Free Republic

As finance and development ministers and legislators gather in Morocco for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from Oct. 9 to 15, the pressing issue of runaway global inequality will loom large on their agenda. Governments can use various tools to address inequality, including fair taxes, quality public services and just labor conditions. And an important tool they should consider now is universal social security, a set of policies and programs designed to ensure financial security across a person’s lifetime. The World Bank and IMF wield substantial influence by funding and shaping social...

More than 140 people experiencing homelessness in Denver will each be provided up to $1,000 in cash a month for up to one year as part of a basic income program designed to help "lift individuals out of homelessness," the city announced last week. The $2 million contract with the Denver Basic Income Project was approved by the City Council and will provide direct cash assistance to more than 140 women, transgender and gender non-conforming individuals, and families in shelters. "Just as important as housing and shelter is a regular source of income for those experiencing homelessness," Mayor Michael B....

Located just 60km from Rio de Janeiro, Marica has modelled itself into a very different city, paying residents a universal basic income, using its own digital currency and procuring its own vaccines. Marica, Brazil — More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil seems set on beating its own tragic records on a daily basis. By April, 4,000 Brazilians were dying every 24 hours — an average of one every 20 seconds — and many while waiting for beds in overcrowded intensive care units. Hundreds of hospitals were running out of intubation kits in what the country’s leading health...

A group of people are to receive €1,200 “universal basic income” per month for three years in a new German study. Germany is launching a new trial to find out how universal basic income affects the attitude and lives of those who receive it. As part of the Pilotprojekt Grundeinkommen (Basic Income Pilot Project) study, 120 people will receive €1,200 each month for three years. Researchers will compare their experiences with another group of 1,380 people who will not receive the cash. […] The aim is to gain a scientific understanding on how people’s behavior and attitudes change when they...

[snip] The legislation put forward Thursday serves as a companion bill to the legislation Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced in the Senate earlier this month. “I am working with Sen. Cotton on this effort to make sure COVID-19 resources go to taxpaying Americans, not non-citizens who broke our immigration laws,” Buck told Fox News. The No Bailouts for Illegal Aliens Act is a direct response to states providing coronavirus funding to undocumented migrants who did not receive stimulus checks from the CARES Act, which Congress passed in March to provide economic relief to Americans struggling from the coronavirus shutdowns.

In a piece at Market Watch, House Appropriations Committee member Tim Ryan (D-OH) writes about his plan to “fire up the economy” by introducing “the Emergency Money for the People Act, which will provide almost every American $2,000 a month until employment levels reach pre-coronavirus levels. Every American age 16 and older who earns less $130,000 per year will receive this money tax-free.” [sic] Married couples, he writes, “can earn up to $260,000 per year and receive $4,000 per month,” along with an additional $500 a month for up to three children, capped at a whopping $5,500 per month for...

Just think of that: We can save nearly 2 million lives every year with these personal and collective sacrifices. In addition, we can prevent an estimated 100 million sicknesses and injuries! Those of us who have raised concerns about the tradeoffs of shutting down the nation indefinitely based on speculative models lacking essential data have been told we’re heartless, pro-death, un-Christian sickos who should be ejected from society and banned from all platforms.How dare we worry about things like money, the next generation’s education, the carnage of a destroyed economy, the deliberate wreckage of all non-pandemic medical services, the desolation...

Rashida Tlaib just sunk the Democrats with a stunning proposal to deal with the coronavirus including giving direct cash to illegal immigrants. Her plan says: “In response to the Coronavirus crisis, the Automatic BOOST to Communities Act would immediately provide a U.S. Debit Card pre-loaded with $2000 to every person in America. Each card would be recharged with $1,000 monthly until one year after the end of the Coronavirus crisis. Guaranteeing Universality “Every person” includes: Dependents, so a couple with two children would receive 4 x $2000 = $8000 in total. Non-citizens, including undocumented people, permanent residents, and temporary visitors...

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is floating a plan to “get cash into the hands of affected workers and their families” due to national shutdowns of businesses in nearly every industry from the coronavirus outbreak. In a series of posts online and in a Fox News Channel interview, Cotton said American workers who are being forced to stay home from their jobs due to shutdowns in the midst of the coronavirus crisis need immediate relief in the form of cash payments. The monetary policy, known as Universal Basic Income (UBI), has made its way into the national spotlight over the last...

Brutal. That's the way to sum up the Daily Beast description of wealthy Democrat candidate for president, Tom Steyer. The purpose of their Saturday article by David De La Fuente was to shame the Democrats into including "candidates of color' at their next presidential debate but a big take away from the story was that it basically described Steyer as a scam artist. Not only were Democrats in general shamed in "Democrats Must Not Have an All-White Debate—and the White Candidates Should Say So" but what really stood out was the brutal slamming of Tom Steyer. Before we look at why De La...

