Toronto In Panic Following Erroneous Nuclear Meltdown Alert
Around 7:25 am Sunday, the Canadian province of Ontario sent out a mass alert notifying residents of an “incident” at Pickering nuclear power station near Toronto, reported CP24 Toronto.
“Emergency staff are responding to the situation,” the alert read, which was sent to cells phones across the province.
It went on to say, “There has been NO abnormal release of radioactivity from the station…People near the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station DO NOT need to take any protective actions at this time.”
About an hour later, a retraction alert was tweeted by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), followed up by a 9 am mass text telling residents that the incident at Pickering was a false alarm.
Important update: the alert regarding #Pickering Nuclear was sent in error. There is no danger to the public or environment.
“There is no danger to the public, there was no radiological event and what I can tell you is that we are working with the province to investigate what happened,” OPG spokesperson O’Neal Kelly told CP24.
Solicitor General Sylvia Jones, who oversees and runs the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre, said the false alarm was a routine internal training exercise that was accidentally released to the public.
Please see my statement in response to the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station emergency alert. There was no incident at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station that should have triggered public notification. Nor was there ever any danger to the public or environment. pic.twitter.com/F9dnQCCWgD
“There was no incident at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station that should have triggered the public notification. Nor was there ever any danger to the public or environment,” Jones said.
Pickering Mayor Dave Ryan tweeted Sunday that he was “very surprised” when he received the alert, but quickly discovered it was sent by error.
Like many of you, I was very troubled to have received that emergency alert this morning. While I am relieved that there was no actual emergency, I am upset that an error such as this occurred. I have spoken to the Province, and am demanding that a full investigation take place.
“I’m very angry and very concerned that this has occurred,” Ryan told Global News.
“We’ve demanded a full investigation and I’ve had confirmation from our local MPP that an investigation will be undertaken. We’ll understand what has happened, why, how and what’s going to be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
And the last time a major municipality made a communications error and alerted citizens of Armageddon was several years ago in Hawaii when officials said the island was under ballistic missile attack.
Former CIA Officer and counter-terrorism expert Kevin Shipp says the threat of outright war with Iran is over – for now.
But, Shipp warns that Iran will change its strategy from overt conflict to covert conflict against the US…
“Iran has backed down. There is no question about that, and even their so-called missile strikes against the U.S. are basically just kicking sand, intentionally missing their target. Iran understands if they entered into a war with the U.S., they would be left with nothing more than a burnt stump. So, Iran is backing down…
What Iran is going to do is engage in asymmetrical warfare. I think they are going to start activating their sleeper cells in the United States and other countries like Saudi Arabia. We are going to start seeing attacks on easy targets in places like Iraq and activation of cells within the United States.”
Shipp is also an expert on the Deep State Shadow Government. Shipp says things are “quiet” on the prosecution of the failed coup plotters who tried to remove President Trump, but ‘that is a good thing.’ Shipp says,
“The evidence is already there to pass an indictment on Hillary Clinton and some of the others. So, there is not even an investigation in that regard…
Barr’s investigation is now a criminal investigation. They are trying to get a hold of Brennan’s (former CIA Director) emails and correspondence, through subpoenas, during this soft coup, and it looks like they are in the middle of that now, so, hence the silence. They are quiet now and that is a frustrating thing about any investigation…
They can’t come out and reveal where they are heading, especially when it comes to the CIA and intelligence agencies. You can’t tip your hand to the person you are investigating. Then they start destroying documents, and people start getting afraid and start covering things up.”
Shipp says the Democrats know they most likely will not win back the White House in the upcoming Presidential election.
“Their chance of winning in 2020, especially now with Trump’s success, is getting slim, and they are getting desperate.
When they get desperate, and they have done this before, I think we can count on voter fraud.They are going to have to use it, and they have used it before. In any event, they have very little chance of winning now, in my view, because the majority of Americans find their platform distasteful. So, I think this (voter fraud) is going to happen.”
Shipp says the Deep State is worried that Trump will have a second term:
“I think they (Deep State) are in a state of shock.
