If I were sufficiently mentally ill to run for President of the United States, I believe my campaign slogan would be, “Humanity First.” How odd that I found a candidate who stole my idea. His name is Andrew Yang. He keeps that a bit on the back burner, and he generally uses “Moving Forward,” which is undoubtedly more inclusive of various ideologies. Humanity First is an Idealist’s ideology. It includes, to me at least, my core belief that there is no Them. We are all Us.
Moving Forward is political. Humanity First is philosophical. To win an election one must be concerned with the political spectrum first, I suppose, although I find that the least desirable part of the idea of running for office. The measured words based on poll results and popular opinion are the enemies of honesty.
Donald Trump billed himself as an outsider. He was not among those who measured his words. He said what he believed. I should, therefore, admire him. I oppose him, however, with all the power my words grant me. Why?
What he believes is as changeable as an infant’s diapers, with which it has any number of elements in common. I rarely know what he means. He simply abuses the language I’ve spent a lifetime learning and loving. He makes it into a weapon of mass destruction of the ability to think coherently. He exhibits no interest in Humanity. He chooses words of separation, and he mocks the empathy I believe to be at the core of being human. Even if I supported his policies, I would loathe his rhetoric.
I will, of course, support any multi-cellular animal that runs against the President in 2020. The first priority is that we change the President before we become a dictatorship. If he gets a second term, I have little reason to believe he will leave at the end of it. He will become what America was designed to defeat.
Having said all that, I have strong preferences. My favorite candidate is the most idealistic, and, quite possibly, the most politically savvy. Yang wants to enact many of my dreams, particularly in that he wants to fix the ills of the world from the bottom up instead of the trickling down bullshit we’ve been sold fruitlessly since Reagan.
He also has the ability to unite Conservatives, Progressives, and even this Idealist. A good example of that can be found in the increasingly quickly blooming “Moving Forward Podcast,” hosted by Rio Verndonir and Corey Cottrell.
Rio is is one of the few Conservatives I know who is capable of changing a Progressive’s mind. While I still disagree at the core with the idea that all people should be self sufficient, he’s made several very powerful cases on the podcast that have made me reconsider my positions on certain issues. He and I could have a great debate.
He never leaves himself open for the easy attacks, though. No use of the Whataboutism that has become the hallmark of the hijacked word Conservative. No ad hominem. No misapplication of quotes. All my easiest avenues of attack are unavailable with him. I’ve never had a more difficult time writing an article as I’ve had for the past couple of weeks trying to come up with my Idealist’s response to his Conservatism.
Corey does an excellent job of supporting the Progressive point of view, and while he’s clearly the first officer to Rio’s captain, he doesn’t lay down.
And here’s the part that is most unbelievable: They can disagree ideologically all day and all night, but they agree on the solutions Yang proposes. Yang appeals to the Conservative in Rio by being a business man. Unlike Sanders, Yang doesn’t loathe the wealthy. He respects them, but believes they need to pay their share, and he’s getting them to do that with the dreaded VAT tax that my more Progressive friends fear.
He appeals to the Progressive in Corey by concerning himself with the Have Nots. Give people $1000 a month, and suddenly there is freedom they had never imagined before. Two or three homeless people could find a place to live together just on that. That place gives them a chance to shower, which increases their odds of getting a job. It gives those who can’t work an address from which to apply for the benefits they need to survive. It gives them a little something to eat. No, they can’t live entirely on that money, or at least not in the way most of us want to, but they can exist. They can fight to survive. They have a chance they won’t get from tax cuts that have no meaning for them.
Giving the money to the Middle Class gives them an opportunity to explore some of the areas of life that were previously unavailable to them. Why take a lousy job when you have the opportunity now, with your guaranteed income, to find one that you enjoy, perhaps even one that pays you to do what you love?
In my Idealist’s world, we would live in a post-scarcity society. We would welcome automation, and we would allow the machines to do the work we no longer need to do. I can be stoned and go to the store for the much needed Eskimo Pies because I will have a self driving car. I have the money I need to survive, because we have come to a place where we can feed and house the world. We are all working on improving ourselves and mankind instead of working 60 hours a week in a futile effort to pay rent, eat, and hope you might have enough left over to go to a movie once in a while. We have time to enjoy being alive. We can read a book, we can watch a movie, we can enjoy a sunset, (or a sunrise… Corey has started broadcasting those daily on YouTube, and it’s more beautiful than you might think) and we can sit up at night thinking all we want because the alarm clock isn’t in charge. We’re done building Walls and calling people “Illegals” instead of human beings, because we all have enough, and we have no need to invent scapegoats for our lack of resources.
I live in reality, however, and I recognize that this isn’t going to happen for a very long time. The longest journey begins with the first step. Universal Basic Income is the beginning of our trip down The Yellow Brick Road. Oz may turn out in the end to be the charlatan behind the curtain, but even he knows what matters is courage, and the ability to think, and to feel, and to love.
The Progressives can enjoy the idea of guaranteed health care for all.
