I think I know what it’s referring to (FJG kind of policies) but I’m still a little bit puzzled by the phrase “non-reformist reform” simply due to its self-contradictory wording. I should probably go back and review Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution” - it’s been at least a couple years now…
I put an extremely brief explanation of it in the show notes: 'a reform that can weaken capitalist logic and build working-class consciousness and power.' It's inadequate but not incorrect, if you know what I mean.
Non-reformist reform is so difficult to carry out in practice because it relies on the active consciousness of organizers. What makes it ‘non-reformist’ is when organizers actively use the struggle to educate... demonstrate limits within the current system and work on building capacity. It’s awfully easy to focus on achieving the actual policy or issue you’re fighting for.
I suspect it's easier for ‘non-reformist reform’ to turn into ‘reform’ than vice versa.
Yeah I did see that, and I looked back at the transcript too, but I’m still left thinking, how can any reform be all that transformative or “non-reformist” if it maintains the existing set of capitalist social relations. I guess the distinction is policy like FJG really does provide a legitimate challenge to capitalist dominance in the market.
This Macro n Cheese episode highlights the very space (lonely as it is) in which we at Real Progressives operate on a daily basis - at the cross-section of economic literacy and class analysis. It’s heartening to come across fellow travelers who recognize the value of both the MMT and Marxist lenses as forces for radicalization and action. Despite what all too many think and all the inter-camp battling, they are NOT fundamentally in contradiction with each other.
Marxists need to understand how modern money actually works in order to form good policy (regardless of political economy), and MMTers need to understand class dynamics in order to recognize why MMT-informed policies are continually ignored and rejected by our capitalist-dominated governments (and why we can’t simply “source the votes”). So much from this conversation to be fleshed out in our next Chill this Tuesday.
#MMT describes state 💱. How the 💱 is spent is 💯 based on the political ideology of those who are in charge of issuing it. In the 🇺🇸 our govt is controlled by capital & that's who our 💵 is spent on. In a more democratic nation like 🇨🇳 its yuan is spent on the public purpose.
The UBI you want must be indexed to GDP per capita. This way inflation cannot erode it, working-class power increases over time, and there's no disinvestment issue related to a reduced incentive to work. As profitability would decline, the way out of stagnation would naturally be worker cooperatives and other non-profit activity.
In contrast, job guarantee (as the USSR had) is either a bureaucratic mess or a productivity disaster, and most likely both.
UBI does nothing to empower workers or consumers, does nothing to increase productive capacity (quite the opposite actually, as a result it’s INHERENTLY inflationary) and it guarantees its recipients nothing but a stack of cash. Asshole capitalists LOVE to promote it cuz it fulfills their need for consumers with cash and doesn’t push back on their dominant control of the market whatsoever. Unfortunately, too many people want a quick fix that fits on a postage stamp.
Exactly. UBI doesn't solve for so many other human needs, and will just be another golden egg for capital, as they just raise costs to vacuum up that amount from the working class (probably even more) using the UBI as the excuse of why they should be able to afford the rate hikes. On the surface, it sounds good. Systemic change with jobs, housing, & health guarantee are much more effective, and make the economy healthier as well, reducing inequality.
One point of indexation to real GDP per capita is not to avoid inflation, but to make it useless as a device for increasing the profit share.
I can agree that a plain UBI would not solve much. However indexing it that way would avoid a decoupling of the median wage from productivity gains, as we've been experiencing for half a century.
It's indeed a simple fix, and that's why it will work.
I don't understand how indexing to GDP solves the price anchor problem. Why wouldn't it make more sense to provide universal basic services so ppl don't have to worry about the cost? Otherwise it just seems like a vicious circle of increasing prices and ppl still have to worry about affordability of things needed to live & be safe, healthy, comfortable...
Indexing to real GDP per capita means inflation can have no impact whatsoever. This mechanically implies shorter hours down the road, unless productivity stagnates or the need to consume increases. Either condition is not so easy to invoke.
