Last week at the Nexus Conference I was on a panel with Doug Casey debating Universal Basic Income (UBI) with Flip Flipkowski and Ellen Brown, the President of the Public Banking Institute.
I have never actually looked into UBI much and assumed it was just a passing, bizarre fad. But it appears to be gaining a lot of traction with people who like to virtue signal and don’t understand economics.
You really just have to watch it for yourself to see and believe just how uninformed their positions are.
Ellen Brown, in particular, could barely raise an argument and turned aside most of my evidence and analysis on why it would be a disaster with comments like, “I don’t believe that” and “I disagree”... but saying nothing more as to why she disagreed.
To summarize my view, printing up massive amounts of money in order to give it to everyone in society would:
- Destroy the value of the currency almost immediately, and it would certainly lead into hyperinflation quite quickly
- Neither incentivize people to be productive nor motivate them to improve themselves, leading to an even worse off economy and a society full of unproductive, unskilled, lazy people.
This is fairly obvious to anyone who even has the most basic understanding of money, economics and human psychology.
But, claiming to have a few “studies” that show otherwise, they countered that people would be more productive if they were all just given enough money to live… and that printing up money does not devalue the currency.
When Doug and I brought up examples pf countries who had hyperinflated their currencies by printing too much, of which there are hundreds of examples, including Zimbabwe and Venezuela, most recently, these two claimed that it was other factors that caused the currencies to become worthless.
Aside from that, when I pressured them on how her idea of raising funds to pay for it all using a sales tax was theft and immoral she claimed it wasn’t a “tax”, it was “just trimming.”
It’d be laughable how uninformed and confused their ideas and logic are if it weren’t gaining so much wide appeal amongst the public who, in general, never has a problem with getting “free money.”
Again, you really have to see it to believe it. Here is the entire debate:
When pressured on any other way of moving forward, both Flip and Ellen had only one thing to say about why we need UBI: “Robots.”
According to them, robots will soon take all of our jobs and we’ll all be left starving.
I pointed out to Ellen that I’d always have a job for her, even if it is just polishing my shoes, finishing with, “At least then you’d finally do something productive with your life.”
It was a bit mean in retrospect, and as we walked out, she muttered to me, “I hate you.”
To which, both Doug and I responded that we didn’t “hate” them, we just think their ideas are uninformed and dangerous.
If this is the level of debate on the topic and it gains ground with the public and becomes a reality, then The Dollar Vigilante’s theme of preparing for the demise of the US dollar will be sped up dramatically… and we are already expecting it to happen in the next few years.
If you want to learn how to prepare for the collapse check out this free webinar with Max Wright. Max gives his outlook on how the collapse will occur and how you can prepare and even profit from it.
It will happen in the next few years or really any day now. And, if these socialists get their way it will occur even faster and be even more destructive than we can imagine.
