Oinarrizko zerbitzu unibertsalez

0:00

So, I’d like you to lay out the cases to what UBS is and why is it better than UBI?

0:06

Sure. So UBI stands for universal or unconditional basic income.

0:12

Right. And so this is what people hang on to because it’s easy.

0:17

It’s a, it fits on a meme, right? You can put it on a meme and people are like, well, yeah, give me 1, 000 a month.

0:25

No problem. That sounds great. Give me, I mean, I’d like to have a thousand dollars extra a month

0:30

in my pocket who wouldn’t, right? But the, the point of a UBI is I’m providing you with a tax credit.

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Remember when I described what money is as a creature of the state, that the dollar is a tax credit that the U S government uses so that it can ask for

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those taxes back by making you do, you have to do something to get the tax. And that’s how.

0:54

That’s the engine of the economy is not the money that they collect, but your, the obligation that you do.

1:01

So by them giving you just money, just giving you random money, it fundamentally violates the whole purpose of the the tax credit, right?

1:11

The tax credit is a coercive force intended To allow the government to provision itself, quite frankly.

1:17

And back in the day, the King would come to some dude sitting on the side of the road and say, Hey, yo, I’d like you to build me an aqueduct.

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And the guy’s like, I’m, I’m, I’m good, man. I, I think I’m going to keep, plucking potatoes and maybe go fishing, spend

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some time with my kids, whatever. And the King’s like, ah, good point. And the King’s like, well, how about I put a tax on your house.

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Would you do it then? And it’s like, Oh where am I going to get that? The thing to pay the tax.

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And he’s like, ah, good point. He goes, these gold coins with my little face on it here. You can get 10 of those by building me an aqueduct and that’ll cover the

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tax on your house, they called it a hut tax and, and Matt Forstater wrote some great papers on this.

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You can look it up. It was in Africa in particular is one of the ways that they did it, but everywhere, this has kind of been the way that the sovereign, Kings and monarchies and

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so forth they would spend their coins, their gold coins into existence and.

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And people didn’t have any need for the gold coin with the King’s face on it. So they institute a tax and the King would get his money back, but it

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would allow them to do whatever it was that the King wanted them to do. And so in, in the case of the UBI, you’re giving people money, but

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there’s a whole bunch of other things that are going on there, right? So businesses primary driver of all businesses is to maximize

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shareholder value to limit wages. And to limit expenses in general and provide the most return

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on investment to shareholders. And so with that in mind, when they know that you get a bump

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in pay, and we could see this in spades during the pandemic, right?

3:03

We had our supply chains crash around us. We had ultimately people were given money to stay home.

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To not go back to work to avoid being super spreaders or whatever was the motivation.

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And ultimately businesses saw that people had money and they knew

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they had additional money because they weren’t driving on the roads. They weren’t having to go into the office.

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They were having to do whatever. And so businesses and Isabella Weber, who’s a economist I strongly recommend

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reading her work on inflation, documented extensively that most of the inflation

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we experienced, save for some minor spikes from supply chains breaking down and fuel cost increases, etc.

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What, what she ended up saying was, is that most of this was what they call seller’s inflation, a.

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k. a. greedflation, which was corporations arbitrarily raising prices.

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And some of them had eight, 900 percent profit. That’s ridiculous. That’s insane, but they could do it.

4:07

And this is what generated most of the inflation. So hypothetically, everybody gets an extra thousand dollars a month.

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What does the capitalist do? What does the business center do? They know that there’s a certain amount of fluff floating out there in, in the world.

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And so they raise prices until they can soak up that extra, that, that surplus, if you will, surplus in people’s bank accounts, they try and

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maximize the amount of that disposable income coming back to their coffers.

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So without having a price anchor, Something to lay prices down to maintain that.

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And the federal reserve has a dual mandate, full employment and price stability.

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They try to manage that through interest rates and so forth. So now all of a sudden you’ve set in a new thing.

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So in order for the federal reserve to maintain price stability, they have one tool in their mind that’s raise interest rates because that’s the only tool they

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really have is to raise interest rates. So they raise interest rates. And what does that do? That raises the cost of credit, which by extension is inflationary.

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And so then what happens? People that have money get additional money through the interest income channel.

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So the rich become richer as a result of this massive transference.

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This all informs us what a UBI looks like. Even though we we already have UBI, but for rich people, bonds, right?

5:32

Right. So if we look at UBI in a kind of modern sense, we already kind of have one in the

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United States talking purely of the U. S. I’m sure Canada has something similar to this in social security.

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They’ve convinced us that That we’re paying into social security, that it’s our money coming back to us, which is not true.

