January 21st, 2017

We will end our discussion this week on education public policy with a look at this coming Presidential term of Trump/Pence having a goal of USING RELIGION to install a RACE TO THE TOP that is ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE global labor pool enslavement to enrich the global 1%. Remember, those old world MERCHANTS OF VENICE both Catholic and Jewish were not PRACTICING RELIGION----they held their religion in contempt. These old world rich merchants instead USE RELIGION to control the MASSES----that's WE THE PEOPLE 99%. These are today's 5% to the 1% RELIGIOUS POSERS pretending to help the low-income-----the seniors----the disabled all while advancing public policy growing the wealth and power of a global 1%. That is what education policy will become under a TRUMP/PENCE. There is no intention of keeping religious schools---they will simply use these privatization policies to break down our public school regulations and administrations. Baltimore is well on its way-----coming to your neck of the woods in all US cities deemed FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
We shared a video of a man talking about ONE WORLD----about JESUITS and END TIME. These few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have filled the Republican Party with a religious right telling their citizens OH, WE HAVE TO PROTECT ISRAEL FOR THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST------here in Maryland we are hearing the same------THIS IS ARMEGGEDON-----END TIMES----THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. No, I'm sure this is simply a power grab by a small group of global 1% and their 2%. The American people must educate knowing this is coming to make sure we do not allow this kind of FACTIONING. For several decades in ASIA---in Latin America a REAGAN/CLINTON used MARXIST fighters to destabilize developing nations they wanted to colonize. These MARXIST fighters were never left communists----never left socialists---they were simply employed by the global 1% to create civil war and instability so global Wall Street can install leaders and Foreign Economic Zones. THAT IS WHO STALIN IN USSR WAS------THAT IS WHO MAO IN CHINA WAS-----and it is who all these brutal dictators in developing nations tied to global Wall Street making them rich. NATIONAL MEDIA IS TELLING US A JESUIT POPE FRANCIS MEANS PEACE AND PROTECTION FOR THE POOR. That has not been the goal of Jesuits partnered with global corporations and global Wall Street these several decades of EMPIRE-BUILDING.
This is why we have been hearing BASIC INCOME from the VATICAN----we all know Basic Income takes American developed wages and income down to third world Foreign Economic Zone global corporate campus socialism----$3-6 a day-----that is great.

Catholicism and liberation theology

A new sort of religious radical
Under Francis, the church has absorbed, and transcended, the heady talk that mixed salvation with revolution

ErasmusAug 20th 2014, 14:26by B.C.

IS LIBERATION theology--an ideological movement that emerged in Latin America in the 1970s and sought to combine Catholicism with revolutionary socialism--making a comeback? Pope Francis has made at least two gestures this month which may lead people to exactly that conclusion. Yesterday, on a flight back from South Korea, the pontiff expressed his admiration for a left-wing martyr: Óscar Romero (pictured), a former Archbishop of San Salvador who was murdered while saying mass in 1980. Francis confirmed that the process of elevating the slain bishop to the status of "blessed", which had been bureaucratically blocked till a year ago because of the cleric's suspected Marxist leanings, should now proceed swiftly. The pope said:
For me Romero is a man of God...there are no doctrinal problems and it is very important that the beatification [elevation to blessed status] be done quickly.


Two weeks ago the pope rehabilitated a (still living) figure from the era of liberation theology who is in some ways even more controversial. Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann was foreign minister in Nicaragua's revolutionary government from 1979 to 1990. In 2007 he was asked by the Qaddafi regime in Libya to be its representative at the United Nations; and a year later, he became president of the UN General Assembly and sharply criticised Western thinking about "humanitarian intervention".
Inevitably he was caught up in the ideological warfare that was raging in the Catholic church, and in the wider world, during the final stage of the cold war. In 1984 Pope John Paul II suspended him from carrying out his priestly duties because he refused to give up his ministerial post. This month Pope Francis agreed to lift the ban, and the 81-year-old priest, who is reportedly deaf and infirm, was able to say mass again.
So where does this leave liberation? Thanks to the arresting gestures he has made in favour of the poor and marginalised, and his often sharp critique of the rich, powerful and trigger-happy, Francis has already become the most popular pope on the religious left since Pope John XXIII died in 1963.


But for several reasons, the d'Escoto phenomenon—in other words, priests who combine their sacerdotal duties with an active role in revolutionary politics—is unlikely to recur. Latin America still has its revolutionary socialists, and the church still has its outspoken clergy, but the idea of combining both roles is probably a thing of the past, says Austen Ivereigh, a British Catholic writer and Latin America specialist whose biography of Pope Francis is due to appear in November.



For one thing, the only recent example of a cleric turned radical worldly leader—President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, a former bishop—came to a disastrous end in 2012 when he was impeached. For another, Pope Francis talks a strong view of the special calling and sanctity of the priesthood, so he is unlikely to approve mixing that vocation with other roles.
More significantly, Pope Francis has himself been responsible for developing a refined version of liberation theology, as the author of a key document issued at a bishops' conference in Aparecida, Brazil in 2007. The statement put enormous emphasis on helping the poor but stopped short of endorsing Marxism or any kind of revolutionary violence. "We pledge to work harder so that our Latin American and Caribbean church may continue to accompany our poorest brothers on their journey, even to martyrdom," it said.
As Mr Ivereigh puts it, this new thinking shuns the economic determinism of Marxist thought, and it tends to idealise "the people", understood as the poor majority, as a section of mankind whose interests must be defended against an often oppressive capitalist North. Such ideas sound nationalist at times, but they are different from doctrinaire socialism.


