How could coronavirus remake our economy and society?

[Proper Tidy]

Going off on a tangent here but I think a more fruitful line of enquiry right now is how helicopter money is being used to prop up economic system, dressed up as social care obviously. So because its so widespread and undermines whole economic system, suddenly the state can find the money to support (some) individuals and (some) businesses following a shock event. It could be an easy push to introduce more permanent help for these events, now there is a recent precedent.

State already does it to some degree, eg bereavement support payments (if you have kids its 3.5k upfront and a couple of hundred a month for a year or something) - but could push for this to be extended, so redundancy supported by grant funding regardless of any redundancy paid by former employer, divorce, serious illness, so on - separate to the benefits system. Scope to win the argument and push for tax reform to pay for it.

Not well written this but its the type of stuff I think the left (of capital) should be pushing for post pandemic

 

[Anju]

It isn't just about the level. UBI if used to prop up capital can be retrograde eg UBI of 7k a year for everybody aged between 18 and state pension age. Great. But we'll get rid of child benefit, child care vouchers, housing benefit, free prescriptions (in those parts of UK where free or for those who qualify in england) etc - after all, everybody gets UBI, they can pay housing or childcare from that.

UBI sounds sexy but within the existing framework its nothing that can't be achieved through tax. Double the personal allowance but then taper it down to zero from 50k a year or something. A lot of UBI calls from right/capital are more about undermining remnants of welfare state by replacing with a universal income - which can then be eroded anyway

Thanks, I'll have to hope the existing framework doesn't survive intact.

Standing does argue for benefits to be used to top up UBI for people who can't work but I realise there's little chance of anything but a take with one hand and give with the other fudged version of UBI atm.

Wrong thread but I hope you managed to sort out your UC claim.

 

[Anju]

I'm not sure what you mean by a society first position, yes Standing is advocating UBI as a measure that will benefit society, but as one the will benefit society because it will turn back rentier capitalism to good old free market capitalism. Standing is in no way, shape or form an anti-capitalist, he'd like a more equal society where the % of share of the wealth taken by labour is higher because he feels such a society is more stable and just but he is advocating UBI as a way to support capitalism.


No it isn't just about the level that UBI would be set. I appreciate that the GKN article may reference ideas/terminology that you are not familiar with but it is worth trying to get to grips with because it really does do a good job at looking at the fundamentals of UBI and work. Re-read the Social security section of the GKN article where the purpose of poverty and welfare is discussed

And the final section


The above does not necessarily mean that UBI is bad and should be opposed. UBI might be a better means of protecting those with the least/securing a greater share for workers than the alternatives Proper Tidy outlines (thought personally I am skeptical), that's a separate discussion and becomes more technical. But it does not change the fundamental purpose of UBI, to incentivise work. A good comparison is the minimum wage, it may be an excellent thing and the level of the minimum wage should be raised but it would be daft to see the min. wage as a way of doing away with work.

Thanks for the reply. I'm going to do some more reading to try and get to grips with some of the stuff I know in name only.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Thanks, I'll have to hope the existing framework doesn't survive intact.

Standing does argue for benefits to be used to top up UBI for people who can't work but I realise there's little chance of anything but a take with one hand and give with the other fudged version of UBI atm.

Wrong thread but I hope you managed to sort out your UC claim.

Cheers anju, yeah claim in now - I jumped through every hoop spending a day doing the ID verification and a week calling every day, my other half did fuck all so the job centre phoned her and did everything on one call, claim sorted in under five minutes. So if anybody else needs to claim my advice is don't do any of the stuff they tell you to

 

[NoXion]

If rents and other living expenses are jacked up on account of people receiving UBI, and/or other benefits are abolished with the introduction of UBI, does this not then simply re-introduce the very same kind of problems that would have prompted UBI to be established in the first place? Not sure what the point is if capitalism throws itself a lifeline, only to then immediately cut itself adrift anyway.

 

[redsquirrel]

Thanks for the reply. I'm going to do some more reading to try and get to grips with some of the stuff I know in name only.

The Pelican Standing book may be worth checking out.

It’s a strange book in some ways, quite different from most Pelican books in that it is much more of a manifesto than an introduction, that’s not necessarily a criticism, it is to his credit that Stranding doesn’t pretend his book to be anything other than it is. There is a strange use of terms, with references to the libertarian left/right but with a different meaning to how most would use those terms. There is weird comparison of libertarian and republican freedom, with Aristotle (an anti-democrat who supported monarchy) put forward as a republican.