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As much as a fun, exciting story that may feel to our kids, it’s not real.

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It was a lie that FDR told to get everyone to believe that they had skin in the game to create this.

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But ultimately social security is a de facto UBI. It’s the difference is it’s a BI because it’s conditional.

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It’s conditional based on certain requirements that you meet, whether it be age. Survivor benefits, disability, a host of things.

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Social security plays into that. So we kind of already have. A lot of those quote unquote conditions that people typically,

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well, what if I’m disabled? Well, there’s social security there. It’s not enough. Yeah.

6:35

Well, that’s the problem. The reason it’s not going up is because they’ve convinced you that it’s your

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tax dollar paying for UBI, paying for your social security, et cetera. And so naturally they’re trying to find ways to get more tax dollars

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from the rich to pay for the stuff. And it’s just not so. But it’s all part of the lie.

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It’s all part of the monetary lie that we’ve grown to believe. And it’s also in part why folks that are capitalists like UBI a lot

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because Milton Friedman’s kind of belief system said the only problem with capitalism, we need more of it.

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And so by helicopter money, dropping money on people, They’re going to spend that money. So that is going to be one person spending is another person’s income.

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So they figured, Hey, this is a great way to grease up the skids for capitalism,

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but it doesn’t take into account, people, gig workers working for pennies on the

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dollar and being subsidized with their UBI instead of letting companies off the

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hook for not paying a fair living wage and skimming all that off for corporate bonuses, stock buybacks, you name it.

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An MM tier would probably tell you point blank that we want to make sure that they’re paying a living wage, that they are paying a wage commensurate.

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And so this is why they would bring a job guarantee as opposed to a UBI because a job guarantee does something that UBI could never do.

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And that is monopolize hours. You can only be in one place at the one time. So if I’m working 40 hours a week at my, my job guarantee job, you

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can’t subsidize a shit wage over there at Walmart by a year UBI.

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And I can’t just jack up wage prices of things because ultimately the UBI would allow them to have that free extra money and work and stuff.

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And so they assume that everybody will have more money. So they just jack prices up. There is no price anchor job guarantee, which is, would be part

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of UBS, which would be part of that. structural eco socialist worldview is that it does provide a price anchor.

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It’s the job anchor. It’s the job standard, the employment standard, if you will, where de facto kind of pegging the currency.

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And I don’t really like that, but in effect, it is a peg of sorts. to labor. We’re saying a unit of labor now, this should appeal to Marxists

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in many ways, is that we’re now defining what a unit of labor is. We’re defining for all what that minimum don’t even want to call it

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wage because it’s more than that. It’s a benefit package, the universal benefit package, the base case for all employment.

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And by doing that, Now, all of a sudden, all those companies have to meet or beat the job guarantee wage, which is not make work.

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It’s not dig a hole, fill a hole. It’s not, working for the man kind of thing. It’s literally socially valuable work that we, the people in our

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local communities would decide. We decide what we want to compensate. We, do we want to have people play chess with people in elderly homes?

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Do we want to have people teach guitar lessons, in the community? Do we want to have them teach swim lessons or.

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Whatever. Bottom line is, is that anything that we want done can be funded in full by

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the federal government, paid for and administered at the local government, giving rise to local democracy, and I call it a democracy enhancer, right?

10:02

But without these sorts of things, if you just go with the UBI, You have no tether to anything.

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You’re not guaranteed anything extra. In fact, you could find yourself even in worse shape because of price

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hikes and, and the inflationary pressures that come from that seller’s inflation that I described Isabella Weber doing her work on.

10:24

So this all backs us up to UBS. UBS, we’re providing universal basic services.

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And this is part of that eco socialist framework that people like Jason Hickel have written extensively on.

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If you really want to learn about universal basic services, guys like Jason Hickel provide a very, very great framework for what sustainability

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looks like and what these kinds of public purpose type jobs, green.

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Mind you, the job guarantee is not a green job. The job guarantee is just a base case for all employment, for kind of like,

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as opposed to an unemployed buffer stock of labor, you’re providing an employed

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buffer stock of labor for, for the work that needs to be done by the state. But when you think about it, so much of the waste and the

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climate crisis that we’re facing right now comes from all this. Competition and advertising and layers upon layers of capitalism, all these

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different services picked apart and skimmed off of, I mean, even payment systems for crying out loud, things like PayPal and all this stuff,

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these middlemen that have layered in all the way across universal basic services eliminates a lot of that.

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If you have. For example, we have no healthcare in the United States. It’s trash. It’s horrible.

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And there’s a hundred layers of denial services stacked on top of your insurance.

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There’s a hundred ways that they a la carte you to the point of bankruptcy. So the United States doesn’t have any of these things.

