI is implemented slowly, and we should see problems far in advance of them becoming serious. If we implemented UBI in 20% increments over 5 years, or 10% increments in 10, we should see work disincentive being a problem long before it does. If people start quitting at $500 a month and it starts accelerating at $600 a month and $700 a month, we could just cap the basic income at the highest sustainable amount, allowing the market to adjust, before pushing it higher if we ever do. If basic income leads to revenue raising issues, we could also cap it at a lower amount if needed. I admit my plan is ambitious, especially beside medicare for all. But I believe it should be tried. 

I mean, ultimately, I am an incrementalist. I do see our society like a ship that turns slowly. I want to move it, but it can only move so fast. I only support moving as fast as is practically possible. I don't want to destabilize the whole thing in the name of my ideology. I'm not that much of an ideologue. I have my biases, but I do see the writing on the wall if needed.

Other issues might be more on the worker side. Rather than BI being too much, it might be too little. Well, if it is, and we can't raise UBI higher due to tax ceilings and laffer curves, we could try more traditional social democratic measures. Unions in work place would still be important and UBI should make it easier than ever to unionize. We could continue to fight for higher minimum wages and working conditions such as time off, reasonable work hours, and safety regulations. Quite frankly I'm more worried about UBI not being sufficient to accomplish all I hope it does, rather than it being too much. 

Another issue is other industries like housing might eat up all of the gains under UBI. I do not believe this will happen as much as say, Marxists, say it will. For the housing market to unilaterally raise prices to put people in the same position there are now, there would need to be a serious supply and demand problem. This might happen in certain congested markets where people are tied to jobs, like New York or San Francisco, but my solution is this: MOVE! Some places are just going to be so hostile to the poor to live in, that they're never going to afford it. It's just a matter of too many people wanting to live there, and there not being enough space. Ricardo's law of rents applies to housing markets in relation to work, but if UBI frees people from work, they could find somewhere less populous to live, where housing is far cheaper. It's fine, as long as most places across the country are reasonably comfortable to live in at around UBI level. I also would not be opposed to increasing housing assistance or programs that create low cost housing for people living around the UBI level. I don't think that individual landlords have enough power to just unilaterally raise rent nationwide. Too much competition. Too many places to live. It's only attachment to certain areas that cause housing to skyrocket. 

 Education is another potential problem market, and I support free public college. Along with making work voluntary, I also want to give people the tools needed to find the careers they want, free of charge. College should not be locked behind paywalls, it should be provided to everyone who wants it. This would allow anyone to achieve upper mobility and find jobs they want to do, if they want to do them. 

That said, I think concerns about things going wrong are overstated, and if they happen, they can be dealt with as they arise.

Looking ahead long term

Looking ahead long term, work will change. This will happen regardless of whether basic income is implemented, because as Yang states, automation is coming. The real question is what we do with it. Will we create more jobs and cling to the same outdated frameworks? Or will we seek to free people? Or maybe both, since I do think a lot of people would like to work. I really don't know exactly what will happen, and this is going to be something for us to all go through together. Ultimately, I want to give everyone what they want. Work for those who want it, freedom for those who want it. Basic income might not change much. The economy might go along like it always has, with most people working. Maybe people will be more wealthy and work the same as they always have. Maybe working conditions will improve and people will work less, mostly taking up side gigs or part time jobs to supplement their income. Maybe many will see the joys of not being forced to participate in the rat race and choose to live off of UBI. Whatever happens, as long as it happens gradually, it will be fine. We might have a system with 50-60% of people working full time, similar to how things are now in a few decades. We might have 40% of people working 20-30 hours a week instead. We might have 20% of people working full time, and another 20% working part time. I really don't know. I highly doubt we will eliminate work entirely, and those discussions are beyond the scope of my lifetime. I'm likely only going to be around on this earth, what, another 50 years? Maybe more, maybe less. So I'm only thinking at most 50 years ahead. That's all we can do. And even that isn't going to be with the best of accuracy. People in the 1960s predicted many of the things I'm hoping for in the next 50, to happen by the year 2000. John Keynes thought by 2030 we would be working 15 hours a week. Of course, I would argue these failures are due to how our social structures perpetuate work and employment as they always have, and are inflexible at allowing for anything else, hence my call for a UBI. 

In fifty years, we might have an economy that ranges from being very similar to our own, to one in which robots do most of the work and only around half of the people who work today need to work to maintain society. And in the long term, that's going to present further challenges. If anyone reads this in the future, there's something I want you to know. Whatever my ideas are here, take them at face value for their worth here in 2021. They might be relevant to your time, they may not. Don't be that guy who reads theory from hundreds of years ago and acts like this is the ideal model for society. It isn't. I read socialist or anarchist theory from the 19th century and I find their works dated. I read works from the enlightenment era and find them even more dated. Despite that, these theories still have die hard proponents even today, who cling to them and act like they're the end all for philosophy. And it's annoying, because I find all of them, even the progressive leftists, to be horridly dated.

In fifty years, perhaps you will reach a state of much less work done due to my ideas, and now you have questions of whether to continue capitalism or pursue socialism. Perhaps my ideas will become completely irrelevant as climate change causes such scarcity from environmental backlash that my ideas seem naively unrealistic. I have no answers for you. I am not a revolutionary. I am a reformist. And I only seek to transition us as far as I can reasonably see a path toward. I have a plan to get us from point A to point B, and I have ideas of where I want to go, but ultimately where to go from there lies with the next generation. Do not view my word as an end all. It is only the beginning transition phase from a modern 20-21st century capitalist society, to something resembling post scarcity as I see it.

Conclusion

Here, I tried to give a brief outline of how I believe is best to achieve a post work society, or something close to it. I don't know if it will ever be truly post work, that is up to us in the future, and to technological advances. My ideas are intended to be compatible with a mixed capitalist economy like social democracy, but might work under mild forms of socialism too. 

The crux of my ideas are centered around basic income and medicare for all. Once peoples' basic needs are taken care of without being linked to work, people would be free to pursue work for more money or other reasons if they desire, or to sit around and "do nothing." Most people will likely work, according to basic income trials. However, basic income will allow people to do labor on their own terms, and this over time will change the labor market, leading to jobs paying better and having better working conditions, or being automated. Some industries with unsustainable business models might stop existing, but that's for the market to decide.

Over time, I ideally hope to see America turn away from the concept of a full employment economy, focusing on ensuring basic needs through automation, with people doing fulfulling work they find interesting if they desire, or highly paid technical work that is essential to society. However, things might change very little over the long term, or a lot, it really depends. Whatever the outcome, I put it into the hands of the people of the future, and their choices as to what they find best for themselves. I do support people to have the freedom to live as they want, after all. 

Ripping off the band aid: identity politics is cancer

So, my relationship in recent years has been very complicated with identity politics. At first, I tried to be supportive. I mean, I tried to do the liberal thing, recognize systemic issues exist, and they do exist. But, these politics have become a cancer that have metastasized in the democratic party and the left in recent years, and it's just insufferable. I dont feel like my views on the issues have really changed. I just realized I'm not as progressive as I thought I was on them. My support for them had largely been dependent on building coalitions with these groups and seeking common goals, but largely, the people advocating for them largely don't want that. We're not all in it together, and I really don't see its advocates as serious potential political allies any more, with me becoming more and more resentful toward these politics. 

Before I get into the bad, let me focus on the good. I believe critical theory, the theory that these politics is based on, has validity. Critical theory is a subset of Marx's conflict theory which looks at conflict between different groups within society. While Marx focused on the ruling class vs the working class, critical theory focuses on power dynamics between men and women, people of different races, different sexualities, etc., to find problematic dynamics within these groups. This is a valid form of study and even though I'm ripping these politics a new one, I still think that this is valid. However, I have several problems with these politics now.

