Yes!! Thank you for this: connecting the corrupting problem of power to the stasis that arises from seeking to check power. Totally. Here in Chicago the most recent example of that was the real estate lobby confusing and scaring voters enough that we could not pass a ballot measure to add a tax to real estate deals over a million dollars to fund housing and services for the homeless. Literally those with the most lining up against those with the very least. Made me sick.
In order to ever so slightly tip the scales toward optimism i offer the following: upon hearing the Channel 4 question I immediately had an answer: universal basic income. Global universal basic income funded by taxing excessive wealth and vampiric financialization.
The thing about the toilet is it requires the SF government employees (I cannot spell bureaucrat without spell check) to provide a service. It redistributes wealth through complex, multilayered systems. The beauty of UBI is it simply transfers a modicum of power from the wealthy to others and it lets those people decide how to use it rather than doing all the work of deciding how to spend it and involving everyone in that decision etc etc.
I think UBI would unlock vast amounts of benefits, innovations, health, wealth, relief, leisure, creativity, and supportive childhoods for millions upon millions of people.
It is better to have taxed the rich and tossed those funds out the window then to have not taxed the rich at all. ;^}
Yes!! Thank you for this: connecting the corrupting problem of power to the stasis that arises from seeking to check power. Totally. Here in Chicago the most recent example of that was the real estate lobby confusing and scaring voters enough that we could not pass a ballot measure to add a tax to real estate deals over a million dollars to fund housing and services for the homeless. Literally those with the most lining up against those with the very least. Made me sick.
In order to ever so slightly tip the scales toward optimism i offer the following: upon hearing the Channel 4 question I immediately had an answer: universal basic income. Global universal basic income funded by taxing excessive wealth and vampiric financialization.
The thing about the toilet is it requires the SF government employees (I cannot spell bureaucrat without spell check) to provide a service. It redistributes wealth through complex, multilayered systems. The beauty of UBI is it simply transfers a modicum of power from the wealthy to others and it lets those people decide how to use it rather than doing all the work of deciding how to spend it and involving everyone in that decision etc etc.
I think UBI would unlock vast amounts of benefits, innovations, health, wealth, relief, leisure, creativity, and supportive childhoods for millions upon millions of people.
It is better to have taxed the rich and tossed those funds out the window then to have not taxed the rich at all. ;^}