So in restoring Father d'Escoto to the full exercise of the priesthood, Pope Francis was not endorsing the Nicaraguan cleric's political and personal stance; he was merely making a humanitarian gesture to an elderly man who said he longed to celebrate Mass again before he died. At 77, Francis understands such imperatives; he startled many people this week by saying he might only have two or three more years of active—and possibly worldly—life ahead of him.
________________________________________________

Here we see an article discussing how these same MARXIST structures are used in other religions by the global 1%-----Jewish calling themselves JACOBINS-----and VOILA----here is the UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY----our Protestant 5% to the 1% religious players------I shared a video of a black leader calling for BASIC INCOME----we see many black churches with religious leaders captured by and working for global Wall Street especially here in Baltimore. It matters when the leaders of these religious groups are tied to frats/sororities/freemasonry----because the very nature of these business organizations is to advance the interests of those connected to these groups----NOT TO THE 99% OF PEOPLE.

So, a TRUMP/PENCE will no doubt bring all the religious 5% to the 1% to the White House to start what they call a religious school movement using vouchers to break apart our public school funding ----building more and more global corporate campus schools with a dash of religious school----all while these religious leaders claim to be working for the poor----the old-----the sick -----

THIS IS THE FAR-RIGHT, AUTHORITARIAN, MILITARISTIC, DICTATORSHIP LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.

There are no doubt crack pots shouting all kinds of things from SECOND COMING OF CHRIST-----RETURNING ALL JEWS TO THE PROMISE LAND-----when none of what MOVING FORWARD is doing has anything to do with that. We hear this coming from our right wing religious POSERS.

This global 1% Wall Street strategy of using our religions and tying MARXISM to far-right Libertarian extreme wealth and extreme poverty ----is what keeps our right wing Republican voters fighting what is a very, very, very good left social capitalism policy for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE. It is all done to keep people from wanting to embrace REAL LEFT capitalism.



Liberation Theology
on the Move in the United States


Liberation Theology owes much of success to its allies among American clergy. Unable to withstand contemporary currents of power, these liberal religious leaders are swept up in the race to trade theology for Marxist ideology.

Throughout the 1960s, the major topic dominating the theological scene was secularization of the Gospel. Paul van Buren, author of The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, declared that the modern Christian must be a secular person with a secular understanding of existence. In other words, the world should dictate the content of the Christian message. With a secular savior, a secular mission, and a secular future, it was a short step to the “God-is-dead” theology of the later 1960s.

Then with a troublesome God out of the way, it was time to usher in Marx. So-called “theologians of hope,” like Jurgen Moltmann, called for a new understanding of the Kingdom of God where the future is shaped by the actions of men rather than the sovereignty of God.

Theologians from Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish ranks have embraced Liberation Theology as the answer for a secular society. While they vary in the degree to which they espouse Marxist ideology or in the religious terminology they employ, all liberation theologians share one common ground: They abandon some or all of their traditional, orthodox teaching. Perhaps most frightening, many young theologians are never exposed to any substantive theology in which God and the Scriptures still reign as absolute.

The Secular City of Cox

Professor Harvey Cox deserves special mention for his notable contribution to the Liberation Theology Hall of Shame. One of its most influential Protestant advocates of liberation, this Harvard Divinity School professor has authored several bestsellers including The Secular City.

Cox remolds theology to fit the collectivist goals of Marxism. For Cox, Christian theology is at work in historical events, particularly communist-controlled national liberation movements. Crusading for a Christian-communist dialogue, Cox wrote in 1966: "Nothing more exacerbates the global confrontation between East and West than the rhetoric that bills it as a duel to the death between God and atheism... A dialogue between Christianity and Marxism is now possible. Both are fascinated with the future and what it means for man’s freedom, maturation, and responsibility."

In an essay for Marxism and Christianity, edited by Communist Party theoretician Herbert Aptheker, Cox asked, "Will Christians, who have preached the virtue of humility for centuries, be able to accept correction from Marxists?"

Cox has participated in pro-communist causes related to the Vietnam War, violent student protests, and “national liberation” struggles in Central America.

Protestant Liberationists

Joining Cox in pro-communist activism during the Vietnam War were other leftist Protestants including Presbyterian minister and Yale University Chaplain William S. Coffin. Coffin did not hesitate to endorse a much broader leftist platform in 1967, when he signed the call for a National Conference on New Politics, a united third-party movement largely controlled by the Communist Party. It is worth noting that Coffin studied at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, a bastion of embryonic Liberation Theology thinking.

Black American James H. Cone carried on the liberationist cause at Union Theological Seminary as the Charles H. Briggs Professor of Systematic Theology. Long influenced by identified communist Harry F. Ward, Cone’s devotion to the Ward tradition is clear in his books, including A Black Theology of Liberation and Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation and Black Theology.

These works reveal Cone’s concept of a racial theology - a “black power” gospel.

Cone says that concepts essential to Marxism are “connected with the Christian idea of obedience and are identical with the horizontal implementation of the vertical dimension of faith.” He then quotes Jesus Christ to argue his point. This anti-Christian , Marxist, racist polemic was published by William B. Eerdmans of Grand Rapids (1986), a major source of Christian publications.

Charles H. Bayer, senior minister of the First Christian Church in St. Joseph, Missouri, is another leading purveyor of Liberation Theology. In his book, A Guide to Liberation Theology for Middle Class Congregations, Bayer admits the connection between Liberation Theology and Marxism.

Bayer’s chapters reek with Soviet versions of how communists came to power in places such as Cuba and Nicaragua. He argues that the Red Chinese depotism that has murdered an estimated 60 million Chinese since 1949 “has not only held out hope, but has significantly improved life for those who had been oppressed.”

The General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church (GBGM) has been a particularly ardent supporter of Liberation Theology. Bishop Roy I. Sano, President of GBGM, called it “blasphemous” for a United Methodist not to support Liberation Theology. He declared in 1984 that it is “profanity” in theology thinking when God’s salvation is seen only in acts of “reconciliation,” the forgiveness of sins, and rebirth in Christ.

