You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
Never a truer word. Related.
The twenty-something ivy educated earnest eighties yuppy me would have taken the "neo-liberal worthwhile Canadian initiatives" perspective and argued that point to death.
ReplyDeleteYou know, the kind of thinking that birthed "third way" liberalism in the 90's with Clinton and Blair.
I was ahead of the curve, as usual, surfing the Next Big Wave.
Pity it didn't drown me, and all who thought like me. Never have I been so f**king wrong, really.
(OK the starter-wife is right up there, was contemporaneous, and should have been my clue right there...)
We already have a form of Universal Basic Income. We have generations of families who don't work, have never worked, and never intend to work. They play the miasma of gov't programs like a fiddle. They have the newest model of Iphone, wear better clothes, drive a better car, and get Cadillac medical care.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the cart-pullers struggle to make their mortgage/rent every month and they drive a 12 year old pickup.
The middle class is being crushed between the billionaires and the bums. This won't end well.