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Universal basic income and the road to serfdom

David Gordon
Mises Institute
Fri, 02 Apr 2021 00:46 UTC
cash
Many people think that a universal basic income (UBI) would be a good substitute for the welfare state. Under this proposal, each person resident in a country would receive a guaranteed income, sufficient to live at a modest level. People would get the money unconditionally. Unlike welfare payments, the UBI would not be lessened if people earned money in addition to the amount it provided, and, because it is not means tested — absolutely everyone gets it, even billionaires — it requires no complex bureaucracy to administer.

The UBI would cost a great deal of money, but its defenders claim that since it is a substitute for the welfare state, we would also save the vast amounts of money now required for financing welfare programs. Further, if our economy continues to grow, at some point the UBI will become affordable. Charles Murray, for example, in a short book published a number of years ago, says of his version of the UBI, "I began this thought experiment by asking you to ignore that the Plan was politically impossible today. I end proposing that something like the Plan is politically inevitable — not next year, but sometime.... Real per capita GNP has grown with remarkable fidelity to an exponential growth equation for more than a century" (In Our Hands, AEI Press, 2006, p. 125).
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Book

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life—A Review

Hannah Gal
Quillette
Sat, 03 Apr 2021 00:18 UTC
jordan peterson
© Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons
A review of Beyond Order: 12 More Rule for Life by Jordan B. Peterson. Penguin Books, 402 pages. (March 2021)

"Any sensible person would be taken aback by all this," writes Jordan Peterson in Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. He is trying to make sense of the astounding impact of his previous book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Why had the book's message resonated so profoundly with so many? And what is the significance of its stratospheric success? What is to be learnt from his videos clocking tens of millions of views? And what motivated thousands to attend his sold-out world lecture tour? In one town after another, they applauded when he appeared on stage and hung on his every word. After the show, they sought not an autograph, but a handshake with the man they credit with breathing meaning into their lives. "My work," he reflects, "must be addressing something that is missing."
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Stormtrooper

'Just following orders?' Calgary police mocked for 'weak damage control' as pastor's fiery standoff with 'Gestapo cops' goes viral


RT
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 19:00 UTC
calgary police
© Facebook / Artur Pawlowski
Calgary Police were ridiculed for their response to a scandalous incident in which a conservative pastor chased health and law enforcement officials out, calling them 'Nazis' for trying to disrupt his Easter service.

In a statement on Sunday night, authorities said that only "one uniformed officer of the Calgary Police Service attended a call to assist our partner agencies... in relation to a religious gathering."

Many wondered if anyone at the CPS press service even watched the video, accusing them of lying in the very first line of their "weak response."

However, while the viral video indeed seemed to show three uniformed cops (in addition to two men in plainclothes and a female Alberta Health Services employee) intruding on the premises - two of them were actually wearing a 'peace officer' insignia of the Calgary Bylaw services.

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Bullseye

DeSantis smashes CBS reporter's fake vaccine narrative, so CBS takes him out of context

Kristine Marsh
mrcNewsBusters
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 10:12 UTC
DeSantis
© "60 Minutes"
Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis
Tireless in their efforts to tarnish Republican Ron DeSantis, CBS ran a malicious and deceptive hit piece against the Florida governor on Sunday night's 60 Minutes. DeSantis has been the unfair target of many journalists in the media, who were nearly a year late to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's deadly nursing home scandal.

Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi's whole report proposed DeSantis led a "pay for play" rollout of the COVID vaccine in his state. She spent the majority of the time speaking to his critics, including West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James who alleged wealthy communities were "jumping the line" to procure the vaccine. "It sounds like the Hunger Games!" an alarmed Alfonsi, seriously said.

She touted other critics like Democrat State Rep. Omari Hardy blasting DeSantis for not prioritizing minorities for getting the vaccine before seniors.

Comment: CBS' edits, in the videos above, change both the tone and content of DeSantis' answers. Astute commenters tore into the network for their smear tactics:
The unprofessional treatment DeSantis received cannot be classified as news. It is editing sabotage aimed to destroy his reputation. A shameful showing by CBS.

See also:

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Arrow Up

Japan's central bank kicks off experiments on issuing digital currency

Leika Kihara
Reuters
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 02:35 UTC
Bank of Japan building
© file photo
Bank of Japan headquarters • Tokyo, Japan
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) began experiments on Monday to study the feasibility of issuing its own digital currency, joining efforts by other central banks that are aiming to match the innovation in the field achieved by the private sector.

The first phase of experiments, to be carried out until March 2022, will focus on testing the technical feasibility of issuing, distributing and redeeming a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The BOJ will thereafter move to the second phase of experiments that will scrutinise more detailed functions, such as whether to set limits on the amount of CBDC each entity can hold.

If necessary, the central bank will launch a pilot programme that involves payment service providers and end users, BOJ Executive Director Shinichi Uchida said last month. He told a committee of policymakers and bank lobbies looking into CBDC:
"While there is no change in the BOJ's stance it currently has no plan to issue CBDC, we believe initiating experiments at this stage is a necessary step,"
Global central banks are looking at developing digital currencies to modernise their financial systems, ward off the threat from cryptocurrencies and speed up domestic and international payments.
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Arrow Down

Weekly deaths in England and Wales now lowest since 2014


Lockdown Sceptics
Sun, 04 Apr 2021 11:55 UTC
Hospital/ambulances
© Unknown
A hospital in England
There were 10,311 deaths registered in England and Wales during the week ending March 19th. The weekly number of deaths was below the five-year average in both nations, as this chart from the ONS indicates:
Death charts
© Unknown
In a piece for The Observer, David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters note that 10,311 deaths is the lowest figure since 2014 for the same week (i.e., the week ending on or around March 19th). This is noteworthy, given that the number of deaths in England and Wales has been trending upward since 2011, due to population aging (the increase in the number of people in the oldest age-groups).