They want to get rid of Trump because for the first time in their careers, they can be prosecuted for what they have done. I think they are afraid of that, and that’s why John Brennan and others are coming out as mocking birds on CNN and MSNBC and constantly attacking the President.”
Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with former CIA Officer Kevin Shipp.
Deepfake Artist Puts Scorcese To Shame With ‘Irishman’ De-Aging
An amateur Deepfake artist using free software took scenes of ‘de-aged’ actors from Martin Scorcese’s “The Irishman” and took them to the next level.
As Movieweb‘s Kevin Burwick notes, despite Netflix spending millions of dollars to ‘de-age’ Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, Scorcese’s CGI was mediocre to the point of distraction.
A scene showing De Niro’s Frank Sheeran, who is supposed to be in his 30s, beating down some mobsters looks more like a 50-year old doing the damage. It is pretty distracting and takes away from some of the greater parts of the movie for some viewers. The new DeepFake video does an excellent job of pulling off what Netflix and ILM could not do. –Movieweb
“All I can say about this, is HOLY SHIT” tweeted director Joe Carnahan, in response to the deepfake – to which someone replied “They are de-aging the already de-aged footage though. Hardly a fair comparison.”
They are de-aging the already de-aged footage though. Hardly a fair comparison.
“Then that’s what they should have been doing. Results is results, guys. We can say it’s 2k and wouldn’t hold up, yadda-yadda but the stuff on the right, looks better than the stuff on the left,” responded Carnahan.
Then that’s what they should have been doing. Results is results, guys. We can say it’s 2k and wouldn’t hold up, yadda-yadda but the stuff on the right, looks better than the stuff on the left.
Fox News is not pro-Trump enough for Trump allies. Their solution is something that amounts to a Trump News Network.
Hicks Equity Partners, a firm tied to Republican National Committee co-chair Thomas Hicks Jr., is pitching GOP donors on buyout of One America News Network.
Allies of President Trump are pursuing an effort to acquire right-leaning news channel One America News Network, according to people familiar with the matter, in a bid to shake up a conservative media market that has been dominated by Fox News.
The investment firm Hicks Equity Partners is looking to acquire the channel and is pitching other wealthy GOP donors to arrange a bid of roughly $250 million for the channel’s parent company, the people said. The firm is owned by the family of Thomas Hicks Jr., co-chairman of the Republican National Committee and a close friend of Donald Trump Jr.
The efforts come as Mr. Trump has periodically rebuked Fox News for being too critical—despite its opinion-show hosts’ general support of his administration—and has praised One America News Network. The channel’s opinion programming is known among its cable-news peers for its praise of Donald Trump and its advocacy for conservative causes.
Some Republican donors say privately that Fox News isn’t doing enough to toe the party line, according to people familiar with the matter. They have noted, for instance, that the network doesn’t always carry the president’s full campaign rallies live on air, the people added.
Trump Blasts Fake News on Fox
Watching Fake News CNN is better than watching Shepard Smith, the lowest rated show on @FoxNews. Actually, whenever possible, I turn to @OANN!
Both Commiecast MSNBC & Fake News CNN are watching their Ratings TANK. Fredo on CNN is dying. Don’t know why @FoxNews wants to be more like them? They’ll all die together as other outlets take their place. Only pro Trump Fox shows do well. Rest are nothing. How’s Shep doing?
Powell In 2014: “A Large Balance Sheet Might Prove A Magnet For Trouble Over Time”
Two years ago, when the Fed released the transcripts from its 2012 FOMC sessions, we first disclosed several passages stated by then governor Jerome Powell which almost convinced us that the former Carlyle partner would not pursue the catastrophic bubble-bust policies that had been enacted by his predecessors.
As a reminder, this is what Powell, who replaced Janet Powell as Fed chair in early 2018, said during the October 23-24, 2012 FOMC meeting – just one month after the Fed announced QE3:
I have concerns about more purchases. As others have pointed out, the dealer community is now assuming close to a $4 trillion balance sheet and purchases through the first quarter of 2014. I admit that is a much stronger reaction than I anticipated, and I am uncomfortable with it for a couple of reasons.