First of all, and this is largely the big issue, these politics come at the expense of everything else. Like, they are taking over politics and sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. You can't discuss anything without it turning into a race war these days. People are linking basic income with reparations. When student loan debt is brought up people mention most black people didn't go to college. When forgiveness comes up they wanna forgive black loans and not white loans, because that solves racism somehow. Whenever I push for any issue, some idpol person is there, telling me to check my privilege, and telling me how much worse everyone has it and I have to get on board. Well, screw you, no. 

These politics are supposed to be a subset of a certain theory. A lens. One way of seeing society. They should be a secondary bunch of issues used to expand a coalition, not the end all that should define an entire political movement or party at the expense of everything else. But because the democrats rely so heavily on POC vote, and how white progressives are lambasted for daring advocate for *checks notes* basic Rooseveltian social democracy, our politics have turned into a total crapshow. 

Second of all, as kind of implied, the politics are divisive. I grew up right wing. And the right isn't really inherently racist. Like there's the dog whistle stuff, and some undercurrents of racism they often don't think about or are aware of, but most conservatives believe in their heart of hearts that all people are equal. They tend to believe "I'm not racist, I don't see color." Now, to some extent that's the problem. Right wing viewpoints have principles of equality but are completely devoid of any sense of sociology. They don't understand concepts of privilege, etc. And pushing these politics tends to not resonate well with people who don't buy into critical theory. Because the perceived racism is questionable in their eyes, and the solutions are often alienating. Whites look at the idea of reparations and are like "why should they get free money I worked for?", heck resentment politics is very strong on the right. It's a huge reason I prefer UBI and medicare for all, to defeat resentment politics you need to help everyone. But these politics aren't about helping everyone, but helping one group, often at the expense of another group. Redistributing opportunities within a flawed system rather than fixing the system as a whole. And this just drives people who don't benefit, myself included to some extent, to the right. Because if this is what the left is, well, this doesn't help us, it actually hurts us, so why would we be for it.

Third, these politics are often extremely cultish and authoritarian. To them, because solving racism and the like is the core issue, at the expense of everything else, everyone is willing to contort themselves to extremes to prove how not racist they are. Privilege reminds me of the original sin of christianity, something people are often expected to constantly apologize and atone for. This is toxic behavior. No one should be forced to constantly virtue signal and give up their top priorities for identity issues. Idpol advocates are also extremely intolerant of other opinions. They are so intent on banning racism they want to criminalize hate speech in a lot of cases. And the softer ones support stuff like cancel culture, which basically involves the free market putting pressure on people and punishing them for behaving in certain ways. Believing that private coercion is still coercion, I cant help but find these politics toxic.

Finally, these politics are used cynically to derail conversations and drive wedges in politics. The biggest issue by far I have with this stuff is the fact that democrats explicitly use it to undermine progressives. I mean, at this point, it's clear to me that this is being done intentionally. When HRC ran in 2016 she used her femininity as a weapon and accused all detractors of sexism. When democrats talk about their primaries, they fetishize black voters as a voting block and use this to drive their moderate coalition. Any criticism against this comes off as racist. If you criticize Pete Buttigieg, you're a homophobe, etc. This stuff really is being used by cynical powers as a system of control to stop them from having a voice and a narrative that carries any weight. The powers that be use it to sabotage and undermine any legitimate political movement and divide and conquer people. And sadly, it works. 

Well, I'm tolerating this no more. As you guys can probably tell, I'm not a bad guy. I'm not really a racist, or a sexist, or anti anything. I mean do what you want, and yes privilege is real, blah blah blah. But, these kinds of politics are literally cancer. Like, they grow endlessly, take over everything, hijack all discussions, and ultimately kill the host organism or transform it into something unrecognizable. I just can't take it any more. This doesn't change my views on the issues per se, but I'm tired of playing the nice guy with these politics on this blog and elsewhere and trying to play this fine line of "I agree with you but...". No. These politics are out of hand. It isn't just a small movement that's poisoning the rest of the well any more. The entire thing taking over left wing politics in recent years like it is, is literally cancer. I'm freaking done.

Why I never was a "true democrat" in retrospect

So, I have this debate a lot with centrist libs. All of this crap about Bernie not being a real democrat, and me not being a real democrat, and blah blah blah.

You know what? Fine, after a lot of reflection, I'll own it. I've never been a 'true democrat" outside of perhaps a couple years when I was transitioning out of conservatism. 

And here's why. Democrats are shaped by modern historical forces that do not shape my views. They used to be far more economically progressive, but they moderated starting in the 1990s, when they became controlled by the "new democratic" coalition under people like Clinton, Gore, Biden, etc. The democratic party is also heavily shaped by racism in the United States. They used to be the party of white southerners under FDR but as the civil rights movement gained prominence, they left the party, leading to an extreme racial divide between the parties. Since then the GOP was the party of racists, and appealed to dog whistle politics to push that, while the democrats went hardcore toward identity politics to cement nonwhite voters into their ranks.

This has led, over time, to the democrats becoming a party that is "big tent" on economics, which in reality means centrist, with lefties being forced to play ball because they have nowhere else to go, and highly racial. 

And demographically, I'm more "conservative". I'm a white dude who grew up middle class. I'm cis-het, and the only aspect of me that doesn't reflect the normal white profile is my lack of religion. I became a liberal when I became a "new atheist", ie, when I exited the cave of delusions this blog is so aptly named after. And while I no longer hold new atheist views, well, I still culturally have that flair to my politics. But even that screams "white and educated", so it doesn't really change much. 

The fact is, I just dont fit the profile of a democrat, and never really agreed with the ideology of democrats. My ideology was similar in a lot of ways, almost parallel, but my own experiences led me to reject conservatism and embrace the form of liberalism I thought the democrats actually were. My politics more fit into FDR's democratic party, and even then I have some weird pre reagan conservative strands in there sometimes, like my desire for UBI over large inefficient bureaucratic programs. But growing up with reaganism I consider UBI a liberal wet dream. I mean everyone gets money without having to work for it? That's *gasp* socialism, isn't it? Lol. Meanwhile democrats push welfare reform and moderation to not piss off the right wing consensus. And on social issues, I never got into the overwhelming identity politics that have taken the party over like a cancer. I mean, I'm "privileged". So that stuff never rang a bell for me, and given how overwhelmingly important that stuff is to democratic coalition building, I just don't fit.

I'm still on the left, but my left represents more like, European leftism based on social democracy (but with my pro UBI/anti work streak), and without the overbearing racial politics. I'm permissive on social issues, but I'm not exactly letting critical theory define every aspect of my politics, and I'm what the idpol people call a "class reductionist" or a "brogressive/brocialist". It's not that I dont understand those issues, but they don't resonate and I consider them secondary.

That said I delve into democratic party politics and end up dealing with tons of people of color, people of weird sexualities, obnoxiously loud feminists, and then these snarky, holier than thou centrists with college degrees who think they're so smart and virtuous because they're neolibs.

And they crap on me for not being a "true democrat". Well, if that's what a true democrat is, yeah, I'm out. I think the democratic party under the guide of the centrist wing is complete and utter trash and I'm proud not to be associated with such a worthless dumpster fire. The only reason I'm still a registered democrat is primaries, and even then, they rig them so sometimes I wonder why I bother. I'm not really a true green either. As I said in my post from a few days ago, I just work with them on common goals. I'm not really hardcore into ecosocialism or whatever. I just want a common sense party that is like "hey on social lives people should be free to live the best lives they want as long as they dont hurt others", and on economics I'm like "yeah, basic income and free healthcare are essential and other progressive ideas would be nice too." Maybe that doesn't make me a true democrat, but what true democrats are these days are trash. As I said, they're not really the party of FDR any more, and as such I see them as garbage. So I'll do me I guess. And I'll only vote for their candidates when I deem it proper to do so.

