More on Welfare and GBI

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Clarissa

August 6, 2016

Welfare was the basic contract between the nation-state and its citizens. Welfare includes public education, public medical care, public libraries, unemployment benefits, things like food stamps and disability assistance etc.

Guaranteed basic income is a feature of post-nation state. This form of state no longer has any interest in providing welfare for its people. Instead, it hides those who are not managing to find a place in the fluid world from view. The best way to hide them and forget about them is to substitute welfare with GBI. They won’t starve and will be removed from public view. As for everything else, the state no longer cares.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we will see a collapse of welfare and the rise in GBI.

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5 responses to “More on Welfare and GBI”

cliff arroyo

August 6, 2016

“Welfare includes public education, public medical care, public libraries, unemployment benefits, things like food stamps and disability assistance etc. ”

I would include civil courts in that too. The UK government is actively disengaging from that and encouraging things like religious arbitration that it doesn’t have to fund.

My working assumption at the moment is that there will be some kind of tracking, which people receive will depend on what group they’re deemed to belong to. Probable categories include:

PUP’s = potentially useful people (not needed at the moment but could be useful in a pinch) will be placed in lifelong learning and/or potemkin companies

SIP’s = scarily incompetent people (there’s no work they could ever do without endangering those around them) will be essentially paid to keep busy (I’ve heard the idea of paying such people to play video games and/or facebook to keep them out of trouble)

CUP’s completely useless people (there’s not much possibility of them being needed and they’re not a threat either) GBI with no strings attached.

nb. the word “useful” is from the point of view of the system, not necessarily mine

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 6, 2016
  
  Courts and the police, absolutely.
  
  The classification is spot on. And the real tragedy is that the 3 categories you list will tend to include a large majority of people. 60, maybe 70%.
  
  People say I’m panic mongering but I’m actually being as optimistic as one can be without slipping into drooling idiocy about this.
  
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2. David Gendron
  
  August 6, 2016
  
  I’m a PUP.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    August 6, 2016
    
    We all wanna be PUP’s (in this scheme of things) but the choice isn’t/won’t be up to us….
    
    On family history grounds I’d probably be placed in the CUP group. Part of post-nation-state fluidity is having your fate more and more determined by your parents’ cirumstances. My parents both had pretty crappy situations and arguably they made the most of them but it traditional status terms….. not so great.
    
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    1. David Gendron
      
      August 6, 2016
      
      I’m a PUP right now.
      
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