[P2P-F] Postcapitalism, Basic Income and the End of Work: A Critique and Alternative

Thu Nov 23 02:04:29 CET 2017

I apologize, I have not read the paper, I have always been very sympathetic
to UBI, but I rather did not study all the material available.

But I have a simple question.

Has there been some studies or work done analyzing the potential and
feasibility  UBI in developing countries?

I live in Colombia. A country with 48.6 million people. Many of these
persons don't get much of a help from the state, and most live on rather
low salaries, whereas though the divide is huge. Of course living costs are
also lower.

There is minimum wage set by the state after negotiation every year with
worker unions, industry leaders etc. Currently it is 737000 pesos per month
- about 240 USD.

I naively assume that the calculation would go like 240USD x 12months x
48500000 people = nearly 140 billions USD in a year. GDP was almost exactly
the double of this figure, 282.5 billion.

I wonder if my math is acceptable, or if I am totally misunderstanding UBI
(beyond the nice side that makes it so appealing), in terms of how to
calculate it and the relationship of it with a country's 'performance', or
rather potential to actually implement it.

So the question is, is UBI feasible and doable for a country like Colombia?

Thanks and apologies if I hijacked this thread for  this question.

Best wishes to all
Fabio

On 22 Nov 2017 1:42 p.m., "Anna Harris" <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:

> I took a brief look at this paper and found it seriously disappointing. I
> hope someone with more heart to read through a caricature of UBI as
> presented here, will make a more thorough criticism.
> UBI is presented as a way to 'escape work', and as anti productivity,
> 'post work dreamers', following a remark by Marx that it was a misfortune
> to be a productive worker.  I cannot claim to have read all the literature,
> but this interpretation of the motivation for UBI does not ring true to me.
> The possibility for people to be free to choose how they spend their time,
> in what way they want to contribute to social wellbeing, as a result of
> UBI, does not seem to enter this analysis.
>
> Finally what I understood  positively was that it should be administered
> by us rather than the state, good point, and can connect with social
> projects needed to make the transition to a society that works for all.
> Both of these points could have been made without attempting to debunk UBI,
> and it's having many supporters of different colours (as if that is a
> criticism)
> Anna
>
> On 21 Nov 2017, at 19:07, Theodoros Karyotis <tkaryotis at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A critique of the plan for a Basic Income and its conception of the
> state, money, wage, and labour:
>
> >
> > http://www.bath.ac.uk/cds/publications/bdp55.pdf
> <http://www.bath.ac.uk/cds/publications/bdp55.pdf>
> >
> >
> > <http://autonomias.net>
> > autonomias.net <http://autonomias.net>
> > twitter.com/TebeoTeo <http://twitter.com/TebeoTeo>
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------------------------------------------
> > ...buscar y saber reconocer quién y qué, en medio del infierno, no es
> infierno, y hacer que dure, y dejarle espacio..
> > .
>
>
> >
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