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So it’s hard for people to get their head wrapped around. They think, Oh, you’re just going to become dependent on the government. We already are dependent on the government.

12:05

The government has created the rules and regulations, the markets and all the things in the government that regulates the whole enchilada.

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It’s, it’s already, you’re already dependent on what they’ve put together. If they make a change to it, your life will change because you will

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ultimately be a part of this system. It’s, it’s just inevitable. It is part of a larger machine that you can’t really escape.

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There’s not really the Prairie anymore. There’s no, there’s no unexplored areas other than maybe the Marianas Trench.

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So. Ultimately, you’ve got to have services to be able to survive in this country.

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And the UBS would do is provide those services to you at no or low

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cost and the no cost version for, for the sake of this conversation.

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Allows that the government would create these things, create high speed rail, create mass transit, create sustainable green cities, create regenerate renewable

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energy and so forth, create the, the very conditions by which we could live without ever getting a bill to see, Hey, I got to pay for this thing.

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So in many ways it takes money out of the equation. It literally, the government makes payments to those entities, those people.

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That are providing the services, but you, the person are not required to pay it. The government’s paying it directly.

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So you don’t see that cost. The good news about that is the government can pay any price it needs to pay.

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And it can also set the price as the monopoly issue of the currency. On the flip side though, for, for if you were to try and do these things with

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universe UBI, what you would be stuck with is you have to negotiate on your own.

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You have to find the services on your own. You have to pay for the services. And if you run out of cash from your UBI, you’re shit out of luck.

13:57

Okay. With the other side, the government is creating the industries. It is literally funding those industries.

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It’s funding the people working in those industries and ensuring that everyone has access.

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And, and so availability of services, quality of services the inflation

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proofing of services, you name it. All comes with this UBS approach.

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And the, the skies though, we’re not talking about burlap clothing and gray and drab and no color.

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And life is boring. We’re talking about literally providing premium living conditions for all.

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Providing home housing for all providing internet, making things, reclaiming

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the privatization and reclaiming them and becoming more nationalized and becoming universal national services for all part of the public commons.

14:51

I think it’s a fantastic, holistic approach to things. And I think quite frankly, it’s, it’s perfectly fit for Marxists and

15:00

other socialists of different ilk. To kind of get behind it and embrace in this, struggle, if you will.

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for all of our lives. And I think UBS meets that need head on.

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And I love the fact that we don’t see the cost increases as people, we, as people

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get those services regardless, and the government itself controls the negotiating

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between the deliverers of those services because it controls the laws. It controls all the rest of the.

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Parameters and regulatory bodies that service those industries. So to me, that’s the step forward.

15:38

Yes. I mean, questions.

15:43

One is just a very practical one of clarification, being what exactly would a UBS include, would it include housing as well as a job guarantee?

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Would it include even food? Because I know China, for example, had the iron rice bowl program, which eventually

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got removed, but They had the iron rice bowl program, which was like a kind of guaranteed right to food I really doubt that would probably be necessary in like

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first world countries that have like such abundance, but you never know how but how is like so what would be included in UBS, in your view because Like, would the right

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to affordable housing be included there? Cause that would be a very big one for sure. And I think that’s the, when you started getting into the territory

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of basically socialism at that point and yeah, education, healthcare.

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Yeah, it really comes down to what do we want, right? Like I don’t want to be at the mercy of a capitalist for a

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universal basic need, right? A universal basic need. I don’t want to be at the mercy of a capitalist for I don’t want to be at

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the mercy of someone whose primary purpose is to maximize shareholder value. I don’t want to be at the mercy of supply and demand based on some cost,

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benefit model that some company puts out there for their return on investment.

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My father died of a very unique disease called progressive supernuclear palsy.

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It’s got such a tiny footprint of people that will die from it or, or ever have

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it, that will never be profitable to cure. It’ll never be profitable to solve.

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And so they won’t not unless we fully invest R and D at a national

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level, make patents and protections and things like that, a thing of the past and really make them part of the public purpose, the public comments.

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So the things that you and I would want in there, I think It’s as important

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that we, as people discuss those things. I mean, I can come up with, I mean, Jason Hickle, look at it, go out

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there and look for his writings. He’s got some great stuff about the double purpose of, or the double mission.

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I think is, I believe it’s double mission of eco socialism and universal

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basic services is cogs trying to look it up here while we’re talking.

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And the power of decommodifying, I think is what it calls universal public services, the power of decommodifying survival.

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This came out in August 2004, I’ll give it to you and you can put it in the show notes if you like but ultimately I, I believe that you’re talking about

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the right to a job, you’re talking about the internet communications.

