Just to follow up on the previous post about Universal Basic Income - a quick quiz. One of the quotes is from Engels and one is from a Tory minister. Who said what:
By the combined functioning of hands, speech organs, .... men were able to set for themselves and achieve higher and higher aims. The work of each generation itself became different, more perfect and more diversified.
or
Mankind is hard-wired to work. We gain satisfaction from it. It gives us a sense of identity, purpose and belonging … we should not be trying to create a world in which most people do not feel the need to work.
Its a funny old world isn't it? Marxist or Tory - our 'work', is at the centre of their 'moral' universe it seems!
Answer https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/dec/28/tory-mp-condemns-universal-basic-income-on-moral-grounds.
Two Birds, One Stone!
46 minutes ago
9 comments:
Define 'work'.
Pincus', Berners-lee's, Kilby/Noyce's and Bill Gates' works mean that UBI is inevitable in the first world....that's just basic math....and I still count on my fingers.
It's called the "Protestant Work Ethic" and it underpins most of Western civilisation since the Industrial Revolution, so all mainstream political movements will espouse it.
The first one is more old fashioned do I guess that's Marx, and the other interesting is the Tory.
My god, that article is a rich harvest of KCNs. Total crap.
CI isn't the problem. 'Rent' is the problem. I rationalise CI as a 'rent' refund. Which is of course an anathema to the Tories as their party started out as the renters (aka land owners) party.
Discuss.
I had the Nick Boles review on my favourites and was going to post it, but Bayard got in with the Marxist guff first. It just felt it was neat to point out that the right would do for LVT/UBI too.
But I should have just posted what I thought as I read Boles, rather than a 'fun christmas quiz' thing. Which was: Is it just me - or is Boles, just stating as 'conservative', the standard Marxist/sociological definition of 'alienation' from ones labour? 'Mankind is hard wired... etc, etc' Sounds like 1970s stuff to me.
Rich. You were in the right social science department, but the clue (crap as it was) was in the title.
What renders Boles guff, if you accept the above, is that he claims that this is a Tory 'moral' stance. Well you might well claim its 'moral' for Marxist, sociologists, after all they want to destroy the existing order, but what is 'moral' about his position for his lot? After all it was not so long ago that a Tory Chancellor argued that 3 million unemployed was a price worth paying for their inflation target. So much for a traditional Tory concern about 'hard wiring'and work.
I won't even start on Boles - workers can't expect to live life like the guilden children of the rentier class. Doesn't he actually say that?
"Mankind is hard-wired to work. We gain satisfaction from it. It gives us a sense of identity, purpose and belonging … we should not be trying to create a world in which most people do not feel the need to work."
Aha , do I see Homo Pauperensis peering out from the thicket of words? Like many Tories, Boles seems to believe that the poor are a different species. Lord Rothschild, one of the world's richest men, may work a ten-hour day, but his species is Homo Elitus, along with most of the rentier class that support the Tory party. Homo Pauperensis, OTOH, will immediately stop working given enough money to cover basic needs.
"It's called the "Protestant Work Ethic" "
I don't think the PWE is supposed to apply to Homo Pauperensis.
B, yes, the PWE is Home-Owner-Ist propaganda, just like the misinterpretation of the statement that "An Englishman's home is his castle", which originally just meant that the police needed a warrant before searching your home.
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