Basic Income: An idea whose time has come

"We live in a new world, remade by many forces: the disruptive technological revolution,
brought about by the computer and the internet; the globalisation of trade, migration and communication; a fast-growing worldwide demand running up against the limits imposed by a shrinking pool of natural resources and saturation of our atmosphere; the dislocation of traditional protective institutions, from the family to labour unions, state monopolies and welfare states; and the explosive interactions of these various trends." -- Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght in Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy

Main Street, Santa Monica, July 4, 2019

                                                           (photo: John Gabree)

It should go without saying

It is unfair and counter-productive of society to dump the job of providing services to the homeless community on businesses, like coffee shops and gas stations, and public organizations, like libraries, that are ill-equipped and unprepared to handle them.

Why the U.S. Should Provide Universal Basic Income

America is the richest civilization in history. Why, then, are our living standards so low compared to those of other wealthy democracies? A universal basic income would help close the income inequality gap, eliminating poverty and increasing opportunity for all Americans.

quote unquote

Man: "Well, baby, now we're poor again."

Woman: "No, we're BROKE again. We were already poor."

                     -- Overheard at Santa Fe Savers check-out.

With apologies to dictionary.com

INTERSECTIONALITY

[in-ter-sek-shuh-nal-i-tee] noun

1.
the theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual (often used attributively): Her paper uses a queer intersectionality approach.
2.
the oppression and discrimination resulting from the overlap of an individual’s various social identities: The intersectionality of oppression experienced by black women.
3.
the antidote to identity politics: The intersectionality or “parallel problems” of economic disparity, gender inequality and institutional racism was the idea underpinning the presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Synonyms: solidarity, comradeship.
Antonyms: capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, empire.
See, also: class consciousness, class struggle.

Extra credit:
"There will be no economic or political justice for the poor, people of color, women or workers within the framework of global, corporate capitalism. Corporate capitalism, which uses identity politics, multiculturalism and racial justice to masquerade as politics, will never halt the rising social inequality, unchecked militarism, evisceration of civil liberties and omnipotence of the organs of security and surveillance. Corporate capitalism cannot be reformed, despite its continually rebranding itself. The longer the self-identified left and liberal class seek to work within a system that the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls 'inverted totalitarianism,' the more the noose will be tightened around our necks. If we do not rise up to bring government and financial systems under public control—which includes nationalizing banks, the fossil fuel industry and the arms industry—we will continue to be victims." The Bankruptcy of the American Left by Chris Hedges (Truthdig)

A cross-racial and class conscious movement is the only foundation for effective freedom: Against National Security Citizenship by Aziz Rana (Boston Review)

"In the worlds of politics and nonprofits intersectionality has become a sneaky substitute for the traditional left notion of solidarity developed in the process of ongoing collective struggle against the class enemy. Intersectionality doesn't deny the existence of class struggle, it just rhetorically demotes it to something co-equal with the fights against ableism and ageism and speciesism, against white supremacy, against gender oppression, and a long elastic list of others. What’s sneaky about the substitution of intersectionality for solidarity is that intersectionality allows the unexamined smuggling in of multiple notions which directly undermine the development and the operation of solidarity. Intersectionality means everybody is obligated to put their own special interest, their own oppression first – although they don’t always say that because the contradiction would be too obvious." Intersectionality is a Hole. Afro-Pessimism is a Shovel. We Need to Stop Digging (part 1) by Bruce A. Dixon (Black Agenda Report)

"In the context of the real left, the community of those aiming to overthrow capital, patriarchy, white supremacy and empire—not two or three out of four but all four, the term intersectionality has become a kind of brood parasite. It mimics just enough of left feminist rhetoric and branding to deceive the unwary and ensnare many bright, serious and sincere leftists into defending and promoting its fundamentally hostile project." Looking Down That Deep Hole: Parasitic Intersectionality and Toxic Afro-Pessimism (part 2) by Bruce A. Dixon (Black Agenda Report)

The story is not THAT citizens are in the streets. The question that needs to be addressed is WHY.

I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. -- Rev. Martin Luther King

The mainstream media is shocked -- shocked! -- by the damage caused by the protestors in Baltimore, but the real story is the grinding poverty and neglect wrought by capital and the powerlessness of citizens living under the thumb of oligarchy.