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Because we want to try to survive, it does no good if we have all these fancy big words and all these great ideas and stuff like that.

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If the planet, gets rid of us because we’ve taken such poor care of our, our world that we are no longer able to, live here.

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Right. Cause we’re dead. I think that it’s important that we do things in a sustainable, responsible way.

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And. I believe that this is all open for debate. I mean, healthcare, certainly education, absolutely.

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Clothing. Absolutely. Housing for sure. There should be no such thing as homelessness.

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There’s no need for homelessness. I mean, we’ve got. room for that. But that comes back to our class interests.

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Who’s in whose class interest is it that some might be homeless while others live in absolute, opulence.

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And I think you understand that the way that the rich judge themselves is by the person right below them, by, how far, how much they’ve acquired and where they fit

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in the pecking order and, and so forth. And you see the, the very rich, what did they miss? They miss the ability to be gods.

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They want to be in control. And one of the things MMT does, which I think is important in this

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whole UBS conversation is it says, we don’t need your money, rich people.

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We don’t need your money at all to do these things. We’re going to do them and we’re going to do them with or without you.

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And on the backside, not tied to this, we’re going to do it without you thing. We’re going to tax the hell out of you because you’re too damn rich and

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you’re buying up our democracies. And you’re not actually contributing, but you’re actually contributing

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in the wrong way to the carbon footprint, to destroying society. And we’re going to fix that too.

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But I think the, the point of this is that an MMT lens allows us to understand that the state, as long as there are real resources available,

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as long as there is labor that can be contributed, as long as there are goods and services and production ready, we can achieve whatever we want to achieve.

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It’s not an issue of where do we find the money. And there’s a documentary out now that talks about finding the money.

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But I would strongly say that it doesn’t matter where the money comes from, because we literally create the money.

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We don’t print it. We spend it into existence, like I said in the beginning. But we have unlimited amount of money.

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It’s just like we have unlimited inches and pounds in the world. So we have unlimited money as well, unlimited ability to measure credit

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relationships on the limited ability to put these tokens out, just like air miles or, whatever with air miles, they can print a million

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air miles, but if they only have. 30 seats to distribute.

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That’s going to be a real problem. Guess what? It’s going to cost a lot of air miles to land one of those seats, and it’s going to drive up scarcity and costs and, and so forth.

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So within a universal basic services approach, we just need to make sure

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whatever we’re saying, like, for example, in the United States, there’s a big push for Medicare for all, which would probably be considered one of these universal

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basic services, even though I don’t like it, I’d rather have just a national health service and be done with it.

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But in that case though. If you give everyone, suddenly you give everyone access to health

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care on demand, whatever you need, however you need it, you sure as hell better have put together the plan to make sure you have the resources.

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Do you have enough doctors? Do you have enough nurses? Do you have enough phlebotomists? Do you have enough gurneys and whatever, all the different aspects, do you have

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enough clinics to provide services? How do people get their service? Do you have enough of whatever it is?

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And it might not be something you can just flip your finger. You might take 10 years to hire and train enough people.

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To do this thing. So you’ve got to have a long view on how to implement it. You’re going to have a long view on how you transition to it.

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And most of the bills you see, most of the quote unquote policy space you see out there never takes into consideration what it will take to acquire and to build

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out the structure, the infrastructure, the ability to provide these services.

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And so what ends up happening? They’re mostly starved out by underfunding. They are completely not considered on how to staff and

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how to build the real resources. So invariably you get poor service. And so people see these poor services and in their head, they say, why the

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hell would I want government anything? It’s crap. They do horrible work, but that’s by design. They want it to be starved.

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They want it to be like, there you go. You want a government in it and look at government screwing it up again.

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But in reality, it’s a function of austerity. It’s a function of saying we don’t have the money. It’s a function of saying we can’t do those things and we can,

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and we can do them very well. And we can do them not just very well, but we can do them better than

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what the capitalist system does. We can take whatever we want, however we want to design it, and we can make

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those universal services as good as we want, as good as we can dream. We, it will never be an issue of we can’t find the money.

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Except in this current environment where we don’t have agency in the political system to make those things happen.

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So to me, the radical moment here is to realize what could happen right here, right now, and then to ask that question, that burning question that we all should

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be asking ourself, why isn’t it happening? Why aren’t we doing that?

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Why aren’t people considering that? Why, why would our government tell us we don’t have the money?

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Obama, the people’s guy, Obama came out and told everybody that we’re out of money.

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That what do you want us to do? Take out a credit card from the people’s Republic of China. That’d be immoral, right?

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Just sound exactly like a Reagan guy. Exactly like a right winger in the United States.