The Conservatives can enjoy the injection of money directly into the economy when people begin to buy more because they have more. Each transaction creates a new job. The job creates more wealth. The wealth creates another job.
There is a feeling that Idealists loathe the wealthy. We don’t. Nor are we jealous of them. I, for one, am happy for them. They’ve managed to figure out a way to prosper in our society. This is good.
What I object to is the idea that only those who have already achieved wealth have any right to it. The idea that wealth is the result of hard work is demonstrably untrue. If hard work created wealth, the waitress working 60 hours a week, 51 weeks a year, would make more money than the lawmaker who works less than a third as much. It’s that some have skills for which our society pays well, and others have skills that are valued at far less. I recognize that’s part of how capitalism works, but that doesn’t mean that anyone should be without the resources to survive. I am a skilled teacher and writer. I can’t make a lay up shot to save my soul. Michael Jordan will have much more than I will, but I don’t believe my contributions to the world are any less valuable than his. Do you?
This is the sort of discussion you’ll find on The Moving Forward Podcast. There are no claims to absolute truth. There is no hidden agenda. It’s a discussion of… believe it or not… ideas! I invariably come away from an episode rethinking my own ideas. Some of them are reinforced. Others are challenged. New ones appear on my horizon.
Eleanor Roosevelt is reputed to have told us, as I’m sure you’ve heard several thousand times (though I challenge you to find a video or show me the book in which she wrote it), “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” You’ll find a little of each in this podcast, but the events and people are always discussed in the context of ideas.
If we have a chance of saving the world, it will come from discussion of ideas that might accomplish that lofty goal. We will never accomplish anything by attacking each other. Epithets are not to be mistaken for arguments. The moment someone comes out with “Libtard” or “RepuliKKKan” the discussion is polluted beyond salvation. It’s no longer a search for solutions. It’s a symptom of the cocksure ignorance that will block any solution that doesn’t fit with our team.
“You can’t change the world,” my Grandpa Schuelke told me when I was a boy, “but you can change your corner of it.”
In this corner, I present to you the ideas of Rio and Corey: The Moving Forward Podcast.
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
– Emily Dickinson
Imagine
As I write this, the world seems to be turning upside down. The President has been impeached. John Bolton has offered to testify before Congress, if subpoenaed, to tell us what he knows about the President’s behavior. Iran is looking for revenge over the assassination of one of their military leaders. Australia is burning. Refugee children are dying in cages. Homelessness and poverty are rising. Suicide rates are up; life expectancy is down. To turn on the news today is to invite a heaping helping of despair. Worse, there is the helplessness that follows despair like a shadow. The world is out of control, and, we are told, we can’t change it.
I take a different view. “Yes, we can,” as one of my favorite Democratic Presidential candidates said during his campaign. I believe there is much that can be done to change the world. The point of both my blog and my podcast is to find our path to the more just, humane, and hopeful world that we Idealists believe should be the birthright of all human beings.
In 1971, John Lennon asked us to “Imagine.” The world he described was a beautiful one. It’s been nearly 50 years since then, and we don’t seem to be much closer. There appears to be plenty left we believe we need to kill and die for. The need for greed and hunger continues to grow. But we can get to such a place.
Today, I ask you to imagine a world without poverty. I want you to imagine a world in which everyone has a place to live. We all have our own beds, our own bathrooms, our own food and clothing. We have the medicine necessary to keep us alive and healthy. We have the time to spend on the things we most enjoy. We have the time to better ourselves and our world. We exist for more than mundane work. We exist so we can find meaning and joy in our lives. Imagine, in short, John Lennon’s “Brotherhood of Man.”
We can, and, I believe, inevitably we must, get there.
There are several obstacles to overcome before this world can exist. Mr. Yang has ideas for each of them.
Climate Change
First, we need a planet that will sustain us. The fact that ours is in jeopardy is not even worthy of debate. Australia’s fires, all but destroying the country, are directly related to the fact that the world is getting hotter. If we do nothing to change this, regardless of what a perfect civilization we create, there will be no means of living in it. Our first priority needs to be saving ourselves from a planet that won’t support us. If we can return it to a condition that is conducive to human life, we can begin to make those lives more meaningful, interesting, and productive. We might even find a bit of happiness along the way. The climate is a challenge in the present. Climate Change is a challenge to our future.
Like many good candidates, Mr. Yang has ideas about how to keep the planet capable of sustaining human life. What makes his ideas different? They will not simply address the idea that the change can be slowed, if not halted entirely. Mr. Yang proposes moving America to higher ground now, before water, over which no one has any power, does damage we can’t easily repair. There are things we can do in the present, based on what we’ve learned in the past, that will help us in the future. Mr. Yang has more than 10,000 words on his site concerning the need to deal with Climate Change and the best methods to do so. I will, then, quote just these few as examples of real things that can be done, right now, that will help:
Research coastal communities that are likely to be impacted by rising sea levels and provide property owners with information about risks and options.
Make up to $40 billion available in subsidies, grants, and low-interest loans to individuals who wish to elevate or relocate their homes, or move to higher ground.
