Stephanie
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2004
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whoa, we all need unicorns too..
Alaska's give it residents monies back from the Natural resource it has in the state (oil) and gives back some of the profits that is invested from that..
this is an opinion piece...
SNIP:
By Allan Sheahen
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 08/23/2013 12:01:00 PM PDT
As we mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, we are sobered by the fact that 46 million citizens are living in poverty and that we have become two Americas, one for the rich and one for the rest of us.
King had a solution to poverty and to the bleak economic conditions faced by many Americans today.
"I am now convinced that the simplest solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a new widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income," he wrote in his 1967 book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" "A host of psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security."
In 1969, a Presidential Commission recommended, 22-0, that the United States adopt a guaranteed annual income, with no mandatory work requirements, for all citizens in need. The report was buried and forgotten.
The concept of a Basic Income Guarantee is not discussed much anymore. But it remains, as the late economist Milton Friedman always maintained, the most practical and sensible way to end poverty and provide economic security to all Americans.
Today we have more than 14 million Americans unemployed with no evidence that we can create jobs for everyone who wants one. Machines are doing work people used to do.
Job creation is a completely wrong approach because the world doesn't need everyone to have a job in order to produce what is needed. When we say we need more jobs, what we really mean is we need more money to live on.
Today there are more than 300 income-tested federal social programs costing more than $400 billion a year. Much of that money goes for administrative expenses, not to the needy.
Charles Murray, the conservative author whose 1984 book, "Losing Ground," claimed that welfare was doing more harm than good, now agrees with King's approach. Murray calls for giving an annual grant of $10,000 with no work requirement to every adult over age 21.
"America's population is wealthier than any in history," Murray writes in his book, In Our Hands. "Every year, the American government redistributes more than a trillion dollars of that wealth to provide for retirements, health care, and the alleviation of poverty. We still have millions of people without comfortable retirements, without adequate health care and living in poverty. Only a government can spend so much money so ineffectively. The solution is to give the money to the people."
all of it here
Dr. King's dream: A basic income guarantee is still something America needs - San Jose Mercury News
Alaska's give it residents monies back from the Natural resource it has in the state (oil) and gives back some of the profits that is invested from that..
this is an opinion piece...
SNIP:
By Allan Sheahen
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 08/23/2013 12:01:00 PM PDT
As we mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, we are sobered by the fact that 46 million citizens are living in poverty and that we have become two Americas, one for the rich and one for the rest of us.
King had a solution to poverty and to the bleak economic conditions faced by many Americans today.
"I am now convinced that the simplest solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a new widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income," he wrote in his 1967 book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" "A host of psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security."
In 1969, a Presidential Commission recommended, 22-0, that the United States adopt a guaranteed annual income, with no mandatory work requirements, for all citizens in need. The report was buried and forgotten.
The concept of a Basic Income Guarantee is not discussed much anymore. But it remains, as the late economist Milton Friedman always maintained, the most practical and sensible way to end poverty and provide economic security to all Americans.
Today we have more than 14 million Americans unemployed with no evidence that we can create jobs for everyone who wants one. Machines are doing work people used to do.
Job creation is a completely wrong approach because the world doesn't need everyone to have a job in order to produce what is needed. When we say we need more jobs, what we really mean is we need more money to live on.
Today there are more than 300 income-tested federal social programs costing more than $400 billion a year. Much of that money goes for administrative expenses, not to the needy.
Charles Murray, the conservative author whose 1984 book, "Losing Ground," claimed that welfare was doing more harm than good, now agrees with King's approach. Murray calls for giving an annual grant of $10,000 with no work requirement to every adult over age 21.
"America's population is wealthier than any in history," Murray writes in his book, In Our Hands. "Every year, the American government redistributes more than a trillion dollars of that wealth to provide for retirements, health care, and the alleviation of poverty. We still have millions of people without comfortable retirements, without adequate health care and living in poverty. Only a government can spend so much money so ineffectively. The solution is to give the money to the people."
all of it here
Dr. King's dream: A basic income guarantee is still something America needs - San Jose Mercury News