The authors suggest several reasons why the number of deaths is so low at the moment. First, the weather is fairly mild. Second, because of the lockdown, there are fewer road accidents than usual (though this is a minor contributor). Third, there are less flu deaths than usual: the influenza virus is less infectious than SARS-CoV-2 (it has a lower reproduction number) meaning that lockdowns and social distancing have resulted in fewer people catching flu this year. Fourth, some of the people who would have died now sadly lost their lives in the spring of 2020 or the winter of 2020-21 instead. (One could say their deaths were "brought forward" by the pandemic.)

Comment: Speculation on how/when folks would have died has no scientific basis and nor bearing on the results.

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Biohazard

Race to drain Florida waste water reservoir on brink of collapse


Reuters
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 15:34 UTC
reservoir
© REUTERS/Drone Base
A reservoir of a defunct phosphate plant south of Tampa, where a leak at a waste water reservoir forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes and threatened to flood the area and Tampa Bay with polluted water, is seen in an aerial photograph taken in Piney Point, Florida, U.S. April 4, 2021.
Crews were working around the clock on Monday to prevent the collapse of a waste water reservoir's leaky containment wall near Tampa Bay, Florida, making steady progress after officials warned of an imminent threat of flooding over the weekend.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was working alongside local emergency management crews to drain waste water from the Piney Point reservoir, which holds about 480 million gallons, in an effort to avoid a breach that could have flooded the surrounding area with a 20-foot wall of water, officials said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a local state of emergency on Saturday over concerns that stacks of phosphogypsum waste, primarily from fertilizer manufacturing, could collapse and cause dangerous flooding at the site, which is a former phosphate plant.

Comment: Over in Russia, a law was recently passed that will hold companies that destroy the environment accountable: Russia to block profits of companies that destroy environment, follows $2bn fine for mining giant over fuel spill

See also: Uranium contamination site partially collapses into Detroit River, waste was created during the Manhattan Project

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Mr. Potato

One rule for me, another for thee: France investigates claims ministers dined in secret restaurants during lockdown


France 24
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 16:40 UTC
pouring glass of red wine
© Isla Binnie / Reuters
French authorities are investigating accusations that government ministers and others dined in secret luxury restaurants and clubs in violation of Covid-19 restriction measures.

The Paris prosecutor's office said an investigation was opened Sunday into possible charges of endangerment and undeclared labour, and to identify the organisers and participants of the alleged gatherings.

The probe followed an undercover TV report aired on French network M6 over the weekend of luxury restaurants in affluent parts of Paris opening their back doors to "privileged" diners, breaching lockdown restrictions. The report included an interview with an unidentified man who claimed he had eaten in two or three clandestine restaurants "with a certain number of ministers".

Comment: While lockdown fanatics cry for equal punishment to be dished out to these 'criminals', they seem to miss a far more salient point. If the accusations are true, and the rich and powerful are not following the rules, it makes a mockery of the entire covid narrative that they are pedaling. One wonders if Pierre-Jean Chalençon was not strongly advised to retract his accusations...

See also:

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Clipboard

Western puppet can't catch a break: Levada poll finds 1 in 2 Russians say Navalny rightly jailed

Jonny Tickle
RT
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 18:55 UTC
navalny
© Sputnik / Pavel Bednyakov
Alexey Navalny in the hall of the Babushkinsky district court, where a visiting session is being held on appeal against the court's decision to replace his suspended sentence with a real one in the Yves Rocher case.
Almost half of Russians think the decision of a Moscow court in February to sentence opposition figure Alexey Navalny to over two and a half years behind bars is fair, with fewer than a third disagreeing with the judgment.

That's according to a new poll by the Levada Center, a Moscow-based pollster and registered foreign agent. The outlet's research also revealed that 82% of Russians have heard about the trial and the sentence, with just 17% saying they knew nothing.

Navalny was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison earlier this year. He was found guilty of breaking the conditions of a suspended sentence handed to him in 2014, when he was found guilty of embezzling 30 million rubles ($400,000) from two companies, including the French cosmetics brand Yves Rocher. Prosecutors claimed that he failed to show up when they needed to see him.

Comment:

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Attention

Catch-and-bus: Biden administration is dispersing thousands of freed illegal immigrants across America

Todd Bensman
Center for Immigration Studies
Wed, 31 Mar 2021 18:02 UTC
illegal immigrants biden catch and buss
© Todd Bensman
Haitian families on a chartered minibus in Del Rio, Texas, taking them to a local hotel to await a charter bus the next day
On a recent evening with the night ahead looking long, an idling charter bus parked on a lot prepared to disperse a new kind of import throughout the American landscape.

The bus and a small van nearby were packed with 60 or so mostly Haitian families fresh out of the Rio Grande from their illegal crossings.

After testing negative for Covid and other processing, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had given them legal documents and released them to a local nongovernmental organization, the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, just blocks from the river in this south Texas border town.

Comment: More from Trending Politics:
The Biden "smuggling routes" have gone largely unreported by media outlets that are fixated on the disastrous border crisis, where children are being kept in unsanitary conditions within detention facilities that violate COVID protocols.

According to an original investigation by CIS, a veritable "conveyor belt" of busesfrom Texas, Arizona and California are transporting "thousands" of undocumented immigrants into America's heartland.

The estimates square with other Border Patrol estimates, The Blaze corroborates.

"Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow for the center, estimated that roughly 30,000 migrants who entered the country illegally have been bused directly into the country since the start of the year," The Blaze reported. "That figure matches Border Patrol estimates TheBlaze reported on earlier this week."


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