Help communities plan for rising sea levels with expertise and information.
Invest $30 billion in high-risk cities to build seawalls and water pumps, upgrade roads and sewer systems, and rejuvenate beaches to serve as barriers to rising sea levels.
I have confidence he can keep the planet in good enough shape to continue to support us for quite some time. Beyond that, I know that he is a “numbers guy.” He listens to the science, he uses facts and data, and he seeks the opinions of those who know more than he does to find solutions to the problems we face. You should check out his high tech ideas for combating climate change, including folding mirrors in space. How very Star Trek of him!
The Climate is only the first step to creating the world we all want.
Humanity First
The next step is to end poverty. This is simple to do. Buy it off. Everyone gets a basic income that guarantees them the bottom two bricks of Maslow’s pyramid. Our survival and safety needs are met. Before you start screaming Socialism, please understand that it is nothing of the sort. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production. This is what Mr. Yang calls “Capitalism that doesn’t begin at zero.” I want you to imagine what this would mean.
First, it all but ends homelessness. With Yang’s Freedom Dividend of $1000 a month, people can now get together to rent a house. There are more than 18 million vacant homes in America today. There are roughly 600 thousand homeless people. In short, we certainly have the room to house everyone. The facts can be found here:
It gives workers power that, at the moment, belongs to employers. Instead of working simply to survive, we’re now working to make things better for ourselves. We’re already surviving. If your boss is a prick, you can find another place to work without having to worry about making rent next month. Your Freedom Dividend has that covered for you. This will lead to better, higher paying jobs, complete with improved working conditions, because we’re no longer slaves to employers. We have the power the wealthy have worked so long to deny us.
Martin Luther King told us:
“The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance condensed into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper class until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.
The curse of poverty has no just of justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
The only thing keeping us from a truly free world is the idea that money matters more than people. Yang’s slogan “Humanity First” is more than a catch phrase. It’s the simplest statement possible of the most powerful truth we all need to recognize.
We have heard Black Lives Matter. We heard the reply All Lives Matter. Both statements are true. I maintain that the life of the panhandler outside of Circle K matters precisely as much as yours, mine, Yang’s, Trump’s, and even more than my cat’s. (And I love my cat deeply.) We are all human beings. We are all here for a very brief time. We all have a human right to the best existence we can create for ourselves. And that existence should not be dependent on the whims of the wealthy.
I have no objection to someone being wealthy. It’s often a reward for hard work, innovation, courage, creativity, or simply good luck. I’m happy for the people who have wealth. I don’t ask that they sacrifice it on the Altar of The Poor.
But money is Freedom. The more one has, the more choices are available. Jeff Bezos can do, within the law, anything he wants at any time he chooses. The panhandler at Circle K can’t do much of anything at all. They occupy the far ends of the Economic Spectrum.
America has always been The Land of The Free. Freedom is the cornerstone of our country, and the desire for it is probably the last idea that still unites us. How we get there is the subject of endless debate, but we all agree that Freedom is an American value.
Aaron Sorkin put these words into the mouth of Jeff Daniels in the opening episode of “The Newsroom.” The scene is frequently called “The Best Three Minutes in Television History,” but only by people who never saw the whole scene. (You need at least 7 minutes to get the real value.)
“And with a straight face, you’re gonna tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom! So, 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.”
And that’s a narrow definition of Freedom. It means, mostly, that you’re allowed, as John Mayer suggests, to “say what you need to say.” Governments have less and less problem with this idea all the time because they have successfully ensured that most of us now have the attention span of a rabbit on crack. “Go ahead and express your ideas,” they think. “No one’s going to pay attention to anything beyond what will fit on a meme or a bumper sticker. You’re no threat to us.” I believe they’re wrong. When poverty is eliminated, we’ll have more time to devote to ideas. Our attention spans will increase, and that will, by itself, add to our Freedom.
Freedom begins with the awareness of choices. I can’t choose to listen to an artist of whom I’ve never heard. I can’t read a book I don’t know exists. I can’t choose to express my ideas in a blog or a podcast if I haven’t heard of those media. With more of my time to focus, I can learn much more.
Freedom continues with the material means to fulfill your wishes. While I won’t try to argue that we should all have equal access to everything (I don’t really deserve a 3 million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills), it is beyond debate that everyone deserves the basics of survival. If we can be sure of survival, we can devote our minutes and our energies to the pursuits we believe will be of greatest benefit to ourselves, and to the world we all share.
A Freedom Dividend allows you to choose what to do with the money the government collects. Bureaucrats hire minimum wage workers to sit at computers pre-programmed with algorithms based on regulations passed by people who know nothing about the problems faced by people living in poverty. These workers tell the poor whether they deserve any help. They tell them how much. Then they take it away if the poor start doing any better, thus trapping them into an endless cycle of failure. A Freedom Dividend does precisely what its name suggests. It increases your Freedom, my Freedom, and the Freedom of everyone else in America. It makes us, for the first time, truly The Land of the Free.
