World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The Universal Basic Income is a very old idea which has been floated around by various individuals over a long period of time.  Thomas Paine, for example, in his pamphlet, Agrarian Justice (1795), argued that every citizen was due a part of his or her natural patrimony: the land upon which the civilization depends.

“[10] It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.

[11] But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.

[12] Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.”

The “ground-rent” is what the owners of property owe to everyone who had a natural right to the land before it was divided up into private property.

The idea has been picked up at various times as a substitute for an incoherent welfare system that is excessively bureaucratic and as a fiscal stimulus policy.  More recently, it has been touted as a way to provide incomes in the absence of jobs.  Since 2008, job creation has been very sluggish due to globalization and automation of many jobs.  The Swiss just held a referendum on whether such a policy should be adopted and it was overwhelmingly rejected.  It is, apparently, still an idea whose time has not come.

The US now conducts more joint naval exercises with India than with any other country in the world (that fact snuck up on everyone).  Given the size of the Indian Ocean and the competition of both countries with China, that reality is not surprising from a strategic point of view.  India, however, is quite uncomfortable with the closeness of the relationship since it it also wishes to remain independent of all great powers. But the growing power of China in Southeast Asia gives it little choice in alternative allies.

Saudi Arabia has announced that the beginning of Ramadan will begin on Monday, 6 June.  It confirmed seeing the crescent moon that marks the first day of the ninth month.  During the month, Muslims will abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and having marital relations from dawn until sunset.  It was during this month that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammed.