Jul 22, 2020 05:17 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 22, 2020 05:19 PM by C C.)
Johnson says Britain was not influenced by Russia in Brexit vote
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britai...KKCN24N1KR
EXCERPTS: Prime Minister Boris Johnson rejected on Wednesday any suggestion that Britain’s vote to leave the European Union had been influenced by Russian interference. [...] A day after a report by parliament’s intelligence and security committee said the government had failed to try to find out whether Russia had meddled in the Brexit vote, Johnson’s government doubled down on its refusal to launch a review.
[....] “The people of this country didn’t vote to leave the EU because of pressure from Russia or Russian interference - they voted because they wanted to take back control,” Johnson told parliament, describing the criticism as being led by those lawmakers who voted to stay in the EU at the 2016 referendum. “It is the UK that leads the world in caution about Russian interference,” said the prime minister, who was a leading figure in the “leave” campaign... (MORE - details)
This is the moment for Universal Basic Income – here’s how it could work
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/ec...could-work
EXCERPTS (Paul Mason): If the forecasters are right we are facing a jobs massacre. Unemployment is predicted to soar this autumn, and the only question is by how much [...] The UK workforce is heavily concentrated in low-value, private service occupations. To move several million people from these into a revived green manufacturing industry, which expands solar and wind power capacity, and into new green transport systems is going to take time.
[...] The arguments for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) are going to keep coming back. UBI involves the state paying every citizen, unconditionally, an annual income. There is no means test and no requirement to contribute beforehand. It is a wage for existing, not working.
The policy has almost no mainstream supporters (Labour rejected it at the start of the crisis), and its opponents rely on three main arguments: principle, cost and relative benefit. Many in the Labour and trade union movement are opposed to UBI on principle: they see paid work as the fundamental route to a decent and prosperous life for working-class people, and object to anything that detaches income from employment.
[...] Arguments on grounds of cost often focus on the gross amounts needed: multiplying the number of adults by the proposed wage. If you paid 36 million adults of working age £7,000 a year it would cost £252bn – compared to £851bn a year of total public spending.
Arguments against UBI on “bang for buck” grounds suggest that it might be better to use state funding to provide Universal Basic Services (UBS) – for example free transport systems, cheap housing, free education to degree level, and even a basic food supply. The Social Prosperity Network report in 2017 argued this could be achieved for as little as £45bn – without undermining the connection between work and wages.
However, research published in July by the Georgetown University economist Karl Widerquist radically revises downwards the cost of a full UBI for the United Kingdom. Using microsimulation models to depict net costs, Widerquist calculates that to provide £7,706 a year to all adults and £3,853 to all children could cost as little as £67bn a year. This is achieved by imposing an effective tax rate of 50 per cent on the beneficiaries – ie, getting them to “pay themselves” part of the UBI figure – and by protecting the incomes of the very poorest against any change. Widerquist calculates that all families earning below £32,000 a year would benefit – "most households in the lower 70% of UK income distribution".
[...] As I argued in Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, UBI is not the panacea that its most ardent activists believe it is. It should be conceived not as an anti-crisis measure, nor as a substitute benefit system, but as a one-time and temporary measure to promote the rapid automation of society, and the reduction of necessary work time... (MORE - details)
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britai...KKCN24N1KR
EXCERPTS: Prime Minister Boris Johnson rejected on Wednesday any suggestion that Britain’s vote to leave the European Union had been influenced by Russian interference. [...] A day after a report by parliament’s intelligence and security committee said the government had failed to try to find out whether Russia had meddled in the Brexit vote, Johnson’s government doubled down on its refusal to launch a review.
[....] “The people of this country didn’t vote to leave the EU because of pressure from Russia or Russian interference - they voted because they wanted to take back control,” Johnson told parliament, describing the criticism as being led by those lawmakers who voted to stay in the EU at the 2016 referendum. “It is the UK that leads the world in caution about Russian interference,” said the prime minister, who was a leading figure in the “leave” campaign... (MORE - details)
This is the moment for Universal Basic Income – here’s how it could work
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/ec...could-work
EXCERPTS (Paul Mason): If the forecasters are right we are facing a jobs massacre. Unemployment is predicted to soar this autumn, and the only question is by how much [...] The UK workforce is heavily concentrated in low-value, private service occupations. To move several million people from these into a revived green manufacturing industry, which expands solar and wind power capacity, and into new green transport systems is going to take time.
[...] The arguments for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) are going to keep coming back. UBI involves the state paying every citizen, unconditionally, an annual income. There is no means test and no requirement to contribute beforehand. It is a wage for existing, not working.
The policy has almost no mainstream supporters (Labour rejected it at the start of the crisis), and its opponents rely on three main arguments: principle, cost and relative benefit. Many in the Labour and trade union movement are opposed to UBI on principle: they see paid work as the fundamental route to a decent and prosperous life for working-class people, and object to anything that detaches income from employment.
[...] Arguments on grounds of cost often focus on the gross amounts needed: multiplying the number of adults by the proposed wage. If you paid 36 million adults of working age £7,000 a year it would cost £252bn – compared to £851bn a year of total public spending.
Arguments against UBI on “bang for buck” grounds suggest that it might be better to use state funding to provide Universal Basic Services (UBS) – for example free transport systems, cheap housing, free education to degree level, and even a basic food supply. The Social Prosperity Network report in 2017 argued this could be achieved for as little as £45bn – without undermining the connection between work and wages.
However, research published in July by the Georgetown University economist Karl Widerquist radically revises downwards the cost of a full UBI for the United Kingdom. Using microsimulation models to depict net costs, Widerquist calculates that to provide £7,706 a year to all adults and £3,853 to all children could cost as little as £67bn a year. This is achieved by imposing an effective tax rate of 50 per cent on the beneficiaries – ie, getting them to “pay themselves” part of the UBI figure – and by protecting the incomes of the very poorest against any change. Widerquist calculates that all families earning below £32,000 a year would benefit – "most households in the lower 70% of UK income distribution".
[...] As I argued in Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, UBI is not the panacea that its most ardent activists believe it is. It should be conceived not as an anti-crisis measure, nor as a substitute benefit system, but as a one-time and temporary measure to promote the rapid automation of society, and the reduction of necessary work time... (MORE - details)
