Neg - Socialist UBI - Michigan 7 2023 CPSW

NEG
Reparations CP
1NC---Reparations CP
The United States Federal Government should provide descendants of victims of slavery in the United States with financial reparations financed by an aggressive wealth tax.
Only reparations are sufficient to resolve racialized economic disparities --- it encourages democratic planning within communities which solves the case.
Ed Whitfield, 12-10-2018, Why Universal Basic Income Is Not the Solution We Think It Is, YES! Magazine, Whitfield is the co-founder and co-managing director of the Fund for Democratic Communities. He serves on the boards of the New Economy Coalition, the Working World, and the Southern Reparations Loan Fund, https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/good-money/2018/12/10/why-universal-basic-income-is-not-the-solution-we-think-it-is, Accessed: 7-18-2023, //ONHS IF
Yes, I feel the current distribution of wealth is grotesquely unfair. Yes, I believe that those who cannot or will not work should not be allowed to starve. Yes, I would be against plans to eliminate or cut the existing welfare system as long as it is needed. Yes, I believe that we should build a community in which everyone’s needs are met. Yet I oppose a universal guaranteed basic income. My objections have surprised many people, but they are consistent with what I think is the solution to our economic justice problem. I favor deep democracy replacing the rule of capital in our lives. This would require reparations and the reconstruction of the commons to include the Earth and the financial resources that have been created by our labor within exploiting systems. Guaranteed basic income is simply more widely available welfare. It would only help people have more access to consumption without altering anything about how production is organized. It would not alter wealth distribution and ownership. And it would require a new bureaucracy staffed by agents and experts to regulate and allocate this universal distribution of money. Our economy suffers from the fact that communities are not having their needs met and a quality of life equitably elevated by all. Neither the self-regulated market nor the intervention of government has been successful in doing this to the satisfaction of the many. We are told not to bother to understand how we got into the situation we are in, but rather forget the past and look ahead to the future. I’m reminded of a story that I was told by the Rev. Bongani Finca who was involved in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation work. A Black South African, Tabo, confronted a White man, Mr. Smith, who had disrespected him and stolen his prize cow. With the prospect of amnesty for telling the truth, the White man admitted to having done what he was accused of, recognized how horribly wrong it was, and asked for forgiveness, saying that he was truly sorry. Tabo was visibly relieved for having an opportunity to confront his oppressor and get an apology. They shook hands and embraced. As Mr. Smith, stood to leave, free, with his amnesty, the Black man called out to stop him. The White man turned back with a questioning look on his face, not sure why he was being stopped. Tabo, the Black South African, asked him, “But what about the cow?” Mr. Smith was visibly angry: “You are ruining our reconciliation,” he shouted, “This has nothing to do with a cow.” That is the question we must ask all those who say the past is long gone but still retain ownership of the herd produced by that old cow. We won’t forgive and forget until we get the cow back. But just suppose that the Mr. Smiths in the world make a counteroffer: “I’ll tell you what, why don’t I just give you a supply of butter?” “The hell,” Tabo might reply. “If you give me back my cow, I can give you butter!” Guaranteed income is merely a supply of butter. It makes two assumptions, both of which I think are false: It assumes that the government can simply pay out the money without having other negative consequences for the economy as a whole, and it also assumes that there is a rational amount of money and process for its allocation that experts can figure out and apply fairly. What is true is that labor is the sole creator of value. Therefore, the money has no place to come from but out of the social surplus, either as taxes or reduced wages. In other words, there is a political and economic price to be paid that cannot be avoided. What I do think we need is reparations, the democratization of wealth, the re-creation of the commons, and the outlawing of financial systems of theft and speculation. Communities must become their own developers through broadly democratic planning and democratic access to nonextractive financing. A good friend of mine, Dara Cooper, an organizer with the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, sent me an email that ended with this quote from revolutionary and Burkina Faso’s former president, Thomas Sankara: “We must produce more because the one who feeds you usually imposes his will upon you.” The key is democracy and expanded opportunities to be productive rather than enhanced consumption. We need the cow back, not just a supply of butter.
MMT CP
1NC---MMT CP
The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a Universal Basic Income financed by deficit spending pursuant to Modern Monetary Theory.
MMT key to solve class consciousness and avoid reliance on taxation
Charles Stevenson and Ellen Helker-Nygren 23, Activist striving for social-ecological transformation who is currently studying for a master’s degree in Degrowth: Ecology, Economics and Policy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Aside from political strategy, his interests include critical macroeconomics, unequal exchange, and Modern Monetary Theory; Activist and recent graduate from the Master's of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Ottawa. She runs a degrowth group in Ottawa called the "Snails Collective" which focuses on building community and organizing for socio-ecological transformation in the City, “A Coherent Monetary Theory is a Threat to the Capitalist State”, degrowth, January 31 2023, https://degrowth.info/en/blog/a-coherent-monetary-theory-is-a-threat-to-the-capitalist-state, NSH-NT
Marxian political economists often criticise Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) for its lack of class analysis. While these critiques are right to point out that MMT has often been presented as the saviour of capitalism and growth, its insights are also of use to those who wish to see an end to capitalism and growth. While many proponents of MMT are not interested in a world beyond capitalism, the theory itself could offer useful tools in this struggle. Indeed, at its heart, MMT formulates the coherent monetary analysis needed by anyone who believes in using State power as a means of dismantling capitalism.