"Baltimore," Shawn Gude writes, "is like so many other cities with their own Freddie Grays: a place in which private capital has left enormous sections of the city to rot, where a chasm separates the life chances of black and white residents — and where cops brutally patrol a 'disposable' population."

(Photo: The Baltimore Sun)

Observers have long puzzled over the passivity of average Americans suffering impoverishment and disenfranchisement at the hands of a kleptocratic elite.

Is this the beginning of the American Spring?

The rest of the story: Why Baltimore Rebelled by Shawn Gude (Jacobin).
10,000 Strong Peacefully Protest In Downtown Baltimore, Media Only Reports The Violence & Arrest of Dozens by AJ Woodson (Black Westchester).
Eyewitnesses: The Baltimore Riots Didn't Start the Way You Think. Baltimore teachers and parents tell a different story from the one you've been reading in the media. By Sam Brodey and Jenna McLaughlin (Mother Jones)

Reading list: “A corrupt, unresponsive and plutocratic disaster”: How Mitch McConnell and the GOP remade Washington in their image. Now that the GOP's in control, Mitch McConnell is letting some things pass — and taking all the credit. By Elias Isquith (Salon).
Why So Many Americans Feel So Powerless by Robert Reich (robertreich.org).
American Political Passivity, Anti-Authoritarianism, and Building a Base by Bruce E. Levine (WarIsACrime).
Rise of the New Black Radicals by Chris Hedges (TruthDig).

We're not only criminalizing poverty.

We're criminalizing compassion and generosity.

Arnold Abbott being arrested on November 2, 2014

90-year-old Florida man faces 60 days in jail for feeding the homeless by Eric W. Dolan (Raw Story)

Living big at $7.25 an hour

The Times spent a few column inches yesterday mulling over the mystery of why the poverty rate hasn't budged in 30 years. Gosh. I don't know. I'm sure it can't have anything to do with the systematic decimation of organized labor and the shipping of American jobs to China and Mexico. Can't see how starving the free universal education system could have anything to do with it. It can't be because of all that expenditure of public wealth on the liberal project of empire-building instead of on the building roads and bridges and harbors and airports and hospitals and schools and housing here at home. Can't be that. You can't blame the war on drugs, or the creation of a vast army of former inmates without jobs, or the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars on incarceration instead of education, on building prisons instead of schools. I'm sure it has nothing to do with Bill Clinton's welfare reforms. Surely it wasn't because the minimum wage wasn't linked to inflation or to worker productivity so that as the decades rolled by low end jobs were worth less and less. Couldn't be that. Certainly it had nothing to do with the mortgage crisis. Or allowing the banks to bleed us dry. Or slashing services for the poor and middle class so that taxes for the very wealthiest could be slashed, too. I can't think what the reason might be. Can you?

Is there anyone in Congress or the White House, elected official or staff member, who would work for $9 an hour?

For someone so ept at electoral politics, President Obama has repeatedly shown himself to be artless when it comes to the political side of governance. On issue after issue, he has entered policy negotiations with low-ball proposals that set-up compromises that, in real terms, hand victory to his opponents.

Take the $9 minimum wage proposal. A person making $9 an hour will earn, before deductions, $360 a week. That's working a full 40-hour week, but many retail and service jobs offer much shorter hours. Even a worker lucky enough to land two full-time jobs -- 80 hours a week -- would take home less than $720 a week after deductions. Clearly, a minimum wage of $9 is not sufficient if the goal is to assure that, as the president said Tuesday in his address to Congress, no one with a full time job should have to live in poverty.

The problem with Obama's maladroit handling of negotiations with the conservatives is that he establishes benchmarks that, while they may achieve "compromise," not only don't fix the problem being addressed but make it less likely that a better result can be achieved in the future (think of health care reform). If a deal at all cost is your goal, $9 may make some sense; as policy, it's ridiculous.

Labor and liberals should have nothing to do with it.