It’s just a giant coincidence that the richest capitalists on planet Earth are the ones pushing YOUR preferred policy the hardest. Oh yeaaah UBI is really gonna bring capital to its knees. 🤣 That’s why Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and Andrew Yang are all promoting it. They’re really fighting for the working class, and fighting against the capitalist machine!!! What a fucking 🤡 I swear to god you couldn’t make up a dumber argument.
Attach this stipulation and that index… You’re still just handing people a stack of cash and telling them to fend for themselves in the private market of predation. A libertarian wet dream. Powerless consumers before capital. How bout you actually guarantee people the basic necessities to live - healthcare, housing, education, employment, etc as opposed to a stack of cash that becomes less and less valuable with its universal implementation?
Rofl “emancipation” to become a mindless consumer (where THAT BECOMES your value)… well done 🤣 your daddy Musk would be proud of your pushing for policy that only enriches him more. How much does he pay you to write this nonsense?
Btw just as an aside… you can have whatever criticisms of the USSR that you want, but I’m not sure trying to use the example of one of the most dramatic industrializations of an underdeveloped feudal backwater into a global superpower in the span of a few short decades, all while losing 27 million in WWII, being isolated, sabotaged and invaded by capitalist powers multiple times is the best strategy to attack a job guarantee program as leading to a “productivity disaster”.
Your idea for a UBI does nothing to achieve our goals. It would further commodify services like healthcare, transportation, education. We want to nationalize them. Socialize them. I'm not an economist but I suspect it also further distances productivity from value and price. It doesn't even challenge who controls wages, rent, or public investiment. It doesn't challenge class power.
The Job Guarantee isn’t “Soviet bureaucracy” (kudos on slipping Cold War ideology into an allegedly economic argument), but don’t worry! It’s highly unlikely we’ll achieve a JG in our current conditions. We still fight for it, because it exposes what’s missing and what’s possible.
'Distancing productivity from value and price', I don't see how that can mean anything.
I'm not opposed to socialization. All options out of capitalism need to be studied. One big advantage of an indexed UBI is that it's very simple to bring about, and the effects would be nothing short of revolutionary. With a decline in the need to toil, the whole basis of capitalism tumbles down. Capital would eventually yield naught, leaving investment a non-profit endeavor, controlled by workers.
The USSR had a job guarantee, indeed a very interesting experiment. Relief from the pressure to find work is quite what an indexed UBI would be about, but without the shirking that was then rampant.
Interesting that you haven’t addressed one of the major arguments against UBI – that it does more to benefit capitalists than to bring them down. Rather than weaken capitalism, a UBI strengthens it.
For one… UBI SUBSIDIZES capitalist exploitation. It suppresses wages because everyone is getting the UBI, it massively expands the buffer of unemployed, and employers can now pay LESS, reducing workers’ bargaining power. And that extra UBI cash just gets sucked up by the capitalist class that will inevitably raise prices because they EXIST to maximize profit. The indexing you laud DOES NOTHING to offset the power structure.
UBI can only be financed by the same income that labor loses to capital. If UBI is set at the same level than basic welfare, distribution of the product must remain pretty much the same.
What do you mean by massive unemployment? People deciding to work less? That's not unemployment. Unemployment is actively looking for work.
A lot of countries have had job guarantees in some form. India, Argentina (Jefes), etc. which empowered the working class. I get that everyone likes to rag on the USSR and to be fair it made plenty of mistakes throughout its history, but it was able to transform from backwater tsarist country to global superpower in a few short decades.
Indexed to real GDP / capita, meaning inflation is of no consequence to it, and workers share in the growth. It is rather bound to eliminate capital as such.
Do you go about life like that? It must be exhausting.
"Market abuse" can mean a number of things, all of them irrelevant.
Inflation can be caused by a number of things, the most interesting being labor shortages that make it difficult to achieve the optimal wage nominally.
If UBI indexes in real terms, there's no point in raising prices because the stipend would go along, so the distribution of the actual product would be exactly the same. How many times do I have to write this?
As for labor shortages, they would only signify an unwillingness to work more, i.e. relative satisfaction with the current level of income.