Yang’s Freedom Dividend, including how we pay for it, can be found here:
Automation, as Mr. Yang has told us repeatedly, is going to change the world. The work of humans will be done, with greater speed and accuracy, by machines. This could spawn disaster or utopia. The last comment Stephen Hawking ever made publicly discussed this very idea:
“Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”
While technology seems to be a scourge because it is stealing jobs from human beings, it is, in fact, if properly applied, a benefit to humanity. We will be free from mundane, exhausting, and dangerous work.
Technology is here whether we like it or not. It’s the reason you can read this. It’s the reason you can hear it. It’s running your bank, your stores, your traffic lights, and most of your life. We can no more shut it down than we can turn off the sun or dry up the oceans. It’s up to us to make it work for us.
Imagine, again, robots who can clean up after us. They exist today. Wouldn’t it be incredible never to have to do the dishes again? How much would you love to have a machine to fold your clothes? We already have little robots running around doing the vacuuming.
The only question to answer is whether these will be readily available to everyone, or will they belong only to the rich? One way to ensure that all of us share in the benefits of technology is to give us all an economy that allows us to participate in the world. Yang’s Democracy Dollars would put $100 per year in the hands of every American to donate to any political campaign they wish, thereby removing the power of the wealthy to buy the elections and politicians who ensure the money stays with them. This will give us the chance to see the technology working for all of us instead of just The Few. These robots won’t make us lazy. They’ll make us free to use our minutes for the things we want to do instead of the things we have to do.
It’s time to recognize The Puritan Work Ethic is obsolete. Relaxing and enjoying life doesn’t qualify a person as evil. We simply don’t have to work as hard as we once did. Our lives are no longer necessarily dependent upon our labor. We are finally, after 200,000 years, becoming free.
An Improving Economy
With poverty vanquished, people have money to spend in their local economies. Small businesses prosper. The money we all have speeds through the economy. The Velocity of Money is a measurement of how many times money changes hands in the course of a given time. If, for example, someone spends $10 at the local market, and the owner of the market spends the $10 at the local restaurant, and the owner of the restaurant spends it at the movie theater, that $10 bought $30 worth of goods and services. It provided 3 times its value to the economy. It will often do much more. And the more money we put into the economy, the more it will grow. This will mean more jobs, better pay, improved working conditions, better family relationships, and decreases in both domestic violence and suicide. It will quite likely reduce crime. When desperation dries up, much of crime evaporates along with it. We become safer.
This is an opportunity for us to produce, to quote Mr. Sorkin again, “the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy.”
Why will we be able to do this? We will have the time. We will be freer than we’ve ever been before. Instead of struggling through mundane tasks that leave us as exhausted as they do unfulfilled, we are spending our lives doing the things we most want to do. We are making meaningful lives for ourselves. We are living for more than survival.
The Ideal World
Imagine with me now the world in this kind of economy.
Let’s use our friends from one of my earlier posts and podcasts, Sylvia and Christina, a pair of young women living together to save money, as examples of the possibilities available to residents of our Brave New World. They both have jobs that pay more than minimum wage, but neither of them can really survive alone with that money in this Cowering Old World. Now… let’s give them the Freedom Dividend.
The rent on their two bedroom apartment is $1400 a month. With their Freedom Dividends, their rent is paid, and they have $600 a month left. That pays for their food. All of the rest of the money they make can now go to paying off the car, going out to dinner once in a while, perhaps taking a vacation now and then, and paying all of the other bills they face: car insurance, cell phones, utilities, school loans, gas in the car, child care, and, of course, health insurance. Yang has a powerful plan for healthcare as well. It doesn’t go as far as I would like, but it’s a step in the right direction. You can find it here:
The girls move closer to fulfilling lives instead of simple survival. And when they spend their Freedom Dividend, they’re increasing the Freedom of those who earn the money the girls pay.
That’s the immediate future. But, what about the more distant time when this is a normal part of existence?
We can create a world where automation is a friend instead of an enemy. Most human tasks are given to robots of one sort or another. There is less need for physical labor, and greater need for creativity, thought, Art, Philosophy, Science, and Spirituality. Our world is thriving. Our minds are expanding. Our hearts are embracing the diversity that makes anything possible in this world. Human potential becomes limitless.
Donald Fagen said it best:
“What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free
On that train all graphite and glitter Undersea by rail Ninety minutes from New York to Paris (More leisure for artists everywhere) A just machine to make big decisions Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision We’ll be clean when their work is done We’ll be eternally free yes and eternally young”
Is that too optimistic? Perhaps. But I agree with John Lennon:
“You, you may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you will join us And the world will be as one”
Emily Dickinson’s little bird could tell us that Andrew Yang can lead us to a kinder, more compassionate, and more unified world. When poverty is gone, cooperation will be more important than competition. Hope, which is the seed of Love, will grow like weeds when life is free from desperation. And Love will save the world.