The capitalist State is beholden to the private sector in several interlocking ways. It relies on businesses turning a profit in order to function for two primary reasons. First, it delegates job creation to businesses. Second, it views taxation as a prerequisite for public spending. Without profits, capitalists do not carry out the investments necessary for creating sufficient jobs and government revenues fall. For these reasons, any reforms that jeopardise private profits, such as social and environmental protections, are opposed on the basis that they present a threat to the economy, and thereby the State and society as a whole.
Governments are thus under constant pressure to foster a good climate for business. Should their laws pose too much of a burden on companies, it is increasingly easy, in our globalised economy, for firms to uproot and move somewhere else. These moves devastate the communities who relied on their employment: this is the spectre of capital flight. Corporations that generate high profits exert outsized and undemocratic political influence. On the one hand, they can fund lobbyists and political campaigns friendly to their agendas; and on the other, they can threaten to relocate overseas should the State not meet their demands.
The monetary theory put forward by advocates of MMT highlights the inconsistencies inherent to this neoclassical view. MMT recognises that the State creates money every time it pays a public school teacher or signs a contract with a company to build a bridge. Governments do not rely on taxation to fund their expenditure, but rather to reduce aggregate demand, thereby limiting inflation. Here lies the real limit to public spending: the productive capacity of the economy, which, importantly, can be modified to suit the ecological limits and social demands of society. Inflationary pressures are generated if demand for a good or service rises beyond the social and ecological limits of production. If a State decides to double the number of nurses it employs without a corresponding programme to train more nurses, it would have to hire those already working in the private sector. Competing with the wages paid by private hospitals means higher wages for nurses in the public sector, and creates inflationary pressure. Given how underpaid nurses are, higher wages are needed, but should come into effect as part of a broader Job Guarantee, to which we will now turn. Through public spending and investment, the State has the ability both to increase the salaries of nurses and, over time, train more of them—regardless of the size of the budget.
A State with high economic agency need not rely on companies either to create enough jobs, nor to fund its spending. It could pass a public Job Guarantee so as to offer everyone a good job paid at a living wage in low-carbon work to prepare our societies for the challenges before us. A Job Guarantee could chart a course towards social-ecological transition by revitalising sectors like renewable energy, nature conservation, public transport, care, affordable housing, health and education. For example, the current energy crisis provides a great opportunity for States to shift societies away from car dependency by investing in public transportation. States could fund good jobs in the transportation sector, including the work of electrifying the public transit fleet. Simultaneously, a shift away from cars could be encouraged by making public transportation free at the point of use. The 9-euro ticket with which Germany experimented over the summer proved an extraordinary success for both people and planet, with 52 million tickets sold in a country of 83 million people, at least 1.8 million tons of CO2 saved, and roughly one car trip in ten replaced with public transit. States with high economic agency need not wait for private investment to fund transformations like these, but instead can crowd it in by leading the way.
Moreover, a Job Guarantee has the potential for a major power shift from capital to workers. The policy would create a de-facto minimum wage with which the private sector would have to compete. The Job Guarantee would also remove the reserve army of labour—the group of unemployed and underemployed workers in society that capital depends upon to discipline workers into accepting exploitative working conditions. While the policy would be funded by State spending, the jobs on offer and the conditions under which they are performed could be decided from the bottom up, thus serving to democratise the work sphere and to reduce the alienation of workers. Combined, these features of the Job Guarantee represent huge shifts in bargaining power from capital to labour. In this way, the policy constitutes a revolutionary reform which opens up space for further struggle.
The insights offered by MMT are fully compatible with Marxian political economy. Indeed, they have the potential to liberate fiscal policy from the tyranny of M-C-M’. Understanding where money comes from and the limits to its creation constitutes a major blow to the justification for the use of State power to protect capital. MMT offers tools to left-wing governments for enacting a social-ecological transformation without capital flight putting paid to their plans. If nothing else, MMT provides us with a powerful argument against the absurdity of neoliberal policies. In this way, MMT can help to rebuild class consciousness against the elites who promulgate these policies. It is time for the Left to have the guts to use this cudgel to put an end to the age of austerity and chart a path towards eco-socialist degrowth.
Cap K
1NC---Link---Capitalism K
A UBI is an attempt by the Capitalist ruling class to subvert expectations of Americans into thinking that transition is possible while retrenching the capitalist economy. ---Also disproves the thesis of secular stagnation and robot jobs.
