Posted on 11/08/2005 4:20:51 PM PST by SJackson
I was watching MSNBC a few nights ago, or maybe it was CNN, and one of the program’s featured shots was a live picture from Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It was packed and the people were sassy and partying – normal, in other words.
Indeed, the commentator used that, very word and stressed the importance of it. He said it again – New Orleans is returning to normal.
How depressing it was to hear that because of all things we want for that city, we should not ever again want it to be its old normal self. Normal – in the context of what New Orleans used to be – meant not just a good time in the French Quarter. It meant severe and cruel poverty for a significant portion of the population.
We only got to meet that latter group in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Through stark and dramatic photos, we saw their misery, and we could also see the wretchedness that had embraced their lives even before the storm hit.
I love Bourbon Street as much as the next person, and I’m glad to see it up and running. Hooray for those who want to rebuild their businesses and bring tourism back.
But let’s not forget the lesson the hurricane taught us: the region needs not only a new levee infrastructure but a new economic infrastructure that can provide the area’s poor with a decent and better life.
As disastrous as it was, Katrina offered up a great opportunity for a social experiment, for a new and creative War on Poverty.
Unfortunately, as the nightly news shifts its focus from the poor-flooded neighborhoods, the opportunities before us are fast being gulped away, like a quick Jack and Coke on Bourbon Street.
Our country will spend more than $200 billion in Katrina recovery efforts, we know that much. But how will it be spent? Unfortunately most of it is going not to needy individuals but to big corporations for large-scale construction projects, many of them based nowhere near the Gulf Coast.
In other words, the Bush administration is applying the trickle-down approach to aid, rather than providing needy people with the direct help they need.
A better way to approach rebuilding would be to guarantee for a period of two or three years the incomes of those who lost their jobs in the disaster. If we took just that small step, the economic and social benefits would be enormous.
Those who lost everything would be able to return home and provide continuity for their children. The money would be pumped into local economies, accelerating economic recovery and re-establishing vital community centers. New businesses would be started, and the wage subsidies would help guarantee the employment of the local population.
The cost for all this bounty? A drop in the bucket.
It is estimated that about 400,000 jobs were lost. Even if those jobs averaged $30,000 a year, the price tag would be $12 billion, or $24 billion if extended to two years. That’s only about 10 percent of the federal dollars expected to be spent, and probably less since new cost estimates are edging closer to $300 billion than to $200 billion.
If the grand experiment worked – and I think it would – then the country should take the next logical step: a guaranteed annual income for every American. The minimum should be enough to guarantee that no American would ever again be called poor.
Ah, in the words of John Lennon, “you may call me a dreamer,” but I hope someday “you’ll join us.” Consider just who some of the “dreamers” have been:
Well, as one might expect, there was the social reformer Michael Harrington.
“Even in a society based on private economic power, the Government can be an agency of social, rather than corporate, purpose,” Harrington wrote in 1968. “This does not require a fundamental transformation of the system. It does, however, mean that the society will democratically plan ‘uneconomic’ allocations of significant resources.”
Sounds radical, doesn’t it? But guess who came to the same theoretical conclusion and specifically endorsed a guaranteed national income?
A lot of conservatives, that’s who.
Actually, there was broad support for the idea beyond the liberal left. The conservative economist Milton Friedman endorsed the concept as early as 1962, and in 1968 1,300 economists signed a petition urging Congress to pass a national system of income guarantees and supplements.
President Richard M. Nixon joined the parade in 1969 with his Family Assistance Plan.
Now, it’s true, Nixon’s plan was skimpy and fell far short of what was needed. But that really is beside the point. What was important was that, had it passed, it would have codified in law the principle of a legal end to poverty, if not of a living wage.
Simply put, by the late 1960s, Democrats and Republicans alike were not really debating whether there should be a guaranteed annual income but the level at which it should be set. Compare that to today, when politicians of both parties avoid debates about the precise role of the federal government in abolishing poverty and engage instead in a debate about whether there should be any federal role at all.
Let’s be frank. Today, unlike in the 1960s, most Democrats and Republicans are quite content to let the poor starve, and that shows just how fundamentally the political paradigm has shifted in the past 40 years.