Andrew Yang ended his book, The War on Normal People, with these words:
“Through all of the doubt, the cynicism, the ridicule, the hatred and anger, we must fight for the world that is still possible. Imagine it in our hearts and minds and fight for it. With all of our hearts and spirits. As hands reach out, clutching at our arms, take them and pull them along. Fight through the whipping branches of selfishness and despair and resignation. Fight for each other like our souls depend on it. Climb to the hilltop and tell others behind us what we see. What do you see? And build a society we want on the other side… get up, it’s time to go. What makes you human? The better world is still possible . Come fight with me.”
Let’s begin our fight for our Brave New World by electing Andrew Yang President of the United States.
My
life is, in most measurable ways, much worse than it has been in
decades. I’m probably at just about the lowest point I have ever
experienced. The idea that it is going to improve much from here is
difficult to believe. I have no money. It’s unlikely that I will
ever have any. I have been on the edge of the abyss, both
intentionally and not, more times in the last 3 years than I have in
the 53 preceding them. Homelessness is never far from me. Death is
always at its heels.
From that point of view, I ought to be miserable. If I measured my happiness only in material form, my depression would have beaten me as surely as Rawlings once put one of my alter egos, Frank, on his back on the mat looking up through eyes obscured by his own blood dripping into them. (It’s in a story I wrote nearly 40 years ago. “The Boxer” was written when I was in materially better condition.)
And
for all that, I am, in many ways, happier than I have been in my
life. At this moment, I’m sitting at my computer, typing this. I
just finished another Star Trek book while sitting in the backyard
with my soda, a pack of cigarettes, and a very nice bowl donated to
me by my best friend’s boyfriend, who is also my landlord. Phil
Collins is singing “If Leaving Me Easy,” my soda is on the desk
to my right, and, for this moment, I can think of nothing else I
would rather be doing.
It
can be argued that I am lazy. That may even be true. I’m not
convinced, anymore, though, that Sloth is a sin. The universe can
continue to unfold whether I go and do unpleasant and exhausting
activities or not. I’m not hurting you by sitting here. You could
argue my food stamps are taking your tax dollars, and I have no right
to that. I would disagree. You know me, by now, well enough to know
I’m an Idealist. I believe all of us deserve the basics of living,
simply for being here, and because life is all too brief to waste it
on unhappiness. In either case, I am living within the system that
is now present, and I am finding my own way as best I can.
And
I am spending my time in ways I find to be best for me. I had no
alarm clock to destroy my morning. I still have them in my life, but
not with the daily horrors they once held. On Sunday, I had to face
a 3:30 AM alarm so that I could get to Prescott to teach my Defensive
Driving Class. The real fear wasn’t just the alarm. It was that I
might end up in the hospital in the time following it. It’s
dangerous for me any time I exhaust what is left of my body. I just
got out of the hospital, for the 13th time in 3 years,
last week. But I redoubled my efforts to ensure my health was as
good as I could make it, and I took the necessary precautions to
allow myself to help myself when I was so far from home. I had both
food and insulin with me at all times. I needed the food, but the
insulin was left untouched. I did well. And now I don’t have to
face that horror again until next Sunday. Until then, I am free to
choose what to do with the time that is given to me. And I find
happiness in that.
Would
I be better off going back to my last post-teaching job selling
DirecTV to unsuspecting old women? I would then be earning money,
but I would despise myself again. I’m not making the world better;
I’m making it worse. I’m depriving people of their money by offering
them something that isn’t worth what they’re spending. They submit
themselves to commercials that interrupt whatever they might have
been enjoying prior to their invasion. Netflix is cheaper by far,
and it’s free of commercials. I see no contribution to the world in
my efforts. I see only that I am trading the minutes of my life for
little green pieces of paper. I would rather have the minutes and do
with fewer dollars. I can do good things with my minutes. This is
one of them.
I
get to experience some happiness this way. Is there more I would
like? Certainly. I would be thrilled to have enough money to go to
California every time Sara Niemietz and Snuffy Walden play. I would
love to be able to have nicer equipment for my podcast and my videos.
I could really use a new backup drive for my music. A nice car
would be lovely. But, I can live without those things, and I can
find happiness in what is available to me.
Gandalf
told us, “All we have to decide is what we should do with the time
given us.” I
think we all need to be more capable of making those decisions. I
don’t believe life should be merely a struggle for survival. I don’t
think it has to be. I think we can do better as a civilization for
those who inhabit this planet, if we decide we want to do that. I
would never want to dictate to people what to do with the time given
to them. But I would very much like for all of us to be able to
decide.
How
can we help them do that?
I’m
not in charge of the world, and I make decisions for no one but
myself. But, for those who do have the power, I would recommend
this: Give all of our citizens enough money to ensure they can meet
their basic needs, and then let them each decide how to better than
themselves, and for some of us, how we can better the rest of
humanity. What are the logistics of this? I don’t pretend to be an
economist, but Andrew Yang, a fairly obscure Democratic Presidential
Candidate, has some ideas about how to do this. If you don’t like
his ideas, there are others that might accomplish the same goal that
you might consider. My concern isn’t the logistics; it’s the idea.
How can you object to the idea that our citizens ought, actually, to
be Free?
