The prime element of a Universal Basic Income is its unconditionality, and that’s why redistribution profiteers hate it the most

Sir, John Dizard titles“Sorry, but the world is not yet ready for universal basic income” October 11, but then he writes an article exposing exactly why we need a Universal Basic Income. Clearly he has not understood the real implications of UBI’s most important principle that of its unconditionality; never to be paid out because you are something different, like in jail.

I came to Universal Basic Income by means of my long fight for having all Venezuela’s net oil revenues shared out equally among all Venezuelans. That would have saved my homeland from its current tragedy. Instead those revenues fell into the hands of odious, besserwisser, corrupt redistribution profiteers… who paid it out generously to themselves and their friends… and with especially bad cheese to the rest of Venezuela.

“UBI…cannot be done within the bounds of the existing social contract in advanced countries.” Absolutely, as long as we allow redistribution profiteers to define those bounds.

Those redistribution profiteers who, circling their wagons in order to defend the value of their franchises, convinced Dizard of that “big tax rises and reductions in other benefits would be needed, even for a modest basic income”. Their most usual tool is using very high figures for that basic income. There is absolutely nothing that would stop advanced countries from beginning by paying out some US$ 200 per month to all its citizens. That would help oil the economy much more than a tax cut.

We urgently need something to help create decent and worthy unemployments in time, before all social order breaks down… and redistribution populists like Hugo Chavez and pals take over. 

@PerKurowski