Written by If you’re too short on time to study economics, or public policy in general, I have a great rule of thumb for you. If it is advocated by a leftist, it is almost certainly the absolute worst possible idea. If that particular leftist also calls himself a libertarian while advocating the policy, and isn’t echoing a policy identical to one advocated by an actual libertarian, you can basically skip the almost part, and call the idea an outright assault on human liberty and prosperity.
Such is the case with Matt Zwolinski’s obsession with a “Basic Income Guarantee” or BIG. He and others have been writing for some time about how much more efficient the welfare state would be, if it would just begin throwing cash at people indiscriminately. He has now gone on, to say not only that it is inefficient to make welfare recipients submit to some sort of means testing, and be sure that they spend their free money on food and housing instead of crack and heroin, in a recent piece published in the Washington Post, now he says it is insulting too.
Because Spooner forbid the poor have to jump through a hoop or two, before they use State violence to steal from me for their sustenance, right? We wouldn’t want wholesale theft and enslavement of the productive class to be anything less than joyful and dignified, would we?
More importantly, the notion that people would just get cash dropped in their lap and suddenly stop demanding more of it is completely ridiculous. Look at any Democrat primary, and it’s like a contest to see who can be the most ignorant of economics, with each candidate promising a bigger and bigger pay raise to minimum wage earners at the expense of employers. Imagine the state of American politics when the name of the game is simply who sends a bigger check after their election…
Personally, I’m with Ben Franklin on this one;
“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
There are a lot of problems with policies like this, they are as anti-libertarian as it gets. So why is Zwolinski regularly published not only at his own Bleeding Heart Libertarians site, but also on the Cato Institute’s Libertarianism.org? It’s backing like that which gets him published in the Washington Post, spreading these terrible ideas even further.
Speaking of Cato leftist sellout publications, Reason Magazine smeared the male gender. To hear some tell it, I’ve also sold out by suggesting it might not be a good idea to have completely unrestricted immigration while the government gives away free cash. The tolerance mafia never sleeps, and of course, your calls at 218-936-0815 or Radical Agenda on Skype.
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