Freedom
isn’t merely the absence of coercion. Freedom is the ability to see
choices, and the education to select the choice most likely to bring
about the desired outcome.
If
there is one thing upon which all Americans, whether they be
Democrats or Republicans, Socialists or Capitalists, Atheists or any
variety of Theists, Anarchists and Legalists, all agree, it is that
we should be Free. Freedom is the first door that must be opened
before anyone can begin the endless search for happiness, for
meaning, for purpose, or for passion.
Let’s
free our citizens from the oppression of poverty. Let’s not worry
about what they will do with their lives once they are free. If we
really believe we must enforce The Puritan Work Ethic with the threat
of poverty, of homelessness, of death, I don’t see that we’re The
Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave. Life need not be unduly
unpleasant in order to be worthy of living. For this moment, I have
the Freedom to enjoy the Time that’s been given to me by my choices.
For this moment, so do you, lest you wouldn’t be reading this.
Freedom is the natural state of life. Let’s work together to find a
way to allow people to spend their lives doing what they want. Let’s
find a way to set humanity free.
What
have I decided to do with the time given to me? I’m going to try,
and almost certainly fail, to change the world. What will you do
with yours?
How good can she be? She doesn’t
have any money. She never earned any money. She just stayed home
and took care of her kids all her life. She’s worthless.
Is it really just your ability to earn
money that determines your value? There are good people who earn
little or no money, and bad people who earn vast sums of it. The
reverse is equally true. So, why are we obsessed with it? By
itself, it has no value. You can’t eat it. You can’t make a shelter
out of it. You can’t grow food in it. You can’t wear it. You can’t
use it to make you well when you are sick.
It’s because money allows us to be more
free than a lack of money does. Freedom isn’t just absence of
coercion. It’s not enough that you’re not in jail, or that no one is
ordering you to do this or that and forcing you to comply. That’s
undoubtedly a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of freedom.
But, it’s also the ability to choose for yourself. If I have
billions of dollars, I can choose to visit the Pyramids of Egypt at
any time. If I don’t, I may be lucky to visit Wal Mart for
groceries. There are more choices available to some of us than
others. I think that is clear.
Now, is it right and fair that some
people have more choices than others? Frankly, it feels unjust to
me. We are, all of us, human beings on this planet for a very short
time, and, it seems to me, we should all be able to enjoy our time
here to the greatest extent possible. There are always restrictions
to our doing this. That’s a part of Nature. Some of us will never
see the top of Mt. Everest. Some of us will never utter a complete
sentence. This is unavoidable, and those are restrictions with
which, whether we like them or not, we must live. And, working
together, we could probably find ways to lift some of those
restrictions.
But, what about the restrictions we
impose on other humans? We have decided to grant nearly unlimited
choices to some of us, and almost no choices at all to others, and we
have agreed to do this, and to measure how many choices one can make,
based on how many little pieces of green paper they have.
I’m reminded of this moment from The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy:
“Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. […]
“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.”
Why
is money any different from leaves? It’s the peanut that has value,
not the leaves.
It
is certainly true that one of the things human beings do in order to
survive is to work together to accomplish some shared goals. We
built all of our civilizations by working together. We would then
trade one task, or service, or item for another. Essentially, it was
barter. There has been trade since we developed enough intelligence
that we were capable of thinking of it. It has occurred in every
civilization and every culture on Earth. It is a useful part of our
shared humanity. It has allowed us to grow to the point we have now
reached.
But,
we have lost touch with what the point of all this working together
was in the first place. The idea was that we could create a better
world in which we could all live. Someone invented the wheel, or
discovered it, as the case may be (I wasn’t there at the time, so I’m
not sure how we ended up having one), but suddenly life became
exponentially easier for us. Heavy things could be moved more
easily. We could travel more effectively. In time, the distances we
could traverse in our lives was expanded. We had many more choices
than we had before. This was an increase in Freedom. And we have
had many more since then.
We
learned to build houses because someone built some primitive version
of one. We found that helping each other to build shelters was
better for everyone. We all needed shelter.
Now,
of course, we don’t do that very often anymore. We pay someone to do
it for us. There are people who are experts in this field. They
know how to draw plans, how to implement the plans, how to get the
pieces, how to put them together properly, and how to ensure it’s
safe to live in this shelter. And it’s almost always a large group
of people who have expertise in each of these and many other fields
who work together to create the house.
I
can’t build a house, myself. First, I can’t cut down a tree. I also
don’t know how to make the tree into usable lumber with which to
build the house. I can’t work out how to put the pieces together,
and I couldn’t pound a nail straight, even if I could do all of the
other things. I have to have people do it for me. And, today, that
means I have to have many little green pieces of paper. Those are
sign of my value, of my right to have something. If I have enough of
them, I can get someone to do all this work for me. If I don’t, I
can’t.
How
did we go from working together to becoming paper obsessed?
