STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Universal Basic Income Promotion Hits the Washington Post
By Staff News & Analysis - May 13, 2013

Thinking Utopian: How about a universal basic income? … In light of the recent Oregon Medicaid study, several people have discussed the idea of taking parts of the social insurance system and replacing them with cash benefits. This naturally brings up the debate about whether it should be a policy goal for the United States to adopt a universal basic income (UBI). These poverty-level targeted incomes are universal and unconditional, so everyone would get them regardless of their income, status or work participation. Wonkblog's Dylan Matthews wrote an overview of universal basic incomes and some proposals for such a system last year. – Washington Post

Dominant Social Theme: National Socialist solutions are the genuine voice and will of the people. Nothing about them is premeditated.

Free-Market Solutions: We long ago identified the anti-usury/pro-central banking movement as part of a larger globalist messaging. Now it's hitting the big time – see above excerpt … For lack of a better descriptive phrase, we have called it the "paper money hoax," and unsurprisingly, we have been relentlessly attacked by those who have adopted it.

But here at the Daily Bell we track memes, especially financial memes and we've been aware of this one since we became aware of Ellen Brown's great work, Web of Debt.

Web of Debt had many inaccuracies, despite Ellen Brown being a charming proponent of "public" central banking. Economist Gary North rightly identified the basic tenets of this sort of argument as belonging to the National Socialist strain of finance. She also used a lot of made-up quotes and justified them by saying that because they were plentiful on the 'Net they were appropriate.

But it doesn't seem reasonable that one should point to the public monopoly central banks of China, India and Brazil and try to argue that they have managed their brief any better than the so-called private Federal Reserve – which is actually only quasi private and derives its authority from the color of its US enabling act. China's monetary stimulation is such that whole empty cities are being built on a regular basis.

Likewise, it doesn't seem reasonable to argue that usury is the world's main problem. If one believes in modern free-market finance, the idea of putting someone in jail for lending someone else money at a few basis points is just as ridiculous as the hard-money idea of imprisoning people for non-monopoly fractional reserve banking.

Anyway, the whole idea of "mathematical" monetary theory is surely questionable, certainly in a non-monopoly banking system. People would issue money into the economy in numerous ways and it is likely not possible to extrapolate that a free-market money would inevitably lead to societal bankruptcy.

Nonetheless, the paper money meme marches on. Its proponents include Bill Still and a slew of web sites that cite obscure economists like Silvio Gesell and Major Douglas as pioneers of rational monetary theory.

Silvio Gesell was a Fabian socialist who believed that people should be forced to turn their money in to government on a regular basis to get it stamped and legitimized at a lesser amount. He wanted to force people to circulate money more quickly, but as Major Douglas himself reportedly remarked, this idea constituted the most terrible government tax ever invented.

Douglas himself was also a kind of crackpot. He wanted government itself to redistribute money … a "social credit" … to society on a yearly basis. It is Douglas's ideas that are getting a hearing now.

Yet the paper money/redistributionist meme is likely a direct result of the trouble that monopoly central banks are having in continuing to pursue business as usual.

Too many people are asking why a handful of people should control literally tens of trillions of dollars on a regular basis and set the price and value of money, as well. The result has been a string of catastrophes and many believe now that central banking is not going to survive growing public disapproval.

So another tactic has to be created. Enter "public" monopoly central banking and further redistributionist schemes such as the one being enunciated in the Washington Post.

We previously saw a similar proposal over at the Daily Kos. See our article here:

Eurocrats Contemplate Social Credit as Meme Expands

And then there is this:

Wall Street Guru Comes Out in Favor of Public Central Banks?

It has the appearance of a campaign. If those at the top cannot continue to impose the current central banking paradigm, they will create agitation for a purely public central bank that will disburse money directly to citizens.

It probably will never happen or at least will never be fully implemented but the idea is to confuse people about the real solution, which is free-market economics.

Those who believe in free-market money – gold, silver and competing currencies – will almost always be at a disadvantage in this argument because they will not deal with the larger issue, which is that public central banking and full-fledged income redistribution is in all likelihood a promotional scheme designed to buy the globalists time.

There are so many signs of elite involvement in this theme that it is difficult to look at it as anything but a controlled meme. Begin with Gesell's involvement with the Fabian socialists and then notice that a prime proponent of these alternative currency schemes is Margrit Kennedy, who worked for UNESCO.

The UN, as we have noted, is a prime exponent of LETS alternative currencies, presumably because one has to keep a full ledger of transactions, which is very helpful from a tax enforcement point of view. And now the paper money/public central bank promotion is hitting the big time. The Daily Kos is carrying articles about it. The Washington Post is publishing editorials proposing a universal income could be a good idea.

Over in Italy, Italian political leader Beppe Grillo has emerged to lead discontented Italians to a brave new anti-EU world. But it turns out he may be funded by George Soros and that his leading financial advisor is none other than Soros's economic wingman, Joseph Stiglitz.

Bombshell Confirmation the Paper Money Hoax Is Real

No less an authority than Ellen Brown herself has explained Grillo's economic policies mimic much of what she and others have proposed:

• unilateral default on the public debt;

• nationalization of the banks; and

• a guaranteed "citizenship" income of 1000 euros a month.

Is all this a coincidence? We are supposed to believe all this is simply the emergence of "good" ideas into the marketplace? No, we have a hard time seeing it as anything but a campaign.

Italy's Top Pol Beppe Grillo Being Groomed for Disruption by Soros?

When a small group of people controls the money supply, no matter how well meaning they proclaim themselves to be, authoritarianism inevitably follows.

End the Fed and the central banking system generally and let people circulate the money choose and make arrangements among themselves as they deem appropriate. Stop dictating schemes that will inevitably end in some sort of tyranny.

Watch this meme continue to blossom. It will be portrayed as simply a "good idea" whose time has come.

After Thoughts

We don't believe it.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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