First, the question, why stop at $4 trillion? The market in most cases will cheer us for doing more. It will never be enough for the market. Our models will always tell us that we are helping the economy, and I will probably always feel that those benefits are overestimated. And we will be able to tell ourselves that market function is not impaired and that inflation expectations are under control. What is to stop us, other than much faster economic growth, which it is probably not in our power to produce?
And then the punchline:
[W]hen it is time for us to sell, or even to stop buying, the response could be quite strong; there is every reason to expect a strong response. So there are a couple of ways to look at it. It is about $1.2 trillion in sales; you take 60 months, you get about $20 billion a month. That is a very doable thing, it sounds like, in a market where the norm by the middle of next year is $80 billion a month. Another way to look at it, though, is that it’s not so much the sale, the duration; it’s also unloading our short volatility position.
Ah yes, the Fed’s “short volatility position” something which vol sellers over the past several years have grown to love and admire – occasional inverse VIX disasters like February 2018 notwithstanding.
But it was something that Powell said next that was an even more remarkable admission:
My third concern—and others have touched on it as well—is the problems of exiting from a near $4 trillion balance sheet. We’ve got a set of principles from June 2011 and have done some work since then, but it just seems to me that we seem to be way too confident that exit can be managed smoothly. Markets can be much more dynamic than we appear to think.
…
When you turn and say to the market, “I’ve got $1.2 trillion of these things,” it’s not just $20 billion a month— it’s the sight of the whole thing coming. And I think there is a pretty good chance that you could have quite a dynamic response in the market.
In retrospect, this observation by Powell turned out to be quite prophetic: after all, who can forget Powell’s “autopilot” comment on the Fed’s quantitative tightening, i.e., balance sheet unwind, which together with the Fed’s 2018 rate hikes, sent the S&P to a mini bear market when stocks tumbled in the last few months of 2018: “quite a dynamic response in the market” indeed, and one which forced Powell just days later to reverse on the Fed’s entire tightening policy and, several months later, to launch QE4.
Which, of course, is especially ironic in light of what Powell said next in the October 2012 FOMC meeting, which as we said earlier, almost gave us the impression that Powell was just the man to unwind a decade of capital misallocation even if meant the bursting of the biggest asset bubble in history:
I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking, and that should give us pause. Investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses. It is not that it is easy for them to make money but that they have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so. Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy.
Either year, one failed attempt at normalization and one QE4NOT QE later launched by the very same Jerome Powell, and we can now safely scrap the “almost”: it is now without a doubt that the Fed is, as Powell said, “blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road” and that “investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses.”
And they have Fed Chair Powell to thank for that, whose historic flipflop will be one for the history books when the asset bubble finally bursts. But until then, contrary to his now iconic warning, it was Powell who took it upon himself to make it very “easy” for investors to make money and the Fed’s only job is to make sure they “have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so.“
* * *
With all this in mind, let’s fast forward to the transcripts of the 2014 FOMC meetings, which the Fed declassified on Friday, and where we got some more delightful pearls of wisdom and warnings from the current Fed chair, who now appears hell bent to do absolutely every single thing he so prudently cautioned his colleagues he Fed should not do.
For the purpose of this article, we will focus on the transcript of the FOMC April 29-30 2014 meeting, which was remarkable in that it was the first one where the Fed extensively discussed the Fed’s rate “liftoff” policy which would, after several delays, finally took place in December 2015 when the Fed hiked by 25bps from the “zero bound”, and then proceeded to hike another eight times before eventually cutting rates three times in the summer of 2019 (with stocks at all time highs). Nested inside a lengthy discussion of Powell’s view of the mechanics of liftoff – which focused on his view of the floor vs corridor system and where Powell concluded that “an administered floor approach may be simpler and cheaper than a corridor with a market rate” – Powell made the following statement:
I kind of think that a large balance sheet might prove to be a magnet for trouble over time, and those two considerations pull me in opposite directions, I admit. So I tentatively land on a floor system with the smallest possible balance sheet. But that brings you to the really interesting question, I think, that Governor Tarullo and Governor Stein were all over, and that is the use of the balance sheet for financial-stability purposes. Very, very interesting questions, and I don’t have a lot to add on them here today, but I think those are the things we are going to be talking about for years to come.
