Redistribution profiteers have a vested interest in hindering people from reaching the pot they promise will be there waiting for them, at the end of their Marxists rainbow.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"
In the Marxist view, such an arrangement will be made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist system will produce; the idea is that, with the full development of socialism and unfettered productive forces, there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs
I do not agree. First and foremost because I believe that free markets (capitalism) has by far the greatest capacity to extract the most from the citizens’ abilities.
But also because, while traveling on such Marxist route, some few would have to redistribute any production of goods and services that is insufficient to satisfy the demand. And those taking the decisions fall too much in love with the political and financial profits such redistribution franchise can produce. As a consequence, the redistribution profiteers will never want to let loose of their power and their interference will never allow the production of abundance.
That said, as a citizen, I can nonetheless see the need for some redistribution of income and wealth to occur, not only in order to keep our society at peace but also out of simple plain need of social justice. For that I firmly believe the redistribution should primarily be done, not top down, but bottom up.
An unconditional universal basic income would do so and it would also be the best way of keeping the distortion of the productive forces of a free market at minimum.
That societal dividend would have to absolutely meet two criteria:
Be large enough to help you out of bed but never large enough to allow you stay in bed.
Be 100% fiscally sustainable, nothing of having our grandchildren pay for our income today.
It should be easy to understand why the redistribution profiteers abhor the UBI… and one of their arguments against are precisely: that it will inspire laziness and keep people in bed; and proposing that it should be so big so as to guarantee its fiscal unsustainability, so that they will have to be kept in their role as redistributors.
There are many funding sources for an UBI. In an oil exporting country obviously those oil revenues should be a prime source, as already done in Alaska.
Though in Spanish, below is a short YouTube in which three important members of the Chavez/Maduro Bolivarian Revolution, confess their need of keeping the poor poor:
Tareck El Aissami, former Vice President and current Minister of Industries and National Production: “The poorer people are, the more loyal to the revolutionary project they are, and the more love for Chávez they have"
Héctor Rodríguez, a former Minister of Education and currently the Governor of Miranda: "It is not that we are going to lift people out of poverty into the middle class so that they later aspire to be scrawny (a derogatory term used for the opposition)"
Jorge Giordani, four times Minister of Planning, “Our political strength is given to us by the poor, they are the one who votes for us and that’s why our discourse of defending the poor. The poor will have to remain poor, we need them so.”
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