Why the far left is not inherently anti work, nor do they have a monopoly on the concept

So, I hang around some anti work communities online. People who are against the concept of working. I'm drawn to the concept because of my UBI support, and my political ideology. I've discussed my thoughts on this subject before, and I have my own ideas on the subject. But I feel like I'm a minority in these communities. Why? Because I'm not a far left anti capitalist leftist. And these guys like to gatekeep. They like to act like only they are the true anti work people, and that you can't be capitalist and anti work. They also like to act like leftism is inherently more anti work than capitalism. Neither of these claims are true, and that's what I plan to address on this topic.

Debunking the idea you cannot be capitalist and anti work

Well, first of all, let's clarify here. I'm not a hardcore, died in the wool, capitalist. I don't go on about how it's the greatest economic system ever, and blah blah blah. I don't sing its praises day in and day out. Capitalism to me, is that beat up, $800 car that's 20 years old and breaks every 5 miles. I hate the thing, it breaks down all the time, but it's the best we can do and it beats taking the bus or walking. Capitalism is...functional. In the sense that it produces wealth and distributes goods and services in a functional way that benefits most people. Regardless of its flaws, it seems to do better at producing and distributing goods and services than most left wing ideas, which either boil down to command economies or some pre industrial society that is about as practical or desirable as anarcho capitalism. More on that in the second part of this post.

But, capitalism does have flaws. It does break down. It is recession prone. It demands everyone works, while not providing them with work. When it does provide work, the work is often poorly paid. It hoards goods and services among the rich and doesn't distribute equitably to everyone. I get it, capitalism is flawed. And I support, generally speaking, progressive measures to fix it. My big problem with capitalism is the fact that doesn't distribute these goods and services equitably on its own, and in a sense, this leads to inherent coercion in the system. One of my first posts on this blog was about the flaws of the capitalist economy. And I would say my ultimate solution to that, would basically be medicare for all and basic income. If you can decouple work from income somewhat, while still providing incentives to work, you can solve poverty and reduce coercion, making the market far more voluntary and fair. I view those as desirable ends. And while I admit we will need to implement some further solutions to deal with certain problematic industries like the housing industry, generally speaking I see these problems as solvable, within capitalism.

And that's why I say I'm anti work while still being largely capitalist. Because I largely don't view the problems of capitalism as so severe that we can't solve the work issue without ending capitalism. Socialists, anarchists, believe the coercion and contradictions within capitalism are so great the entire system must be abolished and replaced with something else in order to solve these problems. I don't believe that. If we can solve some aspects of the ownership problem, guaranteeing enough resources to people to survive without work, we can shift markets to work more for people. The biggest problems with markets are the inequalities in power. One side has access to all of the resources, the other needs those resources to survive. This leads to exploitative power relationships that are the root of all evil under capitalism. Give everyone enough resources to survive without needing to work, and you essentially solve that problem. 

Yes, pure ideological capitalism is inherently pro work. It trends toward infinite growth, and infinite productivity, and ignores how the conditions it forces on people actually affects them. The thing is I want to solve those problems without killing the golden goose.

And if you can, this is what will happen. Jobs reflect the pay they're actually worth in a true free market. With voluntary buyers and seller, truly voluntary, the market equilibrium changes. For some industries, this might lead to automation as its cheaper for employers to automate labor than to keep it being done by humans. This is a good thing, if we can fix the distribution issues with the system. Automation in capitalism as it exists means people dont have jobs meaning they lose access to resources. You can either create more jobs, the rallying cries of many mainstream ideologies everywhere, or you can fix the distribution methods. So I say, yeah, if people don't want to do a job at a fair wage, and an employer doesn't want to offer a fair wage, let it be automated, seems like a win win for everyone. Some industries might simply stop existing. These industries would likely be non essential luxuries. You know the kinds of things we've largely done without since COVID started, restaurants, amusement parks. I'm not necessarily against these disappearing. If people don't want to work them, and employers dont want to pay them, and the business model is unsustainable, then good riddance. I can do with fewer frivolous luxuries in theory, if those luxuries were essentially subsidized by wage slavery. However, I really don't think industries would off themselves completely. The third category is what will happen with most essential work, and stuff that can be adapted. Workers would have to be paid a living wage. If work can't be automated and it's essential to society, then the wages paid will reflect the actual value of the labor to the employer. Now, it is possible to go overkill on basic income. If basic income is too generous and no one works, then society falls apart and falls into a wage price spiral. That would be bad. So obviously there are limitations to my ideas. But if we set basic income at the highest sustainable level, where society doesn't collapse and people are as free as realistically possible, we can start moving society in a positive direction. And given basic income studies for the rough amounts I support haven't found insane work incentive drops, and the consensus ranges from no drops at all to around 15% less work, well, that's not the end of the world.

The point is, full employment is essentially a policy choice. We don't need to employ every single able bodied person. We just try to force it that way for some vague notion of economic growth, even if this does not translate into human well being. I'd rather continue living in conditions similar to what we experienced over this past year, if it means humans can be free, than to continue to go back to normal, where everyone works, and we have tons of economic growth, but everyone is enslaved to jobs that they hate and poverty exists despite this massive surplus. Poverty is no longer a material issue, it's a distribution issue and if we can distribute stuff better without killing the engine creating this prosperity, then we will be better for it. 

And who knows? Over time if market signals push the economy toward automation and away from human labor, well all the power to us, that's a good thing. I'd rather move toward employing 20-30% of our population rather than 60%, or having everyone work 15-20 hours a week than 40+. I believe this is possible under capitalism. We just gotta organize our resources in a specific way to do so. I admit this will be difficult given the powers that be, and how they are designed to serve the benefits of capital, but ultimately I'd rather take the FDR route in dealing with them, than to take the Lenin route, if you know what I mean. 

Leftism isn't any more inherently anti work than capitalism

That said, I would now like to take the sails out of leftist theory in being superior to capitalism on the anti work issue. I understand leftism is broad and there are many kinds of leftism, and perhaps certain strains of leftist theory could get us in a similar place as my version of left libertarian capitalism would. 

First of all, most marxist strains of leftist theory are as inherently pro labor as any strain of capitalism. This is because Marx was not inherently anti work, he just thought that people were exploited under capitalism and that they were alienated from their work due to their employer stealing their labor. Marxists view the rich as parasites, similar to how conservatives view that of welfare recipients, or basic income supporters in my view. Both groups have this belief that workers are entitled to the fruits of their labor, and that anyone who takes from this is bad. Again, just a different bad guy. Conservatives go on about taxation, and marxists go on about the rich who own the means of production. But here's the thing. Ideologies like this are rigid and inflexible and not accomodating to an anti work perspective. Because think of it, if wealth exists, and an individual didn't work for it, it had to come from somewhere, right? Meaning someone, or in the case of automation, something had to produce it. That's two questions everyone has to answer in their political ideology, who works, and who receives the fruits of labor. In these kinds of ideologies, in order to receive resources, one must work, meaning that everyone essentially must work. On the right, they base their ideology on property, whereas the left has the labor theory of value. So let's just say none of these strains are even compatible with anti work views, as that involves some sort of weakening between work and income (or alternative resource receiving structure). 