Your proposed solution does NOTHING to address either. Instead it subsidizes capitalists while undercutting labor. The index doesn’t do shit when the capitalists are left in control of production and price setting.
Raising prices to maximize profit is one way to put it, although it's somewhat misleading. There's an optimal wage that 'maximizes' profit, and at times it cannot be reached nominally.
My dude GDP per capita has no relationship to what people actually make and even less to inflation. Indexing a UBI without a price anchor will achieve nothing except faster inflation in the parts of the economy where people can least afford it.
A UBI devalues labor. I am familiar with the Rates against Space compensation model in commercial photography. Those that use the additive licensing model instead of the Rates against Space model for licensing images devalue their images licensing value by factors of 2, 3, 5 or more times. This understanding from commercial photography licensing shows how an income subsidy undermines the value of your work.
Employment in the USSR was nothing like the job guarantee proposal, which simply offers a job to any laid-off worker or anyone who needs paid work but can't find a job. Comparisons with the USSR are invalid.
When you understand how the photography licensing is devalued you will understand how wages are devalued. Licensing fees for images directly represent their value to those that license a given image. That value is also tied to what the market will bear (essentially what has been budgeted by the buyer). If what is paid in photography production is merely a credit toward the license fee, the license fee is maximized. If the license fee cost of the license is tacked on as an afterthought, the license value becomes minimized. The UBI makes wages an afterthought.
Do you mean that if you get paid only in licensing fees, they're higher? That would make sense. Indeed UBI would have the same 'devaluing' effect on wages. However the more you find some form of remuneration outside of work, the higher wages must be (work must be incentivized). So it's not about UBI as such, but its level. If UBI were just enough to achieve current basic welfare, the overall income of workers (UBI included) would not change.
The problem of a rising UBI is ultimately the effect on profitability.
The photography production cost being credited toward licensing means when the work is good you potentially earn more from royalties over time from relicensing and if you work isn’t wanted, you still get paid a base day rate without the work being turned into spec work. Spec work is highly exploitative and should be treated with disdain. — the issue of the UBI being present is that wages will go down because the UBI allows them to go down. A federal job guarantee provides the benefits the UBI advocates claim the UBI has without devaluing wages.
I don't deny UBI could lower your wages, in whatever form. But the difference would likely be covered by UBI itself, for the reason that welfare is likely already at the optimal level for capitalism's current goals.
A job guarantee, federal or otherwise, is as unlikely as UBI to make a significant difference. Unemployment supposes that the offered wage for job openings is not high enough. This means there can be no meaningful job guarantee without higher wages, so the profitability problem arises once again.
All these hopeful proposals have no chance to make a decisive impact unless capitalism is abandoned first. What would take its place can still be debated. I suppose it is possible to design a coherent system that would include a job guarantee. But why that should be such a major goal rather eludes me. The main issue is certainly production decision.
Granted, a job guarantee would theoretically undermine the traditional capitalist solution (unemployment) to worker savings and emancipation. As a response, wages could be lowered, which is where Universal Basic Services (or competition from 'federal' employers) fit in. UBI could also do.
In practice, profitability would quickly decline and new investment issue only from the non-profit sectors (including worker co-operatives). Ok, that may look manageable.
Perhaps a bigger hurdle is that guaranteed federal jobs do not, by themselves, prevent a decline in private capacity utilization. Unless, basically, expropriation takes place.
An alternative might be a reverse auction on job 'openings'.
By that I mean subsidies to get reluctant firms to compete for the workers they would otherwise reject. It's not a very elegant solution, but the job guarantee is the design constraint here.
Not to mention it leaves aside what a proper UBS/UBI level should be, even though that determines half of the incentive to work.
Assuming these types of formulas can be implemented is pretty much supposing that the revolution already took place. So we can afford to be more ambitious, more imaginative.
The issues to discuss should be: how is decision to be made on socialized production? Can markets be tamed and serve to avoid bureaucracy? The goal is quite obviously the alignment of individual and common interest. It's probably less difficult to resolve than we make it to be, but closed-mindedness won't be of much help.
Excellent!!
