0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Making communism sound good?, 2008-03-01
The proposal to guarantee a minimum income is ludicrous and flys in the face of individual liberty.
The whole problem in the world is that govts everywhere take too big a portion of their peoples outputs and are directly responsible for the poverty they create and perpetuate by making people dependent on govt.
America is the world's richest country in spite of this past hundred years of the welfare warfare statism elites re-imported from the Euro-statists our Founders gave the hook to.
Our absolute worst actors have been Hamilton and his cabal of corrupt bankers; Lincoln, to whom the continuation of the 3/4ths of federal revenues contributed by the south, then spent almost wholly on his northern crony "capitalists" and corrupt subsidized railroads, was more important than the South's duly constitutional right to succeed from the high tarrifs the north imposed to the South's financial detriment. Lincoln cared naught for the plight of the slaves and said so over and again.
Woodrow Wilson, installed puppet to his banking masters and the munitions merchants of death who aggitated for war, along with socalled proggressives like The Nation Magazine propgandists under their control. Gave the bankers their monopoly cartel and later lamented he'd ruined the country for doing so and resulted in perpetual debts for perpetual wars.
And FDR, whose cabinet the Venona decodes revealed from the Kremlin's archives in the 90's beyond all doubt, that figures such as Harry Dexter White, Rexford Tugwell & Alger Hiss, to name a mere few, were indeed Soviet operatives who some of actually lived in our WH.
Capitalism NEVER failed, it has been hamstrung and corrupted when big business and banking took over our govt 100 years ago with their monopoly cartels and wars for profit and treatment of the common man as cannon fodder and gift horses to be ground down for their enrichment.
The sole purpose of govt who the people as the principles only delegated to as our agent, was tthe protection our rights and our shores from invasion.
If this had remained the case, Americans would have all been millionaires by now, and we'd remained the beacon of freedom that has been slowly relinquished ever since Hamilton's banks.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Thought provoking, 2003-02-07
Philippe Van Parij's deceptively simple but powerful proposal is to establish a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all citizens of the U.S. Throughout the book's 130-odd pages, readers are challenged by Van Parij and 15 prominent respondents to critique the idea and to examine related core values and beliefs. The result is a book that has the rare virtue of being thought provoking; over time, it may prove to be widely influential as well.What I found interesting is that the boldness of Van Parij's proposal succeeds in exposing the fact that much of what passes as conventional wisdom may be surprisingly vulnerable to radical critique. As the global economy continues to dramatically change labor's relationship to capital, it is clear that existing social welfare programs have been based on an imagined world that no longer exists. But while the neoliberal assault to dismantle the social safety net may not be just, it is widely acknowledged. Van Parij courageously demonstrates that change provides an opportunity for the Left to plausibly propose an agenda that moves in the opposite direction.
Ultimately, what at first glance might appear to be pie-in-the-sky thinking rapidly gains currency. On the whole, Van Parijs and his critics show that the UBI (or like policies) can provide a reasonable and humane solution for people adapting to life within today's hyper-competitive global market economy.
In short, I highly recommend this book for students or anyone else who may be interested in contemplating how a better society might come to pass.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
I�m up for a free lunch, 2002-01-10
An essay by Philippe Van Parijs begins this book, in which he proposes that all citizens above the age of 16 be given a Universal Basic Income unconditionally. I must say that I've found this idea very fascinating for the past few years, but never thought seriously about it. The fifteen replies to Van Parijs' essay provide various perspectives on the political and economic feasibility of the plan, as well as on issues of justice and fairness.
The problem of this book lies in its very virtue of being a short, easy read that introduces the reader to what is considered a radical policy proposal. And this is that it doesn't provide much in the way of analysis beyond what one might read in a newspaper. Of course, there is a problem in being too academic: few people might read it, and the idea may not spread (though I doubt it will spread far anyway). Still, it's a fun concept to think about.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Badly needed, 2001-06-21
"What's Wrong With a Free Lunch" by Philippe Van Parijs proposes that every person be given an above-subsistence-level Universal Basic Income with no strings attached. The book includes responses from 15 thinkers, mostly sympathetic to the idea. A couple oppose the idea of letting anyone have anything for nothing (as if that were not already the case), and several suggest what they see as similar but better ideas. The majority of these are based on the idea that enacting a UBI in the United States is unlikely, not that it is undesirable.
This may be right, but even an unreasonable goal serves a very important purpose. Many of the right-wing ideas openly discussed in the media are, I dearly hope, unreasonable goals. But they serve the purpose of making somewhat-less-destructive ideas pass for "centrist." As long as the right wing proposes what it dreams of and the left wing proposes only what it thinks it can get in the foreseeable future, the "center" will be commonly placed further and further from what the left thought it could get. Van Parijis's book is exactly the sort of thing needed to break this defeatist pattern. We need to direct our energies to the achievable, yes, but we also have to dream -- or the achievable won't be.
I'm not convinced that some of the alternatives offered, such as a Negative Income Tax, are either more desirable or more feasible. And concentrating on how best to convince Americans to pay more income taxes is the wrong thing to be worried about.
Our first project should be to free up the tax dollars we are wasting. We should cut military spending, cut prison spending, cancel the wars on victimless crimes, cut highway spending, cut trash-removal spending, eliminate corporate welfare, tax pollution, tax the use of natural resources, tax corporations, tax the extremely rich, tax wealth, tax union busting, tax estates, eliminate the cap on payroll taxes, eliminate offshore banking, etc., etc. The idea that we need to devise a means of doing good that will most readily persuade a large segment of society to pay higher income taxes is hopelessly misguided. (And the idea that people won't want others to have free money while they "have to work for it" misses the whole point of the UBI: everybody gets it!)
What I find most attractive about a UBI is the hope that it would eliminate the most unattractive and lowest paying jobs. The response from certain parties will inevitably be that this will "hurt the very people it is intended to help," that certain people will be stuck with the UBI and nothing more because there are no jobs for them. But this same argument is made against raising minimum wages in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A UBI would doubtless result in higher pay and better treatment for low-skilled workers, but it would also do something that a higher minimum wage does not: allow people to refuse fulltime work and pursue the acquisition of skills.
Here's an idea for a handout that does not stigmatize and actually boosts wages. Surely that's a more valuable trick than a "missile defense system" with a test record that would get it thrown out of the third grade.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Perfectly adequate, 2001-06-19
Having read _Real Freedom for All_, in which the author outlines his UBI proposal in detail, I purchased this volume in the hope of finding insightful commentary and sound criticism. Much to my chagrin, I was disappointed. While Edmund Phelps and Emma Rothschild had insightful essays, I didn't find very much in the way of dissent. Phelps certainly did disagree, but many of the others were just wailing like nettlesome grandmothers while conceding Van Parijs' point. Galston's essay left much to be desired, predictably enough. Couldn't they have asked a thoughtful critique on the Right? But again, this is certainly not awful. My favorite Boston Review forum remains Martha Nussbaum's _For Love of Country_, which did have a broad range of dissenting voices and is definitely worth checking out. If you are strictly interested in UBI or distributive justice, turn to _RFA_.