Medium, June 9, 2016
LAST SUNDAY, Swiss voters defeated a ballot initiative that would have required their government to pay every Swiss citizen $2,500 a month, no questions asked. That electoral setback is far from a death knell for basic income in Europe, however. In Finland, the center-right government is testing a plan that could pay all Finns about $870 a month. In Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere, politicians are discussing similar schemes, and popular interest is spreading.
But America isn’t Europe, and whatever the odds of basic income taking hold there, they’re a lot lower here. Most European countries already have generous welfare states, with no shame or stigma attached to them. There, basic income is viewed as a way to simplify, not expand, the existing welfare state. Cut out the bureaucrats and the qualifying tests, and just give everyone cash to use as they wish.
The situation is quite different in the United States. Here, efforts over the years to build a welfare state have consistently been thwarted by America’s preference for individual self-reliance, distaste for government, and racism. The result is a safety net so stingy and hard to navigate that many who are eligible don’t even bother. To shift from that to a basic income for everyone would be an extraordinary leap, the mere thought of which pushes two potent American hot buttons: (1) fear that our work ethic will be undermined, and (2) dread that our taxes will soar.
I’M A BUSINESSMAN. I believe society should reward successful initiative with profit. At the same time, I know that profit-seeking activities have unhealthy side effects. They cause pollution, waste, inequality, anxiety, and no small amount of confusion about the purpose of life.
Business and Society Review, Summer 1989
TO BE ETHICAL as a business because it may increase your profits is to do so for entirely the wrong reason. The ethical business must be ethical because it wants to be ethical.
The Washington Monthly, October 1983
SEVEN years ago, at the age of 34, I decided to become a socialist entrepreneur. It seemed like a logical calling to pursue. As a journalist, I’d flung my share of arrows at the big corporations. But if the left rejected corporate capitalism, we had to show there are some workable alternatives.
The New Republic, June 15, 1974
I HAD NEVER HEARD of E. F. Schumacher before reading this book. After reading it I am ready to nominate him for the Nobel Prize in economics.
The New Republic, April 13, 1974
LIKE SOME 25 MILLION Americans, I pay monthly tribute to an absentee landlord for the privilege of having a roof over my head. A good-sized portion of that is profit for banks, insurance companies, real estate agents and present and past landlords. Why?
The New Republic, October 13, 1973
THREE of the four provinces in western Canada — Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia — are governed by socialist parties. With the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, these are now the only democratic socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere.
The New Republic, March 31, 1973
Our economy is controlled by an extremely small, largely unaccountable set of elites operating on behalf of a wealth-owning minority. To alter this pattern of ownership and control is politically unfeasible at the moment, but so are many things until enough people decide they want them.
The New Republic, October 21, 1972
WHILE a small minority of Americans siphons off more money than it knows what to do with, a fifth of our population remains perennially poor, and millions more teeter on the edge of poverty. Ever-increasing production won’t, by itself, correct this. We also need to share better.
The New Republic, December 11, 1971
NO OTHER economics book that I have read possesses the lucidity, grace or compassion of George’s classic. And while there are faults in George’s reasoning, and much of what he says has been blunted by the passage of time, what strikes the modern reader is how extremely pertinent this book remains.
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