By SHAUN KENNEY
If you are reading and seeing things regarding a “universal basic income,” you’re not crazy. This idea — once the thought experiment of libertarian economist Milton Friedman or “Uncle Milton” to his legions of adherents — is starting to pick up traction from the unlikeliest of quarters — the political left.
Friedman’s logic ran something like this. Take the trillions of dollars that the United States spends on the social welfare state — its handouts, bureaucrats, and civil service. Instead of spending it on the welfare state, simply take that amount and divide it among each American citizen. Thus every American would get a single check of a several thousands of dollars a year, but with the tradeoff that the entire social welfare apparatus would come to a screeching halt: no more Medicare, no more Medicaid or Social Security, no more Obamacare, none of it.
Obviously, this is where liberals balked as Friedman knew they would. Decentralizing the power of the welfare state meant that those dispensing the handouts would lose power as well.
There are other numerous objections to the idea of a universal basic income. Many conservative critics will argue that the government giving any sort of handout at all is perilous at best, as citizens will simply vote for the politicians willing to give them the largest bribes much in the same way as the Praetorian Guards would select their emperors based on who paid them the most gold during the second century AD.
Liberals too, sensing the gambit, refuse to dismantle the social welfare state and insist that a guaranteed income should be offered in addition to the vast entitlement system that is already threatening to capsize and bankrupt America.
Those currently receiving Social Security benefits (rightly) object, noting that they have invested a fraction of their salaries for five decades only to get the worst possible return on their investment. Clearly, something must give.
Of course, we shouldn’t kid ourselves in the slightest with the thought that liberals have discovered a soft spot for Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek.
Yet imagine for an instant that we took them at their word. Certainly there are areas where Friedman’s idea has taken shape in some form. The Earned Income Tax Credit (ETIC) is actually a version of this, one that allows lower and middle-income families to escape some of the more crushing tax burdens that middle and upper income tax brackets are more fiscally able to absorb. Social Security is another method of cash transfer, provided that Washington quit raiding the Social Security Trust Fund for short-term gain.
However, there is another area where — if the progressive left truly wants to embrace the ideas of Milton Friedman — they should give things a go for a decade or so.
That’s right, folks: education spending.
Consider if federal spending alone — rather than being chopped up by bureaucrats and administrators — was given to each and every child as a lump sum of $5,000 each year. Can you imagine the scale of education reform we would see in this country?
Rather than being trapped in a one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter system, parents would be able to sponsor a private or parochial school of their choice, and send their children to get the sort of education they need rather than the one the government requires.
Liberal fears notwithstanding about the loss of power, could you imagine an America liberated from the shackles of a nineteenth-century education system cranking out a twentieth-century product and being expected to compete in a twenty-first century workforce?
Just one decade of freedom is all we ask. The proliferation of private and parochial schools across this country would spark a new and fresh set of civic involvement in an institution that should never have been nationalized in the first place.
Maybe then we can explore the devolution of other entitlement systems?
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Trump’s Helsinki visit with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin seems to have folks’ feathers all ruffled. Of course, Trump knew he was taking risks by even meeting with Putin face to face. Yet failure to do so would only have made tensions in Eastern Europe that much worse.
In case folks have missed what is actually going on, the United States is boosting its defense spending to five percent GDP over the next five years. Russia and China both are beginning to assert themselves in their own near abroad, while NATO allies seem perfectly happy to let the United States carry the load.
That is a situation that cannot continue indefinitely merely because the Democrats lost the election in 2016. Truly, shame on the media for taking a press conference that should have been focused on questions of national security and turning it into an opportunity for political posturing — a dose of medicine Trump was more than happy to spoon-feed right back to the media.
As for the griping about “17 intelligence agencies” and so forth, it’s a well-worn talking point, it’s not 17 agencies but 4, and let us not forget: This is the same Democratic Party who trashed our intelligence services before the Iraq War without mercy and continued to do so throughout the Bush presidency. That we are to suddenly feel outrage because a worn-out talking point was raised yet again in a public forum? Perhaps it is time for the left to focus on better argumentation, rather than demonizing their opposition.
U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest point since the early 1980s after another Democratic president — Jimmy Carter — put American interests at risk. Both nations have the ability to wipe out the human race in eight minutes.
One would like to think that, despite the fact that some folks cannot get over the fact that Hillary Clinton lost, we shouldn’t be sacrificing American foreign policy interests to left-wing partisanship.
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As I was finishing up, I came across news from late May that Fr. Fidelis with the Franciscan Fathers of the Renewal and two others were arrested in at Washington, D.C., abortion clinic for handing roses to mothers and counseling them not to kill their babies in an abortion. (Charges were later dropped.)
And shortly after that, America was in open revolt against the idea of ripping babies away from their mothers at the border.
Today, we are back to the same old grind of those dark Satanic mills — and Jerusalem is still a long way from being built. Yet the witness of Fr. Fidelis and others helps to remind us about the evils we ignore every day — and God bless them for teaching us to have the courage to do so.
Send Me Your Thoughts
Of course, I am succeeding (but not replacing) the inestimable Mr. James K. Fitzpatrick for the First Teachers column. Please feel free to send any correspondence for First Teachers to Shaun Kenney, c/o First Teachers, 5289 Venable Road, Kents Store, VA 23084 — or if it is easier, simply send me an e-mail with First Teachers in the subject line to: svk2cr@virginia.edu
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