The company that I work for recently changed the officially observed holidays, adding Martin Luther King Jr. Day and changing President’s Day to a optional floating holiday (can be taken on any day of the year.) This prompted a primal scream of “Communists!!!” from my gut, and since my group is currently between projects (read “nothing much to do”) I decided to do a little research to see if I have been duped by the “vast right wing” into believing ill of a great leader, or if my gut reaction is valid.
So I hit Google to see what I could find, and ended up on the Seattle Times area dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. (hereafter MLK.) I read some stirring speeches and selected portions of MLK’s writings, which were on the subject of the Civil Rights movement itself and his views on both the movement specifically and on civil disobedience in general, most of which I agreed with wholeheartedly. I was starting to think that maybe I needed to have a change of heart about MLK, but then I hit the last link, which was a chapter entitled “Where We Are Going” from his 1967 book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”, and hit on why I had the reaction that I did, although I have decided that “Socialists!!!” is probably a more accurate reaction. Here is the quote that stood out to me:
Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure. First, it must be pegged to the median income of society, not the lowest levels of income. To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions. Second, the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows. Were it permitted to remain static under growth conditions, the recipients would suffer a relative decline. If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has risen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted upward by the same percentage. Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur, nullifying the gains of security and stability.
So here is the problem. If you start handing out this guaranteed income that is set at a level of that of the median income, is there anyone who truly believes that most of those who are now working their tails off to get ahead, ie to a good standard of living, ie to somewhere around the median income, will continue to do so when the option is now available to stop working altogether, and achieve that goal immediately? I think not.
Lets follow this through to its logical (at least for me) conclusion. Suddenly most people who are making less than the guaranteed income will quit working, and start receiving the guaranteed income. Now there are very few people who are making less than the guaranteed income, so we raise it so that it is the median again. Lather, rinse, repeat, instant socialism, and instant economical collapse. No, I do not think that everyone would quit their jobs and go on welfare if they could receive the same income level, but I would claim that the majority of people would, and I do not think that anyone could dispute that so many people would take that offer, that those who still are working would have no chance of being able to support everyone else who is not working.
Defining “poor” dynamically as less than the average means that the only way to eliminate poverty is to have everyone make exactly the same amount of money, so that no one makes less than the average. Human nature people, if you are guaranteed to make exactly the same no matter whether you work hard, or hardly work, the economy is going to go in the crapper really fast – does no one remember what happened to the U.S.S.R?
As a parting shot that I should probably leave out, I am not sure how MLK could claim as a preacher that we can eliminate poverty, in light of Jesus’ words in Matthew 26:10-11 that there will always be poor. I am by no means claiming that we should not do anything to help the poor, quite the contrary, but I do not believe, given human nature, that we will ever eliminate poverty.