The Post-Partisan Emporium

UBI: The Devils in the Details Sean Arthur Joyce The devil is always in the details, as the old saying goes. Most have probably forgotten now what that proverb means, but in essence, it’s a kind of  caveat emptor : If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t swallow the whole enchilada until you know  all  the ingredients. In my previous article, “To UBI or Not to UBI?” I discussed the Canadian proposal for a Universal Basic Income and the various reactions to UBIs from both socialist and capitalist sources. I also noted that a nearly three-year study on UBIs by the  University of British Columbia ,  Simon Fraser University  and the  University of Calgary  concluded that, “a basic income for all  is not the best way to address poverty and other social problems .” Instead, the  British Columbia Expert Panel on Basic Income  said, “governments should boost existing social support programs for vulnerable groups…”[1] The tri-university study[2] released an executive summary pref

The Economy of Permanent Emergency, Part I This may be the most vital article you read about Covid. Italian writer/philosopher, Fabio Vighi, provides a quasi-total account of why the ‘pandemic’ was launched. It’s not about health, but wealth. John Waters Due to the unusual length of this article, and Substack’s limitations on the permitted wordcount of newsletters, it has been necessary to divide it into two parts. Part I is in text form below, and there is a link to Part II at the end. Coming up on three decades ago, in the early years of writing my weekly  column for the  Irish Times , I fell into writing on a theme that might have been described as a critique of contemporary economics. I was not an ‘expert’: my sole formal qualification in economics was a pass in a Leaving Cert paper that, being doubtful if I had enough subjects to scrape through, I took at the last minute on the basis that, having plumped for Latin rather than Economics, I had sat with one ear cocked through numero