Back then, New York Times columnist James Reston understood the importance of the GOP’s philosophical acceptance of the idea. In 1969 he wrote:
“The main thing about President Nixon’s proposals for dealing with poverty in America is that he recognizes the government’s responsibility for removing it. He has been denouncing the ‘welfare state’ for 20 years, but he is now saying that poverty in America in the midst of spectacular prosperity is intolerable and must be wiped out ... A Republican president has condemned the word ‘welfare,’ emphasized ‘work’ and ‘training’ as conditions of public assistance, suggested that the states and the cities be given more federal money to deal with their social and economic problems, but still comes out in the end with a policy of spending more money for relief of more poor people than the welfare state Democrats ever dared to propose in the past. This is beginning to be the story of American politics ...”
Unfortunately, Reston was wrong; it was more like the end of the story in American politics. At the moment the columnist was penning those words, a new and potent laissez-faire force was gaining ascendancy within the Republican Party, and these days it has pretty much gained ascendancy within the Democratic Party, too.
The domination by laissez-faire politicians – always extolling the virtues of private mostly nationally controlled monopolies over the value of decentralized and local democratic planning, no matter what – that fundamental shift of the political paradigm is one reason why the Gulf Coast looked like a Third World country after Hurricane Katrina.
It’s because we are already a Third World country in most respects. Katrina didn’t so much create those conditions as expose them.
Sure, there are pockets of the middle class left, mostly in the suburbs, but they are voting themselves out of existence every time they cast a Republican ballot, and most every time they cast a Democratic ballot. They may get away with their living standards intact, but their children almost certainly will not.
We are once again in need of a paradigmatic shift in political thinking. The effects of Hurricane Katrina and the consequences of corporate governing are becoming obvious validations of that need.
In truth, the “disasters” we increasingly face are not random events, chaotic and unpredictable, but the absolutely predictable outcomes of the modern American political mindset.
Put bluntly, we need to fundamentally change the way we organize society. Instead of from the top down, as we do now, let’s for once give the bottom up a chance. A guaranteed income is one way to achieve just such a goal.
Well done! LOL!
Everything the Clintons wanted for Christmas. A red flag bearing a sickle on every flagpole.
http://www.angelfire.com/la/prophet1/towg.html
"The economic comrade of Clinton's who, though appointed to no official post, helped form his economic strategy is Derek Shearer, longtime associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, "which is committed to socialism in America and sides with the Soviet Union on almost every important foreign policy issue," according to a 1988 article in Policy Review. Shearer favors socialism, but don't look for the words communist or socialism to show up any time soon in Clinton's speeches or policy announcements.
In the book Economic Democracy, written with Martin Cornoy, Shearer says corporations are too "impersonal and powerful" and that a strategy to achieve economic democracy "must start by dismantling, or at least restricting, the power of these corporations." Shearer and Carnoy call for a "democratically" planned economy - one planned by government bureaucrats. They also call for nothing less than complete government control of capital markets. "A strategy of reform," they write, "must transfer capital from the corporations to the public.... The logical vehicle for that process should be the government." The objective, according to the book, is to provide a vehicle for governmental takeovers of entire industries "without the immediate financial and ideological burdens that large-scale nationalization efforts would entail." This has been and continues to be attempted with the Clinton Health Care plans and recent government intervention into the tobacco industry.
America is quickly becoming a Socialist State. The following things are characteristic of socialistic forms of government proposed by the Democratic Party and illustrated by Hillary Clinton's "village".
The individual loses all rights and everything is done in the name of the commonwealth (public) (read - "village"); you are officially the property of the state and not an individual with wants, desires, and needs.
There is only the rich and the commonwealth. If you are not rich, then you are a member of the commonwealth. The needs and wants of the rich come before the needs and wants of the commonwealth. In the commonwealth there are no individuals and no one has any rights whatsoever. All decisions in your behalf are made by the state. Your children are the property of the state and it is decided by the state what they will learn, who will teach them, and what will become of them. As a parent, you have little or no say in what becomes of your children, all decisions are made by the government and you accept or become an enemy of the state.
The government owns and/or controls the basic means of production and distribution of services and goods. We are told that business and other things will be regulated but that we will still be free. Free to do what? They will operate under the illusion of a free enterprise system. All business and land, if not owned by the government or the rich, is controlled and taxed very heavily. What a contradiction of terms. How can anyone have a Socialist form of government with freedom? As stated, in a Socialist form of government the rich rule and have the power, not the people."
http://www.angelfire.com/la/prophet1/towg.html
We already have a guaranteed national income: Anyone in the nation who works hard is guaranteed to have an income.
Once it's "guaranteed", I can "guarantee" you I will quit working ASAP. Isn't that what guaranteed means?
