Welfare doesn’t pull people out of poverty – economic growth and freedom do

 Before the rapid expansion of the welfare state, most people were earning their way out of poverty. Across the world, economic growth driven by liberalisation helped pull almost one billion people out of extreme poverty from 1990 to 2010.

In the USA, “The most powerful anti-poverty programme had no enrolment forms, caseworkers or spending bills. It was a growing economy that helped millions of people earn their way to a better life,” Tyler Turman writes.

America has spent more than $20 trillion on fighting poverty since the introduction of President Johnson’s Great Society programme in 1964. Sixty years later, how are we doing?

That depends, as it turns out, on how you measure it.

Last month, Senator Kennedy (R-LA) introduced a bill that would require the Census Bureau to report a new poverty metric as an alternative to the Official Poverty Measure (“OPM”) by including both cash and non-cash welfare benefits in its calculations.

As Kennedy points out, this is a much-needed fix. The OPM’s methodological weaknesses are well documented. Most notably, it ignores the hundreds of billions of dollars the government spends each year to assist low-income families through tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and in-kind transfers such as Medicaid, food stamps and housing subsidies. In short, the OPM paints an egregiously inaccurate picture of material poverty in America....<<<Read More>>>...

Universal Basic Income – Making Slavery Great Again

I once worked in communities supported mainly through a form of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Most money was received from the government for no (or token) work, or from mining royalties where others worked digging on the communities’ lands. There were walls black and heaving with cockroaches while children slept with dogs on stained mattresses below, and babies covered head to toe in pustular scabies while the mother complained about a sore back. This was not universal, but not uncommon. Other communities that stood out as strong and healthy had people working hard for a living – particularly in roles that reflected their culture – a very different economy.

Men who once worked hard to support families lose the reason to do so when it makes no real difference, when basics of life and leisure are equally available to those who work for them and those who do nothing. It is not a political issue, just a human behavioural and psychological one. Removing the need to work and the dignity that striving and succeeding brings, especially for one’s family, leads to inaction, loss of interest in the world, a loss of role, loss of dignity and depression. This is dampened by alcohol or drugs. Wives and children suffer by being beaten up by drunk, frustrated and drug-addled men. Having two frequently drunk parents ensures children are malnourished and aimless.

This is not theoretical – it is seen all over the world where people of one culture are overrun by those of another and confined to subservience, economic and societal irrelevance, and handouts. Some people and communities break out of it, usually by finding ways to grow their local economy and achieve some form of self-governance and self-reliance. Breaking out is not common and requires an opportunity, the possibility, to do so....<<<Read More>>>...

OpenAI CEO launches global “Worldcoin” cryptocurrency to facilitate Universal Basic Income (UBI) and globalist authoritarian control

WHATEVER! Moving on ..................

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The new "Worldcoin" digital cryptocurrency token for global identification has officially launched, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the guy behind it, is thrilled about its implications for launching a global Universal Basic Income (UBI) program.

As we recently reported, the purpose of Worldcoin is to verify the identities of internet users by scanning their irises to determine whether or not they are real people. This "World ID" program, as they are calling it, is part of a "global digital passport" system for instant verification.

According to Altman, his company is strategically placing "orbs" all around the world to scan people's eyeballs. Users will need to make an in-person appointment to access the "orbs," which are silver balls designed to "verify humanness and uniqueness in a secure and privacy-preserving way."

While still in beta, some two million users signed up for Worldcoin. The company's global orb deployment is now being expanded to 35 cities in 20 countries, according to reports. Once registered, some members in some countries will gain immediate access to Worldcoin's cryptocurrency token, known as WLD...<<<Read More>>>...

"Looks like it's a combination of a global digital ID, crypto currency, AI and UBI?" tweeted investor and real estate guru George Gammon in condemnation of the technology. "It's literally not possible to create something that sounds worse."

Universal Basic Income Will Be Linked to Your Digital ID Which Will Be Linked to Your Social Credit Score – So Who’s Pushing For it?

 WE DO NOT CONSENT!

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“A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is where a government pays all individuals a set salary regardless of their means. It guarantees a certain amount of money from the state without any requirement to work”

In this article, wrote ThreadsIrish, I am not going to dig deep into the economic reasons for it as I am not qualified enough to discuss it from that viewpoint. I will, however, be looking at the countries implementing it and who the people behind the scenes pushing for it are.

As you read the end of ThreadsIrish’s thread below, as well as the points ThreadIrish makes, it’s worth recalling John Calhoun’s Universe 25 experiment that we previously wrote about HERE, which showed that “utopia,” where all needs are met except space, led to societal collapse and population die-off to extinction....<<<Read More>>>....

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the Road to Serfdom

[Humans Are Free]: Many people think that a universal basic income (UBI) would be a good substitute for the welfare state.

Under this proposal, each person resident in a country would receive a guaranteed income, sufficient to live at a modest level. People would get the money unconditionally.

Unlike welfare payments, the UBI would not be lessened if people earned money in addition to the amount it provided, and, because it is not means tested — absolutely everyone gets it, even billionaires — it requires no complex bureaucracy to administer.

The UBI would cost a great deal of money, but its defenders claim that since it is a substitute for the welfare state, we would also save the vast amounts of money now required for financing welfare programs.

Further, if our economy continues to grow, at some point the UBI will become affordable.

Charles Murray, for example, in a short book published a number of years ago, says of his version of the UBI:

“I began this thought experiment by asking you to ignore that the Plan was politically impossible today. I end proposing that something like the Plan is politically inevitable—not next year, but sometime…. Real per capita GNP has grown with remarkable fidelity to an exponential growth equation for more than a century.” (In Our Hands, AEI Press, 2006, p. 125).

The critics of the UBI aren’t convinced and still claim the program would be too costly to implement. In a recent book, Universal Basic Income – For and Against (Rational Rise Press, 2019).

Antony Sammeroff offers a very able account of this controversy and many other issues connected with the UBI....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...