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No difference at all except better bedside manners. Two sides of the same capitalist class interest.

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So when we get to these questions of UBS. It’s not an issue of whether they’re great ideas, it’s how do we get there?

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And that’s when we start butting heads because you got the people that really believe in this electoral system.

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And I believe their children mindedness, the naivety that allows them to believe

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that capital will relinquish control. And that’s what it is by making us strive by making us need that allows the

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capitalist system to continue to push us to do things that it wants us to do.

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And they’re not going to relinquish that control without a real fight. And are people ready for that fight, whatever form that comes in?

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I don’t think so. I think people think they can just go to a ballot box, click vote, and if it doesn’t happen, they give up on everything.

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And I think that that’s part of the problem. And that’s part of why I feel it’s important to bust the bubble of electoralism.

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Because this very concept of UBS will never be possible until we get through that process of recognizing the limits of this, what I consider to

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be placebo oligarch olympics voting. I really believe that we need to stare that demon in the eye and say, Oh my God.

25:46

My kids could have nice things. I could have a, I wouldn’t be paying, a thousand dollars a month for a student debt.

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Why am I doing this? What, what in the world’s wrong with the system? And you realize ultimately it’s a class war.

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We, we have class war on our hands, whether you signed up for it or not.

26:03

And I think that that’s the real wake up call that people need to have. Right.

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I don’t want to, like, I want to be post work. So there’s these whole post work crowd. Now, I will, I will say I was more sympathetic to this crowd before.

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And I still am sympathetic, well, I would say I’m still sympathetic to this crowd now. But I used to be fully on that side.

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Which is Okay. Okay. Why would we want a, like, wouldn’t we want to have, well, I still think everyone should work less, but I think the idea of people who are opposed to work would

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be, well, what’s, what’s the window for people who have career paths that aren’t

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really tied up in a traditional career what, what, where is there room for people who want to write books for a living or, I don’t know, make art or whatever,

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that’s what they would say is what, what is their place in this job guarantee? It’s, it’s whatever, that’s the point.

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It could do all of those things. It can literally, I mean, we could theoretically, it’s all theory, right?

27:23

Every bit of what we’re saying is practical. We could do it, but it’s theoretical in that we’re not doing it right.

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So if you think about the opportunity for even paying a caregiver to stay home

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with a loved one or a relative, what, what would prevent us that’s beneficial to society, it’s a benefit to work within your community in whatever fashion.

27:45

If you want to be an artist, we need to value art again. We need to value the arts in general.

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We need to value music. These are things that produce socially. Beneficial value for all of us, even if it’s.

28:00

Ironically, just them, even if that’s their job, ultimately it benefits all of society.

28:07

And if it’s not your cup of tea, it’s okay. Cause it’s somebody else’s cup of tea. So to me, I think that all of these ideas of artists and musicians and I’m disabled

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or whatever, the post work mindedness. Bye still dealing with a very different situation where you are able to

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achieve the things that you want through a job guarantee that would be federally funded, locally administered.

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And in whatever fashion that that shows up, right? I, one of the things that I find interesting is that when you

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look at work in general, there’s nothing stopping an artist.

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From selling their art and making money. There’s nothing preventing that at all.

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And most of the UBI schemes that you see out there are like a thousand bucks a month, even if it was 2000 bucks a month, that still wouldn’t be enough to

29:04

really make a dent when you understand. The way that capital operates and absorbs up all that was extra money.

29:13

It knows it. They have, they literally have AI out there to this day that can crawl

29:20

around, find out what the average disposable income is, and adjust

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their prices for them automatically. I was just reading this the other day, software packages that companies deploy

29:33

that automatically adjust their price points based on criteria that they give.

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And so people need to understand that there’s, even with a job guarantee, there’s nothing preventing you from being an artist and

29:45

selling your art or doing whatever. What we’re talking about here is in the absence of a job.

29:53

And, and let’s be fair, most people when they go to jail, God, I’d love to get rid of cops. I’d love to get rid of jails.

29:59

I would love to move to a totally different abolitionist perspective of, of society and providing for the social needs of all people, right?

30:10

Within that space right here, right now, people are released from jail and they have a work requirement and a lot of jobs won’t hire you if you have a record.

30:18

But a job guarantee immediately allows for the reintegration of felons and,

30:24

and other people that have been in prison rightly or wrongly or whatever. And again, I come on the abolition side, so it’s hard to talk about, like, Hey,

30:32

but it’s important to understand that these are tools of capital to, to penalize these people, to, to bring about these kind of good people, bad people, you

30:41

win, you lose meritocracy kind of thing. And by eliminating that through a federal job guarantee.