Standing argues that UBI will reduce inequality and poverty and promote justice and security. That may be true, but so will (and did) any decent welfare state measures. Standing claims that UBI can do what other welfare measures can no longer do but he never interrogates why welfare state measures are no longer “working” (though of course they are working very well for capital). This is particularly apparent when the Finnish experiment is discussed, where UBI is used to attack workers. Standing dismisses this incidence as not being consistent with the principles of UBI but never addresses the fact that like the other welfare state measures he criticises UBI will face the same difficulties.

Standing’s rentier capitalism is a bizarre version of capitalism, one that is totally ahistoric. It is not very well developed at least in this book but ultimately seems to be similar to the sort of inverted snobbery of industrialist to landowners, an idea that wealth should be generated by hard work not simply by possession. Having just finished a load of Ellen Mieksins Woods books the silliness of this vision is really hammered home. It is totally oblivious of the fact that capitalism arouse out of the (dis)possession of land. While rentier capitalism is invoked as a bad thing there is no attempt to identify at why this system has arisen, the closest that is we get is that it is due to the effects of globalisation and technology.

The best parts of the book are:
1) The recognition that people are actually capable of making sensible choices for themselves. There is a excellent case made against the prevailing idea that people cannot be trusted and need to be managed by states

2) The arguments against wage-labour as the only meaningful form on work and the defence of other non-paid forms of work. Also the defence of ‘idleness’

3) The comparison of UBI against other forms of welfare. It is this point that social democratic opponents of UBI need to tackle. If they are going to reject UBI what alternative are they going to propose? The argument of the superiority of UBI over other alternatives is well made. If a welfare state was to be drawn from scratch now, the case for UBI, without its waste on means-testing, as a choice of the basis of measures to reduce poverty and inequality.

 

[Anju]

The Pelican Standing book may be worth checking out.

It’s a strange book in some ways, quite different from most Pelican books in that it is much more of a manifesto than an introduction, that’s necessarily a criticism, it his credit Stranding’s doesn’t pretend his book to be anything other than it is. There is a strange use of terms, with references to the libertarian left/right but with a different meaning to how most would use those terms. There is weird comparison of libertarian and republican freedom, with Aristotle (an anti-democrat who supported monarchy) put forward as a republican.

Standing argues that UBI will reduce inequality and poverty and promote justice and security. That may be true, but so will (and did) any decent welfare state measures. Standing claims that UBI can do what other welfare measures can no longer do but he never interrogates why welfare state measures are no longer “working” (though of course they are working very well for capital). This is particularly apparent when the Finnish experiment is discussed, where UBI is used to attack workers. Standing dismisses this incidence as not being consistent with the principles of UBI but never addresses the fact that like the other welfare state measures he criticises UBI will face the same difficulties.

Standing’s rentier capitalism is a bizarre version of capitalism, one that is totally ahistoric. It is not very well developed at least in this book but ultimately seems to be similar to the sort of inverted snobbery of industrialist to landowners, an idea that wealth should be generated by hard work not simply by possession. Having just finished a load of Ellen Mieksins Woods books the silliness of this vision is really hammered home. It is totally oblivious of the fact that capitalism arouse out of the (dis)possession of land. While rentier capitalism is invoked as a bad thing there is no attempt to identify at why this system has arisen, the closest that is we get is that it is due to the effects of globalisation and technology.

The best parts of the book are:
1) The recognition that people are actually capable of making sensible choices for themselves. There is a excellent case made against the prevailing idea that people cannot be trusted and need to be managed by states

2) The arguments against wage-labour as the only meaningful form on work and the defence of other non-paid forms of work. Also the defence of ‘idleness’

3) The comparison of UBI against other forms of welfare. It is this point that social democratic opponents of UBI need to tackle. If they are going to reject UBI what alternative are they going to propose? The argument of the superiority of UBI over other alternatives is well made. If a welfare state was to be drawn from scratch now, the case for UBI, without its waste on means-testing, as a choice of the basis of measures to reduce poverty and inequality.

Thanks for taking the time to write this, it's really helpful. Have just invested £4.99 of our UC advance on a kindle copy.

Also I'm wondering if anyone thinks this blog is worth reading. The author is talking about "hard edged class struggle" in the linked article but when I looked him up he is a fan of MMT, which doesn't at first glance seem particularly compatible with class based stuff.

