It’s Either Basic Income or Chaos
Pay it forward or suffer the payback.
Basic income has been a pretty hot button topic recently. Forbes says it could help our society’s productivity. The Guardian says it’s an absolute necessity. The New Economy calls it a socialist fairytale.
I say it’s either basic income or total and utter, scorched earth, death match for drinking water, cannibalistic chaos.
To put it in simplest terms, basic income is a set amount of money every citizen would receive in order to ensure a basic standard of living. It would be given to all citizens, from those with nothing all the way up to billionaires (hoarders).
To put it in simplest terms, chaos is when Wall Street people need fallout bunkers with heavy locks or they’re going to get ripped apart and eaten like a gazelle fetus in a hyena eating frenzy.
Automation is far more efficient than manual labor, but it also eliminates jobs, particularly blue collar jobs (though it’s shifting into the white-collar spectrum as well). Corporations generate huge amounts of income with far less overhead, while those who once worked those jobs are pounding the pavement, often to no avail. It’s been a problem for a long time, and it continues to be a mounting concern, as automation claims more and more jobs every year.
As a freelance writer, my job feels relatively safe, but if you take a look at the progression of technology, creative writing may be one of the least technical professions automation can take over. (Sorry, coders, engineers, architects, and doctors, the matrix is coming for you.)
Automation should be a good thing. It should mean that robots are finally doing all the work for us. It should be the start of never before known comfort to all people, wherein we replace traditional elbow grease with literal gears-and-levers grease so that we can focus on slowly building our digital hive mind.
Instead, automation is doing the work for people who weren’t doing the work to begin with. It’s a dollars and cents issue, not a “holy god, if I have to do one more day at this job I’m going to set a chair behind my treadmill, turn that treadmill up to twelve, jump on the conveyor, and Million Dollar Baby my neck into the backrest” issue.
As is typical, those who could use a break the least get the most breaks.
It’s important to first remind everyone that corporations are not people despite the legality surrounding the Fourteenth Amendment in the form of corporate personhood. Yep, the very same amendment that led to desegregation, pro-choice, and gay marriage is being used by corporations to obtain many of the same rights given to individual citizens.
A corporation dying is not the end of a human life. A corporation having to pay a ton in taxes is not a human rights violation. A corporation is not a human being and therefore does not have a moral compass or societal obligation. A corporation is inanimate. GM doesn’t lay off its workers, the people who lay off the workers do. The housing bubble wasn’t caused by big banks, it was caused by big bankers. We cannot afford to forget this.
In that same vein, it’s also important to remember that capitalism is not what’s evil, it’s the people who approach capitalism psychopathically who are evil. It’s people willing to hurt others in order to line their pockets. That’s textbook evildoing.
But I will concede that The New Economy is correct: basic income is a socialist fairytale. Personally, I would call it a democratic socialist approach to an escalating problem where only two outcomes are possible: everyone has enough to eat well, hydrate safely, and sleep comfortably, or, well, chaos. (Catch the Orwell pun?)
But hey, tomayto, tomahto.
We got a little peek of what a mass number of angry people protesting because they’re simply angry looks like with the 99%ers. The end result was, at worst, a conversation starter, but it’s starting to feel like a seed was planted. If Jack and the Giant Beanstalk taught us anything, it’s that seeds can blast into the stratosphere and through the homes of (corporate) giants.
Here’s the thing filthy rich people need to understand: the vast majority of you were born privileged. You don’t know what desperation feels like. And right now, you’re probably thinking you’ll never need to.
But desperate times call for desperate measures. If you think a mass number of people accustomed to desperation aren’t going to reach a boiling point eventually as you continue to automate your industries, put people out of work, and give next to nothing back, you’re the one living in a fairytale. You better be ready for the day a large group of stronger people march to and break down the wall of your fortress, pull you off your gold-plated shitter mid-poop, and drag you through the streets like Cersei Lannister. Then you’ll know what desperation feels like.
Basic income isn’t the end to ambition, by the way, it’s simply the end to feeling desperate. It’s giving people enough to have the quality of life middle-class folks are able to enjoy now (or for now) while leaving room for all the ambition one could want.
How could anyone have a problem with someone hoarding billions of dollars if everyone else is comfortable?
Basic income isn’t communism. It’s not an equal share. It still allows the hardest working, most talented, and even the most privileged to come out ahead. It also allows people to, you know, not go hungry or freeze to death or have health problems because their drinking water comes out murky brown.
And how do we pay for it? With ease! We tax the filthy rich a lot of money, close up loopholes that get them out of it, force corporations to pay more in taxes and a SHITLOAD more in taxes if they take their business to a foreign country, get developed countries on board with this initiative so that they too block countries who flee for lower taxes, and boom. No one is hungry. Crime rates are way down. People aren’t forced to work a job that drives them to suicide under threat of homelessness. People can still make additional income and enjoy the finer things in life if they so choose.
I had this conversation with a friend of mine, and we were totally on the same page until he said that people should be limited to what they were able to spend their basic income on.
No. This is not welfare. It’s not food stamps or unemployment or bankruptcy. This is us making capitalism work for everyone on some level. Basic income is basic human decency.
And I promise you (I’d stake my life on it, I really would), the stupidly rich will continue to be stupidly rich. Despite this, they’ll be the strongest opposition, both vocally and politically, to basic income.
If our government and society continues to work for the benefit of the rich — standing idly by while executives automate industries to get richer while average people lose their jobs/lose everything — most people (yes, most) will suffer greatly.
The middle class really will disappear.
Those who don’t know squalor will become well acquainted with it.
Crime will increase to the point where we live in an extremely blatant police state rather than just a blatant police state.
Rich people will retreat into their palaces and hire private armies.
At first, we’ll all just accept it. But then someone will shout “LET’S EAT THEM ALIVE!” into a megaphone, the country will erupt into chaos, and rich people will be eaten alive in a savage display of comeuppance (dibs on thigh).
Or, you know, we could just tax corporations heavily, tax filthy rich people a fair amount, not tax people below the poverty line, and distribute basic income while jobs disappear at the same rate more money comes in.
And hey, in the meantime, let’s give medicine and treatment to anyone seeking medical care. Otherwise, they’ll die. To go against universal health care is to either not care that people are dying or to repulsively enjoy the idea that people are dying. Either way, the hell’s wrong with you? Seriously, seek mental health treatment (if you can afford it).
Basic income seems like basic common sense. But it probably won’t happen, which means GRAB YOUR FORK AND KNIFE BECAUSE WE’RE FEASTING ON- Sorry, I got a little carried away there for a mome- THE RICH!
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