Saturday, August 16, 2014

A guaranteed income sacrifices producers

In an Ottawa Citizen column August 16, 2014, writer Toni Pickard proposes a guaranteed minimum income. She taught law at Queens University but apparently absorbed only marxist ideology instead of the correct principles of freedom, rights, prosperity, economics and capitalism.

Pickard claims that welfare demeans recipients and runs them ragged. Welfare is an immoral and counterproductive program that victimizes both its recipients and those whose rights are violated to pay for it. She claims a guaranteed income frees energy for work, when work naturally requires energy since it is a basic requirement of human survival. She claims technology eliminates jobs when in fact it creates new and better ones, raising the standard of living for all.  She claims there is no longer enough work for everyone, ignoring that the work to be done is infinite and only government interference through laws such as the minimum wage prevents full employment. She asks how we can enable people to live decently without sufficient work income, ignoring that reality requires individuals to earn their own living or perish and that her goal requires the sacrifice of the productive and rational to those who are not.

A state-enforced minimum income would be a horrific legacy, as has been discovered by the tens of millions of victims of marxism in Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. It is a monstrous idea that should be denounced at every opportunity.