Be careful not to get ahead of ourselves – hard-edged class struggle will be necessary

 

[yield]

Thanks for taking the time to write this, it's really helpful. Have just invested £4.99 of our UC advance on a kindle copy.

Also I'm wondering if anyone thinks this blog is worth reading. The author is talking about "hard edged class struggle" in the linked article but when I looked him up he is a fan of MMT, which doesn't at first glance seem particularly compatible with class based stuff.

Be careful not to get ahead of ourselves – hard-edged class struggle will be necessary

Thought you might like this Anju

The World According to Modern Monetary Theory

Looking past money to the sovereign power that makes it valuable

thenewinquiry.com

 

[Anju]

Thought you might like this Anju

The World According to Modern Monetary Theory

Looking past money to the sovereign power that makes it valuable

thenewinquiry.com

Thanks, just had a quick skim through and looks like exactly the type of stuff I've been looking for. Beginners guide level written assuming the reader might not be familiar with the different ideas being used.

 

[campanula]

Cheers for the linkie, yield. Have been simultaneously smirking, gulping and glowering, following the global capitalism thread for...years...but often with only the sketchiest comprehension (despite sitting through a tedious year of economics during a history degree when I coulda been slacking off with the media studies crew). It was vague in 1992 and it is all very dim indeed by now, so whilst there is time for reading...

 

[yield]

Cheers for the linkie, yield. Have been simultaneously smirking, gulping and glowering, following the global capitalism thread for...years...but often with only the sketchiest comprehension (despite sitting through a tedious year of economics during a history degree when I coulda been slacking off with the media studies crew). It was vague in 1992 and it is all very dim indeed by now, so whilst there is time for reading...

Ta. Doubt you'd've learnt nothing on that economics course anyways. They fill the students with nonsense like John Nash's rational actors and the now discredited Laffer Curve.

If there's anything I can help with give me a shout.

 

[William of Walworth]

Liked the New Enquiry article's use of the student co-op and its points as an illustrative parallel .... really helped to clarify stuff for me.

 

[Anju]

This sounds similar to an MMT approach, I think, though the money would exist as debt rather than just cash in the economy. Interest only to be paid, which I guess is the compromise. Could be completely wrong but based on my limited understanding it does seem like a potentially sound idea. It's 1.5 trillion not 15 billion as the link text shows.

España propone un fondo europeo de 1,5 billones con deuda perpetua

 

[redsquirrel]

Ten reasons why a 'Greater Depression' for the 2020s is inevitable - This piece could also probably go on the financial meltdown thread
It's not a great article but might be of interest to some. Some of the reasons given are dubious ("debt unsustainable", right what was the level of debt throughout most of the C20th again) but some points are more reasonable.

This points to the sixth major factor: deglobalisation. The pandemic is accelerating trends toward balkanisation and fragmentation that were already well underway. The US and China will decouple faster, and most countries will respond by adopting still more protectionist policies to shield domestic firms and workers from global disruptions. The post-pandemic world will be marked by tighter restrictions on the movement of goods, services, capital, labour, technology, data, and information. This is already happening in the pharmaceutical, medical-equipment, and food sectors, where governments are imposing export restrictions and other protectionist measures in response to the crisis.

The backlash against democracy will reinforce this trend. Populist leaders often benefit from economic weakness, mass unemployment, and rising inequality. Under conditions of heightened economic insecurity, there will be a strong impulse to scapegoat foreigners for the crisis. Blue-collar workers and broad cohorts of the middle class will become more susceptible to populist rhetoric, particularly proposals to restrict migration and trade.

EDIT: Also a better piece Covid-19 and Crisis-20

The world is in the middle of a crisis, a breakdown of the normal functioning of society. The outbreak of a viral contagion has led to the prospect of casualties on the scale of the 1918 flu pandemic. This might seem serious enough, but politicians and policy makers are also worried about another crisis – this time an economic one. This fear is justified. Many businesses are likely to fail, with many more people losing their jobs. Financial analysts predict falls in GDP on a scale worse than the 2008 recession, unemployment is already rising rapidly and nearly 1 million people claimed Universal Credit in the last two weeks. These economic effects of the pandemic are being treated as inevitable consequences, as if they followed natural laws as surely as the replication of a virus. We disagree. A viral pandemic at the scale we are seeing does not have to produce an economic breakdown or general destitution. That in this society it does, requires explanation.