I think I know what it’s referring to (FJG kind of policies) but I’m still a little bit puzzled by the phrase “non-reformist reform” simply due to its self-contradictory wording. I should probably go back and review Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution” - it’s been at least a couple years now…
I put an extremely brief explanation of it in the show notes: 'a reform that can weaken capitalist logic and build working-class consciousness and power.' It's inadequate but not incorrect, if you know what I mean.
Non-reformist reform is so difficult to carry out in practice because it relies on the active consciousness of organizers. What makes it ‘non-reformist’ is when organizers actively use the struggle to educate... demonstrate limits within the current system and work on building capacity. It’s awfully easy to focus on achieving the actual policy or issue you’re fighting for.
I suspect it's easier for ‘non-reformist reform’ to turn into ‘reform’ than vice versa.
Yeah I did see that, and I looked back at the transcript too, but I’m still left thinking, how can any reform be all that transformative or “non-reformist” if it maintains the existing set of capitalist social relations. I guess the distinction is policy like FJG really does provide a legitimate challenge to capitalist dominance in the market.
Exactly!
This Macro n Cheese episode highlights the very space (lonely as it is) in which we at Real Progressives operate on a daily basis - at the cross-section of economic literacy and class analysis. It’s heartening to come across fellow travelers who recognize the value of both the MMT and Marxist lenses as forces for radicalization and action. Despite what all too many think and all the inter-camp battling, they are NOT fundamentally in contradiction with each other.
Marxists need to understand how modern money actually works in order to form good policy (regardless of political economy), and MMTers need to understand class dynamics in order to recognize why MMT-informed policies are continually ignored and rejected by our capitalist-dominated governments (and why we can’t simply “source the votes”). So much from this conversation to be fleshed out in our next Chill this Tuesday.
💯
#MMT + #ClassAnalysis = #Vital
https://realprogressives.org/articles-from-our-community/
This really was a killer article by Steve
#MMT describes state 💱. How the 💱 is spent is 💯 based on the political ideology of those who are in charge of issuing it. In the 🇺🇸 our govt is controlled by capital & that's who our 💵 is spent on. In a more democratic nation like 🇨🇳 its yuan is spent on the public purpose.
I can already hear normies’ brains exploding at your phrase “in a more democratic nation [than ours] like China…” wha-wha-whaaaaat?!!! 🤯
You know the saying 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'? Well, sometimes I think that's kinda true of democracy
The UBI you want must be indexed to GDP per capita. This way inflation cannot erode it, working-class power increases over time, and there's no disinvestment issue related to a reduced incentive to work. As profitability would decline, the way out of stagnation would naturally be worker cooperatives and other non-profit activity.
In contrast, job guarantee (as the USSR had) is either a bureaucratic mess or a productivity disaster, and most likely both.
[Edit: the disinvestment issue remains – https://substack.com/@soothinghex/note/c-205563993]
UBI does nothing to empower workers or consumers, does nothing to increase productive capacity (quite the opposite actually, as a result it’s INHERENTLY inflationary) and it guarantees its recipients nothing but a stack of cash. Asshole capitalists LOVE to promote it cuz it fulfills their need for consumers with cash and doesn’t push back on their dominant control of the market whatsoever. Unfortunately, too many people want a quick fix that fits on a postage stamp.
Exactly. UBI doesn't solve for so many other human needs, and will just be another golden egg for capital, as they just raise costs to vacuum up that amount from the working class (probably even more) using the UBI as the excuse of why they should be able to afford the rate hikes. On the surface, it sounds good. Systemic change with jobs, housing, & health guarantee are much more effective, and make the economy healthier as well, reducing inequality.
Indexation must be to real GDP / capita, obviously.
How does that ensure access and affordability? It doesn't. Now take that libertarian nonsense elsewhere
It doesn't ensure anything in the short run.
At all, in anyway
https://realprogressives.org/ubi-vs-fjg/
https://realprogressives.org/matt-yglesias-is-wrong-job-guarantee-vs-basic-income/
https://realprogressives.org/2019-09-17-neoliberalism-at-work-through-the-universal-basic-income/
One point of indexation to real GDP per capita is not to avoid inflation, but to make it useless as a device for increasing the profit share.
