The first rule of polemic is if you’re going to argue against someone’s position, at least do it in an intellectually honest fashion. Falling short of this is Sally Gimson’s piece on Progress. Sally attacks the Citizen’s Income on the grounds that because Charles Murray, author of the notorious and reviled The Bell Curve, and the Greens agree that a basic income could promote social cohesiveness that the latter buys into the libertarian nonsense of the former. Never mind that the Green policy document, which I suspect she didn’t bother looking at, underlines a continued commitment to extra support for housing and the disabled. Rarely since the days of high Stalinism, when Trotskyists were lumped in with fascists because both had criticisms of the USSR, do such clumsy amalgams come along. Continue reading
Tagged with Basic Income
Why Labour should adopt ‘citizen’s income’
I’m all for nicking good policies, and one Labour and the labour movement should half-inch is the citizen’s income from the Green Party. Of course, the Greens don’t own it, it has been knocking about for a good many years. But they are the only ones pushing it as a key plank of their commitments. Here is the short section from their policy website, and is likely to have similar wording for the 2015 manifesto: Continue reading