 

[ska invita]

Podcast here with a US academic, Philip Morowski, who wrote Never Let a Good Crisis Go To Waste

#85 Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste w/ Philip Mirowski

Philip Mirowski, joins me to discuss why the Covid-19 pandemic is more opportunity than threat to neoliberals and whether - as in the wake of the financial cris

podcasts.apple.com

Interesting bit in it he says US neoliberals are already seeing the C19 crisis as a win moment, because it is already achieving the following:

-Gutting of rules of drug control standards and regulations
-Telemedicine - accessing a doctor over a screen (proposed by them for a long time supposedly)
-Think it helps block move to an NHS stye system in the US (doesnt explain why)
-Its turning big pharma into a heroic sector
-re-engineering higher education, always wanted less people to access it, more distance learning helps that
-promotes home schooling
-privatisation of elementary education
-kills the US post office

 

[redsquirrel]

-re-engineering higher education, always wanted less people to access it, more distance learning helps that

Eh? % of people going into HE has increased massively under neo-liberal govs, intentionally. And how would more distance learning help reduce numbers?

EDIT: listened to this podcast now. Frankly its pretty crap, it might be ok from an entirely US perspective but in general lots is simply wrong (e.g. HE as above, "fascism"), I don't know what he means by "left" but I strongly suspect it means the Democrats, see the weird tangent about party funding. The reading of populism and "the left" is also weird. And who on the left thinks that neoliberalism is just "what rich people want"?

One point that he is bang on is that neo-liberalism needs the state.

 

[weltweit]

Initially, when the virus was mainly in China, and Chinese manufacturers were unable to deliver, UK manufacturers got lots of enquiries for parts that had till then been made in China. It was easy to think there might be a large scale onshoring of supply chains which could benefit UK manufacturing.

However, a matter of some weeks later and Chinese manufacturers are coming back on line, (while UK manufacturers are suffering from the virus now) their British customers are no longer bleating about onshoring, rather they have fallen back in love with the very low prices they can get from China.

So there might have been dramatic change, to the benefit of the UK economy, but that looks unlikely now.

 

[Flavour]

I think all the Basic Income and helicopter money initiatives which will come out of this (and I predict this will hasten their wider implementation) will completely fuck immigrants and anyone who doesn't have citizenship of their country of residence

 

[RTWL]

Good interview here with Thomas Piketty covering the possibility of investing in new social models if the world recovers and comparing stimulus packages around the world.

 

[redsquirrel]

Going to have to listen to this again as I think I missed some stuff, even with captions on it was not easy to catch everything.

However, its all very well to say that neo-liberalism is not working (and working for who?), it's something else to say how labour and capital will react. I don't disagree that it would be great if the welfare state, or basic safety net in Piketty's words, was (re-)built but is that really likely? Likewise the stuff about the international agreements about taxing multinational companies but how is that going to work when we have seen an increasing move towards national policies and protectionism (something that IMO is going to be strengthen rather than weakened by the COVID-19 crisis)?

 

[redsquirrel]

Short piece from John Harris on UBI. The piece itself is pretty general stuff but there is a link to a new paper from Compass

So, a familiar idea has once again returned: that of a universal basic income(or UBI), whereby all of us would be entitled to a regular payment from the state, enough to cover such basics as food and heating. Ten days ago, the left-inclined pressure group Compass organised a letter, signed by more than 100 MPs and peers from seven parties, calling for a “recovery basic income” that would be “sufficient to provide economic security”. An accompanying papersets out the case for these short-term measures being followed by a permanent basic income – set at a starting rate of £60 a week per working-age adult and £40 per child (or £10,400 per year for a family of four), with additional unemployment, housing and disability benefits maintained. Over time, this “income floor” could rise to £100 per adult.

 

[William of Walworth]

I'm definitely going to read those (Harris article and the Compass paper) later today, and I'll try my best to think of any drawbacks/disadvantages.
Given my own bias towards UBI as an idea, I really need to get my head round the bads as well as the goods -- I appreciate there were quite a lot of good discussions and links earlier on, further up this thread.

 

[Proper Tidy]

'with additional unemployment, housing, and disability benefits maintained' ok but for how long. My big concern is that, once entrenched, its easy for govts to move away from other provision, or the drip drip drip of not increasing benefits or allowances in line with inflation etc so worth becomes devalued. I could see local authority stuff like childcare being first to fall as everybody now has a base level UBI so councils push for removal of obligations.