30:49

The people that want a job can have a job and the people that don’t want a job, you can go be an artist if you want to do that on your own, or in some communities,

31:00

they may say, Hey, we want people that want to be artists to be able to work on

31:06

their art and we will pay them to either teach classes on art and do their art.

31:12

Or whatever the idea is to contribute to the local community, the people in which we all ride on the roads, we all contribute to

31:20

society in some way, shape, or form. So the idea of. Part of our stuff is to help one another through these kind of arrangements.

31:29

And I understand the anarchist perspective and I understand that there’s some groups out there like just want to eliminate the state altogether.

31:37

And I’m not here to debate those kinds of claims. I’m here just to simply state that we do have nation states.

31:43

We do have a currency issuing federal government. We do have these situations in place.

31:50

And I don’t see, and maybe you see something different, but even with the encampments at these universities and so forth, I don’t see anyone but the very,

31:59

very far right wing really, really have an appetite for any kind of revolution.

32:06

So the idea here is, is that, you stare that devil in the eye. The right wing is very much ready for a revolution.

32:14

They they’re armed to the gills. They have the their own modus operandi for what they’re fighting for.

32:21

And the left really doesn’t have that right now. In fact, vast majority of the left of the people I was talking about, I even

32:27

see people that claim to be Marxists, sheepherding people into Joe Biden.

32:33

And I’m thinking to myself, genocide, Joe, the guy who is literally funding the annihilation of the Palestinian people.

32:39

You as a Marxist are telling me that I have to eat, a lump of coal and vote for Joe Biden.

32:46

I’m thinking to myself, wow, that just doesn’t, just doesn’t work for me. It just doesn’t make any sense.

32:53

Because the difference, I think of it like this, and maybe this is a little bit of a tangent, but I believe that it all ties together in terms of right sizing our

33:01

ability to have UBS and things like that. When you consider the fact that the average person goes back to sleep when a

33:11

Democrats in office, the average leftist, the average left of center, or what I’ll

33:17

call a normie goes back to sleep when a Democrats in office, they stop fighting. But the minute someone like a Trump gets into office, whether you believe

33:26

he was elected or whether you believe he was anointed and selected, or however the capital order operates above and beyond the electorate.

33:33

Okay. Okay. Okay. If regardless, the point is, is that you ended up still once again,

33:41

getting a president in power with less than 25 percent of the people

33:47

that would have fought Trump. Fighting against Biden and his genocidal, proclivities.

33:54

Trump were to be in there. You would see a huge amount of marginal centrist, moderate Democrats

34:03

coming out of the woodwork, obsessed with fighting against Donald Trump.

34:09

Those same people are not fighting against Joe Biden, who is doing the very same things.

34:16

If you look at what happened in East Palestine, Ohio, the train derailment of Norfolk Southern.

34:22

And you look at the hands off approach and the laissez faire approach to dealing

34:28

with that horrible, horrible disaster. The federal government could have made every last one of those people whole.

34:35

Could have bought every one of their homes, moved them away like it was a mini Chernobyl. Giving them health care for life and not even flinched, not even thought

34:44

about it, but instead they leave it in the hands of capital to deal with them, lawyers and stuff like that.

34:50

And so these people are sitting there, piss and blood, literally, literally

34:55

like all kinds of skin rash, diseases and lung issues and respiratory issues

35:01

and so forth and no help coming in sight. And that’s a Democrat in office, president.

35:07

Congress at the time and, and the anointed people of the different institutions, like Pete, but a judge of the transportation secretary.

35:16

And they did absolutely nothing for those people. So. If Trump were to have done that, every last one of those Democrats would have

35:24

been in the street ready to fight, they would have been taken to the street, etc. So you have to ask yourself in the end, when you have two parties that

35:33

behave in the same manner with just slightly different bedside manners, and you know that the only path forward is to fight, would you rather

35:40

be in power with somebody who you’re letting do the things Trump would do? Would you rather be out of power where you at least see everybody

35:47

willing to fight like hell? To stop them. And at this point in time, I think that I would rather not be guilty of supporting

35:55

genocide and would rather fight against genocide, even if Trump were to do the same thing that plays right into all the other things we’re talking about.

36:06

Yeah, very contemporary and very necessary there. Yeah, we’re coming up on time.

36:12

But the last thing I wanted to ask is a question that I think is a fair objection to empty and MMT theorists like Randall Ray have all of them, but

36:22

Randall Ray, in my mind comes up as the one who has a good objection to this and his work modern money theory which is that wouldn’t giving everyone jobs,

36:32

a job guarantee also lead to inflation? Because of course the MMTers say that UBI, what’s the point?

