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A Universal Basic Income Is Being Considered by Canada's Government (www.vice.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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[–] -3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Because it allows companies extracting extreme profit from labour, paying their upper management exorbitantly and their labourers starvation wages to just keep doing that.

Edit:

There seems to be a significant misunderstanding of my post.

The question posed was "How could one understand this to be corporate welfare", in conjunction with the previous qualifier of "If the rich aren't subsidizing the program"

I'm not against UBI.

I AM against record profits. Profits are the extraction of surplus value from labour. Profits are unpaid wages.

The fact that we have an environment where a working person can not meet their basic needs while their employers take in record profits is a massive problem.

If the wealth transfer happens by way of increased wages, fine. If it happens by way of government transfers via UBI paid for by those same corporations, fine.

The premise to which I was responding was one where the wealthy were NOT the ones footing the bill.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Not every step that makes it slightly easier to exist as a poor person that doesn't solve capitalism is corporate welfare. Celebrate the steps in the right direction or you'll make progress impossible.

    Never say "It's not good enough" when you could say "that's good, what next?"

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Employees who have UBI to fall back on aren't forced to accept that starvation wage. UBI gives everyone a small amount of fuck-you money. Employers paying starvation wages would find themselves with a lack of qualified employees because people can afford to quit and look for a better job.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    If you believe that you must believe all programs to help poor people are corporate welfare. And you're missing three essential other half of the equation that makes UBI possible: increasing taxes in the rich. If a direct transfer of wealth from the upper class to the lower class is corporate welfare, then what isn't corporate welfare?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    If UBI is done right, no one will need to work to survive, so they can just quit that exploitative job.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    So I'm curious, and this is a legitimate concern of mine, but what happens when corporations (and the local mom and pop) raise prices, because you can now afford to pay them more? Should there be a limit enforced by the government to have a freeze on the price of goods? Wouldn't it be equally effective to skip the UBI and just do the freeze?

    In line with the freeze on the price of goods, wouldn't it be beneficial for the government to demand lower medical costs as well, since the exact same medical and pharmacy companies are selling their stuff in other countries for cheaper than in the US?

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