Catholic Liberation Centers

Meanwhile, Liberation Theology is providing the Vatican with one of its greatest challenges ever. The undisputed proponents of Catholic Liberation Theology propaganda and activism in the United States are the Maryknoll, Paulist, and Jesuit orders.

Maryknoll, New York, is the international center of the Maryknoll Fathers and Sisters, many of whom have given their lives aiding communist terrorists in Central and Latin America.

In the United States, Maryknoll militancy is manifested in their media productions, including films glorifying the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and books published by Maryknoll’s Orbis Books.

The older Paulist Order and its Paulist Press echo the liberation message in such leading titles as: Lea Anne Hunter’s and Magdalen Sienkiewicz’s Learning Clubs for the Poor, Gregory Pierce’s Activism That Makes Sense: Congregations and Community Organizations, and John Coleman’s An American Strategic Theology.

Most students of Liberation Theology are familiar with the Jesuits, primarily because Gustavo Gutierrez, father of modern Catholic liberationism, comes from that order.

The works of other Jesuit advocates widely read in the United States include Juan Luis Segundo’s five-volume A Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity and Arthur F. McGovern’s Marxism: an American Perspective.

McGovern, a Jesuit professor at the University of Detroit, contends that much diversity exists among liberation advocates in regard to their commitment to Marxism. He does not, however, deny that they derive their insights from overtly Marxist critiques of society.

Catholic Liberation Theology has posed such a significant threat to U.S. policy at home and abroad that the Reagan White House launched a campaign in 1984 to educate U.S. Catholic bishops against Marxist ideology. That campaign helped conservative critics of the U.S. Catholic Conference disseminate their message to the hierarchy.

Jewish Liberationism

The roots of Liberation Theology among Jews go back to the period of the French Revolution. In his book, To Eliminate the Opiate, Rabbi Marvin Antelman has traced a number of movements that became active in European Jewish communities toward the end of the 18th century.

These included Jacob Frank and the Frankists and Moses Mendelssohn of the Haskala, the German assimilationist movement, from whom Abraham Geiger and much of the modern movement of Reform Judaism derived their heretical ideas.

This background explains why Liberation Theology is popular among Reform and Conservative Jewish clergy and congregations rather than Orthodox groups and accounts for the conflict between legitimate and phony factions of Zionism in Israel.

In the United States, liberationist rumblings among Jews are represented by the neo-orthodoxy of Arthur Waskow who points to Old Testament texts as precedents for leftist causes.

Another liberation force is the New Jewish Agenda, formed to be a diverse left-wing pressure group and a strong partisan of the PLO. There is also strong liberationist influence among Jews active in the feminist movement.

Clear and Present Danger

These religious liberationists seek to undercut respect for American values and institutions. They ignore that America already possesses the best the best working theology of freedom and equality in the world.

Russell Barta comments in his article Liberation: U.S.A. Style (America, April 13, 1985) on the endless moralizing of liberation theologians who reduce all human problems to the context of social sin (i.e., class struggle): “This essentially negative and ‘prophetic’ angle of vision may be appropriate to the conditions of Latin America, but when applied to American social reality, it leads to serious distortions.”

Barta compares the U.S. liberationists’ view with that of a young man suffering with cancer whose vision of reality is altered by his condition to the point where he was quoted in the paper as saying, I look out at the world and all I see is cancer.

Liberation theologians look at America and see a land of violence and oppression, gross poverty and neglect, a land whose basic structures and beliefs are morally questionable. Perhaps it is time they recognized that the cancer is within themselves.

________________________________________

No one represents a Jewish Jacobin then Andy Stern------as with all US international labor leaders being tied to global Wall Street partnering these few decades with a Clinton neo-liberalism they knew had a goal of bringing down US workers and labor---and they are still supporting global Wall Street policies to bring ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE-----ONE WAGE to all Foreign Economic Zones. This is how our left Democratic base of labor and justice have been confused these decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----and not only a STEIN----a WEINGARTEN----a TRUMKA-----all these international labor leaders will now be out front claiming to be MARXISTS when the goal is far-right wing Libertarian global corporate campus socialism----$3-6 a day.



The Case for Unions to Support a Universal Basic Income


How Andy Stern, the former head of the 2-million-strong SEIU, came around to the idea of giving everyone, even non-workers, a monthly stipend.

A large poster in a square in Geneva, Switzerland, promoting the idea of a universal basic income Denis Balibouse / Reuters

• Bourree Lam
• Jun 27, 2016

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Andy Stern has been part of the U.S. labor movement for decades. He was formerly the president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents nearly 2 million American workers. During his tenure at the SEIU, he was hailed as “the nation’s most politically influential union president,” which made his resignation in 2010 something of a surprise.
Stern’s new book, Raising the Floor, details his views on the changing nature of work in America and explains why Stern has come around to supporting a universal basic income—an idea that has gained a lot of traction in the past year when it comes to media coverage, policy debates, and efforts to study its efficacy. I recently spoke with Stern about his book, and a lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Bourree Lam: So tell me about your background.


Andy Stern: I'm a product of the one-job-in-a-lifetime careers: I spent 38 years working for the same organization, a labor union called Service Employees International Union, where I started as a welfare worker and spent the last 14 years as its international president. During that time, the SEIU became the largest union in the U.S. and the fastest-growing union in the world. I was appointed to the Simpson-Bowles Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and spent all of my life trying to change worker's lives, mostly through the growth of labor unions, which I call the greatest anti-poverty program that America ever created.


Lam: In the beginning of your book, you wrote that the American dream that had motivated unions, like SEIU, was replaced by “a paralyzing anxiety” around 2010. Can you talk more about that?


