Dependence and Freedom are Incompatible
Whether out of ignorance or by design, ideological extremists are working hard to destroy our precious freedom. If we don’t stop them, we will be living in a country that is unrecognizable to us. A 33-year-old man by the name of Zohran Mamdani is running for Mayor of New York City. He calls himself a “democratic socialist” but he is playing word games. He is a communist fully committed to redistribution of wealth, public control of the means of production, and collective responsibility (as opposed to individual responsibility) all in the name of social justice. Mamdani thinks he’s qualified to run a city with 8.5 million residents and a budget of nearly $116 billion with a resume as thin as a piece of tissue paper. He was born in Uganda and moved with his parents to New York City when he was 7. His mother is a successful filmmaker and his father a college professor. Mamdani describes his life growing up as privileged; he wanted for nothing. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Africana studies and worked briefly as a housing counselor and hip-hop musician. Since 2020 he has been an elected member of the New York State Assembly.
It's quite common for people Mamdani’s age not to know what they don’t know, making his brazen pursuit of a position he is totally unqualified for embarrassing but not shocking. But what is truly alarming is the voters of New York City appear poised to elect him in November. Hordes of enthusiastic New Yorkers, many of them young, are all in on the idea of a government that provides free stuff for everyone.
Mamdani’s platform makes it clear “Zohran believes that government can lower costs and make life easier…”
He promises to freeze rents, free bus service for everyone, no cost child care for every child until age 5 (while raising the wages of child care workers), “baby baskets” full of baby supplies and resources for every newborn (costing nearly $20 million annually), city-owned grocery stores, “housing by and for New York” (for which he will “initiate a Comprehensive Plan for New York City to create a holistic vision for affordability, equity and growth”), crack down on bad landlords, create an office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs, retrofit 500 public schools with solar infrastructure and raise minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2030 for starters.
And how will he pay for all of this? Tax big corporations and the wealthy. Young Mamdani seems unaware of the mass exodus already being experienced by New York due to over-regulation and high taxation. Business leaders have been quick to point out there is no policy behind all of the promises of a government-funded (translation: taxpayer-funded) “easier” way of life. Mamdani is ducking their requests to meet because he has no substance to share with them.
The Mamdani phenomenon would be troubling enough if it were an isolated incident. It isn’t. Self-sufficiency, critical to living free, is being actively displaced by the allure of free stuff. There are multiple “pilots” underway in an effort to demonstrate that having the government provide a “universal basic income” to people would be a good thing for our country. Proponents argue that guaranteed income gives people autonomy. They are dead wrong. Autonomy is the state of being independent from external control and can never be achieved while dependent on the government (or anyone else).
The results of the largest “study” of its kind were reported in “Business and Economy” late last year and should give pause to every American who understands the fundamentals of a free society.
The pilot was the brainchild of Sam Altman the founder of Open AI, an artificial intelligence company. Altman believes universal income is going to be necessary because new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are going to eliminate traditional jobs (a disruption that always occurs when new ways of doing things replace the old). Beginning in 2020, 3,000 families in Texas and Illinois received $1,000/month with no strings attached for 3 years. The average income of the families in the study was about $30,000. A “control group” was paid $50/month for their willingness to allow the “researchers” to compare their behaviors to the experimental sample.
The complexities of human behavior make it impossible to attribute the life choices of participants in an experiment like this to the $1,000 monthly payment. These so-called researchers are political ideologues trying to “prove” government income subsidies would be good for Americans. The researchers declared the pilot a success.
Research Director and Principal Investigator Elizabeth Rhodes set the stage with, “Asking if cash is good is kind of like saying ‘Is food good?’”
Participants reported they “started imagining what they could do with more financial breathing room” and had a renewed “sense of self”. Others had “head space to dream, to believe, to hope, to imagine a future they couldn’t imagine before”.
The hypothesis that participants would hold out for better jobs because they had a financial cushion didn’t pan out and, in fact, participants decreased their work hours by about 2 hours per week. Researchers concluded that more leisure time was better for people’s wellbeing.
Study participants were reported to be 5% more likely to have a budget and spend 20 minutes more a month on finances. (about as statistically insignificant as numbers could be).
It is sobering to consider, as reported by the Heritage Foundation, if a $1,000/month income guarantee was taken to scale for everyone age 20 – 64 whose income is at 300% of poverty or below, the annual cost to hard working American taxpayers would be $1.1 trillion/year. The greater cost to the human spirit and to our democratic republic would be discarding self-sufficiency and personal responsibility as hallmarks of a free society.
The liberal extremists who want to fundamentally change our country are determined. Since 2018, there have been 150 programs similar to the pilot detailed in this Blast involving 50,000 people in cities across the country including Stockton, Oakland, Chicago, San Antonio and others. Just this month, the Los Angeles City Council approved $2 million for the Supporting Transitional-Aged Youth and Survivors in Achieving Financial Empowerment (STAY SAFE) program. It will provide 83 initial participants who are survivors of “intimate partner violence and youth who are currently or formerly in foster care” with $1,000/month for 2 years. The goals are to end homelessness and break the cycle of abusive relationships.
Are you paying attention? The enemies of freedom gained a lot of ground while we were sleeping. They must be defeated if we want to preserve what those who came before us fought and died for. Dependence and freedom are incompatible.