Well he was right, because almost six years later, not only are we still talking about these “things”, but the use, and role, of the Fed’s balance sheet for financial-stability purposes, has never been more topical at a time when the Fed’s balance sheet has grown by over $100 billion per month in the past 4 months, allegedly to stabilize the repo market but in reality to unleash a historic market melt-up that has sent us to the highest, and most overvalued, S&P on record.
Amusingly, a little later in the same April 2014 meeting, Powell, a former private equity professional, shared some views from the perspective of a PE professional.
As long as we’re talking about private equity, I do keep in reasonably close touch with what’s going on out there. I would say that prices are high, leverage is high, and equity is low—in all cases, not as bad as it was in 2007. Prices might be in the mid-9s. We talked about leverage. Equity contributions are in the low 20s. So, again, not as bad as in 2007, but, in all cases, it’s getting stretched.
This was in 2014, six years ago. Anyway, back to Powell, and the following delightful snippet why a decade of covenant lite deals means the zombies will ravage the world for a much longer time than most expected:
The other really important difference is that rates are incredibly low. They swap out a lot of the floating-rate debt anyway at very low rates. You put all of this into the mix—I’m not at all sure that there’s a big wave of defaults being cooked up here because coverage ratios are pretty good. Certainly, the equity returns are under a lot of threat. But there are no covenants. It’s going to be really hard to default or fail to pay.
In response to this summary, former Richmond Fed president Jeffrey Lacker had the perfect laconic summary: “No dysfunction to worry about.” None whatsoever.
Which brings us to the punchline: Powell’s parting words from the April 2014 FOMC, which as in the case of Oct 2012, were delightfully prophetic:
I see financial conditions as a potential risk down the road. The risk of continued rising froth in fixed-income markets, followed by a correction that could halt progress, is a real one. If this starts to have the feel of a classic credit cycle, then the level of damage when the cycle turns is hard to predict.
To summarize, after years of warning about the potentially catastrophic consequences of a giant balance sheet, ultra low rates and super easy monetary policy, Powell – now in charge of the world’s most important central bank (as Trump’s twitter account reminded him every so often) – gazed into the abyss of tighter financial conditions, higher rates and a smaller balance sheet… and quickly did everything he himself had warned years ago against doing.
Oh, and speaking of the Fed’s “magnetic” balance sheet, 4 months after his face to face with the “abyss”, Powell managed to undo more than half of the Fed’s entire “normalization.”
University of California-Los Angeles professor made her views on climate change public in a recent op-ed, questioning American private homeownership in response to climate change, particularly California’s forest fires.
Professor Kian Goah, assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA, whose expertise includes urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the issues of climate change and global urbanization, argued in an op-ed for The Nation that what makes the California forest fires even worse is urban planning. Its subtitle reads, “if we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership.”
“Yes, climate change intensifies the fires—but the ways in which we plan and develop our cities makes them even more destructive. The growth of urban regions in the second half of the 20th century has been dominated by economic development, aspirations of homeownership, and belief in the importance of private property,” she writes.
Goah compared two ideas of thought: The American tradition of private property ownership and the collective property theories.
She suggesting the cause of the issue is private homeownership and advocated for “more collective” cities.
Some examples she cited for public housing were put in practice by Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and Bernie Sanders. Another solution would be cooperative housing, and community land trusts.
She argues that public housing would put more power into the federal government as opposed to the “Jeffersonian agrarian ideal.” The “Jeffersonian agrarian ideal”, cheap energy, and individual property “have created the scorching landscapes we see today.”
Goah concluded with how one should seriously question the American Dream with obtaining private property in the face of modern issues.
“The ideals of the American Dream that have been instilled for more than 150 years will be difficult to dispel. Those deals have blinded us to other possibilities…
We need another kind of escape route—away from our ideologies of ownership and property, and toward more collective, healthy, and just cities.”
Campus Reform reached out to Goah but did not receive a response in time for publication.
