So Kyle Kulinski covered Joe Manchin's take on the 2024 election and why he retired. And yeah, after listening to him, Joe Manchin can screw off. Why? Because he's basically leaning into resentment politics and "entitlement society" rhetoric again. Remember him opposing the Child Tax Credit because he was afraid of it leading to an "entitlement society"? Yeah. Now he's back and saying the democrats care more about non working people more than working people. Bro...WHAT?!
First of all, as someone who actually is genuinely anti work, let me just say, THAT IS A LIE. Harris, if anything, leaned into this cringey rhetoric of the "opportunity economy." Opportunity is just a fancy word for "work" in modern capitalism. She literally bought into the jobist religion and was pontificating its values the whole time. So did AOC. And I was deeply critical of that.
Second of all, the child tax credit was a UNIVERSAL credit for children for people making under a certain amount of money, I think it was $75000 or $100000 or something. Working class people got it, it's just that some non working people also got it too. What's so bad about that? Oh wait, because you're a closet republican leaning into cringey resentment politics.
Third of all, if you cared about work ethic, it should assuage you to know that the amount given wouldnt have greatly improved the lives of someone to the point they would no longer want to work. As Kyle said, we did UBI studies, and while I won't say work reductions don't exist like he did, the effects are overstated and the effects of this would be minimal.
And fourth, I'm going to make a really progressive anti work argument here. I'll say it: you make the working class better off by making the bottom better off. Those who don't work in our society are generally at the bottom, because their incomes are generally $0. A UBI that gives everyone $15,000 a year like I'm for, which is far more progressive than the $3600 CTC, would help the entire bottom 80% of the population, including a lot of workers. Anyone who is working class would benefit under my plan. You would need to earn $75000 as an individual and $150000 as a married couple to actually lose out under my plan. Working class people benefit from UBI. Non working people do too, but let me also make a second argument for that.
What keeps people miserable in capitalism is being chained to bad jobs. Our system is set up to make those who don't work so miserable, that most of them would rather work. We claim that this system is voluntary, but it's not. A lot of people end up taking bad jobs out of poverty and desperation as a result, and bosses use the cudgel of firing them to keep them in line and to basically turn them into de facto slaves.
Marx wrote about this in his books, talking about the reserve army of labor, and again, it works, because the system is set up to make the only thing more miserable than having a crappy job...being NOT having one. And that's how businesses can get away with exploiting and abusing workers. And workers are kept on a treadmill of precarity and desperation and accepting bad jobs, because it's considered better than no job at all.
If you want to fix capitalism, this needs to change. We've tried tons of reforms over the years to make work pay, to tone down its worst abuses, but at the end of the day, the system is still the system, and these reforms amount to a system of not beating your slaves, it doesn't actually free them.
How do we improve the market system in a way that speaks to the market's values? By allowing people to say no. By letting them refuse to work. Unions are built on this. They literally are built on organized resistance to businesses' demands through a collective refusal to work. That's what a strike is. Workers gain more power through systematically refusing to work. Businesses just expect to fire one worker and replace one from the desperate ranks of the unemployed. But if everyone quits, and strikers manage to stop scabs from crossing the picket line, then they can demand a lot from employers to make their lives better. And that's how we actually made capitalism work for people.
UBI and my indepentarianism is just the idea of making each individual their own union. You want a system where all individual workers can say no to work. We want everyone to be able to fall back on a UBI and say "you know what? screw you, I ain't doing this", and quit if they want. I dont expect work reductions from UBI to be so massive that no one works. I don't think a UBI of that amount is feasible at all. But UBI can be scaled to levels where people are just comfortable enough to quit bad jobs and arent coerced to take more of them. And if they do that, guess what? Businesses have to raise wages, they have to offer better working conditions, and the working class is better taken care of.
It's bullcrap that we keep attacking those who dont work and making the debate about them, and turning the resentment of the working class toward them, rather than at their actual oppressors. The real enemy is the business class. It's the bourgeoisie. And I admit, I aint a revolutionary marxist, or even a reformist socialist. All things considered, I actually think capitalism as a system is the least of all possible evils. But capitalism is predicated on voluntary exchange, and the labor market is systemically rigged to basically turn people into de facto slaves. Supply for workers is high, demand for workers is low. To some extent it has to be this way or things get inflationary, but obviously there is a middle ground to be had. The problem is, as long as capitalism remains as it is, it doesnt matter if we hit that middle ground because people will still be poor, and there will still be coercion. You can't have an ideal economy where everyone has a job, and blah blah blah. The system literally requires unemployment to exist for the system to work.
That said, Joe Manchin, you can kindly F off. You're not a democrat. You're a DINO. You're basically a republican masquerading as a democrat. You're playing into conservative resentment politics, and while i understand a lot of working class voters feel this way and lean conservative for this reason, I'm going to be blunt, I think they're ignorant and fighting against their own interests. To truly make capitalism work for people, we need to dismantle this idea that the enemy is those who don't work. If anything, you should thank people for sitting in the couch every person sitting on the couch is removing themselves from the labor market and giving you a better shot at getting a job, and being able to negotiate on your own terms. Stop blaming us. We're on the same side, you fricking motherfricker.
Either way, I'm so glad this dude is retiring. Sure, it sucks we lost his seat, but we would've lost the senate anyway, and he was basically holding us up throughout the biden administration anyway. He's actually a huge reason biden lost. Because he sabotaged Biden's entire agenda over this stupid bullcrap, and basically kneecapped his entire presidency. So yeah. Screw Joe Manchin. Please retire and never participate in national politics ever again.
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