Again,
there is a value in trade, but the point of trade is to make life
better for everyone. We have worked 200,000 years to get to the
point that we can now grant everyone the basics they need for
survival. We have the materials and the skills to build more than
enough houses for all human beings to live in one. We can grow
enough food to ensure that every human being has enough to eat. We
can fight diseases sufficiently to keep people alive much longer than
we once could. We can provide enough clothing to keep everyone warm
and safer from some of the elements than we were without clothing.
Why
can’t everyone have those things, then? Well, they don’t have enough
pieces of green paper. That means they don’t deserve them. Wait…
what?
I
see a value in trade even now. Obviously we can’t all live in 10,000
square foot mansions, or have wheels that are attached to the best
vehicles, or the most artistic clothing, or the most tasty food. We
should trade for those. That makes sense to me.
But,
should we really have to trade for what our 200,000 years of growth
have made possible? Shouldn’t everyone have a place to live?
Shouldn’t everyone have enough to eat? Shouldn’t everyone have
medical care, and clothing and some ability to make some choices in
their lives? In short, why should we limit some people’s freedom so
much while granting so much freedom to others?
Is
there a way we can make sure everyone has enough freedom to live? Is
that an unreasonable goal? How can we get there? I welcome your
thoughts.
I have
always wanted to live in a world where we work to improve ourselves
and the rest of humanity, instead of working 40 hours or more a week
just to survive. I want human beings to live a life in which they
can actually experience Freedom. Freedom is not simply absence of
coercion. It is the ability to examine choices, the education to
select the choice most likely to lead to the desired outcome, and the
ability to act on the choice. And the Freedom Dividend can be a step
down that road.
The
Freedom Dividend is a proposal under which every American over the
age of 18 would receive a check for $1000 a month. There is no means
testing. If you’re an American, whether you are the homeless guy
hoping to panhandle enough to get a pack of cigarettes, or you’re
Jeff Bezos, you get the check. If you’re anywhere in between, it
increases your Freedom by adding to the resources necessary to make
your best choices.
Why
is this such an extraordinary idea?
It will
change lives in unimaginable ways. If you’re among the wealthy, and
you don’t need it, you’re welcome to donate it to anyone or anything
that does. If you’re among the poor, this gives you a chance you
never had before. But it does much more.
Its
benefits are not only economic. It affects the quality of life for
millions. It helps to reduce the despair and hopelessness that leads
to increased stress. That stress increases domestic violence and
suicide. I have little doubt that it also contributes to mass
shootings.
When people are poor, it just keeps spiraling downward. You can’t afford a good car, so you buy a cheap one. But that car requires constant repairs. That’s more money you spend. As Yang once said, “Poverty charges interest.” Let’s see if we can start paying down some of the bills of poverty.
There are as many reasons for poverty as there are poor people. Is it the fault of the impoverished individual? I don’t know. I’m not nearly wise enough to decide who is “deserving” and who is not. I don’t believe anyone else is, either. With The Freedom Dividend, we don’t need to make that judgment. It goes to everyone. I can’t speak for all people; neither can you. I can, however, confidently speak from my own experience, and that’s why I believe in the Freedom Dividend. A minimum wage job isn’t enough, by itself. For more on that topic, see below.
I
really can’t work very much anymore. I’m 56, my body is shot, and my
diabetes lands me in the hospital with startling frequency, almost
invariably from trying to push what’s left of me too hard. If you
paid me $15.00 an hour, that would be a reasonable wage, and while I
couldn’t survive well on it, even at 40 hours a week, it would
make it possible for me to find some decent roommates and have a shot
at making ends meet. I couldn’t live alone on that. I don’t know
many people who could without government assistance.
I quit
teaching 3 years ago because both physically and psychologically I
was no longer capable of doing it. I teach Defensive Driving now,
and I’m getting 4 to 5 classes a month. I make good money, at $200
per class, but it’s clear $1000 a month is all I have to live on. If
my means testing works out, I might get disability. I’m too young
for Social Security. I have, quite fortunately, state funded medical
care and food stamps. That’s the whole ball of wax.
I have
a roommate who is on disability, and she gets a monthly check that
doesn’t quite cover rent for the three of us. My other roommate
makes 15 bucks an hour, 40 to 50 hours a week, at Amazon. Between
the three of us, we just barely survive. And that survival is by no
means certain.
If
there were a Freedom Dividend, my monthly income would double. If we
see the three of us a family unit, the additional $3000 a month would
cover all of our rent, utilities, and gas. All the money we bring in
other than that would be to pay for groceries, vet bills, insurance,
gas, and car repairs. We might even be able to afford to go to
dinner sometimes, or perhaps see a movie.
A person who is too
lazy to work deserves nothing from anyone else. I had to work hard
for what I have; so should they!
I understand that feeling too. But I disagree with it.