“Harsh Blow” – Boeing Supplier Cuts 2,800 Jobs Amid 737 Max Production Halt
Just as Boeing’s departing CEO deployed his $62.2 million golden parachute last month as the 737 Max crisis persists, the first signs of supply chain problems for the Max was realized Friday when jet parts maker Spirit AeroSystems laid off thousands of employees, reported AP News.
The Wichita-based company announced 2,800 layoffs on Friday after Max production was halted this month, and the ungrounding of the aircraft remains unclear.
News of the layoffs come a day after Boeing published internal emails showing employees mocking Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigators and ridiculing engineers for their incompetence on Max design.
Spirit AeroSystems is the largest employer in Wichita and defines itself as a “significant supplier” to the Max program.
At least 40 aerospace firms are based in Wichita that manufactures parts for the production of the 737 Max. The layoffs at Spirit could be an indication that the Max supply chain is coming under pressure.
“The difficult decision announced today is a necessary step given the uncertainty related to both the timing for resuming 737 MAX production and the overall production levels that can be expected following the production suspension,” Spirit AeroSystems CEO Tom Gentile said in a statement.
“We are taking these actions to balance the interests of all of our stakeholders as a result of the grounding of the 737 MAX, while also positioning Spirit to meet future demand,” Gentile added.
The announcement of Spirit layoffs comes as manufacturing in the US continues to decelerate. Manufactures cut payrolls last month by 12,000, with concerns more job cuts could be seen in the weeks ahead.
Affected Spirit employees will be paid for two months; the layoffs start on Jan. 22.
Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said the disruption of Boeing’s supply chain will have “short-term impacts” on the economy.
“The layoffs announced today [Friday] at Spirit AeroSystems have dealt a harsh blow not only to the company but also to Spirit suppliers and subcontractors,” Moran said. “I plan to continue working with the administration and Department of Defense to showcase the capabilities of Wichita manufacturers in an effort to diversify the industry and bring more job opportunities to the region.”
Hedge Fund CIO: Will The Fed Ever Be Held Accountable For Turbocharging Inequality That Poisons America
Submitted by Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God,” pledged the 2.7mm young, courageous American soldiers that our Commanders-in-Chief sent to Iraq and Afghanistan Since 2001. Over 6,900 of them died there. Over 52,000 have been wounded. Bush, Obama and Trump spent over $6 trillion. 480,000 Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis died, half civilians. Millions were displaced. Who is accountable? What are the consequences?
Overall
“This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” wrote one of Boeing’s employees, referring to their 737 Max. “I don’t know how to fix these things… it’s systemic. It’s culture. It’s the fact we have a senior leadership team that understands very little about the business and yet are driving us to certain objectives,” wrote another. “I still haven’t been forgiven by God for the covering up I did last year. Can’t do it one more time, the pearly gates will be closed,” wrote another. Boeing is our mightiest manufacturing exporter. A symbol of American greatness. Boeing’s board held the CEO accountable, fired him. The consequence for the catastrophe of his leadership? He walked away with $61mm in compensation.
Carlos Ghosn held an absurd press conference to clear his name, having fled Japan in box barely big enough to contain his greed and shamelessness. Set against Adam Neumann’s $1.7bln golden parachute, Ghosn perhaps believes Japanese consequences are overly harsh.
You see, accountability and consequences are both relative things. The less we hold ourselves accountable, the less accountable we become. And the lower the consequences we face, the more outraged we come to be when faced with the slightest consequence.
Not a single person was held accountable for the 2008 debacle. Nor for Iraq/Afghanistan. Earth’s sixth mass extinction is underway, Australia is burning, no global leader wants to seriously be held accountable, or suffer consequences. America least so. And the Fed led global central banks to accommodate all the above with easy money. Their policies turbocharged the inequality that poisons politics in ways more powerful than any elected official could have ever done. Are they ever held to account?
This all matters because we head into America’s election. It is sure to be the most vitriolic in generations. Who will we hold accountable? What will be the market consequences?
