“Stimulus” checks are economic crack that lead to a greater dependency on more and more “free” money. It’s all part of a broader plan to keep you hooked and dependent on a government provided Universal Basic Income (UBI).
Any good drug dealer will give you a free “tester” of his product the first time you come around looking to buy some of his supply. Then once he’s got you hooked, you’re all his.
Economic stimulus checks work the same way.
China Virus was the excuse this time to give away the economic crack.
The first checks were $1,200 a person plus $500 a kid. That got you hooked.
The second was for $600.
You see what they did there? They got you hooked on that big check the first time around and then came back at you with a smaller one. The problem is, you were already hooked on that big one. So people started bitching because now they were conditioned that the right number was the $1,200.
And now Biden the Illegitimate is proposing a third batch of economic crack to the tune of $1,400 a person. Wait a minute…didn’t he originally say, “…those $2,000 checks will go out the door…”? Yes he did, but since when did truth matter to these people anyway?
(For more of Biden’s lies check out the link on the homepage)
But did you think people would be happy with $1,400 they have to do absolutely nothing to get? And I am talking about people who don’t really need the money. Those who didn’t have their lives ripped apart by the government’s over reaction to the China Virus. Don’t be silly, of course they aren’t. Because now they’re hooked, and like any crack-head or drug addict they just want more and more.
Not many are thinking about where this money is coming from or what it really costs in terms of the huge amount of damage it is doing to our economy and society. And who could blame them? Government overreaction to the China Virus is causing people to suffer. An overreaction which was, and still is, causing huge damage to people’s own personal economy. When the Health Fascists who are in control came around and for no good reason starting closing people’s restaurants and gyms for months at a time, when originally it was supposed to be for 15 days, it wasn’t the workers fault they lost their jobs.
So the government caused the crisis by collapsing huge parts of the economy when it wasn’t necessary to, and then that same government comes in to provide the relief needed for the very crisis they created? Sounds fishy. And the end result seems to be just what they wanted. Getting people conditioned and hooked on the premise that the government needs to save you by giving more and more fake money created out of thin air.
Which now brings us to the main point of all this…
Universal Basic Income (UBI)
Universal Basic Income (UBI). That’s’ the “greater dependency” I mentioned in the beginning of this piece.
So what is UBI? It’s when the government sends every single adult person in the country a set amount of money every month for doing absolutely nothing. Sounds like a great plan right? The government is going to pay people for zero productivity. If you owned a small business and paid people for not producing anything all day, how do you think your business would turn out?
For a time the government was also funding enhanced unemployment benefits to the tune of $600 a week. That’s about $2,400 a month for those bad at math like me, along with all of that “stimulus” money they were handing out.
Now there is no doubt that some people needed this money because the government destroyed their jobs.
But I also think it’s pretty safe to say that some people who really didn’t deserve it were also getting that $600 a week. You know I’m right. I know of people who were working part time jobs making nowhere near that kind of money who were receiving that money every week, and I am sure you do too. Why would the government do this? I believe it was a test run to get more people hooked on the idea of a UBI… and I think it worked.
The idea of a UBI is nothing new. Thomas Paine and even Napoleon had proposed it at one point.
But like most bad ideas a UBI has never gotten any real traction.
What does the left and right say about a UBI?
I think part of the reason it never did, in this country anyway, is because there is something very Communistic about it. It’s the ultimate spreading of the wealth around plan.
Some Socialists in this country, at AmericanSocialists.org for example, thinks it’s a great idea, “The basic income…ensures all citizens or residents of the United States regularly receive an unconditional sum of money…in addition to any income received from employment, investments and elsewhere.” It’s no wonder Socialism is so popular among a lot of people nowadays. Never mind all of the millions of people murdered by it over the years; it’s going to give us “free” money!
Over at the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) they at least say that people would need to perform some kind of civic duty to receive their UBI checks, “…a basic income reward in exchange for national or public service,” is what they tout. Don’t get them wrong though. They still believe you should get your handout no matter what, “Basic income is mandatory for the immediate future, in whatever form.”
The hair on the back of my neck goes up when I read any of that because anything a Socialist is for, I am instinctively against.
On the other hand, some Socialists don’t like the UBI because they feel it doesn’t go far enough. The website Socialist Appeal says, “Instead of calling for a UBI, socialists should be using this question to expose the irrationalities, absurdities, and contradictions of capitalism. Our demand should not be for a UBI, where economic control remains in the hands of a tiny rich elite, and where money continues to flow into the pockets of parasitic capitalists. Our demand must be for nationalisation of the key levers of the economy and for workers’ power.”
Apparently they don’t like UBI because all of you “parasitic” small business owners and wage earners will get the benefit of that “free” money “flowing” into your pocket. The people at Socialist Appeal would rather the government just outright take that deli you own from you and leave you with nothing.