Peace & Justice: A few thoughts from MLK this holiday weekend

"...three larger problems which grow out of man's ethical infantilism: racial injustice, poverty, and war." -- Rev. Martin Luther King, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize

It ought to be shocking to anyone that in the wake of the recession the number of Americans living in poverty has jumped to 44 million -- one in seven citizens is now living below the poverty line, more than at any time in the past 50 years. More specifically, one in five American children, more than a quarter of African Americans and Latinos, and over 51% of female-headed families with children under 6 is impoverished. According to poverty expert Peter Edelman, 19 million people are now living in "extreme poverty," defined as under 50 percent of the poverty line, or $11,000 for a family of four. "That means over 43 percent of the poor are extremely poor."

But Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, argues there are ways to attack the problem:

Half in Ten, a coalition working to cut poverty by half in 10 years, is pushing Congress to renew the TANF Emergency Fund, which is set to expire on Thursday. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have used the program to provide 250,000 low-income and long-term unemployed workers with subsidized jobs. The coalition is also pushing to make the Obama administration's Recovery Act reforms to the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit permanent. These progressive policies keep families from falling into poverty and reduce long-term costs such as crime, public benefits and lost consumption. Estimates of costs associated with childhood poverty run at $500 billion annually, or 4 percent of gross domestic product.

The rest of the story: As 44 million Americans live in poverty, a crisis grows by Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Washington Post 2010-09-28).

Apps: A homeless person on your iPhone

With charitable donations plummeting because of the state of the economy, the fundraising efforts of nonprofits have needed a creative boost. Just how creative is demonstrated by iHobo, a Tamagotchi-like iTunes application that lets you interact with your very own homeless person, shows just how creative. In just a week, iHobo shot to the top of the iTunes chart, with over 200,000 downloads. Although at first glance it may sound exploitative, the thinking behind it, the app's creators claim, is as serious as it is provocative. Although it's generating significant word of mouth, innovative marketing ploy's success won't ultimately be measured by publicity or even download volumes, but by the uplift in donations it produces. iHobo: No 1 on the street by Meg Carter (Guardian UK 2010-05-24).

Media: Top 10 Works of Journalism of the Last Decade

The faculty of New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and a group of distinguished outside judges has selected "The Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade in the United States." We began with a list of eighty nominees. Our purpose was to call attention to and honor work of exceptional importance and quality - journalism that brilliantly met the challenges of this difficult decade.

Ten years ago New York University, using some of the same judges, selected "The Top 100 Works of Journalism of the Twentieth Century in the United States."

The official press release is  here.

The staff of The New York Times: "A Nation Challenged" 2001

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx 2003

Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 2006

Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson: This American Life & NPR: "The Giant Pool of Money" 2008

C.J. Chivers (reporter), Dexter Filkins (reporter) and Tyler Hicks (photographer): The New York Times ongoing reporting from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. More2003-2009

Jane Mayer: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals 2008

Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America 2001

The Times-Picayune staff, New Orleans, La.: Coverage of Hurricane Katrina, August-December 2005

Anne Hull, Dana Priest (reporters) and Michel du Cille (photographer) - The Washington Post: "Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army's Top Medical Facility" 2007

Walter Robinson, Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, Matt Carroll, Stephen Kurkjian, Tom Farragher, Michael Paulson, Kevin Cullen, Ben Bradlee Jr., Mark Morrow - The Boston Globe: Abuse in the Catholic Church"  2002

Why welfare reform fails its recession test

"When President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law, he didn't just end welfare as we knew it. For all practical purposes, it turned out, he brought an end to cash help of any kind for families with children in much of the country. While welfare reform was long ago declared a success in some quarters, it was deeply flawed from the beginning. The recession has shown how seriously unprepared it left us for hard times." - Peter Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich (Washington Post 2009-12-06).

For all you -- you know, metaphorical -- ukulele players

“A prosperous country should not just be prosperous for the people like me who are wired a particular way at birth (no credit to me) but I happen to know something about capital allocation and that wasn’t, you know, instead I could have been wired, you know, so I was, I don’t know, a great ukulele player. But there’s no money in that." -- Warren Buffett

Impractical Proposals: John Edwards still wants economic justice in America

The former Democratic Party vice-presidential candidate is leading an ambitious campaign to cut poverty in America by half in 10 years -- completely in 30: <PBS' Now>.