Red Lines
America can assassinate anyone, anywhere, at almost any time with limited collateral damage. Few of our adversaries can. With today’s technology, we surely would’ve killed Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora in 2001 along with the senior Taliban leaders harboring him. We might’ve saved $6trln and 500k lives. Given that the US has this capability, might we rewrite the rules and adopt an assassination policy? Holding our adversaries to account, imposing a capital consequence when their leaders cross our Red Lines? Soleimani apparently thought the answer was no. How will our adversaries act in the future if they know they’re thus accountable?
“I’m Spending All My Money To Get Rid Of Trump”: Bloomberg
U.S. presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg told Reuters over the weekend that his “number one priority is to get rid of Donald Trump. I’m spending all my money to get rid of Trump.”
Bloomberg spoke to Reuters on his campaign bus as he toured a 300 mile stretch of Texas on Saturday. He made several campaign stops where he drew several hundred people in Austin and even fewer in San Antonio. Many of the folks who attended said they were independents and recovering Trump supporters who had learned about Bloomberg through his massive advertising campaign on television.
“He’s better than Trump,” said Marcelo Montemayor, 75, who attended a Bloomberg gathering at a Taco restaurant in San Antonio.
Montemayor told Reuters he voted for Trump but worried the president’s ultra-conservative appointees to federal courts could threaten abortion rights.
Former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg making his pitch to voters in Texas this weekend. He’s on a bus tour making stops in San Antonio, San Marcos, Austin, Waco, and Dallas. Follow @kellyfphares for more! pic.twitter.com/6Xob4fln6W
— wearing cowboy hat at Michael Bloomberg rally (@neoliberal_dad) January 12, 2020
Since Bloomberg officially declared his candidacy on Nov. 24, he has already spent more than $37 million on television ads.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a top Democratic presidential candidate, criticized Bloomberg for his media spending and said he’s trying to buy the election.
Among the Democratic candidates, Bloomberg ranks fifth in national public opinion polls, despite his massive ad spending that has dwarfed all other campaigns on both political aisles.
Heading towards the National Football League championship, Bloomberg is expected to drop millions of dollars on a 60-second television ad to reach hundreds of millions of people.
“You can’t get to 330 million people by shaking hands. Television is still the magic medium,” Bloomberg said.
“If the Super Bowl wasn’t a place to get to an awful lot of people, they wouldn’t be charging a lot, or nobody would be paying it. This is capitalism at work,” he added.
Bloomberg is worth an estimated $58 billion, ranks 6th richest US person and 14th richest in the world. There’s no telling how much Bloomberg will spend ahead of the 2020 US presidential election.
I’m sitting in the pub after a Skeptics Society meet up. I don’t go very often, but there was a famous author speaking, and living (as most of us do these days) in something of a social media bubble, this is a rare opportunity for me to actually get a window into what thinking people outside of my circle have to say on some of the issues of the day. A warm chat ensues over a pint with a couple of the other attendees, when miraculously the conversation at my table turns to the universal basic income (UBI).My neighbour gushes with vigour over its merits. He eagerly vows that it will solve innumerable problems facing our civilisation and I get the feeling he has been spreading the gospel at every available turn because this idea is the crucial one. If only he can get enough people to believe it…
I abstain from mentioning my book as I don’t want to prejudice his answers to any of my questions. I politely wait my turn, and then ask a simple question: “What do you think the potential disadvantages of the basic income would be, then?”
He replies, “There aren’t any.”
Trade-Offs Are Inescapable
Despite the heated disagreements between economists on just about every issue under the sun, there is probably one point that they are all actually unanimous on. That is the fact that every policy has winners and losers. Given that human wants are infinite but our means towards attaining those wants are limited, policies, by their nature, advantage some groups at the expense of others.
But the universal basic income seems unaffected. It’s going to cure poverty, eliminate stress, reduce crime, unleash entrepreneurship, emancipate women, save us from AI, and fight climate change. I’m not not exaggerating. I googled, and there are multiple articles claiming that, not only will the UBI save the economy from flatlining due to a lack of consumer demand by increasing consumption, but somehow also put a halt to global warming as well — contradictory as these two aims may seem.
Is the UBI is a flying unicorn that poops rainbows?
