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In another thread, someone suggested the following solution to poverty. I can't remember who this person was, so if you think this was your idea please speak up.
Here's the solution. Basic income for life of about ~$2000/month to anyone with one condition: voluntarily submit oneself to sterilization. Within a generation or so, the problem of poverty will be solved.
This suggestion was written on here a few weeks ago. On the outside, it sounds horrid, doesn't it? But I cannot find anything logically wrong with this policy. Put aside political correctness for a moment. What exactly is wrong with this solution?
What's wrong?
CLASSIC MONEY MADNESS
If money truly ended poverty, let us end poverty once and for all. Let us credit 22 billion billion quatloos - a phenomenal sum - to everyone. What happens next? If people with more money than they can ever spend do not labor, mine, farm, transport, perform, and produce goods and services, to be bought with those billions, civilization collapses. The money is worthless if there’s nothing to buy with it. No one "needs money," so they won't trade their labor nor possessions for it. Even starving babies are phenomenally "rich."
ARE YOU MAD?
Why won’t people produce, trade and enjoy surplus usable goods and services, except when they’re paid in money tokens that they do not control the volume nor value thereof?
Are they daft?
Yes. Civilization has been money mad for millennia. Those who understand money madness run the asylum.
= = = =
SANITY MODE
Since money doesn't really solve poverty, as shown above, redistribution of wealth is no solution to unmet needs, lack, and unemployment.
Real prosperity is not based on money tokens, but upon the production, equitable trade and enjoyment of surplus usable goods and services. Doing more with less, so more can enjoy is the recipe for happiness. Doing less with more, so few can enjoy is the recipe for misery.
Folks should be asking : WHO controls the emission of money tokens, and HOW did they get that power?
The Congress has no power to create money.
Congress can coin money (stamp bullion) or borrow money. If Congress did have the power to create money (bullion), why would it need to BORROW it?
Still don’t get it?
There is NO CORRELATION between the marketplace's potential for goods and services (human labor multiplied by tools and machines) and the circulating supply of money tokens, manipulated by the money masters.
Why call it “money madness”?
Because the (m)asses believe that whatever the “money masters” say is money IS money, and that everyone “needs money.”
A “basic income for life” is no solution.
Because money isn’t the cure for poverty, but the cause!
Equally distributing money (an abstraction) instead of generating a surplus of usable goods and services (reality), trading them, so more can enjoy, is why it is called “money madness.” The money token has no trade value if the marketplace is bare.
What stops billions of people from generating prosperity?
What is behind unemployment, closed factories, abandoned farms, and unmet needs?
“No one has enough money!”
INSANITY.
{If you believe that you have to “do” whatever those who have the money “you need” tell you to do, then you are a money mad slave of the money masters. Ask: Who made you “need money” and why?}
Last edited by jetgraphics; 03-10-2017 at 12:00 AM..
I really do believe this plan will work. I don't expect 100% of the poor to flock to the program all at once. But if we can get a certain percentage of them to agree to not pass their impoverished attitude to the next generation, we will have significantly reduce poverty by quite a bit.
It's an idea that is quite drastic. I admit that. Try to look at it this way. Right now, single women who don't know any better are rewarded by having children out of wedlock. I know that to the rest of us, it's not nearly enough money to have a comfortable life. But to them, barely getting by is good enough. Their children grow up and observe this lifestyle believing that it's the only way they can live their lives.
I have posted many links in this thread pointing to studies that show 70% of children who are born poor remain poor all their lives. It is not a coincidence. Generational poverty is very real. For 50 years, we have tried to educate them, help them financially, push forward programs for job training, etc. Nothing has worked. We still have more generational poverty than ever before.
I'm an engineer. In engineering, we actually have a word to describe doing something the same way many times expecting a different result next time. We call it "stupid".
Shall we continue to try the same damn thing we've been doing for 50 years or can we please try something new?
I tried, in my original reply, to avoid bringing up any reservations about this idea on philosophical grounds, in an attempt to respect your request for "logical" objections. I still don't really want to get into that aspect of it, but I have to say that the way you talk about the poor troubles me.
I won't accuse you of lacking compassion, as I cannot possibly know what is in your heart, but the way you talk about the poor makes it seem as if you consider them almost another species: incapable of change, hopeless, and perhaps even less fully human than yourself. Again, I refer to how your words sound to me. Whether or not this is your belief, I cannot say. I can only say to speak in terms of us vs. "them" makes me very uncomfortable, as it always does in conversations about groups of people.