Then you have more moderate forms of socialism that aren't inherently Marxist. You know, stuff like market socialism or democratic socialism. Well, these ideologies in practice don't seem much different than liberal ideologies like social democracy. Social democracy carries with it an inherent pro work component based in the idea of "reciprocity", which basically comes down to "society is obligated to take care of you, but you are obligated to work", the relationship is reciprocal, in other words, hence the term. I dont really inherently view democratic socialism as any different. Especially since demsocs' ideas to solving many of our current crises seem to be more jobs programs like the green new deal. So they make work for the sake of making work, because people are obligated to work, and they work for a paycheck or living standard of living. This is more just than the poverty we currently see under right wing capitalism, but it seems to misdiagnose the issue and take all of the wrong lessons in solving it. I don't desire pointless drudgery as a solution to poverty because people can't think past the whole recprocity thing, if we don't have to work, we shouldn't all have to work. While infrastructure projects are good short term, ultimately we should work to live not live to work. Humans are the masters of the economy, not the other way around. And ultimately the point of work is to produce things. Not to provide people paychecks.

Market socialism seems even worse at solving these issues. After all isn't market socialism just worker cooperatives within a market economy? That's the problem with socialists. They think workers owning the means of production is an end all solution, and it just is divorced from the issue of anti work politics. It just changes who makes the decisions. It doesn't change the work-income link at all, and if anything given the theory of justice at work here it might strengthen is as people might think because workers own the companies there's no excuse to be poor or something. Admittedly some market socialists might be for other liberal solutions, but that makes them as anti work as a social democrat. Not inherently anti work, and they might be pro work. It depends on the underlying system.

But, you say, most leftists who are anti work aren't necessarily socialists, right? They're anarchists. Now, I'm going to be honest, I'm not super duper well informed on anarchist theory, but I did do a little research before making this topic, and here's the thing. Anarchists are often MORE anti work than most other leftists, but that doesn't mean they're anti work, at least not in the same way I am. 

The problem with a lot of these theories is that I just can't see how they can work, or if they do, they either don't solve the issue or seem very undesirable. Anarcho communists tend to believe that the means of production should be owned collectively, and that people should work as much as they want, and those who don't should get resources. Okay, but here's the thing. I don't see the incentive structure here. How do we ensure enough people make enough stuff? In my system, I at least try to give detailed ideas of how we can get the ball rolling and use market signals to push the system that way, while ensuring we don't change too radically to destabilize the whole system. What's to stop the same kinds of resource hoarding or entitlement to resources based on labor we currently see under capitalism? It's one of those leftist theories that seem good on paper but not in practice. You got anarcho syndicalists and market anarchists, which seem to fall into the same overall issues we see with market socialism in my amateurish opinion. You got anarcho primativists who seem to think going back to pre industrial society and living in tribes is desireable. No, just no. I don't want to go back to dying at age 30 because I happened to get an infection or something. We need society. That's one issue I have with anarchists. I want to solve work, by conquering it with technology. I see capitalism as a flawed golden goose, and I don't want to destroy it. These guys want to do away with it and endorse all of these other ways of living that won't really abolish work, and even if they lead to less work, they also lead to significantly lower standards of living. I know I said I can do without sit down restaurants and amusement parks if their business models rely on essential slave labor, but I don't want to destroy society as we know it. Even if you worked say, 10-20 hours a week in an anarchist society, you would be doing so at a much lower standard of living. If possible I'd like to have my cake and eat it too.

Conclusion

So, here's the thing. I'm very anti work. I hate the idea of it. I believe it should be conquered. But, I have a very specific path to accomplish this. First, we use UBI to free people from the threat of poverty. Second, we allow society to evolve from there. If automation takes over labor, we could afford to work less and boost the UBI. Eventually, we might reach a largely automated economy that resembles post scarcity. We do this under capitalism, or a market socialist system. After all, it's not capitalism itself that's bad, but the unequal power relationships within. We solve that, and we can solve the work issue and get the ball rolling on achieving Keynes' dream of 15 hour work weeks and high standards of living for all. Leftism is not necessarily a good way to lead to anti work societies. I might not be opposed to market socialism as a way to further weaken the power of the ownership class in society and make their power more diluted, but beyond that, no. Most forms of socialism are inherently pro work, and the ones that aren't are indistinguishable from social democracy on the issue in my opinion. Anarchists might be more anti work, as they're anti current society in general, but they go too far with it. They have these books of theories that have never been tried, and I can't see how they can actually work in reality. Or, they are indistinguishable from social democracy in the best case scenario. Or, they would achieve a less work centric life at the expense of basically giving up most progress in modern societies. They are not desirable.

I'm not saying leftists can't be anti work. Many of them are. But they seem more against the capitalist idea of work, rather than work itself. Their solutions won't free us from the institution of work, most will just change it. I honestly don't believe the left is inherently more anti work as an idea than capitalists are. And I believe anti work goals can be done just as easily under capitalism as socialism, if not easier in most cases. You might be able to make an argument for me for some sort of market socialism over autocratic ownership of the means of production, but even then, I see the whole divide as secondary to the anti work question. Capitalism or socialism, the goals can be accomplished either way. And both systems have large, even majority pro work factions within them. 

Anti work politics should transcend the capitalist-socialist divide. Not just be a circlejerk of a bunch of far leftists purity testing capitalists who support basic income because they don't advocate for the liberal abolition of modern society. Just saying. I'm just as anti work as any of those, even if I'm not a radical.

Just a reminder that Bernie WAS the compromise, or me purity testing my "heroes"

Ya know, I've heard it for two election cycles now. That I'm a purity tester. That I don't like to compromise. That I have to have things my way or the high way. That I have to be pragmatic and work with the options available. That I can't have everything I want, and that I shouldn't just take my ball and go home when I don't get everything I want. Well, in this post, I'm going to explain that I actually do do that, I just ain't willing to settle for complete crap from a candidate who is blatantly ignoring virtually every concern I care about.

A brief history, and what I am for

I've mentioned this before when I was far more active on here, but generally speaking, I consider myself an indepentarian, although I haven't used the word until recently. I'm an ex conservative who became more liberal after some personal awakenings, but never quite adapted to liberal culture within the democratic party. I philosophically forged my own path, recognizing that the economic system is fundamentally broken and in dire need of reform. I lived through the Obama administration's mediocre reforms, and I have to say I walked away quite underwhelmed. His solutions came off like band aids on a gunshot wound, but I wanted more change. But being an ex conservative who grew up believing government was inefficient and didn't work, this actually made me flip to being left of the democrats, but not quite socialist, believing the path forward relies on three major pillars:

Universal Basic Income

Medicare for all

Free college/student debt forgiveness

I also recognized the benefits of other popular left wing reforms like higher minimum wages, more unionization, jobs programs, etc., although I kind of view these as compromise solutions that address the problems with society as I see it in less optimal ways. None of these solutions truly end poverty, and they still rely on a coercive system based on jobs, while as part of my lessons from the Obama administration would point out, my dedication to jobism and making more work is virtually nonexistent. I just see it as people pretending to work, and people pretending to be paid. The system fails on its promises and it's time to build a new system based on a new set of principles. I believe the economy needs fundamental change, but my reforms are less radical than most socialists want. I'm a social democrat, but with a left libertarian bend, hence "indepentarianism." Which brings me to 2016.

2016: The year of Bernie or Bust

In 2013-2014 I developed my above ideas and ideology and fleshed them out to what they are today, largely. By late 2014, I was looking for a progressive candidate who would take me up on my call for a "new new deal". Early rising stars channeling the idea were Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. I gravitated to Bernie while he was 1% in the polls. Talk about being an early adopter. But I knew what I wanted. I just outlined it above. And here's why I was so drawn to him.

