From: slider@anashram.com

In his Easter address to popular movements of the world, Pope Francis encouraged activists to keep up their efforts and their hope under the
pressure of a pandemic. He repeated familiar refrains about the “idolatry
of money” and “ecological conversion.” But he also allowed himself to offer a single policy proposal that movements might work toward: “This may
be the time,” he said, “to consider a universal basic wage.” This points unmistakably to what is usually known as universal basic income—a regular, substantial cash payment to people just for being alive.

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/04/12/pope-just-proposed-universal-basic-income-united-states-ready-it

Back in 2015, I reported on how the idea was becoming fashionable in
Silicon Valley, as well as among activists on the American right and left. Since then one luminary after another has voiced support and Andrew Yang
had a surprisingly strong showing in the early days of the Democratic presidential campaign while focusing on basic income almost exclusively.
(John W. Miller also wrote about U.B.I. for America.)

Why is the head of the Roman Catholic Church advocating a little-tested, still-radical economic policy like the universal basic income?
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Now countries including the United States are normalizing government cash payments to individuals as part of Covid-19 relief efforts. Pope Francis’s statement builds on this rapid escalation from a fringe fantasy to global rallying cry. He also mentioned basic income in passing last month during
a meeting with finance ministers.

Why is the head of the Roman Catholic Church advocating a little-tested, still-radical economic policy?

It would not be the first time. Modern Catholic social teaching began with
Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical “Rerum Novarum” in 1891, which sought to address the widening economic inequality of that Gilded Age—one not so
unlike ours. Leo sought a response to the conflicts between labor and
capital that rejected the absolutist tendencies of each.

Leo affirmed both the right to private property and the rights of
organized labor, but he also sought to transform both. The goal for governments, he advised, should be “to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.” By drastically broadening access to capital, he wanted to reorient the relationship between capital and labor altogether.

This was not a detailed policy design but a call for experimentation, and
it was heard. In Italy, Catholics worked in parallel with communists to
create one of the world’s leading economies for cooperative,
democratically owned businesses. Achievements from the Mondragon worker cooperatives in Basque country to the North American credit unions are
direct descendants of Pope Leo’s call.

Today we still see evidence of this as Catholic entrepreneurs embrace
employee ownership, and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has
backed a worker co-op now making protective masks for caregivers. Pope Leo
did not invent cooperative business, by any means, but his encouragement created space for others to try it and succeed.

Pope Francis spoke to the need for universal access to work, alongside
housing, land and food. But several times, he also emphasized the kinds of
work that go unnoticed and unwaged.
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By nudging social policymakers toward basic income, Pope Francis seems to
be doing something similar. He is seeding the idea both among political
elites and social movements, inviting both to explore it. As in “Rerum Novarum,” he is steering them toward a potentially transformative frame
for economic thinking—one that is not zero-sum under current conditions
but that alters the terrain altogether, as universal cash payments could
do. This could also become a bridge among partisans; basic income has
attracted interest from directions as otherwise divergent as Martin Luther
King Jr. alongside Richard Nixon, the Cato Institute alongside the
Roosevelt Institute.

Despite the enthusiasm for basic income in elite places like Silicon
Valley, some of its most revealing test cases have been in what Pope
Francis calls the “peripheries”—the parts of our world far from the centers of power, where prophetic voices frequently go unheard. Brazil’s Bolsa Família program has helped lift millions out of poverty with cash payments, for instance, and the Alaska Permanent Fund has cut annual
checks to residents since the mid-1970s. Both programs are popular and
have withstood the regimes of competing political parties.

What might be most perplexing about a pope embracing basic income is the Catholic Church’s longstanding emphasis on the importance and dignity of work. Paying people whether they work or not could seem like an affront to
that ethic.

In the Easter message, Pope Francis spoke to the need for universal access
to work, alongside housing, land and food. But several times, he also emphasized the kinds of work that go unnoticed and unwaged. This includes “the people, especially women, who multiply loaves of bread in soup kitchens,” as well as the work of movement activists such as those he was addressing.

### - why not (eventually, i mean) just get rid of 'money' altogether?
wouldn't that be cool? :)

have no idea how that might all work out in practical terms heh, a
veritable nightmare to figure out/apply that would potentially turn our
world completely upside down, but then surely everyone who's born deserves
to live don't they? to at least have clear access to the most basic of requirements of food, education & somewhere to live...

a perhaps far fairer system wherein 'everyone' without fail is included
and 'allowed' to live!

it would be a completely different world! and likely a far better one too!

but then i always 'was' a bit of a dreamer huh ;)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)