Perhaps so. Perhaps the laws of economics will be nullified around the good intentions of its advocates. Such is the strength and cavalier nature of the latter’s idealism.
Perhaps I’m being a little harsh on budding idealists, though. After all, this lad doesn’t have a background in economics, does he? He’s just looking for an easy way to save the world. Surely I should pick on someone my own size. Professional advocates of the UBI are bound to be more evenhanded in their consideration of the comparative advantages and disadvantages of the program and present a more nuanced view, aren’t they?
Well, not according to the titles of their books …
Rutger Bregman comes right out and calls his book advocating the UBI Utopia for Realists.
Annie Lowrey’s bookGive People Money carries the subtitle “How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World.”
Andy Stern and Lee Kravitz’s book Raising the Floor carries a subtitle claiming the UBI will, “Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream.”
Phillipe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght entitled their bookBasic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy.
This boundless idealism scares me.
The Russians were also offered utopia after the tsars, as were the Chinese when Mao came to power. So if I deviate from my so-far-ecumenical tone in this new coda, it’s in part because people seem to too readily forget what the road to hell is paved with.
Trusting the World’s Regimes to Do Good?
Most people agree that politics is a dirty game and that political powers will inevitably be used to further the agenda of officeholders and their cronies. That said, despite being immersed in the current thinking regarding UBI for three years now, I have seen precious little worrying as to what the government — or a future government — might actually do once it has seized control over everyone’s purse strings.
After all, these governments are composed of the same people who launched a permanent war in the Middle East, wasting trillions of dollars on destroying millions of lives. These governments bailed out the banks from the public purse and gave themselves raises after telling the rest of the nation we had to tighten our belts. They have robbed the young of the opportunity to own a home by sending house prices through the roof and mean to leave them a nation in ruinous debt. They continue locking away huge numbers of people for decades for victimless crimes, leaving their children to be raised single-handed. They created an oligopoly of higher education provision forcing generations into student debt that cannot be defaulted on, and healthcare systems that are so restrictive that people must pay inordinate sums to get care or are otherwise forced onto government waiting lists so long that many of their conditions are chronic or untreatable before they are seen to.
Am I the only one who thinks these powers may be used for evil rather than good?
China’s “Credit System”
One such cautionary tale may be found in China.
If we take a look across to China, where they are instituting a “social credit system,” we might glean some insight into what may be in store for us with the UBI.
Under the Chinese social credit system the government judges their citizens’ behaviour and trustworthiness in order to assign each person a rating out of one thousand which the state can then improve or dock. If people play their music too loud, don’t pay a court bill, owe the government money, or are caught jaywalking, for example, they can lose certain rights, such as booking flights or train tickets. The government can have an individual’s internet speed throttled, or exclude a person from getting the best jobs. Parents can have their children banned from the best schools, be excluded from the best hotels, be publicly named and shamed as “bad citizens,” and even have the family dog taken away.
Now a basic income guarantee may begin universal, but as the years wear on and it proves expensive to provide, it might be that corners have to be cut in order to ensure its continued fungibility. Hardly anyone will object to the UBI being withdrawn from criminals, for example. And then perhaps for antisocial behaviour. People may have their universal basic income docked for committing petty crimes like littering the street. A few might moan that this is the beginning of a government social engineering program, but to most people this will seem like a quite a sensible and reasonable measure. After all, we all “benefit” from the benevolence of society providing our roads and schools, and now our basic income. So if some choose to repay society in disrespect, with such vulgar behaviour as littering, throwing away the ends of cigarettes, spitting on the street, failing to remove their dog foul, or what have you, why should society continue to furnish them with the fullness of a basic income? Besides, if their basic income is docked for several months they are unlikely to repeat the crime — they will soon learn their lesson. It will save money on law enforcement, lengthy court trials, and prison sentences as well, all of which are costly. Clipping people’s basic income will soon seem the most sensible and appropriate response to many crimes and misdemeanours. People may be sanctioned for things like not sorting out their recycling. After all, the government provides garbage disposal for us, and the environment is at stake. Governments are already looking at sanctioning people for this kind of behaviour, so the step would not be much of a leap. These steps will simply be designed to acclimatize people to the idea of being “nudged” in the right direction before more radical measures are taken to use the UBI to shape their behaviour.