Look, I knew 2016 was too early to discuss UBI. It is a seemingly utopian idea. I mean we give people money, but then expect them to...not work? Seems preposterous. But between my disaffection with the economy, and me doing heavy research, I became convinced this is the way. But I knew that such an idea was so NOT mainstream, that not even Bernie would go for that. 

But, with Bernie I could get my other 2 priorities. he would be for medicare for all, full throatedly, and he was for free college. As the song goes, two out of three aint bad. And in place of a basic income, he supported a higher minimum wage and jobs program. I considered his ideas to be good enough. I'm going to be honest, I'm not thrilled with the idea of jobs programs. I see it as just creating drudgery and paying people. Bernie's pitch for climate change was nice, and I could see an argument for it in the short term, but long term, like say, in the next decade, my goal was to accomplish Bernie's agenda, and then maybe pick up UBI in the 2020s and 2030s. I mean, that's what happened last time. We needed FDR to shift the overton window before UBI and the war on poverty were discussed in the 60s and 70s. We need to take back the narrative from Reagan, and pass this agenda, and then when looking back, we could say "hey you know what, instead of this complicated mess, lets have a UBI". And that would be the real debate to have in society. 

That said, all this talk of pragmatism, and incremental change, and voting being like public transport, that's how I saw Bernie. Bernie was never the end all of politics for me, despite me sometimes acting like it. He was just the dude who was going in the direction I was. if we accomplished his agenda, it would get us closer to a UBI and my other priorities would be dealt with.

I mean in reality the dude was the bare minimum. I mean, "you mean, we should actually pay people a living wage for working 40 hours?" I mean, "we should actually keep up our end up the social contract that we force on people?" Yeah, no crap. Pay people a living wage for working 40 hours a week. Ensuring everyone has a job so we can have guaranteed SOMETHING in society. I mean, so radical, wow. Not really. I mean, again, this is basic common sense. It's literally the whole bare minimum of the "don't be evil" sniff test. Bernie was just FDR 2.0. That's all. For better or for worse. And the democrats told us we couldn't even have that.

Which is why I got so pissed off at the Hillary camp. Hillary came along, and literally chewed that down to a third Obama term with extremely flawed fixes of Bernie's plans at best, if not a full on rejection of them, opting for status quo politics that we had already spent the past decade trying, and that weren't working. It really isn't surprising she lost in retrospect. I mean, the GOP being comic book evil at this point is the only thing that gives these jokers any sense of credibility. And considering how low that bar is, it allows the democrats to simply be slightly better, and still be the better option in a two party system. And then they DEMAND, not ask for, but DEMAND our votes. 

That's what caused me to become so anti democratic party over the years. It's one thing to have a candidate asking for my vote in good faith, and me giving it. It's another to basically give me the finger and then expect me to support them regardless. I'm willing to accommodate a Bernie, someone who is, to be honest, somewhat flawed, but well meaning and moving in the right direction. But I will NOT support a Hillary Clinton. There just isn't enough common ground there, and given most arguments are based on lesser evilism and gaslighting me, I'm not interested at all.

Which brings me to who I did vote for:

Jill Stein

I ended up voting for the green party's Jill Stein. She wasn't perfect either. She supported medicare for all, and free college, but as I stated on this blog before, her plans aren't very well thought through. She wanted to forgive student debt via some form of quantitative easing, which is to say, deficit spending. I believe in paying for proposals. And I remember asking her on reddit about basic income and she said she supported it but kind of doubled back.

Even worse, she was anti science at times, pandering to the idiots who are now qanon Trumpers who need to eat organic because chemicals are bad,  think vaccines are questionable, and that wifi hurts kids. Yeah. I'm brutally honest here. Stein was not a good candidate. And she was less competent than Hillary by a mile. I would've voted for Hillary if she were just a bit more accommodating. The bar wasn't high. But I was so pissed off and knew Stein wouldn't win anyway I strategically protest voted to try to push the democrats left in future elections. And believe it or not, Hillary actually lost, only to learn all the wrong lessons due to her stubbornness and intellectual dishonesty. 

2020: 2016 Electric Boogaloo

I never really forgave the democrats after 2016. And politics became such a crapshow I just lost interest to some extent for a while. I had my ideas, but the Trump administration was as incompetent as I knew it would be, and the democrats literally didn't learn at all. I just tuned out because neither party really interested me at that point. Yes yes, the republicans are comic book level bad. Democrats are cynically evil russiagaters on the other hand. I just couldn't stand either.

That said, I just waited until 2020. I just saw 2016-2020 as a huge dark age we had to get through as Americans before we could get another shot at a decent candidate. I expected to back Bernie again, but the field ended up being more diverse than I expected. However, despite that diversity, most didn't impress me. Biden was the front runner and ew, he's basically just Hillary/Obama. Blatant centrist. And then other frontrunners like Harris seemed a little better, but seemed to do this weird triangulation game of "hello fellow kids" in being for Bernie ideas, without being Bernie. Like the smarter centrist democrats actually claimed to be for medicare for all and free college and stuff, but at the same time were for a different, weaker implementation of the idea, trying to hitch a ride on the Bernie train while being basically against Bernie. Which begs the question, why not just vote for Bernie? Which is why those candidates lost. Most people ultimately wanted a full on centrist, or they wanted Bernie. The other candidates were just competing for votes from these two camps. Except one, who I strongly considered supporting and did support for a time.

Andrew Yang: A new hope?

I'm going to be honest, I originally did not consider Yang a serious candidate. I saw him being discussed in basic income forums as early as 2017-2018, and he just didn't impress me. I looked at his UBI plan, and being very well informed on the inner workings of UBI from a public policy perspective, I had to say his plan was pretty much crap. I mean, a VAT tax? That just taxes consumption. Meaning you spend your UBI, and you get taxed on it. And his UBI had a massive deficit problem, which I actually attempted to fix in fleshing it out in my 2019 iteration of my UBI plan. And the dude was a no name candidate no one took seriously. I mean, why would I support him over Bernie? Even if he's for UBI, it isn't my UBI, and he doesn't seem to offer much else of value. So I expected to support Bernie.

But then in 2019, he had his famous Joe Rogan interview which kind of was is breakthrough moment. And I'm going to be honest, it profoundly affected me, and my opinion of him. This guy actually gets it. Like, he looks at the world the same way I do. The failure of creating jobs. Automation coming. The areas he talks about with massive job loss shifting toward Trump, the failures of the democrats to capitalize on the anger people feel, he gets it, he gets it, he gets it. Without going into details, it went deeper than that, and his research into this topic actually caused a very dark moment for me, given how much it spoke to me. But that's the thing. Yang. Gets it. And then I looked more into him. I read his book. I read his campaign website. And I can't help but be amazed by how well his top three priorities, basic income, medicare for all, and human centered capitalism, align with mine. Maybe the guy isn't perfect. Maybe his plans are a bit flawed. But you know what? His mistakes weren't done in bad faith. He is an amateur, much like me, and he made some rookie mistakes with his numbers. In trying to pass a bill, congress could fix that. That said, for much of 2019, I became a hardcore Yang Gang supporter, and my loyalty to Bernie wavered. Bernie is a good candidate, with a lot of good ideas, don't get me wrong, but again, I kinda hitched my wagon to him because he was the best option available at the time. He wasn't perfect, and he was a compromise. Yang seemed more in line with my actual politics.