How you gonna make me work if I don't want to? How do you force just some people to work and not everybody?
I'll go get the popcorn now and wait for the answers...
shhhhhhh...
Damn straight.
But... but... but... but...
What aboot the Chil'run?
A guaranteed national income... Don't the French have that already? I wonder how it's working out for them.
Anybody gonna explain how this is supposed to work? ...if you'll pardon the expression...
Under the current system, those who do not work receive from the government (and in some cases even net) more than those who do. If someone deserves to receive some amount of money from the government for not working(*), is there any reason they should deserve any less if they work?
(*)Or, more to the point, if liberals are going to ensure that people get a certain amount for not working...
Presently, the welfare system in this country is an absolute abomination. Unfortunately, it is sufficiently deeply entrenched as to be impossible to remove. I would suggest that it would be far less harmful if it removed the rules that disqualify anyone who tries to get ahead in life.
Under today's rules, if someone on welfare gets a part time job that pays $200/month and they report that income, they'll be lucky (unless they 'cheat' the system) to end up with even $50 more in their pocket at the end of the month than if they hadn't taken the job. With that sort of payout, why bother?
The approach I would favor would be to replace the welfare system and tax system with a flat per-person credit and a flat tax rate imposed from Dollar One. If your taxes exceed the credit, you pay the government; if they're less, the government pays you. But every dollar you earn, whether it's your first or your billionth, will put an extra $0.70 (or whatever) in your pocket.
Suppose you put the payout at $500/month and the tax rate at 30%. Someone who sits on their butt all day will get a total of $6,000/year in government payout. If they decide to get a part-time job that pays $69/week, they'll keep about $2,500/year of that so they'll end up with $8,500/year to spend (of which about $4,925 will come from the government). If they get a promotion and decide they like having more spending money so they go for more hours next year, earning $138/week, that'll be another $2,500/year in their pocket (their yearly total will thus be $11,000 of which $3,850 will come from the government). If they eventually move up to a job that pays $24,000 they'll break even on taxes, and if they earn more than that they'll pay into the government.
I would suggest that once people start earning money--ANYTHING--and are allowed to keep most of it, they'll decide they want to earn more and will thus work to move themselves up the ladder. Even if they never earn enough to be net taxpayers, they'll still take far less from the system than they would have if they'd remained non-working leeches.
Further, I would suspect that if everyone is taxed at the same marginal rate, people are going to be much less eager to see that rate go up than if it only affects the "obscenely wealthy". If someone who earns $10,000/year is given a choice between keeping $5,000 and being given $8,000, or keeping $7,000 and being given $6,000, they'd prefer the latter, since they'd recognize that even if it was all the same this year, the former would bite them when they moved up the ladder.
Finally, I would suggest that the 'guaranteed income' would be far less destructive to the economy than a minimum wage. Under the present system, someone on welfare who decides to take up a full-time minimum wage job will end netting very little more than they would have if they hadn't bothered. Which is better:
How would that create a new class? Seems to me that class already exists. At least the 'guaranteed income' concept would remove the punishments imposed on those who try to get ahead.
It has worked well for France. /sarcasm
Presumably this brilliant man can go potty without assistance?? Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Eliminating work is eliminating the avenue to one of life's most important pleasure....the ability to produce something worthwhile.
Work itself might be dreary, but the results of the work can give real pleasure.
Taking that away from people leaves them a hollow shell that knows their fruitless life is meaningless.
Eliminating work is eliminating the avenue to one of life's most important pleasure....the ability to produce something worthwhile.
Work itself might be dreary, but the results of the work can give real pleasure.
Taking that away from people leaves them a hollow shell that knows their fruitless life is meaningless.
The U.S. has spent over 6 TRILLION dollars since LBJ's big idea, i.e. The Great Society. Well, it's certainly made everything better, hasn't it?
This idea (guaranteeing minimum incomes) is just as good as LBJ's Great Society idea, i.e., overripe garbage!
Oh, well, it's a free country. Everybody is entitled to their ideas, including bad ideas. It's not like this will ever become public policy, so let them spout off.
About 407 years ago one Boris Godunov [the real one, not the one from the opera] promised in his Coronation Oath that there would be no poor people in his realm. He was a man of his word, for pretty soon after his coronation most poor people in the realm succumbed to starvation and disease. This tried and true solution is much more realistic than the "new war on poverty" this idiot advocates.
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