"Let's give everyone a guaranteed income!"

Y'know, it's just totally unfair that some people in the U.S. have to get by on meager welfare or disability payments.  So here's a great idea:

Why not have the federal government give every person in the nation an amount of money each month equal to the average wage of all working people?  We could call the program "guaranteed income," and it would end poverty in a single day.

That is so cool!

What's that?  Did you ask how such a program can be funded?  What a ridiculous question!  You must hate the poor!  You must be a racist!  Sexist!  You must hate children and single moms!  Because a guaranteed income program would greatly benefit those groups.

I don't have to explain how the government could afford such a program, because it doesn't matter:  The government can simply borrow the money needed.  After all, it's for the children.

You say you think giving everyone a guaranteed income would increase the number of people deciding not to work? Nonsense!  We know that's nonsense because we like what we do, so it follows that everyone enjoys work.  So your charge is baseless.  And we know that because we're professors.

If I were to seriously advocate the above idea, virtually every American with an IQ over 90 would see the obvious flaws.  But if a couple of leftist professors wrote it and a national magazine published it, every leftist and Democrat and so-called "progressive" would proclaim it a fabulous idea.

And of course this idea was published--way back in 1966--in the Nation..

If you follow politics you've probably heard of the "Cloward-Piven strategy"--a plan that's been described as having been designed to destroy capitalism and conservative government by overwhelming both with "demands" from people insisting that it's your responsibility (thus your obligation) to give them all the fruits of hard-working middle class people--without their having to work.

I'd seen clips of Piven speaking but had never seen their defining article until today.  So...click here and prepare to be astonished as professors Cloward and Piven outlined their plan in The Nation magazine 47 years ago.

Of course The Nation is also the mag that published the line, "Cheap oil, once a boon, is now a bane," so they're definitely nuts.