Yang still was a compromise too though, and Yang's flaws grated on me as the year went on. To be fair, outside of his top issues and a few other interesting ideas, Yang's platform seemed flawed. I ended up seeing Bernie talk during the summer on vacation, it was a random happenstance thing. I was passing by the speaking venue on my way to get a nice non alcoholic daiquiri, and hey, why are there Bernie signs all over this park? Is he speaking here, today? Oh crap, I gotta see that. So I detoured. Didnt drink anything for four hours despite being thirsty, didn't go to the bathroom either despite having to, but hey, I got a front row seat at a Bernie rally. And what did he speak about? Climate change. This was in coastal south carolina, and we were a few blocks from the beach, and the discussion centered around how in a few decades, where we were standing might be underwater. And much like earlier in the year, it affected me, and it made me wonder if my Yang support was selfish. Yang aligned more with me than Bernie did on my top issues. But outside of those issues, Yang was a fairly moderate democrat with a Biden/Clintonesque platform. On the other hand, Bernie did address climate change, and maybe I should support a jobs program for the sake of the greater good? Climate change is an existential threat, I don't want to screw over the planet because I decided a UBI was more important than curbing climate change. That said, I shifted.

Yang shifted over the campaign too. When I supported him, he was for medicare for all full throatedly, the only other candidate from Bernie and maybe Warren to do so. But, he shifted toward a public option due to costs and pragmatism. I don't believe this shift was in bad faith, but it did damage my opinion of him. I mean, without medicare for all, the dude just had UBI. Is UBI really worth sacrificing every other priority for? Am I selling my soul for a measly $1,000 a month? Again, it weighed on me. 

In December 2019, I cut ties with the Yang gang. I mean no ill will toward them. But the primary was coming up in 2020, Yang was like 2-3%, Bernie had a real shot at winning this, and I agreed with Bernie more on virtually every idea other than UBI more. Without medicare for all, and with a weaker climate program, I decided Yang was too weak to support, and Bernie would be better. Again, I would put aside UBI and my anti work post scarcity fantasies to come together for the more immediate common good. Don't ever say I don't compromise, or that I'm a purity tester, because if I was, I would have been ride or die on Yang. But, because I do compromise, I went with Bernie. 

I guess it didn't matter. Yang dropped out after New Hampshire, and I didn't vote until April. By then Bernie was defeated too. The democrats played their games again and foisted Biden upon us, telling us to vote blue no matter who again. And me, not being willing to settle for crap, once again turned to the green party...

Howie Hawkins: a much better Jill Stein

Howie Hawkins was...interesting. He was a much better Jill Stein. He was allegedly the original green new dealer and had much of the expertise Jill Stein lacked. He was a founding green party member and the best green party candidate since Ralph Nader. He supported medicare for all, he supported free college, he didn't support student loan forgiveness, but that isn't a dealbreaker. He supported the green new deal, and he even supported a UBI in negative income tax form. But, that's kind of the issue with the greens. When you're in a position of not being a serious candidate with a serious chance to win, you can just throw out grand progressive wish lists that lack political pragmatism. As I said in 2019, when debating Yang vs Bernie and green new deal vs UBI, you can't really have both. We can only spend so much money, and opportunity costs exist. And push comes to shove, he would shift back to being a green new dealer. That is his "thing". He basically was closer to Bernie than Yang. But he was still a decent candidate with interesting ideas. And he was much better than Joe Biden. I gave him a vote without a second thought after Biden got the nomination. I wasn't about to vote for the democrats' gaslighting and giving us nothing campaign. 

I'm always compromising

That said, I'm always compromising. Even the candidates who I find the most common ground on, I might only agree with them 80-90% of the time, and on top issues we might only agree 50-60% of the time. Even if we agree on policy, we might disagree on implementation of it. Or they might not agree with every point I agree with on. But I'm not about to purity test someone who is sufficiently close where I feel like we at least have some common ground on values and policy. You're never going to get everything you want, and as any leftist will tell you, what we hate most in the world is often other leftists. Because the left is so diverse, that it has several non overlapping political ideologies and the left has vigorous debates among themselves about how to best solve issues. I'm not even really a member of the "left" in this sense, as I'm fairly agnostic on capitalism vs socialism, and instead seek UBI and a non forced participation economy that gives people the freedom to live as they want. I'm left in the sense of being left of democrats, but not left in the sense of being outright anticapitalist. I mean I lean that way, but the furthest I can go is worker cooperatives in a market system on that front. But often times, if I'm going to fight both the republicans and democrats, I end up supporting more "socialist" types like Hawkins and Sanders over the "human centered capitalism" I'm most drawn toward. Every election is a compromise. I just make sure the compromise is worth it. With other left wingers, I'd argue it is. I can often get at least something I want, and get progress on other issues, even if it's not necessarily the exact progress I want, or how I would do things. The reason I don't compromise with democrats is because the compromise is often done in bad faith and the compromise is so one sided and watered down in their favor it feels more like they're cornering me and demanding an unconditional surrender I'm not willing to give. So I tell them to screw off.

Looking forward to 2024

I'm not sure what I will do in 2024 year. I have mixed opinions on Biden. He's a little better than I expected, but still very lacking. And given 2024 might be the year of a reelection campaign rather than an open seat with primaries, the ticket might be already decided. That's the problem of democrats winning, you're stuck with them for 8 years instead of just trying again next time. Moreover, I legitimately am afraid of the republicans right now. It's all fun and games until someone incites an insurrection. Trump could run again in 2024, or a close supporter of his. And if they win, well, I do fear for the future of democracy. I didn't take Trump super seriously for the most part. Even through most of 2020 I just kind of treated everything that happened as a necessary evil in order to purge the evil out of our system once and for all. The GOP needs to fail before voters reject them. But given Trump almost win in 2020 despite being such an evilly incompetent president, and watching his supporters try to overturn election results, yeah, I'm kind of scared that Trump might not be a one and done deal. We might have had a party realignment alright, it's just that due to Clinton's failures, and the democrats' continually unwillingness to rectify them, the GOP might end up gaining the ideological upper hand as the republicans become a fascist-populist party while the democrats double down on identity politics and centrism, in which case, dark days are ahead, and we are screwed.

One thing I will say though. COVID has changed my politics too. I mean, it's kind of proven me right all along. If we had a basic income and medicare for all, everyone would already have a constant source of "stimulus". There wouldnt be as long of an unemployment line. People could pay rent. They could refuse to work for oppressive bosses who force them to work in unsafe conditions that put their health at risk. The world would be so much better if we had these ideas, and it's like this crisis has proven me right all along. And as far as climate change goes, I suspect if we changed how we live and didn't rely so much on never ending work and production, we would probably pollute far less too.

That said I am, currently, becoming a lot more unapologetic about my actual views. We're not in the middle of a campaign season, I'm not pushing for a push in a specific direction in hopes it gets me close to where I'm really going. I'm just being me, and I'm not taking a side for pragmatic reasons. I'm just being me. Take it or leave it. Basic income, medicare for all, free college. Those are the three pillars any major economic reform should rest upon.

Funding a basic income in the US, 4th edition (2021)

So, it's that time again. I've been thinking about my last basic income plan recently, and I feel like it needs an overhaul in a post Yang environment. I've been really doing a lot of thinking and soul searching lately, and I'm kind of regressing to my 2014-2015 beliefs again post 2020 election, essentially accepting Karl Widerquist's "indepentarianism" as my main ideology. And that being centered around basic income, I feel like it's time to really think up a new plan. The thing is, I want to write this for first time readers of my plans, and lay out the ideas in as basic of a way as I can, without expecting people to rely on my past works much. That said, without further ado, time to get into it. 

So what's the target amount for this basic income?

Well, previously, I had my basic income at the same level as Yang's, $1,000 a month, $12,000 a year. However, I came up with that in 2014, back when the federal poverty line was like $11,700. Today, the poverty line is $12,880 with an additional $4,540 per extra member of a household. That said, the basic income needs a raise. For the purpose of this article, the amount will be set at $1,100 a month, or $13,200 a year for adults, with an additional $400 a month, or $4,800 a year for children.