36:38

Because people can just jack up prices. Right. Well, a job guarantee, there’s been people who oppose this idea, who, mainly

36:49

on the neoclassical end, who will say, won’t that lead to a wage price spiral?

36:54

They’ll say that. Or they’ll or they’ll say that the cost of employers having to, Raise the

37:04

prices raise the cost of production, wages in other words, would mean that

37:09

they would just have to raise prices in order to meet profit margins. To what extent is this true?

37:15

And how would, if it is true, how would it be prevented? first things first, the job guarantee produces.

37:22

This is a nominal price anchor, right? And so it sets the wage.

37:28

It’s like a, a, a minimum wage, but it’s a minimum benefits package, including the wage and healthcare and all the other things that come with it.

37:37

So the job guarantee by extension creates stability. By setting that price.

37:43

It’s also largely considered to be a temporary thing. People roll on to the job guarantee when there’s layoffs and

37:50

unemployment that people roll back, back to private sector employment.

37:55

I personally want to get rid of that private sector employment. I want to create a commons.

38:00

And I want to nationalize. I do recognize that there are multiple ways of skinning that cat, so to speak.

38:06

I hate to use that term, but you get the point. I believe that, there’s a modicum of room to go with, non needs

38:13

based capitalism living on. It’s not my preference. I’d like to eradicate it, but I know that, there’s only so much there’s

38:21

only so much realm of possibility we have without Willie, being crazy and off the, and I say crazy.

38:27

I don’t mean like, I think it’s a bad idea. I mean, crazy in terms of our ability to do it, to, to do right,

38:33

to achieve it at this point, I think would require something. Most people aren’t willing to accept,

38:39

Well, and even like your position, right, on the commons and nationalization

38:46

doesn’t seem to be what Pavlina Chernova‘s position is, which her book, MMT for those who don’t know.

38:55

She doesn’t see the job guarantee as something that replaces the private sector, but something that kind of fills the gaps of the private sector.

39:02

And in doing so could even help the private sector, of course, it’ll hurt employees. And this is where we’d probably both be critical of her approach that doesn’t

39:10

really account for the class warfare that this would require to even make possible. But yeah, I’ve, the way I’ve heard the job guarantee articulated, it’s more

39:20

so just trying to fill the gaps of. private sector employment rather than replacing it.

39:26

So maybe it’s clear to differentiate your position from that of yeah. dominant MMT viewed because then people might think that is the

39:33

dominant MMT view where, you know, so job guarantee. Is the base.

39:38

It’s the minimum. It is the lowest point, right? We’re not talking about how it’s like this is the wage floor.

39:45

It used to be called like the employer of last resort, things like that. So the idea of Warren Mosler would call this a transition job.

39:53

Okay. Others include a lot of other career minded stuff into a job guarantee,

39:58

which is not what a job guarantee is. Okay. Job guarantee is literally there to catch people from falling through the cracks

40:07

to make sure that, when, when there’s the ebbs and flows of the business cycle, as they lay people off, People don’t go into complete destitution.

40:15

They have health care. They have dental care. They have a wage coming in, a living wage.

40:21

So this is the ability to walk away from a really bad job immediately and walk

40:26

right into a living wage with benefits. That’s what a job guarantee is. However, Structuring that job guarantee.

40:34

Pavlina talks about the nonprofit model. She talks about several other ways and I’ve talked to different people.

40:39

Like Bill Mitchell has a different potential view. Fadal Kaboob has a different view. My former co host Ellis Winningham and I have a different view.

40:48

Ultimately they have a job guarantee site out there that describes like a model for how you might institute this.

40:56

I will admit that the vast majority of MMT ers are probably more dem soci type

41:02

folks and that they leave a lot of room available for, private sector, okay?

41:09

And that’s MMT is the underlying operational truths.

41:16

Let’s not make MMT the theory of everything. MMT is the operational truth.

41:22

We learned how a fiat currency works. That’s it. Once we start laying over our political values, the political economy on

41:30

top of it, that’s no longer MMT. That’s left the MMT train and is now political economy.

41:38

And I think that this is the fundamental difference is that the job guarantee is like the loan policy proposal that MMT is kind of built on, but it’s core MMT.

41:47

And the reason for that, if you think about it, going back to my story of the king issuing the tax to the guy that has to pay it in the, in the coin.

41:55

Yeah, the idea here is the M M tiers are saying, Hey, we’ve created this problem by instituting a tax, which is what drives the currency.

42:04

Now, what we’re going to do is we’re going to fulfill that promise and complete the loop by providing a way to make sure that at all times, you’re able to produce

42:11

something to create money to pay that tax. So the job guarantee is kind of like completing the circuit.

