Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:55 | #

All good points, Fred.  However, I wouldn’t place ultimate emphasis on “following the money” for the obvious reason that there are genetic interests that sometimes take precedence over profit—witness Hollywood’s self-indulgence for example. 

What is really going on here is the evolution of virulence driven by globalization-enabled horizontal-transmission.

PS: It should be stressed that Gilman is an anti-racist so he’s not going to be able to think about the real consequences of race-replacement.

Posted by Q on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:13 | #

This fellas’ presentation is MUCH more of an endorsement of GT’s microcommunities than it is of Citizen’s Dividend.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:58 | #

This fella’s presentation is an endorsement of resilient communities (GT is a late-comer in this thinking) particularly in the absence of a Citizen’s Dividend to contain globalization’s virulence at the level of the nation state.  Less virulence means much greater nation state sustainability hence less need for resilient communities.  I’m no big fan of the nation state but there are a lot more fans of the nation state than there are fans of resilient communities at present so it is rather silly to criticize the Citizen’s Dividend on the basis of its lack of popular familiarity and then turn around and praise resilient communities.

However, notice what I’m claiming is going to be necessary for the Citizen’s Dividend to actually be adopted…  I’m no great fan of political action as I’ve said repeatedly for over 15 years now (ever since getting credit from the bill’s sponsor for some Federal reform legislation that was signed into law by Bush, Sr.).  My lack of affection for the nation state is closely related to my lack of faith in politics gained through the school of hard knocks.  And, no, I don’t believe in the “rule by aristocracy” which is nothing more than rule by the Africanized gangsta BAOWSE.

Posted by GenoType on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:30 | #

This fella’s presentation is an endorsement of resilient communities (GT is a late-comer in this thinking)

GT never claimed otherwise.

Once again MR’s “original thinker” and narcissistic claymore-swinging Ren Faire “yeoman,” James Bowery, stuffs a strawman he can knock down.

Posted by Euro on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:43 | #

James,how about targeting your dividend idea to a more restricted section of the citizen body?Eliminating high-income groups and certain professions for example.The dividend amount could then be increased for those eligible,making it an even more interesting proposition.

Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:36 | #

Euro, the moment you “means test” you get into a violation of the principle of the Citizen’s Dividend.  Unlike Milton Friedman’s “negative income tax” or Charles Murray’s “grant”, meant to be a socialist transfer, it is a genuine entitlement deriving from nation state ownership enjoyed by all parties to the founding social contract.  The richest and the poorest are equal owners as citizens of the nation state.  The closest I can come to a historic antecedent is Thomas Paine’s “Agrarian Justice” where he says: “Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund prod in this plan is to issue.”  Henry George took guidance from this—both Paine and George understand at least the obvious fact that land ownership, beyond subsistence territory, is a service of government.  However, Paine then went on to means test the dividend—a mistake that is fatal for reasons that Murray, despite his shortcomings, was able to see with his understanding of voluntary community entailed by the title “In Our Hands”.

The sole social question, open to politics, is who is “in” and who is “out”, and that is as it should be.  I qualify recipients of the Citizen’s Dividend as being “resident citizens” due to the need to maintain ecological integrity so as to avoid horizontal transmission and resulting evolution of virulence so characterising Jews and globalism.

Posted by Al Ross on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:13 | #

The Jew-led monetary expansion which caused the unsustainable rise of house prices in the US may well have been created deliberately in order to make working stiffs feel contentedly distracted when their real remuneration was experiencing downward pressure from both the Third World country beneficiaries of globalisation and the unwanted Third Worlders who ‘migrated’ to the US.

Posted by Frank on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:38 | #

James Bowery,

you’d presumably do away with FICA, but from what money pool would you draw to create the citizen’s dividend?

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:15 | #

When the financial system bailouts commenced, the question of “from what money pool would you draw” ceased to have much relevance.  At this point there is a race on between the financial elites, who are borrowing trillions of dollars basically for free and the rest of us who are paying usurious rates on a relentlessly growing debt load which we cannot service.  The race is simple:  Who gets to buy up all the bankruptcy assets?  Right now, the enemy is buying them up for pennies on the dollar and more are coming on the market all the time as money is withheld from the citizenry, causing a continuing cascade of bankruptcies. 

But I’ll address your question for that hypothetical day when some semblance of stability returns to the nation state as a result of the adoption of the Citizen’s Dividend, taking the US government as an example even though it would be among the last to adopt the Citizen’s Dividend due its lack of a parliamentary system:

Take the Constitution seriously starting with the “general welfare” clause of the preamble which will be taken to imply that any benefits paid out to the citizenry must be paid out without any discrimination whatsoever—obivating what Charles Murray thought would necessitate a Constitutional Amendment in his plan, but also eliminating all spending that does not fall under the umbra of the Constitution’s enumerated powers.  Henceforth, falling under the penumbra of the Constitution is not construed as falling under the powers of the Federal government:

The US Federal Budget is currently around $3e12/year.

Eliminating all unconstitutional activities and privatizing those Constitutionally authorized services, such as the postal service, that no longer need be public monopolies, the budget can be reduced to just 4 basic items, all of which can be funded for well under $1 trillion dollars:

1) Executive is reduced to national border defense and investigation of interstate criminal activity.
2) Legislative
3) Judiciary
4) Interest payments

That leaves $2e12 to divide up among less than 2e8 adult resident citizens.

$2e12/2e8 adult resident citizens = $1e4 or $10,000 dividend per citizen per year

All federal mandates on the States would be repealed as well, freeing them to each solve their problems in their own manner so there is a return to the laboratory of the states intended by the Founders.  If one State wants a Drug Administration to test and approve all medical procedures, while another wants to eliminate all medical licensing and malpractice torts, the Federal government would be as powerless to interfere as would those States be to interfere with each other’s preferred policies.