Who gets this basic income?

Every adult citizen or long term legal resident over the age of 18 gets the full basic income, and any child who is a citizen or dependent of a citizen or long term legal resident will receive the partial basic income for children. 

As of 2019, there are 255,220,373 adults in the US, and 73,039,150 children in the US. There are roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. Let's assume 8.5 million are adults, and 2.5 million are children, roughly. In addition there are 2.3 million people incarcerated in the US. This means roughly 244,420,373 adults and 70,539,150 children would be eligible for basic income.

How much will it cost?

Based on the above information:

244,420,373*13200 = $3,226,348,923,600

70,539,150*4800 = $338,587,920,000

Basic income will cost a total of $3,564,936,843,600, or to put it simply, $3.565 trillion

So how will we pay for it?

Unlike my previous plans, I'm not looking to fund the entire federal budget. Given the volatile conditions from the Trump administration's fiscal irresponsibility, and the fact that we're currently spending trillions to dig ourselves out of the COVID recession (although on that front I would posit that perhaps a basic income would be money better spent than what Biden wants to do), I'm not interested in touching the entire federal budget with a ten foot pole. Although I may take some spending cuts from it and redirect them toward UBI. Moreover, it would be better for me to focus on funding UBI than coming up with a grand flat tax scheme like I did with my original UBI plans. I would rather focus on just solely funding UBI.

Basic income will be funded primarily from tax increases and spending cuts. The model provided below is a basic median model of around five different models I cooked up with different assumptions. Some models were far more optimistic, including progressive taxes on the rich and a wealth tax with a slightly larger tax base, but others were much more pessimistic. All in all, I estimated the flat tax required to raise revenue would range between 14% on the low end and 26% on the high end depending on the assumptions and funding mechanisms used, with the median estimate used being 20%. The one provided below should be a fairly simple and conservative take on basic income that doesn't take too many assumptions into account and should give you an idea of how it turns out. Actual results may vary depending on actual implementation.

Spending cuts

$291.3 billion from welfare cuts

$323.7 billion from social security cuts

$156.1 billion from military cuts

+                                                          

$771.1 billion from spending cuts

Taxes

$187 billion from carbon tax

$2.658 trillion from 20% flat tax on all earned and taxable income

+                                                         

$2.845 trillion from taxes

Together

$771 billion from spending cuts

$2,845 billion from taxes

+                                                        

$3.616 trillion to fund a UBI (around $51 billion surplus)

Spending cuts

Many spending cuts can be drawn from the existing social safety nets. I know this will be controversial for a lot of people, but I want to ease peoples' fears here. These numbers will be drawn in a way to ensure we only cut programs that are worth less than basic income, and to cut programs larger than UBI only in ways that would make people on those programs at least as well off as they are today. I want to take a scalpel and do surgery to the current safety net, not just hacksaw it to death in some right wing neoliberal plot like some progressives think. I want this basic income to make people better off, and not worse off.

Based on USgovernmentspending.com, $365 billion from the federal government includes "other welfare", meaning welfare other than social security and medicare/medicaid. $274.7 billion is spend on "families and children". I'm guessing this is stuff like SNAP, WIC, etc. I will cut all of it. I will keep the 54.2 billion in housing, because let's be honest, section 8 provides much more value than $1100 a month in a lot of cases. Unemployment is tricky, benefits vary by a lot depending on what state you're in, and a lot of money is spent at the state level. Some states offer as little as $200 a week while some offer as much as $1200. Assuming an average of around, say, $500 a week, that's $2200 a month or so, so let's just cut federal unemployment benefits in half here. States can pick up the slack for their own cost of living, and everyone gets a basic income of $1100 a month anyway, so it should end up about the same on average at the high end. We would save $16.6 billion this way, bringing total cuts from welfare programs up to $291.3 billion. 

Next I will focus on social security. The maximum benefit for someone retiring at the late age of 70 is $3,895 a month. Given UBI is $1,100 a month, we can reduce that benefit to $2,795 a month, which is a roughly 28% decrease in the benefit. This will ensure the maximum benefit remains the same and anyone making less will be better off. Given the social security program costs $1.1562 trillion, a reduction of 28% would reduce it to $832.5 billion, giving us $323.7 billion in savings.

Finally, I want to address military spending. We spent $767.1 billion in defense, whereas in the Obama era, which in itself deserved a cut, we spent $611 billion. Just reversing Trump's military spending increases that we didn't need would give us $156.1 billion. That should still be more than enough to keep ahead of our largest geopolitical foes like Russia and China.

All in all, this means:

$291.3 billion from welfare cuts

$323.7 billion from social security cuts

$156.1 billion from military cuts

+                                                          

$771.1 billion from spending cuts

Raising the rest of the revenue from taxes

At this point, we reduced the amount of money that needs to be raised to $2.794 trillion.

A smaller tax that might be good would be a carbon tax bringing in roughly $187 billion a year.

Beyond that point, we got to look at income, payroll, and VAT taxes. I will not be doing VAT, because I don't believe it's a good way to tax people. Andrew Yang did it, but it's basically a regressive consumption tax that could end up eating into the very UBI we give people. I want to tax people based on what they earn, similar to a clawback mechanism you would find in a negative income tax. So I'm going to go with an overall payroll tax when applicable, where people pay income taxes if they don't pay payroll taxes. I'd prefer payroll as much as possible though because it basically takes the taxes out of peoples' paychecks with minimal effort for them.

To figure out how much income is there, we have to turn to the Bureau of Economic Analysis' "Personal Income and Outlays" chart. I am specifically looking at table 1. In January 2021, total wages and salaries make up $9.967 trillion and should be taxable. However, employer contributions on various public and private funds are not. Personal income receipts on assets seems to be capital gains and income from retirement funds that weren't previously taxed. That said, I would consider it taxable. That's an additional $2.868 trillion. Unemployment benefits are considered taxable, so that's another $285 billion once you account for my cuts to those programs. Proprietors' income with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments is small business revenue and not all of that is taxable. As a matter of that they will have to deduct the vast majority of their earnings as business expenses, so their profits are far less than the amount shown. Based on research they normally only pay taxes on roughly 7% of this, so let's say that $114 billion is taxable. I'll do the same for rental income and get $57 billion.

Adding that all up:

$9.967 trillion in wages and salaries

$2.868 trillion in investment/dividend income

$0.285 trillion in unemployment benefits

$0.114 trillion in small business income

$0.057 trillion in rental income

+                                               

$13.291 trillion in taxable income

At this point, we only need $2.607 trillion to fund UBI.

Applying a flat tax across all income, including the parts we just taxed, that's a 19.6% tax on all income. Let's adjust this to 20% for simplicity's sake.

Adding that up:

$187 billion from a carbon tax

$2.658 trillion from a 20% payroll/income tax on all income 

+                                                 

$2.845 trillion in total tax revenue

Spending cuts/taxes that I did not include in this model

There were various spending cuts and taxes that I included that did not make the cut. These are largely because they either were too unreliable to include as I'm not sure the revenue could be gained, or because I did not like what these taxes did to something, either model related or not related. I will discuss each of these briefly, explain why I did not include them, and explain how they impacted my plans. Anyone can take these numbers and modify my plan to get another model.

Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax: Elizabeth Warren wants a 2% tax on all wealth above $50 million. She projects it could raise up to $3.75 trillion over the next decade, or around $375 billion per year. I did not include that in this model because wealth taxes have a horrid track record of working, often bringing in far less revenue than expected. If it worked perfectly, as projected, it would reduce the flat tax by 2.8%, from 19.6% to 16.8%. However, given some projections for it working in practice are far lower, it might not have as much of an impact at all. At the low end it might only raise $100 billion a year, which would only reduce the flat tax by 0.7%, down to 18.9%. It's too unpredictable to include, but it is nice to think about.

