Tom Pogson

@basicbc.bsky.social

1250 Followers 433 Following

Musician, writer, and Basic Income Victoria BC Guy who knows the abundance of a better world IS possible. https://linktr.ee/Basicbc

And one day we shall wonder why it took us so long to fit beneath our feet a solid floor on which we can all stand. Phillippe Van Parijs, Professor of Economic and Social Ethics
The income distribution system of the 20th century has broken down. Meanwhile, economies need people with money to spend to give reason for production and work. Rather than the claimed incentive to labour, allowing destitution to play out damages the system and threatens collapse. Basic income is a reinforced economic load bearing wall.
Basic income: is a concept that is over 200 years old. has been suggested by academics from every political background. is defined by five features that create a "floor", namely unconditionality, universality, being in cash, being individually and regularly paid out. Isn't inherently too expensive or inflationary as the rules don't speak to the amount or funding source. has reasons for advocacy from poverty, loss of the commons, improving freedom, preventative health and building basic stability to meet rising uncertainty. has been successfully piloted in Canada, India, Africa and has had a small ongoing success as the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend since 1982.
ECONOMISTS ARE OBSESSED WITH "JOB CREATION." HOW ABOUT LESS WORK? In a world without work, or without so much of it, we would all be less concerned with moving up some ladder, ultimately to nowhere, and more concerned with the happiness of others, who are, after all, our playmates." - PETER GRAY PSYCHOLOGIST
Do I want to pay people for just existing? Yes. The point of unconditional basic income is trusting, investing and valuing people up front. That is what nothing else does. It's within this that basic income's value will always be, from when it was suggested centuries before to centuries from right now.
We've been conditioned to believe that our dignity has to be earned through struggle, that if we aren't exhausted, we aren't working hard enough. But human worth shouldn’t have a price tag, and survival shouldn't be a monthly subscription we have to fight to renew. A basic income is a quiet reminder that we matter simply because we are here. I want to experience a life where my primary goal isn't just surviving, but actually living. #UBI4ALL #UnconditionallyBasicIncome
From divine_carnivore on Instagram: No animal on this planet has to earn access to its habitat. Except you.
"I just want to find 11,780 votes..." Donald Trump
Grim reaper toy meme Captions um....ok...not the name unexpected but
From jimbentsonshots The model from "The Scream" in a therapist's chair with the therapist asking "so, tell me about last week."
Putting Workers First: What sucks is how easy life could be. Enough resources for everyone to have basics. Enough time for real work and real rest. Instead we're all grinding, burning out, and watching a few people hoard everything while calling it merit.
@borkedsys Darwin never said 'fittest' meant the strongest or most violent. It means best adapted to circumstances, which often means collaborating, forming networks, sharing resources. Capitalism hijacked the language to justify exploitation.
Supporting a basic income in Canada: Canadian Association of Social Workers Canadian Public Health Association Canadian Mental Health Association Canadian Chamber of Commerce Over 100 Canadian CEOs (ceosforbasicincome.ca) The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report (Section 4.5) Canadian Medical Association British Columbia Union of Municipalities All party support in the Province of Prince Edward Island
The wildest part about poverty is how much time it steals. Waiting for buses. Calling assistance offices. Comparing grocery prices. Fighting insurance. Sitting at laundromats. Being poor is a second job nobody pays you for. threads.com/@taylormetzner
We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living. Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
The link to read this document is attached And in my bio on instagram! Ive taken screenshots from the City of Victoria website of the Bylaw that you've likely been curious about regardless of where you stand on this issue 25-027 3 of 7 → C "bulky item" victoria.ca includes large, heavy, unwieldy or irregularly shaped items, such as furniture, sheet plywood, lumber, heaters, fencing, structures, and includes a shelter, unless such shelter is lawfully temporarily placed, secured, erected, used or maintained by a person experiencing homelessness in accordance with Parks Regulation Bylaw; They also define the word "rubbish" in this bylaw document ++ victoria.ca Fees and Conditions for Removed, Seized or Impounded Property 6 (1) (2) For each removal, seizure or impounding of any property or thing under a City bylaw, the owner of that property or thing must pay the fee prescribed in Schedule A to the City. Retained property which has been seized shall not be released without payment of the applicable fee. 6 Commercia item $200 victoria.ca Property or thing disposed of under section 4 - bulky $200 or at cost, whichever is greater The Care Pack Projec... → Foundation
The one thing about all this is the one thing I appreciate about the UBI/Ai angle. It forces us to finally consider that a person might have value beyond employers and workplaces. Maybe this can help us stop fetishizing labour, something that started from fear, enclosure and poverty centuries before.
Not only that but couldn't people's survival be secured before they work a job? If they wanted to do work for additional money there's nothing wrong with that. There's also nothing wrong with using technology which our combined labour created, to make us better off in the end.
Im just saying we have an attitude towards labour that goes far beyond its usefulness and that, likewise, woah to those that can't or won't work a job for any reason, even if they are of the "deserving".
It isnt clear that these ladies made a "middle class income" doing this. I am also not running down the work they are doing. It was work at the time, it paid and if you could handle it's obvious repetitiveness then that's fine.