I agree that what we have done so far is not working in enough cases, and needs to be changed, but I'm not sure that the way to get rid of the problem is by getting rid of the people. Your links show that 70% of children born into poverty remain poor. That means that 30% do not. Why not look closely at what makes the difference, and try to focus on that?
Last of all, and this is almost an afterthought: you have, I assume, proposed this plan as an alternative to welfare in its current form. What, then, of the working class, people who do not receive welfare, yet still fall under your definition of "the poor"? Should they also be encouraged to refrain from having children? If so, why? Assuming everyone had the ability and the desire to become highly educated and work in one of the professions, there would still be the issue of "menial work" needing to be done. Do we reward those who do it, making all of our lives easier in the process, by telling them they are not worthy of rearing a family?
Enough of my concerns about the plan itself. For anything to work, it must first be accepted by those footing the bill. I think you may find this a tough nut to crack, as you may have surmised from the replies here. In addition to those who simply don't want to spend the money, you will find others who object on moral grounds, particularly among deeply religious communities. There are people out there who don't even want their tax money to be used for birth control (even condoms, which serve the dual purpose of preventing pregnancy and stemming the tide of STDs). Do you really think these folks will take kindly to paying for sterilization and lifelong income for those who accept it? Others will object because they believe the poor are being targeted for extermination, and may even bring up the term "genocide." If proponents of this scheme begin targeting heavily minority communities, and I am sure that some would, they may even have a point.
I tried, in my original reply, to avoid bringing up any reservations about this idea on philosophical grounds, in an attempt to respect your request for "logical" objections. I still don't really want to get into that aspect of it, but I have to say that the way you talk about the poor troubles me.
I won't accuse you of lacking compassion, as I cannot possibly know what is in your heart, but the way you talk about the poor makes it seem as if you consider them almost another species: incapable of change, hopeless, and perhaps even less fully human than yourself. Again, I refer to how your words sound to me. Whether or not this is your belief, I cannot say. I can only say to speak in terms of us vs. "them" makes me very uncomfortable, as it always does in conversations about groups of people.
I agree that what we have done so far is not working in enough cases, and needs to be changed, but I'm not sure that the way to get rid of the problem is by getting rid of the people. Your links show that 70% of children born into poverty remain poor. That means that 30% do not. Why not look closely at what makes the difference, and try to focus on that?
Last of all, and this is almost an afterthought: you have, I assume, proposed this plan as an alternative to welfare in its current form. What, then, of the working class, people who do not receive welfare, yet still fall under your definition of "the poor"? Should they also be encouraged to refrain from having children? If so, why? Assuming everyone had the ability and the desire to become highly educated and work in one of the professions, there would still be the issue of "menial work" needing to be done. Do we reward those who do it, making all of our lives easier in the process, by telling them they are not worthy of rearing a family?
Enough of my concerns about the plan itself. For anything to work, it must first be accepted by those footing the bill. I think you may find this a tough nut to crack, as you may have surmised from the replies here. In addition to those who simply don't want to spend the money, you will find others who object on moral grounds, particularly among deeply religious communities. There are people out there who don't even want their tax money to be used for birth control (even condoms, which serve the dual purpose of preventing pregnancy and stemming the tide of STDs). Do you really think these folks will take kindly to paying for sterilization and lifelong income for those who accept it? Others will object because they believe the poor are being targeted for extermination, and may even bring up the term "genocide." If proponents of this scheme begin targeting heavily minority communities, and I am sure that some would, they may even have a point.
Sure it is voluntary. You can always move to Canada or Somalia.
So I consented to taxation when I was born? Interesting concept.
Did I also consent to a lawn care service, magazine subscriptions,Internet provider, trash pick-up, etc.?
Another interesting concept is thinking you can eliminate "poverty" by making everyone else poorer.
So I consented to taxation when I was born? Interesting concept.
Did I also consent to a lawn care service, magazine subscriptions, trash pick-up, etc.?
We've been over this before.
You slid out of a vagina and immediately agreed to a host of things.
Then, you reaffirmed your consent to these things by standing in the same geographic location.
Everyone knows that when a mugger approaches a guy standing on a street corner and relieves him of his wallet that the guy agreed to the theft by standing on that corner. The mugger is not at fault.
So I consented to taxation when I was born? Interesting concept.
Did I also consent to a lawn care service, magazine subscriptions,Internet provider, trash pick-up, etc.?
Another interesting concept is thinking you can eliminate "poverty" by making everyone else poorer.
We've been over this. You always have the choice to move to Somalia. No one is physically holding you back.
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