Modern academics’ wet dreams persist, unchanged since Charles Fourier's nightmare of utopian socialism and a new world order was first revealed in 1822
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It’s curious that Marx and his successors accepted and adopted Fourier’s belief that utopia was achievable if only capitalism (and the Jews) were eliminated, yet, so far, haven’t gotten behind his prediction that the world’s seas will lose their salinity and turn into pink lemonade, nor his assertion that 3-year-olds could be put to work cleaning sewers and collecting a community’s garbage “because they like doing that sort of thing” — curious, because neither idea is any less, or more, believable than the rest of his vision.
In any event, here’s the latest modern version of Fourierism:
You know, man, we got all these people in the world who are, like, really, really poor, you know? I mean, like, they don’t even have Starbucks — well, okay, maybe there are some of those, but like, these people can’t afford lattes, let alone, like, you know, a trenta cold brew with 30 shots, you know? And then we also got this problem with like, the world’s dying, man, ‘cause all this oil stuff is making things really hot, and the polar bears and are gonna come down from the North Pole ‘cause the penguins will have all disappeared and that’s what the bears eat, you dig, so they’re gonna eat us instead and that’s gonna really suck, right? So we got this idea, see, that’s gonna deal with both problems, cause we’re gonna tax those oil companies like a trillion-trillion dollars, see, and give it to everybody in the world, so everyone’s gonna be really rich and have lots of food and even trente lattes, and there’ll be lots of money ‘cause the oil companies are just gonna give like everything they collect over to the government and like never increase the cost of their oil ‘cause they’re gonna stop making it anyway and then there’ll be no money but that won’t matter ‘cause, like, everybody’s gonna be rich by then anyway.
So anyway we came up with this really cool solution that, like, no one’s ever thought of before or if they have it didn’t work ‘cause they didn’t really try it or they didn’t do it right or maybe the Jews sabotaged it ‘cause that’s what those people do, you know man? So, like, you know, here it is:
Universal Basic Income Could Double World's GDP And Slash Emissions
What if we could keep everyone out of poverty while also tackling the climate crisis? It sounds too good to be true, but it could be possible with a universal basic income scheme funded by taxing carbon emissions, a new study shows.
Universal basic income (UBI) proposes that a regular payment to every person – with no questions asked or any means testing – could replace all other forms of welfare payment, and perhaps make us all happier at the same time.
The new research, led by a team from the University of British Columbia in Canada, shows UBI could not only improve living standards but also boost global gross domestic product (GDP), a standard measure of economic prosperity.
The downside of UBI is that it costs an awful lot. According to the researchers, the companies that pollute the environment could pay for it because taxing carbon emissions alone would generate about US$2.3 trillion a year.
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"By requiring that major polluters pay to clean up their own messes, or the 'polluter pays principle', you have a creative approach to address both issues."
Sumaila and his colleagues looked at data across 186 different countries, combining modeling with an analysis of economic factors such as marginal propensity to consume – how likely people are to spend their extra disposable income.
According to the team's calculations, it would cost US$41 trillion to give a basic income to all of the 7.7 billion people on the planet, or US$442 billion to only help the 9.9 million people below the poverty line in developing countries.
Worldwide basic income would lead to a boost in global GDP of US$163 trillion or 130 percent, the researchers estimate. To put it another way, every dollar spent on UBI generates up to seven dollars in economic impact, as that money gets spent on food, rent, and other goods.
"Our findings show a positive economic-impact-to-cost ratio for basic income implementation across all scenarios examined," Sumaila and team write in their published paper.
Previous research has linked similar schemes with environmental benefits too. The environmental tax would encourage more eco-friendly policies, the team suggests, although to be sustainable long term, it would need to transition to other funding sources.
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“[E]xtraordinary times call for commensurate measures," says Sumaila.
So why isn't UBI in place already? It would require a lot of political will and agreement, and there remain questions over the extent to which it would deincentivize work and innovation, on top of the concerns over how it would be funded.
Oh, don’t worry about getting those former workers out of their hovels and back into the fields: they’ll be starving, and will work for food, especially when prodded by their community enforcers. You know?