Stern: I'd spent my life believing that there was a way to continue what had been an enduring dream in this country that every generation of children did better than its parents. I lived that as a welfare worker—watching the sons and daughters of coal miners and autoworkers go to college and get white-collar jobs.
By 2010 though, the labor movement that I loved had gone from representing one in three or four American workers to one in 16 in the private sector. I could not figure out anymore how a shrinking labor movement, a changing economy, a changing structure of work could accomplish what I had spent 28 years trying to do—which is have the American dream continue.
So, out of ideas and realizing that something different was going on in the economy, I found it very hard to keep doing what I was doing and expecting that I'd get a different result. Unexpectedly to many, but very logically to me, if you can't figure out where you're leading an organization, it's pretty hard to get up everyday and go to work. So I resigned.



Lam: What were you trying to accomplish and what felt so impossible about that?


Stern: Our union had grown over a million members. We've seen the lives of many home-care, childcare, security officers, and other low wageworkers' lives change because of the union. But for all the time we were growing, the rest of the labor movement was shrinking. Inequality was rising. Wages overall were flat.
Today, we know that less than half of Americans believe that the American Dream is possible anymore. It's very hard to keep doing the job you're doing when you don't think it has the potential to produce results.
Lam: One of your arguments in your book is that unionizing is, in some ways, no longer enough.



Stern: Unfortunately, labor unions now play a particularly boutique role in the economy. When they represented one in three workers and were able to, as economists say, take wages out of competition for autoworkers or steelworkers so that companies competed based on quality and efficiency, not who could pay the least, they served a very economy-wide function.
Now, in certain labor markets—like New York or Chicago—unions play important roles, but they clearly are not in the position, other than in professional sports, to really create a level playing field amongst companies to add value on a large enough scale. So for the workers that are in them, they're an incredible opportunity. But, many people sort of don't understand how you get in one—it seems like a secret society at times. The unions have become more and more involved in the public sector rather than the private sector. It's hard to see in the private sector how traditional unions are willing and able to scale up like an Uber or AirBnB.


Lam: So after you quit SEIU, you started researching the future of work?


Stern: I started trying to understand two things in more depth: what was going on, and, if there was something going on, how we could build a stronger economy and renew the American dream. It's ironic that an answer I ended up with, which is universal basic income, I wouldn't have known what it was if someone proposed it when I first started. So I listened to lots of people—from Andy Grove at Intel to Dave Cote [at Honeywell], to advocates like Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone—and just tried to hear from their perspective how the world of academics and the lead economists sort of played out in real life. It was that journey that took me to a series of conclusions.


Lam: And now, do you believe universal basic income is the answer?


Stern: I believe that this is not our father's or our grandfather's economy, that the 21st century will not be employer-managed. It's going to be self-managed, because the growth in alternative work relationships—contingent, freelance, gig, whatever you want to call it—is clearly going to increase. Although the economy can grow in terms of GDP and productivity, it no longer means there will be wage growth or job growth, as opposed to the 20th century.
There's now an ever-growing amount of research—from McKinsey, and Oxford, Larry Summers, Bill Gross, Deloitte, Pew, Brookings—that says that the potential for a tsunami of job disruptions is quite high, although the estimates can range from 25 percent of jobs to nearly half of tasks. The numbers are huge, and grow at an accelerating pace. So if that's a conceivable scenario, then what's an appropriate response? Universal basic income is the best idea I have. I appreciate some of its potential shortcomings, but it can work.


Lam: There's a section in your book about the idea itself seeming quite un-American.


Stern: Yeah, the idea seems un-American because people like myself and my parents came from a world where work was not only an economic function, but it was very tied to your sense of dignity, your identity, to your social relationships. And the idea that we would provide money to everyone, even if they didn't work, just seems particularly un-American.
Having said that, Thomas Paine at the early founding of the country proposed giving every American 15 pounds sterling as compensation for the wealth of a country that we were going to turn over to private hands. Conservatives like Frederick Hayek, and most importantly Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon, were huge supporters of the idea as a way to provide stability and end poverty. So although the concept of giving away money to people who don't work sounds rather un-American, the idea has very strong roots in American history and politics.


Lam: It's interesting because besides the question of political viability, there's also the culture of work—the American way being that hard work can lead to success. How can we square decades of that mentality with a concept like universal basic income?


Stern: I'd say two things: One is that clearly there's a generation issue here. But also, more and more Americans are having a really hard time. I think some of this worship of a work-centric economy is very illusory for many Americans. We're now seeing the limits of the traditional answers—if you just worked hard or just got a degree, things would be fine. Now we find people with advanced degrees, adjuncts having a hard time getting by.
Historically, a degree was the ticket to the middle class. Reality will change what is still probably mostly an elite held vision of the world. But I also think that young people entering the economy clearly have a different attitude about work and jobs than their parents and grandparents. Even in the Swiss referendum on universal basic income, where only 22 percent of the overall voters voted in favor—nearly 40 percent of Millennials did. I think time will demonstrate that people that are having a harder time in the job market.


Lam: How do you reconcile unions and universal basic income? Are unions for basic income? And if not, how did you get to a place where you're in such strong support of universal basic income now?
Stern: I would say that unions are not generally oriented towards thinking too far into the future. We spend most of our time chasing the future and trying to understand it rather than finding ideas that put us where the future was heading and have it come towards us. We are spending, appropriately, a large amount of energy on $15 an hour wages, getting governments to promote paid family and sick leave. In the absence of unions being able to make changes in workers’ lives, people are turning to the government as a solution to do that on a broad scale.



But unions have rarely thought 10 or 20 years ahead, and universal basic income requires that kind of thinking. What I'm hopeful, somewhat from this book, is that unions can look up from the defensive crouch they're in, look into the future, and understand that so many of the things they're doing now that are enormously important could be very insufficient. And that they'll begin to think of universal basic income as they think of minimum wage, as an idea that becomes essential if we're going to end inequality, provide stability, and keep the American dream alive.


Lam: The old American dream or the new one?