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang was extremely candid about how impeachment is going for Democrats so far and the effect he believes it will ultimately have on the election. "It seems like all we can do is throw ineffective rocks at Donald Trump, and then it ends up leading unfortunately toward his reelection," Yang said on Rolling Stone‘s podcast "Useful Idiots." While “traditional” Democrats scramble to find the right message, Andrew Yang is scoring with the blunt truth. The ‘Useful Idiots’ Interview with @mtaibbi and @kthalps https://t.co/L2YRKNd9rN pic.twitter.com/i3Xbr7CkTo— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) December 4, 2019 "I’m pro-impeachment, but this is...

What are the Democrats going to do about all these racist…ummm…Democrats???? – Kamala Harris became the latest of the 6,000 or so Democrat presidential candidates to drop out of the race on Tuesday, and naturally the Democrat/Media propaganda complex ran with the “America is a racist nation” narrative in response. Let’s examine that notion for a moment and take it to its logical conclusion. Kamala Harris ended her campaign for one reason and one reason only, and that is because registered Democrat voters told liberal pollsters that they don’t plan to vote for the California Democrat Senator in the Democrat...

...A democratic socialist—Bernie Sanders—is among the top contenders to be the next Democratic nominee for U.S. President. His rival and fellow Senator, Elizabeth Warren, is also among the top tier of candidates, declaring herself a capitalist who wishes to transform American capitalism as we know it, with a wealth tax, a Green New Deal and the elimination of private health insurance. A more centrist candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., illustrated the shifting winds when he recently declared that “neo-liberalism is the political–economic consensus that has governed the last 40 years of policy in the U.S. and U.K....

On Tuesday evening, Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang celebrated the opening of his office in Manchester, New Hampshire, by squirting whipped cream into supporters’ mouths. The “uncomfortable” interaction was captured on video by ABC News reporter Christopher Donato. As shown in the video below, Mr. Yang squirts the cream into one kneeling young man’s mouth and then celebrates by shaking the bottle and joking, “That’s a full-service presidential candidate!” And he wasn’t done there, to the obvious displeasure of who appears to be the candidate’s campaign manager Zach Graumann. The businessman then squirts more cream into another kneeling male supporter’s...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) signaled that she is open to a universal basic income – an idea that has been championed by fellow presidential contender Andrew Yang (D). Warren expressed her willingness to consider a UBI, which quite literally amounts to the government handing individuals and families a “basic” income per month regardless of employment or income status, in a Washington Post survey that asked, “Should the federal government pay a universal basic income to every American adult?

**SNIP** Although none of the Democratic candidates explicitly rebuked Mr Obama's comments, Mr Sanders mounted the strongest defence of his policy platform. Answering questions on a forum aired by Univision , a Spanish-language TV network, he was asked whether Mr Obama was "right" to say voters didn't want systemic change. Mr Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist and progressive, laughed and said: "Well, it depends on what you mean by tear down the system." "The agenda that we have is an agenda supported by the vast majority of working people," he said. "When I talk about raising the...

The illegal immigrant population is as high as 29.5 million, far more than the 11 million accepted by experts and the government, according to an explosive new report from three Yale University experts. “Our results lead us to the conclusion that the widely accepted estimate of 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States is too small. Our model estimates indicate that the true number is likely to be larger, with an estimated 95 percent probability interval ranging from 16.2 to 29.5 million undocumented immigrants,” said their report published by PLOS One, an academic journal. The authors from Yale School...

Yang: Climate Change May Require Elimination of Car Ownership Imagines 'constant roving fleet of electric cars' as alternative Graham Piro - SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 2:05 PM Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said the United States may have to eliminate private car ownership to combat climate change during MSNBC's climate forum at Georgetown University Thursday morning. He told MSNBC host Ali Velshi that "we might not own our own cars" by 2050 to wean the United States economy off of fossil fuels, describing private car ownership as "really inefficient and bad for the environment." Privately owned cars would be replaced by...

NEW YORK — In separate articles on the same day, the New York Times and Washington Post each seemingly parroted the same talking points 11 times in respective articles in their zest to baselessly connect President Trump’s rhetoric and policies to an unhinged manifesto attributed to the 21-year-old accused of murdering 22 people in cold blood and injuring dozens when he opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso. The manifesto is clearly the work of a demented mind and expressed views that are all over the map, yet both newspapers selectively cited the document to divine the El Paso...