I can agree that a plain UBI would not solve much. However indexing it that way would avoid a decoupling of the median wage from productivity gains, as we've been experiencing for half a century.
It's indeed a simple fix, and that's why it will work.
Its not a solution for anything
https://realprogressives.org/2019-09-17-neoliberalism-at-work-through-the-universal-basic-income/
The criticism that UBI does not make sure that anyone can get a job is very weak.
Supporting a UBI is a disgrace. So... there is that
That UBI doesn't claim a moral high ground might actually help it get adopted.
https://www.youtube.com/live/FgGUqHz57AI?si=RZN4r6wtMZczsJt9
https://www.youtube.com/live/xlp-K8mtT_s?si=1ebiJBrjt41dhwp2
https://www.youtube.com/live/TMEgSbNap2Y?si=LjcgLFrnVDut6FcG
I don't understand how indexing to GDP solves the price anchor problem. Why wouldn't it make more sense to provide universal basic services so ppl don't have to worry about the cost? Otherwise it just seems like a vicious circle of increasing prices and ppl still have to worry about affordability of things needed to live & be safe, healthy, comfortable...
Indexing to real GDP per capita means inflation can have no impact whatsoever. This mechanically implies shorter hours down the road, unless productivity stagnates or the need to consume increases. Either condition is not so easy to invoke.
No one here is gonna support neoliberal answers like this. It's absolutely garbage. I am sure you are a nice person
This however is not it
"Neoliberalism" is quite precisely about decoupling the median wage from productivity. A properly indexed UBI is the way out of this.
my dude what drugs are you on and where can I get some 😂
lol @ JG turning into a “productivity disaster”… ahhh yes the sweet sweet UBI and all of its huge productivity gains 🤣🤣🤣
UBI used to make me laugh as well.
Sorry but imo anyone who continues to push it is either a capitalist or a clown.
It is a laugher. A piss poor policy.
Index it. Then it beats being administered by the collective unconscious.
ubi=taking a knee to capital
An indexed UBI would bring capital to its knees.
Jesus… clowning me..
You really hate competition.
I hate stupidity
It’s just a giant coincidence that the richest capitalists on planet Earth are the ones pushing YOUR preferred policy the hardest. Oh yeaaah UBI is really gonna bring capital to its knees. 🤣 That’s why Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and Andrew Yang are all promoting it. They’re really fighting for the working class, and fighting against the capitalist machine!!! What a fucking 🤡 I swear to god you couldn’t make up a dumber argument.
Shhhh you can tell when someone isn't serious about fighting capital
Bezos as well? Anyway, as far as I know, they don't argue for an indexed UBI.
🤡🤡🤡
Attach this stipulation and that index… You’re still just handing people a stack of cash and telling them to fend for themselves in the private market of predation. A libertarian wet dream. Powerless consumers before capital. How bout you actually guarantee people the basic necessities to live - healthcare, housing, education, employment, etc as opposed to a stack of cash that becomes less and less valuable with its universal implementation?
Just that index. It's all you need to achieve emancipation.
Rofl “emancipation” to become a mindless consumer (where THAT BECOMES your value)… well done 🤣 your daddy Musk would be proud of your pushing for policy that only enriches him more. How much does he pay you to write this nonsense?
Any other stupid question? How about how much they pay you to promote work as the ultimate value?
Btw just as an aside… you can have whatever criticisms of the USSR that you want, but I’m not sure trying to use the example of one of the most dramatic industrializations of an underdeveloped feudal backwater into a global superpower in the span of a few short decades, all while losing 27 million in WWII, being isolated, sabotaged and invaded by capitalist powers multiple times is the best strategy to attack a job guarantee program as leading to a “productivity disaster”.
The Soviet system could not handle abundance. If it had switched to communism it might have.
ah that explains a lot. you're an "abundance bro". I've probably seen you on a YIMBY thread on Bluesky somewhere.
Is that a morning cartoon?