Stern: I think a new one that's a mixture of hard work and a floor that allows people to have choices, and not live in constant fear of missing a paycheck or not paying rent or not being able to take care of their children—which is what universal basic income will allow.

_______________________________________

Why are the tech 'elite' getting behind basic income? Because this policy will be used as a platform to bring Western developed nations and their wages down to what Foreign Economic Zones overseas earn------so yes, these global executives would indeed support BASIC INCOME -----as a mechanism towards $3-6 a day. Same global corporate campus socialism----WE THE PEOPLE don't need money if that corporate campus feeds, houses, schools, and buries its human capital.

IT'S ALL SOCIALISM SAY FAR-RIGHT LIBERATARIAN MARXISTS!

The Outta My Way, I’m Walking Here Issue

Why the Tech Elite Is Getting Behind Universal Basic Income


NS
Nathan Schneider
Jan 6 2015, 12:41pm

Why not give money to people just for being alive?

As if Silicon Valley hasn't given us enough already, it may have to start giving us all money. The first indication I got of this came one evening last summer, when I sat in on a meet-up of virtual-currency enthusiasts at a hackerspace a few miles from the Googleplex, in Mountain View, California. After one speaker enumerated the security problems of a promising successor to Bitcoin, the economics blogger Steve Randy Waldman got up to speak about "engineering economic security." Somewhere in his prefatory remarks he noted that he is an advocate of universal basic income—the idea that everyone should get a regular and substantial paycheck, no matter what. The currency hackers arrayed before him glanced up from their laptops at the thought of it, and afterward they didn't look back down. Though Waldman's talk was on an entirely different subject, basic income kept coming up during a Q&A period—the difficulties of implementing it and whether anyone would work ever again.
Around that time I had been hearing calls for basic income from more predictable sources on the East Coast—followers of the anarchist anthropologist David Graeber and the editors of the socialist magazine Jacobin, among others. The idea certainly has a leftist ring to it: an expansion of the social-welfare system to cover everyone. A hard-cash thank-you just for being alive. A way to quit the job you despise and—to take the haters' favorite example—surf.


Related: "Kim Dotcom: The Man Behind Mega"


Basic income, it turns out, is in the peculiar class of political notions that can warm Leninist and libertarian hearts alike. Though it's an essentially low-tech proposal, it appeals to Silicon Valley's longing for simple, elegant algorithms to solve everything. Supporters list the possible results: It can end poverty and inequality with hardly any bureaucracy. With more money and less work to do, we might even spew less climate-disrupting carbon.


The idea of basic income has been appearing among the tech-bro elite a lot lately. Mega-investor and Netscape creator Marc Andreessen recently told New York magazine that he considers it "a very interesting idea," and Sam Altman of the boutique incubator Y Combinator calls its implementation an "obvious conclusion." Albert Wenger, a New York–based venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, has been blogging about basic income since 2013. He's worried about the clever apps his company is funding, which do things like teach languages and hail cars, displacing jobs with every download.
"We are at the beginning of the time where machines will do a lot of the things humans have traditionally done," Wenger told me in October. "How do you avoid a massive bifurcation of society into those who have wealth and those who don't?" He has proposed holding a basic-income experiment in the dystopian fantasyland of Detroit.


Singularity University is a kind of seminary in Silicon Valley where the metaphysical conviction that machines are, or soon will be, essentially superior to human beings is nourished among those involved in profiting from that eventuality. Last June, the institution's co-founder and chairman, Peter Diamandis, a space-tourism executive, convened a gathering of fellow industry luminaries to discuss the conundrum of technology-driven unemployment.


"Tell me something that you think robots cannot do, and I will tell you a time frame in which they can actually do it," a young Italian entrepreneur named Federico Pistono challenged me. Among other accomplishments, Pistono has written a book called Robots Will Steal Your Job, but That's OK. At the Singularity meeting he was the chief proponent of basic income. He cited recent experiments in India that showed promise for combating poverty among people the tech economy has left behind. Diamandis later reported having been "amazed" by the potential.


One might not expect such enthusiasm for no-strings-attached money in a room full of libertarian-leaning investors. But for entrepreneurial sorts like these, welfare doesn't necessarily require a welfare state. One of the attendees at the Singularity meeting was HowStuffWorks.com founder Marshall Brain, who had outlined his vision for basic income in a novella published on his website called Manna. The book tells the story of a man who loses his fast-food job to software, only to find salvation in a basic-income utopia carved out of the Australian Outback by a visionary startup CEO. There, basic income means people have the free time to tinker with the kinds of projects that might be worthy of venture capital, creating the society of rogue entrepreneurs that tech culture has in mind. Waldman refers to basic income as "VC for the people."


Chris Hawkins, a 30-year-old investor who made his money building software that automates office work, credits Manna as an influence. On his company's website he has taken to blogging about basic income, which he looks to as a bureaucracy killer. "Shut down government programs as you fund redistribution," he told me. Mothball public housing, food assistance, Medicaid, and the rest, and replace them with a single check. It turns out that the tech investors promoting basic income, by and large, aren't proposing to fund the payouts themselves; they'd prefer that the needy foot the bill for everyone else.


"The cost has to come from somewhere," Hawkins explained, "and I think the most logical place to take it from is government-provided services."
This kind of reasoning has started to find a constituency in Washington. The Cato Institute, Charles Koch's think tank for corporate-friendly libertarianism, published a series of essays last August debating the pros and cons of basic income. That same week, an article appeared in the Atlantic making a "conservative case for a guaranteed basic income." It suggested that basic income is actually a logical extension of Paul Ryan's scheme to replace federal welfare programs with cash grants to states—the Republican Party's latest bid to crown itself "the party of ideas." Basic income is still not quite yet speakable in the halls of power, but Republicans may be bringing it closer than they realize.


