By Susan Boskey
Universal Basic Income, also known as UBI, social credit and Basic Income Guarantee, is not a new concept. However, it is being looked at newly by the State of Hawaii as a solution to how AI (artificial intelligence) is likely to take over many of their jobs.
Having lived in Hawaii, I understand why the concern there may be greater than for other places. My experience showed me that the income disparity between wealthy mainlanders who bumped-up real estate prices in Hawaii, and everyone else who had to work for a living, was crazy severe. To survive a cost-of-live higher than the San Francisco Bay area at minimum-wage levels, I observed that most locals had to work more than one job just to survive. Today, I imagine this disparity is even greater.
UBI is a dividend-type proposal similar to the one in Alaska since 1982 via the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation distributing an annual share of oil revenues to each resident of the state (including children in the family). In 2007, the amount to each resident was $3,269 and in 2016, only $1022.
Former Democratic Congressman, Dennis Kucinich, a proponent of this economic strategy for every American, not just Alaskans, said after former Treasury secretary Henry Paulson announced the 2007 $700 billion bank bailout:
“Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, tomorrow I will offer legislation to create a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, at market value and not higher, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American.”
According to another UPI proponent, Richard C. Cook, former Treasury employee and author of the book, We Hold These Truths, (for which I wrote the forward) one of UBI’s most recent sources is Scottish Major C.H. Douglas. In 1918 he was an industrial engineer who authored the book, Economic Democracy, which addressed the gap of purchasing power for the average person, and therefore the need for government-distributed dividends.
Cook, in a Global Research article, discusses “Credit as a Public Utility: The Key to Monetary Reform,” asserting that social credit “should be treated as a public utility, like water, electricity, and clean air.”
A citizens’ dividend could work wonders in rebuilding the economy from the bottom up, including small business and local agriculture. To assure that dividends are spent for necessities, they could be issued initially as tax-free food, fuel, and housing vouchers from a government recovery account not dependent on taxation or borrowing. Rather the backing for the vouchers would be the productive potential of the economy. This way new economic production could be generated without bank loans. The vouchers, when spent, could be funneled into a network of community savings banks that would re-lend the money at zero percent interest. (Richard C. Cook, “How to Save the U.S. Economy,” Global Research)
At the time, in 2007, when Richard Cook asked me to write the forward to We Hold These Truths, the social credit concept sounded good to me: a practical solution to the purchasing-power gap Americans had continued to suffer in the early to middle 2000s. That said, in 2017 I am no longer a fan of social credit having had the time to look into it more deeply.
Would this government strategy create economic justice providing a spiritual basis for the economy as Cook and others suggest? Or would it simply be the next step towards larger government and its increased control over matters of our personal lives? And how exactly would social credit affect the national debt? The UBI, in my view, is short-sighted; it would enhance, not end, the grip financial elites already have on Central Banking, a system destined to underwrite a world government with a world currency.
Frederick Hayek in his 1960 book, The Constitution of Liberty, predicted that egalitarian redistribution would end up only as a new approach of the “old aims of socialism.”
Visionary? No. Short-sighted wishful thinking? Yes.
Susan Boskey is author of the book, The Quality Life Plan®: 7 Steps to Uncommon Financial Security. After exposing the bottom-line of why more and more families need credit each month just to make ends meet, Susan provides game-changing practical strategies, tactics and templates to help you create a life of greater ease. You can reverse the downward trend of credit and debt while learning how to establish a long-term, debt-free lifestyle; a life that allows you to build both financial wealth and the wealth of well-being midst the challenges of today. To learn more or to purchase the book, please visit her website at http://TheQualityLifePlan.com
Image Credit: AFP
In a fairy tale UBI has a nice feel to it, but in reality, it would lead to soylent green.
Why not…it’s all fake money…brought to you by the unholy who have owned the unfed b.s. bank since Woodrow ‘the Treasonous’ gave satan the keys on 12/21/1913 and the thug agency IRS was formed in 1914.
Uncle Satan’s dole, what could possibly go wrong with that…
Precisely! Uncle Satan’s dole has the world “universal” in it. Guess what the word universal is interchangeable with under our system of law? Roman Catholic. So Uncle Satan, who proclaims to own the entire world and everything in it including you and me, will be sitting on his throne in the Vatican, laughing at the loss of our jobs and becoming our “daddy”. The thought makes my hair hurt.
The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. Haven’t you heard? And haven’t you heard also that not one jot or tittle shall pass from the law, till all be fulfilled? And have you never heard of the jubilee? Which “christians” are responsible for our current economic system? How is it possible that a feudal system was ever established by “christians” in the first place?