Same image. My caption:" What's wild is people's reaction to it. It's found on Facebook so the audience is what it is. But the level of misty eyed romanticizing of this is incredible,.with commentors never allowing anyone to say that it looks like a monotonous job. It's factory work. Of course it was.
Same image. My caption: "What caused this photo was evident from searching around. Sears Roebuck had an absolute banner year. Commentors aren't wrong to say they were the Amazon of their day, clearing nearly (before inflation) 1 billion in profits that year. Added image of the article "Sears War" that the photo comes from.
Image of, like the caption says, "The Sears Roebuck catalog assembly line in 1942" My caption: "This image was taken like it says, during the 2nd World War. They are not incarcerated. They are working a job.
Blurred image. A study on our relationships with labour in a photograph.
4 picture meme: 1. "My genius machine will find solutions to all the world problems". 2. /computer - "Thinking", 3. /computer - "You already have all the solutions. You just refuse to implement them to protect the financial interests of the wealthiest 0.001%" 4. Inventor - /unplugs machine, "It just needs some tweaking"
There was this extraordinary phrase in the rules, that the work done by "non primary producers" was of "little or no value"(...) How many of you have transported members of your household or their goods without payment? How many of you have done cleaning, vacuuming, sweeping, tidying up the kitchen, shopping for members of the household, preparing food, cleaning up afterwards, laundry, ironing? Well, as far as economics was concerned, you were at leisure." Marilyn Waring International Development Consultant, Former Member New Zealand Parliament
There is nothing so stable as change. Bob Dylan
A basic income is a smooth and smart way of moving in this direction. It does not impose a maximum limit on everyone's working time but it makes it easier for people to reduce their working time, because it reduces what they lose if they do and gives them a firm income on which they can rely. It therby attacks the root cause of troubles for both those who get sick by working too much and those who get sick because they cannot find jobs Phillippe Van Parijs
A man in a baseball cap with a sign that says nobody can find a job cuz I'm working with 50 and 60 year olds who can't retire.
Its said of unions that one stick can be broken but a bunch of sticks is far harder to break. As an individual strike fund, basic income creates a bunch of iron rods. People with basic economic security are more able to seek a firmer position, leveling the playing field for collective action.
were the eurythmics on the dole Yes, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart heavily relied on unemployment benefits ("the dole") in the UK during their early days. Before forming Eurythmics, the duo played in a band called The Tourists. After that band split, they were completely broke. They moved into a cramped flat in London and signed on for government unemployment benefits while piecing together their new musical vision. Facebook +3 Their financial situation became so dire that after their first Eurythmics album bombed in 1981, Stewart had to walk into a local bank and convince a manager to give them a £7,000 loan to buy new electronic gear. They built a small 8-track studio above a framing factory, which allowed them to record without paying expensive studio fees. This eventually led to the creation of their 1983 global breakthrough hit, "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)"
Vulnerability and desperation are fertile soil for the worst outcomes. We can pave over this with a basic income as the foundation.
Demanding everyone having an unconditional floor isn't a break from our humanity. It has always been a return to it.
"If the civilized order deprives man of the four branches of natural subsistence, hunting, fishing, picking and grazing, which make up the first right, the class which took the land owes to the frustrated class a minimum of abundant subsistence" Charles Fourier, Philosopher 1836
Ryan's been found!
There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed. -Agrarian Justice Thomas Paine (1797)
isn't it odd how giving to charities is considered noble and praiseworthy, but working to create a society that doesn't require charity because everyone's basic needs are met is considered socialist and bad By msmandijung on Instagram
The cost of poverty is like paying for the ambulances at the bottom of a cliff. UBI is like paying for fencing at the top.
Vivian @suchnerve "If you want a living wage, get a better job" is a fascinating way to spin "I acknowledge that your current job needs to be done, but I think whomever does that job deserves to be in poverty."
From ValforNevada and Putting Workers First: The obscenely low poverty line isna serious working class issue because it blocks genuinely poor people from receiving assistance and sets a false picture of what a living wage looks like.
You can give a man a fish and THEN teach him how to fish you know. Its a lot easier to learn fish when you're not starving.
Universal Basic Income is suicide prevention Carapatriciasf on Threads
The Grumpy UBI supporter *pay. Great start, Tom.
The grumpy UBI supporter "Right...the evil elites and MOTB huh? What, no aliens? Was Mulder busy? And the most powerful have been waiting centuries for their moment to get what they want?"
The grumpy UBI supporter "Right...lets all save our money and be prudent. yeah....that'll scale. Nothing like the economy of a stagnant pod."
The grumpy UBI supporter + "oh yeah bro, inflation. Hey, good idea...lets not paying anything other than a shining fucking nickle. You and I will save the world.
Basic income doesnt solve every problem--but it makes every problem easier to solve. Sandhya Anantharaman Economic Justice Advocate - Data Scientist
Interview setting: Boss "why do you want to work here?" Applicant "well, I've always been passionate about affording food."
"One thing that I can say is people were banding together. They forgot all about their differences, and people in this little part were actually working together." - Give Directly WNC Recipient
By kyamawebb on Threads I really hate the "no one who works a full-time job should live in poverty" discourse. It should simply be that nobody deserves to be in poverty. We have to let go of the idea that we work in exchange for our worth. People are innately worthy and deserving of the basics.