Karl Widerquist, a professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar, has been preaching basic income since he was in high school in the early 1980s. He says that we are now in the third wave of American basic-income activism. The first was during the economic crises between the world wars. The second was in the 1960s and 70s, when libertarian heroes like Milton Friedman were advocating for a negative income tax and when ensuring a minimum income for the poor was just about the only thing Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon could agree about. (Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, which bears some resemblance to basic income, passed the House but died in the Senate.) The present wave seems to have picked up in late 2013, as the news went viral about a mounting campaign in Switzerland to put basic income to a vote. Widerquist is glad to see the renewed interest, but he's cautious about what the libertarians and techies have in mind.
"I don't think we want to wait for technological unemployment before having basic income," he says. For him the plan is not about averting the next disaster—it's about curbing the exploitation of the property system.


Riding way on the left side of the current wave of enthusiasm is Kathi Weeks. She's a good old-fashioned-in-certain-ways feminist Marxist who made basic income a central proposal in her recent book The Problem with Work. She advocates it cautiously, however: If a basic income were too low, people wouldn't be able to quit their jobs, but employers would still lower their wages. It could incline more businesses to act like Walmart, letting their workers scrape by on government programs while they pay a pittance. Workers might get money for nothing, but they'd also find themselves with dwindling leverage in their workplaces.


If we were to fund basic income only by gutting existing welfare, and not by taxing the rich, it would do the opposite of fixing inequality; money once reserved for the poor would end up going to those who need it less. Instead of being a formidable bulwark against poverty, a poorly funded basic-income program could produce a vast underclass more dependent on whoever cuts the checks. And as out-there as the idea can seem, Weeks's leftist critics complain that it's still a tweak, a reform. "It's not going to signal the end of capitalism," she recognizes.

Like pretty much all the shortcut solutions Silicon Valley offers, basic income would have its perks, but it isn't enough to solve our real problems on its own. There's still no substitute for organizing more power in more communities—the power to shape society, not just to fiddle with someone else's app. Social Security, for instance, came to be thanks to the popular struggles of the 1930s, and it carried huge swaths of old people out of poverty. Obamacare, a set of reforms mostly written by the industry it was meant to regulate, has turned out to be a far more mixed bag.
A basic income designed by venture capitalists in Silicon Valley is more likely to reinforce their power than to strengthen the poor. But a basic income arrived at through the vision and the struggle of those who need it most would help ensure that it meets their needs first. If we're looking for a way through the robot apocalypse, we can do better than turn to the people who are causing it.

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Andy Stern has been working for WORLD BANK for decades------here he is now blogging with WORLD BANK. Each population group's 5% to the 1% is now shifting towards this Foreign Economic Zone ONE WORLD WAGE----it has nothing to do with bringing wages up in developing nations---it is completely tied to bringing wages in Western nations down to third world Foreign Economic Zones----$3-6 a day. The old world MERCHANTS OF VENICE----whether Jewish or Catholic Merchants----whether KINGS AND QUEENS WITH A HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE are all positioning themselves as FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS----


STERN is now tied to global IVY LEAGUE Columbia University right there next to global Wall Street-----what a great big 5% to the 1% labor player.



Moving towards a universal basic income
Submitted by Andy Stern On Tue, 04/12/2016  WORLD BANK BLOG

Andy Stern, guest blogger, is former President of the SEIU and now the Ronald O. Perelman Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Richman Center.

In 2010, I seemed to be at the top of my game: leader of the US’s largest and most influential union, a central player in the most significant piece of social legislation since the establishment of Medicare, and appointed by President Barack Obama to sit on the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission to propose an answer to the country’s long-term deficit problems. Despite this, I stepped down that year as president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
 
I didn’t resign from SEIU because I was bored. Rather, after nearly fifteen years at the helm of SEIU, I had lost my ability to predict labor’s future.

HMMMMM....15 YEARS OF CLINTON GLOBAL WALL STREET NEO-LIBERAL TIES FOR INTERNATIONAL LABOR UNIONS BRINGING A COMPLETE LOSS OF EVERY LABOR RIGHT AND WEALTH GAIN FOR LAST CENTURY------

I could do that in the 1990s and early 2000s. But, by 2010, the economy was changing and fragmenting at such warp speed that I couldn’t see where it — or labor — was headed. At the end of that year I embarked on what became a four-year journey to discover the future of jobs, work, and the American Dream. My journey coincided with significant economic trends — a jobless recovery and the concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
 
Wages were stagnant. People had to work two or three jobs to stay afloat. Students were coming out of college thousands of dollars in debt and with no substantial job prospects. Early on, I saw that unions would play only a limited role in shaping the twenty-first-century economy. Not only because unions are typically slow to adapt, but also because the economy is being transformed by new technologies that will automate more tasks and require fewer full-time jobs, and marginalize the role of collective bargaining, leaving a dearth of dues-paying union members.
 
Already, the new landscape of work is populated by free agents and temporary workers who have more freedom and flexibility in their work life, but no job security and significantly less leverage with the people and companies who hire them. My focus turned to larger questions: If there are significantly fewer jobs and less work available in the future, how will people make a living, spend their time, and find purpose in their lives? Also, how can we keep the income gap from growing so wide that it erupts into social discord and upheaval?
 
I believe there is a solution – the universal basic income or UBI. Imagine a check coming in the mail each month to every single American, whether they work or not, with sufficient money to eradicate poverty and give everyone the opportunity to achieve their dreams. A UBI may be the most practical solution to our economic problems, and one that most, if not all, of our country’s political parties can potentially embrace.


 
It works elsewhere…


There have been several other basic income experiments, mainly in Canada, Africa, and Europe. In the mid-1970s, the tiny Canadian town of Dauphin acted as guinea pig for a grand experiment in social policy called “Mincome”. Their aim was to determine if a guaranteed minimum income acted as a disincentive to work. During the five-year experiment, only two groups of people were found to work fewer hours: adolescents (because they felt no pressure to support a family) and new mothers (because they wanted to spend more time at home with their infants). There were several other findings. As expected, poverty disappeared. And, unexpectedly, hospitalization rates went down, especially for admissions related to mental health and to accidents and injuries. High-school completion rates went up, suggesting that a guaranteed annual income, implemented broadly in society, may improve health and social out-comes at the community level.
 

