There’s nothing at all surprising about Barbara Lee’s proposal to give free money to homeless people. This far-left politician, virtually a Communist, has spent her life advocating for the forced redistribution of wealth, taking it away from creative taxpayers who actually contribute to our nation’s productivity, and handing it to parasites who contribute nothing.
And in order to justify this nonsensical policy, Lee resorts to the politics of shaming. She points her finger at those of us who work and contribute and pay taxes, and accuses us of lack of compassion for our homeless brothers and sisters. She thereby virtue-shames us while signaling her own superior virtue.
Lee’s guaranteed income program would give free money to 5,400 homeless people in Oakland. The plan is short of details: unknown are how much each person would get per month, how long the program would last, or whether the individuals would be required to do some work in exchange for the free money. Unknown, also, is how Lee proposes to pay for it, at a time when Oakland’s $140 million structural deficit has the city teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The closest Lee has come to describing how she would come up with the tens of millions of dollars has been her vow to “pursue philanthropic investment” to “pilot a universal basic income program in Oakland for unhoused individuals that move into supportive housing.” I can just see all those billionaires lining up to give Lee bundles of cash. Maybe Elon Musk can throw a few hundred million bucks our way.
The arguments against universal basic income (UBI) are numerous. One major opinion poll found that absolute majorities of Americans are opposed to UBI based on the following reasons:
* Removes the incentive to work: 83%
*Program costs: 80%
*Shrinks the labor force: 60%
*Programs lead to poor spending habits: 57%
*Inflationary risks: 56%
The first cited reason—“removes the incentive to work”—is perhaps the most compelling. Throughout history the motive to work—to earn one’s living by the sweat of one’s brow—has prevented the human race from becoming a breed on the path to extinction. The paeons of praise attending to the virtues of work are endless. “Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it,” noted Stephen Hawking. Yet Barbara Lee would stand this universal truth on its head, twisting it to mean “Work is unnecessary, if we simply give people free money.”
Beyond the disincentivizing of Lee’s free money scheme is the likelihood of massive fraud. Oakland has always been mired in fraudulent practices whenever public funding becomes available; there are simply too many grifters in this town who will take advantage of loopholes in the rules. We’re currently seeing an egregious example of this in the pay-to-play scandal that is threatening Sheng Thao with prison.
It should be clear by now that Barbara Lee is unfit to be mayor. She’s too old, too out of touch, too stuck in the politics of 1968. She’s also untruthful. Her Barbara Lee for Mayor website calls Lee a “Former Oakland Small Business Owner with over 400 employees.” I have asked her campaign to tell me exactly what “small business” Lee owned, but the campaign has yet to respond. I could be wrong, but I strongly doubt the truthfulness of that statement.
Steve Heimoff