Your idea for a UBI does nothing to achieve our goals. It would further commodify services like healthcare, transportation, education. We want to nationalize them. Socialize them. I'm not an economist but I suspect it also further distances productivity from value and price. It doesn't even challenge who controls wages, rent, or public investiment. It doesn't challenge class power.
The Job Guarantee isn’t “Soviet bureaucracy” (kudos on slipping Cold War ideology into an allegedly economic argument), but don’t worry! It’s highly unlikely we’ll achieve a JG in our current conditions. We still fight for it, because it exposes what’s missing and what’s possible.
💣💥🔥
'Distancing productivity from value and price', I don't see how that can mean anything.
I'm not opposed to socialization. All options out of capitalism need to be studied. One big advantage of an indexed UBI is that it's very simple to bring about, and the effects would be nothing short of revolutionary. With a decline in the need to toil, the whole basis of capitalism tumbles down. Capital would eventually yield naught, leaving investment a non-profit endeavor, controlled by workers.
The USSR had a job guarantee, indeed a very interesting experiment. Relief from the pressure to find work is quite what an indexed UBI would be about, but without the shirking that was then rampant.
Interesting that you haven’t addressed one of the major arguments against UBI – that it does more to benefit capitalists than to bring them down. Rather than weaken capitalism, a UBI strengthens it.
Help me through it.
For one… UBI SUBSIDIZES capitalist exploitation. It suppresses wages because everyone is getting the UBI, it massively expands the buffer of unemployed, and employers can now pay LESS, reducing workers’ bargaining power. And that extra UBI cash just gets sucked up by the capitalist class that will inevitably raise prices because they EXIST to maximize profit. The indexing you laud DOES NOTHING to offset the power structure.
UBI can only be financed by the same income that labor loses to capital. If UBI is set at the same level than basic welfare, distribution of the product must remain pretty much the same.
What do you mean by massive unemployment? People deciding to work less? That's not unemployment. Unemployment is actively looking for work.
A lot of countries have had job guarantees in some form. India, Argentina (Jefes), etc. which empowered the working class. I get that everyone likes to rag on the USSR and to be fair it made plenty of mistakes throughout its history, but it was able to transform from backwater tsarist country to global superpower in a few short decades.
https://www.jobguarantee.org/global-program-map/
I actually like that feature about the Soviet economy. Nonetheless, as they said, "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."
You misunderstood - UBI, indexed or not, is irrelevant. UBI is NEVER what you want. As any form of UBI is a captalist hand out and inflationary.
Indexed to real GDP / capita, meaning inflation is of no consequence to it, and workers share in the growth. It is rather bound to eliminate capital as such.
Fucking gobbily gook word salad from someone who doesn’t know fuck all about macroeconomics or political economy.
Again what does a UBI (indexed however TF you want) do to control market abuse or boost productive capacity? What do you think produces inflation???
Do you go about life like that? It must be exhausting.
"Market abuse" can mean a number of things, all of them irrelevant.
Inflation can be caused by a number of things, the most interesting being labor shortages that make it difficult to achieve the optimal wage nominally.
If UBI indexes in real terms, there's no point in raising prices because the stipend would go along, so the distribution of the actual product would be exactly the same. How many times do I have to write this?
As for labor shortages, they would only signify an unwillingness to work more, i.e. relative satisfaction with the current level of income.
Again, no. Market abuse does not mean many things. And no, inflation with a monetarily sovereign government and idle resources comes almost entirely from two places: (1) monopolies and oligopolies raising prices because they exist to maximize profit, seller’s inflation aka greedflation (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sellers-inflation-diagnosis-accepted-but-old-interest-rate-policies-remain-by-isabella-m-weber-2023-07) and (2) insufficient productive capacity to meet increased demand.
Your proposed solution does NOTHING to address either. Instead it subsidizes capitalists while undercutting labor. The index doesn’t do shit when the capitalists are left in control of production and price setting.
Raising prices to maximize profit is one way to put it, although it's somewhat misleading. There's an optimal wage that 'maximizes' profit, and at times it cannot be reached nominally.
My dude GDP per capita has no relationship to what people actually make and even less to inflation. Indexing a UBI without a price anchor will achieve nothing except faster inflation in the parts of the economy where people can least afford it.