As Ludwig Von Mises wrote in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, “But Socialism, including Marxian Socialism, sees in the entrepreneur someone alien to the process of production, someone whose whole work consists in the appropriation of surplus value. It will be sufficient to expropriate these parasites to bring about a socialist society.”
Imagine that! Socialists think business owners are “parasites”. Just makes it easier for them to destroy you if they don’t look at you as human.
So some Commies are for a UBI, some against.
Then to confuse things even more there are even some people from the free-market, right wing side of society who seem to be in favor of a UBI as well. Milton Friedman the famous Libertarian Free Market Economist supported a version of a UBI which he called a Negative Income Tax. We also haveConservative/Libertarian Political Scientist Charles Murray outright backing a UBI of $13,000 a year to all adult Americans over 21 years of age.
All of this can make your head swim, so rather than getting bogged down in the politics of whether or not a UBI is a left wing or right wing idea, let’s talk about it in practical terms.
Why People are in favor of a UBI
People in favor of a UBI say things like it would remove the stigma of being on welfare, guard against losing your job to a technological advance and even help entrepreneurship because if you wanted to start that Kale Smoothie shop you have been dreaming about you could knowing you have that UBI cushion. Many also claim a UBI would take the place of much of our current welfare system thereby eliminating a large portion of the overhead that goes along with administering that huge welfare apparatus. They also say it’s also going to reduce poverty, create jobs, control discrimination and ultimately change society for the better. Sounds utopian right?
At least in Murray’s version of a UBI it comes with some caveats, “A UBI will do the good things I claim only if it replaces all other transfer payments and the bureaucracies that oversee them. If the guaranteed income is an add-on to the existing system, it will be as destructive as its critics fear.” He also says, “…Three thousand dollars (of his proposed $13,000 a year) must be used for health insurance,” and finally, “The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare.”
That almost sounds reasonable to me…getting rid of all of those other bloated, corrupt government programs and replacing them with a clean check every month to people? Yes, in some kind of fantasy world that would work, but we don’t live in a fantasy world.
A UBI in the real world
In the real world we all know the UBI would just be added on top of all of those other things. Oh, it may start off small like a lot of government programs, but as sure as the sun comes up every day and Joe Biden doesn’t know where he is or what day it is, you know that it will grow into yet another cash devouring, soul sucking monster.
Want proof? Take Social Security for example. It was signed into law by FDR in 1935 and was intended as a means to combat poverty in people over the age of 65 by taking 2-6% of your pay. That’s it. There wasn’t even a survivor’s benefit attached to it originally. If you died before you could collect, your estate would get a lump sum.
Then what happened?
In 1939 President Roosevelt signed legislation establishing benefits for survivors and dependents.
In 1950 legislation extended coverage under the old-age and survivors insurance program to about 10 million more people; and benefits began to be paid to a dependent widower, a dependent husband, a wife under 65 with a child in her care, and to a divorced wife.
Disability insurance arrived in 1954, and the disability program expanded in subsequent years to include the families of disabled workers. Social Security was also amended to extend old-age and survivors insurance coverage to self-employed farmers, self-employed members of specified professions, additional farm and domestic employees.
Early retirement benefits, allowing people to draw checks at age 62, were enacted in 1956 for women and in 1961 for men.
In 1956, disability payments were enacted and initially were payable only to workers aged 50-64 which was then changed in 1960 to permit payment of benefits to disabled workers of any age and to their dependents.
In 1965, Medicare was introduced as a form of health insurance under Social Security.
Payments to divorced wives began in 1965 and to divorced husbands in 1977.
While all of these changes were occurring, the bureaucratic monster needed to run all of this kept growing as well. That 2% people originally contributed has now grown to 12.4%.
In fact, “Social Security is now the largest government program in the world relative to other U.S. federal programs. In 2019 for example the amount spent on Social Security was: 19% higher than for national defense and veterans’ benefits; 8 times higher than for education, training, employment, and social services combined; and 16 times higher than for public order and safety, including law enforcement, courts, prisons, fire protection, and immigration enforcement,” as per justthefacts.com. In 2019 23% of the Federal budget went to Social Security and 25% went to Medicare, Medicaid and other health insurance programs.
It’s a monster.
Can you imagine what would happen with a UBI? How long do you think it would be before people were clamoring for those payments to be expanded to cover everyone, not just adults? How long before that $1,000 a month became $1,000 a week? Hell, we were already just at $600 and no one blinked an eye. In fact, a lot of leftists out there were already saying it wasn’t enough!
And how do we pay for all that “free” money?
And where is all of this “free” money for a UBI to come from?