In China people can have their social credit score docked for buying too many videogames. Under the UBI, there are bound to be complaints that some people are taking advantage of the system but are not contributing, and that that is bad for them as well as for society. It will therefore seem sensible to save money, and encourage people into better habits, by docking their universal basic income if they spend too much time playing on the computer, on clicking around on social media. The government will likely have many bright ideas as to what kind of activities they should be getting up to instead. They may soon also want to reward people for good behaviour, like contributing to charity or volunteering. But how long can such a system remain impartial? How long before people start creating malignant causes to launder and take advantage of free government money? How long before the government starts to select which causes are worthy and which are not? The government rewarding specific activities with public funds supplants the market system with a “bribocracy” where people can climb the ladder not by directly providing goods and services that others are willing to pay for, but by finding out what the government approves of and collecting brownie points. If spying on neighbors and reporting their so-called antisocial behaviour qualifies, then the government will have found a role for the new class of sycophants — the idea becomes all the scarier. It would not be the first time governments have called upon their citizens to tell on their neighbor.
In China people can have their social credit score docked for posting fake news online. We may, of course, ask, fake according to whom? After all, the Chinese government maintains that the Tienanmen Square Massacre of 1989 was “fake news” drummed up by the West to undermine the regime. Closer to home, the mainstream media was entirely complicit in selling the war on Iraq to the public, but I very much doubt we will see people being sanctioned for posting news from mainstream sources such as the BBC or MSNBC. Our leaders are above falsifying our historic records and sending embarrassing incidents down the memory hole for permanent deletion. The purse strings of the universal basic income also present a grave threat to freedom of speech. Anyone who has been following the “woke wars” on Twitter and other social media platforms will have heard of people receiving lifetime bans for tweeting things like “Men are never women.” Now whether you believe such a message is transphobic or otherwise, you may at least believe that someone has the right to tweet it, and be duly educated as to the wrongs of their action by other users. The universal basic income could easily become the new weapon to wield against those who hold unpopular opinions or those that are simply no longer politically correct. It will be first used to strike against unpopular groups such as racists, misogynists, homophobes, and bigots. Not many people will come to their defense when they lose their basic income for spreading hate. But one day you yourself may hold an unpopular opinion that is relatively benign. Maybe you will say that people shouldn’t have their basic income docked just because they say unpopular things on the internet. You will not just be slapped with a Twitter ban, you will potentially lose $1000 a month.
Conservative Charles Murray states in Losing Ground, his book advocating the UBI, that it would require people to have a “universal passport” and “known bank account.” I don’t think it’s unrealistic to imagine that people may soon be forced to accept a mandatory government ID card in order to claim their basic income. Before long they will be asked to show it in order to get into venues and government buildings. Then at the airport to get on a plane. Then simply to board a train or a bus. Then to get into a bar. Then to get into a restaurant. Then show it to any policeman who asks to see it. Before long, every public place we go we’ll be asked to show our ID card. Failure to produce it may result in a penalty to our UBI. You will need to show your ID card in order to vote, and before long not voting may result in a penalty to your UBI as well. In a time of war you will be asked to enlist in the military or risk losing your UBI for denying your patriotic duty. Just as states freeze the assets of suspected fraudsters, they will soon be freezing the “known bank accounts” of political dissidents. By the time they come for those with radical ideas about freedom from government tyranny there will be precious few left to speak out for us.
Far from creating a futuristic utopia where — once our security needs are met — we are all liberated to pursue our dreams, become great scientists, scholars, artists, and entrepreneurs, the universal basic income threatens a totalitarian horror the likes of which we are used to seeing imagined only on The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.
Certainly the poor, who depend solely on their handouts to survive, will quickly become very cautious of what they say and do, but even reasonably affluent people will think twice before risking a sum that is high enough to live on. The UBI will institutionalise the state as each of our patrons — and us as wards of the state. Once this relationship is established we will enter into a frightening era where the government is our provider and the UBI can easily be weaponized by our rulers to shape us into compliance.