That GDP per capita has no relationship to what people actually make is precisely the reason for this indexation.
A UBI devalues labor. I am familiar with the Rates against Space compensation model in commercial photography. Those that use the additive licensing model instead of the Rates against Space model for licensing images devalue their images licensing value by factors of 2, 3, 5 or more times. This understanding from commercial photography licensing shows how an income subsidy undermines the value of your work.
How does that constitute an income subsidy?
Employment in the USSR was nothing like the job guarantee proposal, which simply offers a job to any laid-off worker or anyone who needs paid work but can't find a job. Comparisons with the USSR are invalid.
How's that so different?
When you understand how the photography licensing is devalued you will understand how wages are devalued. Licensing fees for images directly represent their value to those that license a given image. That value is also tied to what the market will bear (essentially what has been budgeted by the buyer). If what is paid in photography production is merely a credit toward the license fee, the license fee is maximized. If the license fee cost of the license is tacked on as an afterthought, the license value becomes minimized. The UBI makes wages an afterthought.
Do you mean that if you get paid only in licensing fees, they're higher? That would make sense. Indeed UBI would have the same 'devaluing' effect on wages. However the more you find some form of remuneration outside of work, the higher wages must be (work must be incentivized). So it's not about UBI as such, but its level. If UBI were just enough to achieve current basic welfare, the overall income of workers (UBI included) would not change.
The problem of a rising UBI is ultimately the effect on profitability.
The photography production cost being credited toward licensing means when the work is good you potentially earn more from royalties over time from relicensing and if you work isn’t wanted, you still get paid a base day rate without the work being turned into spec work. Spec work is highly exploitative and should be treated with disdain. — the issue of the UBI being present is that wages will go down because the UBI allows them to go down. A federal job guarantee provides the benefits the UBI advocates claim the UBI has without devaluing wages.
I don't deny UBI could lower your wages, in whatever form. But the difference would likely be covered by UBI itself, for the reason that welfare is likely already at the optimal level for capitalism's current goals.
A job guarantee, federal or otherwise, is as unlikely as UBI to make a significant difference. Unemployment supposes that the offered wage for job openings is not high enough. This means there can be no meaningful job guarantee without higher wages, so the profitability problem arises once again.
All these hopeful proposals have no chance to make a decisive impact unless capitalism is abandoned first. What would take its place can still be debated. I suppose it is possible to design a coherent system that would include a job guarantee. But why that should be such a major goal rather eludes me. The main issue is certainly production decision.
https://www.youtube.com/live/FgGUqHz57AI?si=RZN4r6wtMZczsJt9
https://www.youtube.com/live/xlp-K8mtT_s?si=1ebiJBrjt41dhwp2
https://www.youtube.com/live/TMEgSbNap2Y?si=LjcgLFrnVDut6FcG
Granted, a job guarantee would theoretically undermine the traditional capitalist solution (unemployment) to worker savings and emancipation. As a response, wages could be lowered, which is where Universal Basic Services (or competition from 'federal' employers) fit in. UBI could also do.
In practice, profitability would quickly decline and new investment issue only from the non-profit sectors (including worker co-operatives). Ok, that may look manageable.
Perhaps a bigger hurdle is that guaranteed federal jobs do not, by themselves, prevent a decline in private capacity utilization. Unless, basically, expropriation takes place.
An alternative might be a reverse auction on job 'openings'.
By that I mean subsidies to get reluctant firms to compete for the workers they would otherwise reject. It's not a very elegant solution, but the job guarantee is the design constraint here.
Not to mention it leaves aside what a proper UBS/UBI level should be, even though that determines half of the incentive to work.
Assuming these types of formulas can be implemented is pretty much supposing that the revolution already took place. So we can afford to be more ambitious, more imaginative.
The issues to discuss should be: how is decision to be made on socialized production? Can markets be tamed and serve to avoid bureaucracy? The goal is quite obviously the alignment of individual and common interest. It's probably less difficult to resolve than we make it to be, but closed-mindedness won't be of much help.