regarding this wang v sanders thing, though.

it's a false debate.

wang claims that his thousand dollars a month will create jobs, which is just silly. the only jobs it's likely to create are federal jobs in sending out the checks. sanders wants a job guarantee, instead, and claims people want to work - as though a thousand dollars a month is offering them any kind of serious way out of employment. it's less than i get on disability, actually, which is currently roughly $1260/month.

and, the ideas are not in contradiction with each other, either. socialism in it's purest state would see these ideas as working together, rather than against each other.

so, post-work anarchists will flip the question on it's head - we'll argue that it is precisely because we want to do meaningful work that we want the escape from market forces that prevent us from doing so. so, i'm not exactly opposed to a federal jobs guarantee - sure, i think that anybody that wants a job should be able to have one - but i am opposed to a system that tells you that you don't have an actual choice in the matter, and that opposition to what the left calls wage slavery is pretty foundational, as well. so, jobs if necessary, but not necessarily jobs (sorry.).

and, this is why it's important to point out that yang actually isn't doing this right. if he was presenting his policy in terms of an actual guaranteed minimum income - rather than a universal handout of what amounts to a pittance - then it wouldn't seem like there was a debate. sanders could present his jobs guarantee for those who want it, and still support minimum living standards for artists and other people that want to get out of the wage system.

i'm a musician, but i do a lot of writing, right? and, i don't want to charge you for this. i don't want to get paid per word. i don't want to sell this to a bourgeois layer. and, i don't want to bother you with stupid advertisements for useless garbage, either. i just want a nice little monthly check that lets me write what i want, when i want and how i want - and then lets me publish it where i want, too.

i understand that i'm not everybody. lots of people want to get up to go to work and get a pay check for it. that's fine. but, lots of people don't...