The time has come for us to civilize ourselves
January 16th, 2012 | Published in Politics, Work
Commenter JKudler alerted me to one of the less well understood aspects of Martin Luther King's legacy. I knew that MLK had described himself as a democratic socialist, but I didn't know that he said this:
In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing -- they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.
I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.
Naturally I agree, and I encourage you to read the whole thing, which ends on the note I quoted in the title. It's something to ponder as you go about marking the occasion of MLK day---or, as Ron Paul calls it, Hate Whitey Day---in whatever way you find appropriate.