For those who want something for nothing, look no further than an article in the Washington Post by Matt Bruenig, a researcher of poverty and welfare systems at the leftist think tank Demos.
Bruenig begins his diatribe by stating baldly, “Capitalism is a coercive economic system that creates persistent patterns of economic deprivation.”
You might assume that after that rigorously substantiated statement Bruenig would have nothing more to say, but then he is advocating communism, so …
To secure freedom and prosperity for all, it may ultimately be necessary to supplement the welfare state with a universal basic income — a program that would provide all citizens with a basic level of financial support, regardless of whether they’re employed.
Oh. Young Matt wants his money, and dammit, he’s going to get it! Someone might point out to Young Matt that a basic income would take money from the rich and the middle class to redirect it to the poor; so those who have earned their wealth would be punished for no reason at all. Not to mention that when basic income guarantee has been tried, the consequence has always been a withdrawal of participants’ labor, as Jim Manzi points out.
But wait, another well-substantiated calumny is forthcoming:
By now, it is well established that capitalism is fundamentally built upon threats of force.
From the Communist Manifesto:
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
Yup, we capitalists are holding a gun to those poor workers, forcing them to slave at their jobs instead of simply offering them plush rewards for their indolence.
“By now, it is well established that capitalism is fundamentally built upon threats of force.”
Matt Bruenig
Let’s follow Young Matt’s logic:
As libertarian philosophers Robert Nozick and Matt Zwolinski have explained, the only way to turn unowned natural resources (such as land, minerals and other goods) into privately owned property is by violently preventing all others from using them.
From the Communist Manifesto:
… modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
(And by the way, don’t bring up how buying real estate works to this chump.)
This one-sided exclusion destroys freedom of movement and cuts many people off from the things that they need to survive. When the physical resources necessary for production are privately held in the hands of very few, as in the United States, the majority of the population is forced to submit itself to well-financed employers in order to live.
The Manifesto again:
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Bruenig continues:
The precarious position of most workers in this position — desperate for employment but aware that they could lose their jobs at any time — is coercive on its face and susceptible to exploitation and abuse … no amount of labor regulation can ever undo the fact that workers are confronted daily with the choice between obeying a supervisor or losing all their income. The only way to break the coercion at the core of the employment relationship is to give people the genuine ability to say no to their employers. And the only way to make that feasible is to guarantee that working-age adults, at least, have some way to support themselves whether they work or not.
Paging Vladimir Lenin! Mr. Lenin?
Even as capitalism makes some workers’ lives miserable, those who can’t work are in even worse shape. Even after counting some or all public welfare benefits, the U.S. poverty rate in 2013 was anywhere from 15 percent to 18 percent.
Hey, Lola, stop gabbing with your cousin in Bangladesh, turn off that damn microwave and lissen to this guy! He says we can get out of poverty for nothin’!
For the record, the president of Demos, Heather McGhee, co-chaired a task force within Americans for Financial Reform that helped shape key provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Forbes wrote of Dodd-Frank:
A grossly ill-defined law, assigning massive authority over the entire financial sector (banking firms with assets $50 billion or more, plus nonbank financial firms as subjectively determined by the Fed, FDIC, et al.), is much more than a problem of regulatory overreach. It is a direct assault on the notion that government must have defined limits.