I like the universal aspect but I can't see how it could end up being a net gain without pretty drastic change alongside it

 

[William of Walworth]

I've just read Stewart Lansley's Compass paper on UBI and I recommend others interested do that also -- click the blue square on this link
I really like a fair few of his arguments about UBI!
What can I be missing ....??
However, this significant bit did jump out at me :

One of the reasons that such an emergency measure has not been taken is
that the full delivery mechanisms and institutional architecture required
are not in place. A basic income scheme would require both a full list of
beneficiaries and a system for paying them. The government does not
have a detailed single record of all citizens. There are many separate
records, including the electoral roll and income tax, child benefit, driving
license and passport lists. In order to deliver a BI – emergency, recovery
or permanent - these separate sources would need to be brought
together to compile a comprehensive list of all those legally resident in the
UK, and their addresses, contact and bank details. Without such a list, it is
not possible to implement a BI.

He seems indifferent to any civil liberty based or right-to-privacy based objections to a universal list.
A significant minority of people, not just in the UK, attempt to live not just off-grid, but off-system/off-records entirely -- as far as is actually feasible.
'Bask in the day' , a number of van and boat dwellers, and other Travellers, who managed to live without claiming, did their best to achieve a bare minimum of being on the records. Or at least they attempted to.
They didn't and will never completely succeed in doing so in practice, but Stay off the system vs Get UBI will have to be a 'choice' that's central to a serious UBI discussion, surely

[just edited and added to a bit, so as to make more sense]

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

I haven't read the whole thread so don't know if anyone has raised this, but does anyone have any toughts on this new contact tracking app that is being trialed on the Isle of Wight atm? If this were to be rolled out nationwide then I can see some serious privacy issues with this, especially if it were to be made compulsory at some point. Even if it never became compulsory, I imagine that social pressure would make it so in a de facto way.

I'm not sure I like the idea of it, but can't quite articulate why. Maybe because I see how it could be integrated very easily into a social credit type monitoring and control system. This tech could very easily be adapted to ensure 'problematic' people are ostracised from wider society.

Been on a protest recently? Said something you shouldn't have on twitter? Well all of a sudden people are avoiding you and you don't know why. Theoretically this is the sort of thing that could very easily be done by a government wishing to do so.

Am I worried about nothing? Am I getting paranoid?

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Reading this with William of Walworth's post above makes me even more worred. By the end of the pandemic we might well end up with a centralised list of all 'legit' citizens, and a government-controlled tracking system that gives them the ability to coerce people into associating only with 'approved' people. A perfect carrot and stick. Want UBI? Best not get in our badbooks citizen, else you'll become a pariah.

 

[NoXion]

No such thing as "off grid" in this country. Even you really wanted to anyway, there isn't a scrap of wild land here. You're not "off grid" if you're relying on food and parts for your boat/van made by the rest of society.

 

[Brainaddict]

I've just read Stewart Lansley's Compass paper on UBI and I recommend others interested do that also -- click the blue square on this link
I really like a fair few of his arguments about UBI!
What can I be missing ....??
However, this significant bit did jump out at me :



He seems indifferent to any civil liberty based or right-to-privacy based objections to a universal list.
A significant minority of people, not just in the UK, attempt to live not just off-grid, but off-system/off-records entirely -- as far as is actually feasible.
'Bask in the day' , a number of van and boat dwellers, and other Travellers, who managed to live without claiming, did their best to achieve a bare minimum of being on the records. Or at least they attempted to.
They didn't and will never completely succeed in doing so in practice, but Stay off the system vs Get UBI will have to be a 'choice' that's central to a serious UBI discussion, surely

[just edited and added to a bit, so as to make more sense]

If it is genuinely universal then I don't see why UBI requires centralising all those records. You can pick the most widely used person-number, which is probably a national insurance number and give it to everyone with a number. Benefits will get recalculated according to the new income I assume. I haven't had time to read the paper but I wonder if he isn't really talking about a Universal Basic Income. You only need to do complex calculations if it isn't really UBI, surely?

 

[redsquirrel]

The paper proposes both a permanent UBI and the recovery BI, the UBI proposals are light on details (they refer back to this study for details).

 

[William of Walworth]

No such thing as "off grid" in this country. Even you really wanted to anyway, there isn't a scrap of wild land here. You're not "off grid" if you're relying on food and parts for your boat/van made by the rest of society.

I know that really -- I did say that people were only attempting to be off-grid/off-the-records as far as they could.
There'll inevitably be limits to possibilities there -- those I used to chat with were frustrated by that, but wanted to go for it.
A rural squat collective in Yorkshire I used to know/visit many years ago were not far off it, but compromises are inevitable!