Of course either directly or indirectly taxes would go up on everyone. That alone would have a hugely negative impact on the economy as a whole.
But in reality I think it would be paid for as the Socialists say it would, “…the power of central banks to create money could be used as one funding channel for basic income.” In other words, we would just “print” the money. So that extra $3.9 trillion at a minimum we would need every year to fund a UBI would just appear out of thin air.
In the glory days currencies were actual linked to something…sea shells, shiny rocks…gold.
Not anymore. Now currencies like our U.S. dollar are based on nothing more than trust and faith. Once we broke that link between our currency and a tangible asset like gold, it allowed for all hell to break loose. The leftists call it Modern Monetary Theory. In reality it’s the enabler of Socialism.
It’s not hard to guess what would happen next. Soul crushing Inflation would arrive and virtually destroy any benefit anyone would have received from that extra cash in their pocket. As the Mises Institute says, “…the essence of inflation is not a general rise in prices but an increase in the supply of money, which in turns sets in motion a general increase in the prices of goods and services.”
But that’s not the only negative aspect of a UBI.
What are some of the other negatives of a UBI?
For one, it upsets the functioning of an efficient market. We will potentially be paying people to pursue work which the market has determined is not worth much. There’s a reason why a degree in Women’s Studies doesn’t land you a high paying job. Because there is no demand for it and in a functioning market that person with that degree will quickly realize they cannot support themselves and will then move on to a more productive form of employment. One the market will actually pay them to pursue. A UBI has the potential to upset that natural flow with negative consequences for all.
A UBI also has the potential to completely distort and upset the labor supply. Especially once it grows beyond the initial $1,000 a month. Just think back to when the government was handing out those $600 a week unemployment checks for a time because of the China Virus. Many people chose to sit home rather than go back to work and businesses struggled because of it.
“This is not rocket science, folks. When you pay people more to sit at home than to go back to work, they sit at home,” said chief economist Stephen Stanley of Amherst Pierpont Securities. “When you don’t, if they are offered a job, they go back to work.”
Why would people go out and do those traditionally low paying jobs if they don’t have to? Think about this, the median income of a 20 year old is $12,000 a year. Typically spent doing jobs that many people later in life could ill afford to do. Those 20 year olds are also gaining very valuable real life work experience doing those low paying jobs, building skill sets that will be invaluable in later years. How many of them would simply stay home if given the chance? Think of how much society loses in that situation. Breaking the link between work and income is not a good thing and a UBI would do just that for many people and in turn it would lead to further impoverishment in later years.
The dark side of a UBI
Then there is the truly dark side of a UBI’s potential to lead to more tyranny, more suppression of freedom and more government control over everything you do.
Many addicts will do horrible, destructive and self deprecating things to get their fix. They will sell their bodies, sell their kids bodies, murder, steal and do virtually anything their dealer will tell them to do in order to keep their high going. –
Imagine what some people would do to keep their “free” money coming in the form of a UBI. Imagine what rights they would surrender. Think about what people would do to you if you threatened to cut off their supply once it starts. To what lengths would people go to violate your rights in order to keep that money coming? Because once that drug of “free” money is in your system, you come to depend upon it and you are a slave to who controls it. Do you really want the government having that much more power over you and your family?
As author Antony Sammeroff says,
“I have seen precious little worrying as to what the government — or a future government — might actually do once it has seized control over everyone’s purse strings. After all, these governments are composed of the same people who launched a permanent war in the Middle East, wasting trillions of dollars on destroying millions of lives. These governments bailed out the banks from the public purse and gave themselves raises after telling the rest of the nation we had to tighten our belts. They have robbed the young of the opportunity to own a home by sending house prices through the roof and mean to leave them a nation in ruinous debt. They continue locking away huge numbers of people for decades for victimless crimes, leaving their children to be raised single-handed. They created an oligopoly of higher education provision forcing generations into student debt that cannot be defaulted on, and healthcare systems that are so restrictive that people must pay inordinate sums to get care or are otherwise forced onto government waiting lists so long that many of their conditions are chronic or untreatable before they are seen to.”
We have actual examples of a UBI being tried
It’s not like we don’t have actual examples of countries who have experimented with a UBI to study. For example, Canada and Finland both tested it and it failed. Sure in some places it made people “feel better” for a time, but is making people feel better worth the cost? Especially when the other consequences of a UBI will make it actually a lot worse for people? Are you really going to “feel better” when a loaf of bread costs $10 and the economy collapses?
Brittany Hunter, at the Foundation for Economic Education, summed up why a UBI is a bad idea very nicely:
- It’s Expensive
- Incentives Work, Handouts Don’t
- The Welfare State Isn’t Going Anywhere
I couldn’t agree more.
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Read more at johnsmustache.com.