Posted on 06/05/2016 7:07:18 AM PDT by John Robinson
I haven’t read it yet, but I was just talking about this with my son this morning.
I could take that $15,000 a year (more or less), get a tiny apartment, use public transportation, and spend my days either in libraries learning stuff, exercising, or doing charity work. However, not everyone is a Franciscan at heart.
“The vote would be much closer here..”
Unfortunately, you are probably correct. I personally believe that human beings have great capacity not only to be selfish, but also to be very charitable. If the proper tax incentives were put into place, and people were given the freedom to decide where their money goes, I believe the needy would be taken care of through private charity better than they are now. The left wouldn’t like this though, because it would take away their role as the special ones who right all wrongs, it would give credit to ordinary citizens (many of whom might be - ‘religious’), and it would shift the paradigm from one of ‘entitlement’ to one of gratefulness and thanks.
Good analysis. The high-concept behind the “guaranteed income” isn’t bad, in my opinion: that individuals have the capacity and indeed the right to make decisions for themselves, and that even the less impressive among us can do better for ourselves than, say, having Ted Kennedy make all the decisions.
However, the whole thing is blown out of the water as soon as there’s a “safety net.” If you blow your income on gambling instead of paying your rent, and the government houses you, or if you blow it on drugs instead of food for your child, and then government provides it ... then we still have to have the whole welfare-industrial complex, PLUS all this extra cash outlay.
It will be completely “unexpected” when rents throughout the country climb by, oh I don’t know, say $2,500 in a few months and property prices rise really fast so that the average mortgage payment is, just a guess, $2,500 per month more. Yep, totally unexpected.
And what do you suppose the proposed solution will be?
Gov’t will have to take over all housing and administer it. Obviously.
Charles Murray sees a massive wave of dislocation and unemployment coming due to automation and robotics. I’ve been very concerned about the same thing. It’s unlike past technological change due to the rapidity of onset. It appears that gainful employment will be increasingly difficult to find for wide swathes of people, even among professional, white collar ranks. This lost employment needs to be replaced somehow, or a very large number of people will need to have another means of supporting themselves. That’s what has led to revived discussion about implementing UBI or Universal Basic Income. Agree or disagree, this or something like this is looking increasingly likely in the future. I see tremendous pitfalls myself, but also see that there may be little in the way of other options.
The one thing the socialists and leftists don’t get:
True liberty and true freedom is a back-against-the-wall scary thing because yes, you can starve, be without a place to live, have little to nothing if you don’t work hard and long to support you and your family.
“First, my big caveat: A Universal Basic Income will do the good things I claim only if it replaces all other transfer payments and the bureaucracies that oversee them.” (Charles Murray)
I don’t know why he bothered to write his book or this article, after that, (except for pay), because this possibility is no more realistic than an episode of “Doctor Who” or “Supernatural.”
To the degree that redistributors are successful in imposing and expanding the welfare state and enacting policies of confiscatory taxation, government budget deficits, an inflation to pay for it, is the degree that the ability to accumulate capital and to increase capital intensiveness is undermined. When these are undermined, economic progress in decreased and prosperity is converted to stagnation then to economic decline and decay and impoverishment, which if not corrected will eventually end in a hellhole.
We have a rabid socialist anchor created by the rats in a capitalist society, hows that working
From the land of a $20 Big Mac....
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