From Subject to Citizen
On June 5th, the Swiss cast their votes and registered their opinions: “No,” they said. We left off yesterday wondering why something for nothing never works. Not as monetary policy. Not as welfare or foreign aid. Not in commerce. Not never, no how. But something for nothing is what people most want.
The future Switzerland just managed to dodge… for now
The Swiss voted against awarding all citizens a “universal basic income” of about $30,000 a year, regardless of whether they have work or not. But the idea is unlikely to go away.
Two-thirds of British voters say they are in favor of the idea. And Canada’s Ontario province is set to try something similar. If you’ve been following these Diary entries, you know how and why we have a welfare state.
It’s not because our leaders are more thoughtful and caring than those in the past. Instead, the French and American Revolutions showed the relative greater value of “citizens” over “subjects.”
When people thought they were in charge of a government, rather than merely subject to it, they no longer found it absurd to ask not what the government could do for them, but what they could do for it! The elite, who control the government, had a quick response: You can pay higher taxes!
And you can get yourself blown up in one of our self-serving foreign wars. Instead of being dragooned to serve in the king’s army, in other words, citizens enlisted, willingly.
And because their money was now used for only projects that benefited them – as selected by their elected representatives – they’d pay more for them. At least, that was the theory.
No comments:
Post a Comment