People of the Otjivero-Omitara region of Namibia receive their basic income. 


In 2008 and 2009, a basic income experiment in the impoverished Otjivero-Omitara region of Namibia produced a number of intriguing outcomes. There was an increase in entrepreneurship, evident in the fact that the average income grew 39 percent beyond the basic income and that many recipients were able to start their own small businesses — for instance, baking bread, making bricks, and sewing dresses. The guaranteed basic income had increased households’ buying power, creating a local market for these goods. Among the other outcomes: the basic income reduced the dependency of women on men for their survival and gave them a greater measure of control over their own sexuality, freeing them from the pressure to engage in transactional sex. It gave HIV-positive residents more time and resources to travel to the town of Gobabis to get their medication. The number of children considered underweight fell from 42 percent to 10 percent. Dropout rates fell 40 percent, partly because parents had more money to pay school fees and for uniforms. Household debt fell, savings increased, and there was increased ownership of livestock and poultry. Finally, there wasn’t the expected increase in alcoholism, partly because the community committee reached an agreement with local shebeen owners not to sell alcohol on the day the government disbursed the monthly grants. In July of 2015, it was reported that the Namibian government was “strongly considering” a national basic income program.
 
In 2017, Finland will begin a two-year pilot that promises to be the most rigorous test yet of a basic income in a developed country. Finland’s center-right government has set aside €20 billion to fund the trial, which will look at a variety of models, including a full basic income that replaces most means-tested benefits, a partial basic income, and a negative income tax in which benefits pay out as people earn more money.
 
When I refer to a jobless future, I’m by no means suggesting that there won’t be any jobs. However, I do think that we are heading to-ward a world with fewer overall jobs—perhaps tens of millions of them. In that world, the jobs that are left will either be extremely well paying and secure, or contingent, part-time, and driven largely by people’s own motivation, creativity, and the ability to make a job out of nothing. The current social contract puts this second category of worker at a disadvantage.
 
My support for UBI is born from a belief that we must attack poverty at its core—a lack of income—rather than treating its symptoms. Also, with major technological advances eliminating more middle-class jobs, new systems of universal support are required. Lacking good jobs and satisfying work, the next generation will desire to build a life outside of poverty and low-wage work, and we should endeavor to give them that opportunity

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No one discussing these issues of BASIC INCOME tie the goal of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE WAGE in all Foreign Economic Zones to this policy. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand MOVING FORWARD the same global Wall Street 5% to the 1% controlling government will not be installing anything LEFT LEANING----SOCIAL JUSTICE IN WAGES. Here is a Protestant Union Seminarian at least questioning to where all these policies lead. The idea of MOVING FORWARD with goals of creating mass unemployment here in the US with more policies saying---well we will simply pay people not to work. This is the same policy pushed by GLOBAL BIG AG-----when they paid small farmers not to plant. Here in Baltimore we already have these labor structures of massive volunteerism-----with tons of unpaid internships-----followed by heavy doses of community cleanups-----all doing jobs that used to be our public sector receiving strong middle-class wages. Indeed, if we allow these policies to advance this is the mechanism to everyone in the US working for that $3-6 a day.

This is to what TRUMP PENCE ------with Jesuit/Jacobin------MARXISM will literally force on WE THE PEOPLE.


'There are a number of arguments to be made based on the economics of the model, but more concerning are the psychological effects of permanently subsidizing the unemployment of the able-bodied. After all, once someone ceases to contribute to society (or feel like they do), they often suffer from depression and feel life is meaningless'.

Dec 06 2016
Universal Basic Income: The Psychological Consequences of a Well-Intended Idea

We don’t know what the future holds, but some in the tech industry are predicting a massive displacement of workers in the future. State jobs reports tend to confirm this expectation, as automation is thought to be increasing and threatening to displace low-skill workers.
Some see the downward shift in employment rates as an overall positive, arguing that taking people out of so-called menial jobs will free more people up to be creative and more effectively human. To support the displaced workers, there are a number of people calling for universal basic income.
Universal basic income proposals come in several forms and variations, but a simplified version is this: Everyone will be guaranteed at least a certain amount of income per year. Essentially, the government will write everyone a check for an amount deemed appropriate to support basic living expenses. Wages from compensated employment would either add to that basic income or displace it, depending on the proposal.
There are a number of arguments to be made based on the economics of the model, but more concerning are the psychological effects of permanently subsidizing the unemployment of the able-bodied. After all, once someone ceases to contribute to society (or feel like they do), they often suffer from depression and feel life is meaningless.
Work is a God-ordained means for experiencing meaning via community & participation in economic exchange.


What about Volunteering?

Proponents of universal basic income are quick to argue that work done on a volunteer basis is no less valuable than work done for pay. This is a valid assertion with regard to the benefit for the community. There is room to argue that volunteering offers similar benefits: personal engagement with others, a sense of contribution and purpose in daily living.
However, Ryan Avent, an editor for The Economist and author of The Wealth of Humans, argues that paid employment offers specific benefits. For example, paid employment permits a person to control the trajectory of their lives, at least to some degree. The need to work to live inspires greater participation in the workforce and a sense of accomplishment.
And this need to work is far less than a bourgeois concern of the middle class. Avent states,
People of all backgrounds also seem to value narratives of personal ambition and responsibility. People wish to have control over their economic lives and to be seen as contributing both to society and to the well-being of their families. People desire agency. (220)