42:17

It’s not the be all end all what many of us would say though, is, is that we can nationalize.

42:24

employment as a whole, we could in effect create a situation where these

42:30

things are owned by the people as opposed to owned by some rich dude. Okay. And we could literally create that public space through public employment.

42:40

And that would mean that guilds and other type of work, high, uh, danger

42:47

type work, Work that requires special knowledge to achieve things like that.

42:53

There are career pathing that could occur in this case. Okay. Obviously that’s not the zero money in the economy.

43:00

We’re all equal. We all get the same, whatever. This is really more of a pragmatic view of, the job guarantee

43:08

sets the base sets the bottom. Right. So I want to be clear that it’s not solving all employment.

43:14

The job guarantee is meant to be the base case, the base, the lowest

43:20

form, the employer of last resort. And by making it, there’s a natural tendency for private sector to lay people

43:28

off, to fight wages, to cut wages, to cut employees, to look for efficiency

43:34

and put robotics in and do things to replace labor and offshore and so forth.

43:40

The job guarantee provides. a stop gap to fill that void, but it also provides that

43:46

could be permanent wage there. It’s like, if all you need is whatever the living wage is, then

43:52

that’s going to work for you. Now, that said, I do believe that there is a way of making this a

43:58

multi tiered system where people can progress and they can have new things and it can be done, but that is exceeding The job guarantee narrative.

44:08

I want to be clear on that, that I’m starting to get into my model. You the way I’d like to see society is not based on some rich guy holding your

44:17

entire family and life in his fist. And if he doesn’t like you that day, he can fire you. And now your world is in complete, free fall while he makes more money

44:26

because he cut an employee off. And now he’s got more money coming in. But I do believe that there is a lot more.

44:33

openness to standard private sector employment.

44:38

With many, I wouldn’t say all because each, this is the thing about MMT, it is not political in any way, shape, or form though.

44:45

Many of the people that are MMT economists would fall into that

44:51

democratic socialist framework. That that’s, it happens to be, that’s a happenstance.

44:56

Cause like you said, Bill Mitchell would call himself a Michael Koleski socialist, he, he, he was a Marxist.

45:03

He learned Marx first. He went through all of that first and he incorporated that into his writing.

45:09

And Bill Mitchell took the job guarantee from folks like Michael Kolecki, who was a

45:14

Polish economist and, a socialist who came up with the concept of a job guarantee.

45:20

So I, I think that that right there It shows that there’s a wide range of political ideologies from M.

45:27

M. tears. They’re not in lockstep. The only thing that many of us agree on is the operational realities of

45:33

the way the banking system works in the way that currency is created. Once you get past that what you would do with it.

45:40

There’s a lot of differing opinions at that point. You, you cease to have that common thread and MMT kind of provides that base.

45:47

If we could all agree that this is how the system works, then when the different

45:52

factions get together, they would have an honest discussion because they, there wouldn’t be any lies about affordability or where the money’s coming from.

46:00

We’d all know that. And then it would be like, How you want people to starve. You really are kind of an asshole, aren’t you?

46:06

You know what I mean? So it reveals the heart, it reveals, your intent and that’s the value overlay

46:13

over the operational system of, of MMT.

46:23

Thanks for being on here. That was phenomenal. Yeah, you really unloaded on this one. You really unloaded the clip.

46:29

I’m sorry about that, man. no, no, that’s great. You’re spitting facts. I think the audience would get a lot of value of it if you did definitely

46:37

leave a comment and a five star rating of The one dime radio podcast. If you like these podcasts and do not forget to check out macro and cheese.

46:46

If you haven’t already been following them, because it’s such a good podcast. It’s phenomenal.

46:52

I I’ve, I’ve gotten a lot out of it myself. I’ve been introduced to all kinds of authors, namely a lot of the MMT authors.

46:59

So definitely check that out. It’s been wonderful with you, my friend Yeah.

47:04

Happy to have more conversations and more collaborations in the future. And hopefully we both get some big patrons eventually where we can fund

47:11

bigger projects with our our, our educational resources that we’re building. You got it, man.

47:17

Look, man, it was great to be on. Thank you so much for the time. Take care. All right, man.

47:22

Bye bye. My only hope is that when enough people become pessimists, then, out of

47:31

despair, somebody maybe does something. But you know why I also like to be a pessimist?

47:37

Because it’s the only way to have a nice life. If you are an optimist, then always bad things happen, and

47:43

you are always uh, disappointed. When you are a pessimist, then you look around, okay, there are bad, but from

47:49

time to time something nice happens, and you are As a pessimist, you are a little bit glad all the time, no?

47:57

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