Esteban Mercatante, 8-7-2018, Universal Basic Income: A Capitalist Fix to the Evils of Capitalism?, Left Voice, Esteban is an economist from Buenos Aires and a member of the PTS, https://www.leftvoice.org/universal-basic-income-a-capitalist-solution-to-the-evils-of-capitalism/, Accessed: 7-18-2023, //ONHS IF
Universal basic income, a guaranteed, no-strings-attached income for the entire population, is presented as a progressive solution to the “end of work.” But those who promote a UBI are doing one of two things. They either entertain illusions in a top-down palliative measure for the miseries of the capitalist system, or they are searching for an impossible shortcut to the challenges of organizing the working class, the only social force that can overcome capitalism. In either case, they lack any sense of realism. The “end of work” narrative A widely held belief suggests that most jobs today are threatened by the so-called “fourth industrial revolution” which promises to extend robotics throughout production. Unlike previous waves of innovation, according to this line of thought, the fourth revolution will result in fewer replacement jobs. Yet in reality the number of workers exploited by capital around the world has grown as never before. According to the International Labour Organization, over 3.2 billion individuals are employed today. While this supposed “end of work” has escaped serious analysis, the idea that a UBI could secure an income for those who can no longer expect to find gainful employment has become more popular. It is not a new idea. But what gives it a new sense of urgency and more adherents is that, as Paul Mason suggests, it could solve the problem of “the disappearance of work itself.” 1 Talk of the “end of work” is permeated with a fetishism of robotics. But in the conditions of the “secular stagnation“ of modern capitalism, the use of robotics does not produce sufficiently high rates of capital accumulation to present a real threat to most people’s jobs. More generally, the idea that capitalism can impose generalized robotization clashes with capital’s need for ever increasing exploitation of the only source of its profits – labor power. Advocates of UBI also assume that growing job insecurity and precarity, faced by a large proportion of the world’s labor force, are irreversible. It is true that accessing formal employment, participating in the social security system, and so on, are unattainable for a growing sector of the working class. The ILO estimates that 42 per cent of workers suffer from “vulnerable employment”, including self-employment, temporary jobs etc., which has increased among young people and especially women. 2 People are working more and earning less than they did decades ago. The length of today’s workday is as long, or even longer, than it was 80 years ago, and in the United States, Germany and France it is being lengthened further. Contrary to what John Maynard Keynes imagined when he considered the economic possibilities of his grandchildren’s generation, we are not even a fraction closer to 15-hour workweek than we were in the 1930s – even though labor productivity has multiplied threefold. But as Leo Panitch points out 3, such generalized job insecurity, seen as inescapable by those who propose UBI, has much more to do with capital’s advance against the historic gains of the working class than it does with supposedly irreversible changes in capitalism’s material processes. Thirty years ago, the most left-wing proponents of UBI, Robert J. van der Veen and Philippe Van Parijs, considered it “A Capitalist Road to Communism.” 4 But what these proponents see as UBI’s “progressive” side is in fact its fatal flaw: accepting the premise of the “end of work” and sidestepping this problem by fighting not for socialism but rather for a UBI. To accept this idea is to accept that the working class has already lost half the battle. Money for Nothing Money here and now, because there is no time to wait for great social transformations – that is the slogan of UBI proponents. They want to give every person a sufficient income to acquire the essentials, whether or not they have a job, whether or not they want to work, with no strings attached. Such a decoupling of the income of citizens from the obligation to work seems to some to be the only viable alternative in a world where the system of production throws growing numbers of workers to the side of the road. A basic level of economic and social rights would be universally guaranteed – without the need to expropriate the means of production or storm the Winter Palace. Since the capitalist state already outlays considerable sums, which in some cases are universal, such as the cash transfers offered to families with children by many states in Latin America, what major roadblocks could stand in the way of taking one more step, however great, down the same path? UBI proponents are certain that it is within reach, and this feeling is reinforced by the growing number of experiments by public agencies and NGOs to test the effects of implementing a basic income. This has occurred even though there is a great abyss separating “progressive” proposals, meant to ensure a “dignified” income, and state practices that aim only to manage poverty without eliminating it. It is no surprise, then, that Rutger Bregman gave his book about UBI the title Utopia for Realists. 5 This book summarizes the experiences from different times and places and also examines the arguments for and against UBI. One of the main objectives of Bregman’s book is to disprove the claim that handing out money for nothing leads to laziness. The author presents the conclusions of a pilot scheme implemented in 2009 in London by the Broadway Cares organization, which delivered 3,000 pounds to 13 homeless people. According to this study, in each case the aid “empowered” the beneficiaries. Utopia also presents the results of a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the performance of the NGO Give Directly, which collects money from donations and delivers it to beneficiaries in poor countries with no strings attached. This study shows a lasting increase in income (on average 38% higher than before the transfer) and an increase in assets and property, including homes (up 58%), as well as a 42% reduction in the number of days that children go hungry. Other examples abound. According to Bregman, there are different programs based on cash transfers that reach 110 million families in 45 countries (“from Brazil to India, from Mexico to South Africa”), the overwhelming majority of which have been implemented in the last 20 years. Focusing on the poorest sectors of society is of course not the same as implementing a UBI sufficient to lift everyone above the poverty line, regardless of their employment status, income and wealth. Bregman does refer to one experiment that took place from 1974 to 1978 in the Canadian town of Dauphin with 13,000 inhabitants. This program secured a basic income for the entire population and ensured that no one fell below the poverty line. Thirty percent of the population (one family in four) re

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