Universal basic income advocates offer a possible solution. Perhaps the government could require volunteer service or job training to receive the benefit, thus simulating a sense of agency and contribution in exchange for a basic income check. However, Avent goes on to argue that, in general, people “do not wish to be forced into unpleasant work by the need to feed their families, but neither do they want to be written of as unnecessary – or assigned meaningless work as the price of a generous welfare cheque.” (220)


The Search for Meaning


What Avent is pointing to here is a search for meaning in the world. Humanity is always searching for meaning (or claiming to make meaning), and one of the ways people find meaning is through work.
This search for meaning through work is not new. For example, Luther’s writings on station and vocation emphasize the importance of vocation on life’s meaning. Nor is it specific to Christians. Viktor Frankl, a psychologist and holocaust survivor, discusses finding meaning through work even in his existential worldview.
In his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl discusses a form of depression among those out of work that he calls “unemployment neurosis.” This neurosis, he claims, “really originated in a twofold erroneous identification: being jobless was equated with being useless, and being useless with having a meaningless life.” (142) In other words, people’s inability to contribute economically to the marketplace, their families and their communities left them feeling they had no purpose.

Frankl notes this feeling was dissipated when he persuaded patients to volunteer in a host of community activities. It was not merely the economic situation that caused the depression, but their lack of engagement. Frankl notes, “The truth is that man does not live by welfare alone.”


The evidence Frankl provides support for universal basic income advocates who feel that a check in the mail and an opportunity to volunteer will be enough to provide meaning without paid employment. However, Avent notes, “Survey data suggest that, over the last decade, people saddled with extra free time thanks to weak job markets spent much of it sleeping and watching television.” (220)
In other words, while unpaid work can fill the void of meaning, for most people the need for community engagement for meaning does not provide sufficient incentive to get out of the house.


Conclusion

Ultimately, Christians understand that meaning is found only through life in Christ. However, work is one of the God-ordained means for experiencing that meaning through community and participation in economic exchange. People pay for what they value, and being paid affirms the value workers bring to the community.

Universal basic income sounds attractive because it fixes the immediate problem by feeding people whose skills may not match the market opportunities. However, as simple as it sounds to implement, a universal basic income may undermine and discourage the social structures that facilitate human flourishing and help people find meaning in life through work. There is a great deal more to discuss, but the side effects of a universal basic income may be more significant than some of its proponents suggest.
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We are shouting to the 99% that this article is what we are hearing globally from religious players. No doubt there are pious religious students of our Bible that may be coming to these conclusions----but none of MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE has anything to do with religion----with the SECOND COMING OF CHRIST----and it will be totalitarian----brutally repressive -----complete domination by a global 1% and their 2%----no world harmony is involved in these goals.
As TRUMP PENCE and the global Wall Street pols push these far-right authoritarian religious views ------AND THEY WILL -----we will see the same global Wall Street group pushing global corporate campus socialism as the answer to growing unemployment and deepening poverty brought to us by massive US TREASURY and state municipal bond market fraud bring our US economy into collapse under $20 trillion and more debt. WORLD BANK AND IMF comes in to bailout US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones and VOILA------BASIC INCOME IS THE ANSWER says all Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations-----


Does the Bible prophesy a one-world government and a one-world currency in the end times?
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Question: "Does the Bible prophesy a one-world government and a one-world currency in the end times?"

Answer: The Bible does not use the phrase “one-world government” or “one-world currency” in referring to the end times. It does, however, provide ample evidence to enable us to draw the conclusion that both will exist under the rule of the Antichrist in the last days.

In his apocalyptic vision in the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John sees the “beast,” also called the Antichrist, rising out of the sea having seven heads and ten horns (Revelation 13:1). Combining this vision with Daniel’s similar one (Daniel 7:16-24), we can conclude that some sort of world system will be inaugurated by the beast, the most powerful “horn,” who will defeat the other nine and will begin to wage war against Christians. The ten-nation confederacy is also seen in Daniel’s image of the statue in Daniel 2:41-42, where he pictures the final world government consisting of ten entities represented by the ten toes of the statue. Whoever the ten are and however they come to power, Scripture is clear that the beast will either destroy them or reduce their power to nothing more than figureheads. In the end, they will do his bidding.

John goes on to describe the ruler of this vast empire as having power and great authority, given to him by Satan himself (Revelation 13:2), being followed by and receiving worship from “all the world” (13:3-4), and having authority over “every tribe, people, language and nation” (13:7). From this description, it is logical to assume that this person is the leader of a one-world government which is recognized as sovereign over all other governments. It’s hard to imagine how such diverse systems of government as are in power today would willingly subjugate themselves to a single ruler, and there are many theories on the subject. A logical conclusion is that the disasters and plagues described in Revelation as the seal and trumpet judgments (chapters 6-11) will be so devastating and create such a monumental global crisis that people will embrace anything and anyone who promises to give them relief.

Once entrenched in power, the beast (Antichrist) and the power behind him (Satan) will move to establish absolute control over all peoples of the earth to accomplish their true end, the worship Satan has been seeking ever since being thrown out of heaven (Isaiah 14:12-14). One way they will accomplish this is by controlling all commerce, and this is where the idea of a one-world currency comes in. Revelation 13:16-17 describes some sort of satanic mark which will be required in order to buy and sell. This means anyone who refuses the mark will be unable to buy food, clothing or other necessities of life. No doubt the vast majority of people in the world will succumb to the mark simply to survive. Again, verse 16 makes it clear that this will be a universal system of control where everyone, rich and poor, great and small, will bear the mark on their hand or forehead. There is a great deal of speculation as to how exactly this mark will be affixed, but the technologies that are available right now could accomplish it very easily.

Those who are left behind after the Rapture of the Church will be faced with an excruciating choice—accept the mark of the beast in order to survive or face starvation and horrific persecution by the Antichrist and his followers. But those who come to Christ during this time, those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life (Revelation 13:8), will choose to endure, even to martyrdom.