I believe all people, whether I agree with their life choices or not, are deserving of the basics of human survival. This means all of us should have food, shelter, appropriate clothing for the climate in which we reside, medical care, a decent education, and the opportunity to communicate with others. What would that look like? You can see here:
Many people make important contributions to society for which there is no financial reward. This doesn’t make them lazy. It makes them unpaid. Instead of raising our own children, many of us need to pay someone else to take care of them while we’re at work. Wouldn’t it be nice if Mom or Dad could stay home and raise children for $1000 a month? Add to the Freedom Dividend the money they’re saving on childcare, and suddenly it starts to add up. Caregivers for their elderly parents have to find other means to survive, or spend money to put their parents into homes. They also profit from the Freedom Dividend.
What
if people waste it, though?
I don’t want to pay for someone’s drug habit.
This is their money. If they choose to waste it, that’s up to them.
They can either use it to move forward and up in life, or not.
That’s true of any money anyone gets. It’s a Dividend in the same
way that Microsoft pays a Dividend to their shareholders. You’ve
invested your life into this country. You’re entitled to get
something back from us. You’re not paying for it. You’re
getting paid by it.
Fine,
but how are we going to pay for this?
First, I would like to point out that the only time… the ONLY
time… this question is asked is when the money is going to be used
for programs that help ordinary people. No one asked how to pay for
a war that has lasted, with no idea of “winning,” for more than a
decade. We decided it needed to be done, and we did it.
Having said that, he does have a plan for it that makes sense. To
understand the point of the plan, it’s important to understand why
this is necessary: Automation.
As Artificial Intelligence (AI )improves, and it will, there will be
more and more jobs lost to automation. We’re only a couple of years
away from trucks that drive themselves. We are already checking out
our own groceries at Wal Mart. Telemarketers and customer service
agents will be replaced by software that is so convincing it sounds
like you’re actually talking to a person. Malls are closing all over
the place because we order what we want from Amazon. Those are more
people without jobs.
Instead
of watching homelessness skyrocket as people lose their jobs, we’re
providing everyone a safety net. The Freedom Dividend gives them
time to find a job that is fulfilling, pays well, and is free from
harassment. It puts the job applicants much more in the driver’s
seat than the employers. They don’t have to take the first job that
is available because they have to pay rent next week. They have that
covered. Now, they can spend their lives doing something they like
instead of working themselves to death for pennies.
To pay for it, Yang will introduce a Value Added Tax for corporations
like Amazon. There are those who hate this idea.
That will only make things more expensive.
I suppose that’s true. However, unless you’re spending over $120,000
a year, you’re coming out ahead. Only about 6% of the population
will pay more than they get.
That
won’t be enough money to pay for all of it. What about the rest of
it?
He’ll also make use of the end of much of Welfare. I would have to
choose between my food stamps and my Freedom Dividend. I get $177 a
month for food. That’s enough for almost two weeks. Take my food
stamps, and give me my $1000 a month. The government will be making
fewer decisions for us.
Money will be going back into the economy, creating more jobs. We’ll
make more in taxes because more people are working. That pays for
part of it.
You
Democrats want to give everyone Something for Nothing. This is just
Socialism, and Socialism never works.
No… it’s not. Socialism is when the government controls the means
of production. That’s still controlled by the Private Sector. This
is Capitalism that doesn’t start at $0. It just levels the playing
field. And we’re not giving Anyone Anything for Nothing. We’re
giving it to everyone who has helped to make us among the wealthiest
and most powerful nations on Earth. This is Human Centered
Capitalism.
We have been trying the Trickle Down Economy since Reagan. What have
been the results? Where once a single person working 40 hours a week
could earn enough to support a whole family, today full time work
isn’t really enough to support even one person. Giving more money
to the wealthy “Job Creators” (who don’t actually create
jobs at all… that’s done by supply and demand and consumers)
obviously didn’t raise the standard of living for the rest of us.
They didn’t invest it into their employees, and therefore into the
economy. They kept it for themselves.
The Freedom Dividend is an effort at a Trickle Up Economy. Instead
of raining only on the top branches of the tree, we’re watering its
roots at ground level. The economy grows because the money is
injected immediately back into it. Those who have more, spend more.
People can now patronize little stores that are more expensive,
instead of being forced into Wal Mart where the prices are lower and
most of the employees need government assistance even to buy Wal Mart
groceries. This keeps small business running and it encourages
entrepreneurs to start their own. The Arts, which are for me the
most valuable part of any civilization, will grow because artists can
now afford to do their work. This isn’t Socialism. It’s a means of
saving Capitalism.
So…
what’s your point?
I
would like to live in a world that is concerned more with people than
with little bits of green paper. We have spent 200,000 years getting
to the place where we can now feed, clothe, and house all of
humanity. But our path here led us to believe we never have Enough.
We don’t have Enough Money. We don’t have Enough Food. But, you
know what? Yes… we do. We’ve made it, folks. We’re standing on
the shoulders of 200 millennia of human beings struggling for
survival. We’re their crowning achievement. Instead of wage slavery
of the past, we can have fulfilling lives. We have invented machines
to do the most tedious and dangerous work. We don’t have to hunt for
food or cut down trees to build our shelters anymore. We are a
remarkable species who have cause to be proud.
We’re here so very briefly. Let’s try to make a world where we can enjoy the ride.
Fred's Thoughts 