See, if the US was actually a “Christian Nation” , and our eyes were on our King and His word and ways, this country would be completely different. Every 50 years, the land would be redivided among the natural born citizens, so that everyone had a share of the means of production. Everyone who would not already have been executed under Biblical Law would be released from prison. All debts would be forgiven. A true, spiritually based, planned reset, designed to give everyone, every family, the opportunity to prosper and receive the blessings from the Lord that are universal to all, just and unjust.
We have been lied to by the lying, thieving, murdering, narcissistic and psychopathic, satanically aligned powers that be damned. For they practice Babylonian Black Magick, designed to enslave us, blind us, and steal all the wealth we create through our labor. The technological advances of this Era will make a vast swath of humanity obsolete and therefore expendable in the eyes of said psychos. They are therefore engineering our demise through conflict, as they have ever done, and are set to cull the herd.
And which nation more deserves to be culled than this one? The Devil is a strict legalist, and the sins of this nation have risen to heaven, and we are under judgement for the lies, thefts, adulteries, and murders being committed constantly not only by the leaders of this cess pit, but by millions of every day people, possibly exceeding half the population. Under biblical law, every sodomite, every rapist, every child molester, every pornographer, every man or woman dressing in the opposite sex’s clothing, and everyone who teaches and supports these things as good and virtuous rather than depraved, debauched, and evil, is under sentence of death. Their only hope is Christ, but the same evil traditions that passed along feudalism, slavery, wage drudgery, usurious lending, and fractional reserve banking, are the forces giving the world its picture of CHRISTIANITY, AND MOST OF YOU EMBRACE IT AS THOUGH IT WERE GOOD AND GODLY! You allow psychos to define things for you. A Biblical Jubilee would be viewed as “socialism” by most of you, as it front-loads resources in much the same way as UBI would. Although most of you aren’t, and never will be numbered among those with inner access to the “big game” , you have been convinced that you might be a millionaire someday, and therefore want the current evil, lawless, and corrupt system left in place. This is what they want you to believe, so that you continue to finance their universal theft schemes with your labor.
I pray this country will repent, but I don’t think it will. Too many “Christians” in this country are Americans first, and disciples second (or third). I was one of them, believing the lie that we were “God’s own Country”, that we are the indispensable country, that we sit a queen, and will see no sorrow. But the blinders are completely off, and I now see that not only does America no longer exist, but it, in fact, has NEVER truly existed. So I commit no treason when I say that I utterly repent of her, repudiate and condemn her, and will rejoice with heaven when her evils are destroyed from the earth. This country has only truly existed for the .001% , and the two party system is just two wings on the same dirty bird. Nothing will be fixed because almost everyone is still convinced that “electing the right people ” from one wing or the other of this filthy fowl, will turn things around. And while some of you are convinced that President Trump is “God’s Man for This Time” , even though he is a thief, liar, murderer, and adulterer, I am more than convinced that Ron Paul was God’s Choice, and this nation showed its true colors by rejecting him, and accepting the likes of Obama , and ultimately Trump, instead.
The everlasting gospel is very simple; a child can understand it. God wanted us to know what He is really like, so He sent His own Son to show us His graciousness, benevolence, and forgiveness. He was murdered for His troubles by His own people and the satanic powers that be, but the grave couldn’t hold Him, and He is alive for ever more. I f you believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Remember, Jesus came preaching the gospel, saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” Nothing has changed.
Well, if you lack even the most basic understanding of economics, UBI sounds great. But if you can add 1 and 1 and get 2, then you know that dog won’t hunt for long.
The UBI would go a long way towards overcoming the economic problem caused by Robotics and AI. Self driving trucks will place millions of truck drivers out of work. More advanced robotic assembly lines will do the same for factory workers. The economic problem then becomes “who will purchase the products made in these robotic factories?” The displaced workers will have no money to buy these products. The UBI seems a fantasy now. But in the near future, it may be the only way to keep the economy humming.
And just who would pay this UBI? The manufacturers? Out of their profits? The government? Out of your taxes? It’s ridiculous on the face of it. When you take away all the shiny bells and whistles these morons have tacked onto it, what you have is the dream child of the scientific dictatorship’s economic model in which they can control everything. It’s idiotic economics for the dumbest people imaginable.
Great! When should i expect my check and who should I complain to if/when it doesn’t arrive?
The only reason the UBI is even discussed is because the system is so completely corrupt and cancerous that it prevents a person from benefiting from their earned wealth. The bankster scum, aided by the Parliament of Whores in the District of Criminals, suck the life out of the world and make sure that YOUR wealth is only temporary – and the debt is perpetual (because the money to pay the INTEREST on the “debt” is never brought into existence … get it?)
Disgusting taker/user degenerates.
Greetings,
Look at the 50 years of LBJ’s Great Society and see what UBI did for the people that have been receiving it. Look at Detroit and Baltimore. Look at Chicago and Cleveland. The people given UBI do not become self actualized artists or create communities that anyone would wish to reside. UBI would be the final failure.