Land value tax: I floated the idea of including a land value tax of 1% on all privately held land. While these numbers are 8 years old, the value of all privately held land is about $14.488 trillion. Applying a 1% tax could raise $144.9 trillion. This would reduce that flat tax down to 18.5%, which would be a 1.1% reduction in the flat tax. There are two major objections I had to including this tax. First of all, it made calculating how much people would pay difficult. Home values, and underlying land values vary widely, and while I do not believe the land value tax would be particularly high on the average American family (a rough estimate I came up with would be $1133 a year, assuming a $340,000 home), this could fluctuate wildly depending on how much a home is worth. Second of all, it could unfairly target some vulnerable populations, such as people living on fixed income. Just because one owns a home, does not mean they have liquidity, and safety nets like basic income nor social security should be used to pay for a tax, to fund a basic income. It defeats the purpose. I'd also go so far to say it violates my indepentarian principles, because a core reason I support basic income is because I support freedom from financial coercion, and a tax on all land regardless of circumstance is essentially a tax on existing and a form of such coercion. It might fit a geolibertarian theory of justice, but it does not fit mine.

A flat tax on the top 1% of income earners: I toyed with the idea of taxing the top 1% of income earners (people earning at least $539,000 a year) exclusively with an additional flat tax of 5% or 10%. This would alleviate the burden on everyone else, making the taxes to fund UBI more progressive. It is said that the top 1% earns 20% of all income. And assuming a $1.7 million average in that income range, that means 68% of their income (excluding the first $539,000) would be taxable under this surtax. This amounts to $1.808 trillion, meaning a flat tax of 10% on all income above $539,000 would net us $181 billion, and a 5% tax would net us $90 billion. This would reduce the flat tax on everyone else to 18.3% or 18.9%, meaning a 0.7-1.3% reduction in the tax, while shifting the top 1%'s burden to 28.3-28.9%. I excluded this for two reasons. First of all I viewed it as a bit more complex while I want to make this as simple of a model as possible. Second of all, I'm leery to push the rich's taxes too high for capital flight or tax dodging reasons. Basic income is already a fundamental increase in taxation for them, and they will be paying most of the burden regardless. But they are good at hiding their money if we try to stick it to them too hard, so I kind of want to keep their overall level of taxation to fairly manageable levels.

An additional $100 billion reduction in military spending: In my original basic income plan, I proposed military cuts too. But I kept them around $100 billion or so. Trump has since increased the military budget significantly, for no apparent reason other than to give us a bigger stick (because he wants to measure a word that rhymes). So this plan reflected reversing Trump's spending cuts and reverting to Obama levels of defense spending, but I really don't want to get too greedy. We need a military, and being the world power that we are, we do want to spend more than the other guys to some extent. I feel confident in reducing Trump's budget increases, but I don't feel confident in cutting more than that. I'd rather be conservative with my numbers rather than overly optimistic. But I feel like it's worth mentioning the proposal here. This would reduce the flat tax to 18.9%, meaning a 0.7% decrease.

How different variables affect the numbers

As you can see, I had several ideas I did not include, because I did not feel confident in doing so or did not like something about the proposal. The flat tax as it is, is 19.6%, which I rounded to 20%, but if I was serious about including the above proposals, I could theoretically reduce that flat tax down to 13.6% or so by bringing in an additional $800 billion in revenue. Most of the shifted burden would be to the top income and wealth earners in the country. I just believed these plans added unneeded complexity to my model, created uncertainty, and might have introduced negative externalities that I could not predict.

At the same time, it is possible that my numbers are too optimistic. I've tried to check them as much as possible, but if my plan introduces tax dodging or economic disincentives, or I am overly optimistic with how I tax certain things and I overestimate the tax base, we might need a tax as high as 24.5%, assuming an 80% efficiency in my numbers. If we forwent all spending cuts, and put the entire burden on the flat tax, it would be 26.8%. And if we added both variables together the tax would be 33.5%. Now, to be fair, that's a really bad, unrealistic doom and gloom scenario. I would estimate the upper boundary of problems with my plan to be around the 25-27% estimate. 

That said, the 20% flat tax is actually roughly in the middle. If things go better than expected, I add more taxes, they work, we could reduce the tax rate down to 14%. If I overshot as is, we might need to increase it to about 26%. In reality, I don't believe either extreme is very plausible and the most likely outcome is going to be something like 17-23% depending on implementation and variables.

How UBI affects real people

Here I am going to provide a handful of scenarios explaining how my UBI works in practice, so that the average person can determine how this plan would effect them. The formula for calculating your own income is simple. Basically, it's UBI + wages - taxes = net income. UBI is the total UBI from all members of your household. Wages is the amount of taxable income you earned from work or other means. Taxes is....taxes on that income. Your net income is the result. I estimate, based on this, that basic income would help roughly 70-80% of the population.

Single adult, no job

UBI: $13,200

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $13,200

Single adult, minimum wage

UBI: $13,200

Wages: $15,080

Taxes: $3,016

Net Income: $25,264 (68% increase in income)

Single adult, median income ($36,000)

UBI: $13,200

Wages: $36,000

Taxes: $7,200

Net Income: $42,000 (17% increase in income)

Single adult,break even point ($66,000)

UBI: $13,200

Wages: $66,000

Taxes: $13,200

Net Income: $66,000

 Single adult, $100,000

UBI: $13,200

Wages: $100,000

Taxes: $20,000

Net Income: $93,200 (6.8% effective tax rate)

Single adult, $250,000

UBI: $13,200

Wages: $250,000

Taxes: $50,000

Net Income: $213,200 (14.7% effective tax rate)

Family of four (2 adults, 2 children), no job

UBI: $36,000 ($13,200 + $13,200 + $4,800 + $4,800)

Wages: $0

Taxes: $0

Net Income: $36,000

Family of four, median income ($69,000)

UBI: $36,000

Wages: $69,000

Taxes: $13,800

Net Income: $91,200 (32% increase in income)

Family of four, break even point ($180,000)

UBI: $36,000

Wages: $180,000

Taxes: $36,000

Net Income: $180,000

Family of four, $500,000

UBI: $36,000

Wages: $500,000

Taxes: $100,000

Net Income: $436,000 (12.8% effective tax rate)

Two average social security recipients ($3086/month)

UBI: $26,400

Social Security: $37,032

Cuts: $10,364

Net Income: $53,068 (43% increase in income)

Two social security recipients, maximum benefit ($7,790/month)

UBI: $26,400

Social Security: $93,480

Cuts: $26,174

Net Income: $93,706 (0.2% increase in income)

Discussion/Conclusion

All in all, this basic income should essentially eradicate poverty in the United States, ensuring all households of legal status have an income above the poverty line. Despite cutting social programs at times, and imposing a 20% flat income tax on all income, it should ensure that every vulnerable person is at least as well off as they are now at minimum or in a better position than ever, and it should be a net benefit to roughly 70-80% of the population. While the top 20-30% will pick up the slack for this basic income scheme, I see that as fair in order to ensure decent wealth redistribution from the rich to poor. And if we really wanted to, we could shift even more of the tax burden to the rich, even taking some of it off of those upper middle class suburbanites that democrats want to pander to.

I am a strong believer in the idea of UBI. This is my fourth iteration on trying to make one that works. And I believe, more than ever, after running these numbers, that this can work. It will require intense political pressure and will to implement it, but I believe that this program is necessary for the benefit of the American people. No one should live in poverty. Everyone should have income security, without having to rely on unreliable and exploitative jobs. Let's do it, America.