What's wrong with free money? - Monday 30 January & 6 February, London

We got two meetings coming up where we want to discuss proposal for a
Universal Basic Income (UBI). We will base the discussion on "What's
wrong with free money?" from Kittens #5 available at
https://antinational.org/en/what-wrong-free-money/

Part 1: 30/01/2017
Part 2: 06/02/2017

The Red Lion
41 Hoxton Street, N1 6NH London, United Kingdom

https://critisticuffs.org/events/ubi-reading-group/

"""
Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) enjoy sympathy from vastly different camps: from social democrats like Paul Krugman, from liberals like Martin Wolf, from conservatives like Richard Nixon; from people who consider themselves disciples of the free market to people who consider themselves Marxists.

In these two evening sessions we want to discuss what these different visions of a UBI share and why those with different politics can share an interest in the policy. We will do this by discussing how these different proponents of a UBI understand society and what these understandings fail to criticise.

Our claim is that, on the one hand, these proponents want to achieve opposing aims under the same name. On the other hand, despite these opposing aims they share more than just the name: they are not interested in why in this society productivity gains produce poverty and why the capitalist state attaches conditionality to its welfare regime. As a consequence, they put forward a wrong and idealised understanding of what it means to produce for the market and the role of the state.

We will spend some time discussing why the left puts such big hopes in a UBI and why we think this strategy is a bad way of dealing with capitalist produced poverty.
"""