A 'Universal Basic Income' will trap people in poverty

The town of Stockton, California is trying an experiment. They’re giving every low-income resident a “universal basic income” of $500 per month. There’s no catch, no obligation. Mayor Michael Tubbs believes it’s a way to end poverty. I’m betting right here and now that he’s wrong.

The Economic Security Project is contributing $1 million so they can gather data to see if this really works. What they’ll find is Stockton will become a magnet for people who don’t want to work. Bums are what we used to call them before the PC police drove that word from our lexicon. But bums are what they’ll see.

From the Los Angeles Times

The irony is some Silicon Valley tech moguls are pushing the UBI. This in the competitive world where meritocracy is how one gets ahead. Innovation and hard work drive the valley. Why would they think giving anyone a UBI would be the answer? Guilt. These people have gotten so rich so fast that they feel guilty about it. They believe that “giving back” means welfare. That’s exactly what people who are stuck in poverty don’t need.

How many times have you seen a guy standing at the off ramp with a sign claiming he’ll work for food? And how many times have you seen a motorist offer him work? Never. They give them money. The person rarely buys food with it. He or she uses the money to buy whatever substance that’s pushed them to the side of the road in the first place. They had it right with their sign. If they actually worked for food they wouldn’t be on the street. But most aren’t willing to work. That’s the problem. And offering someone a UBI will only exacerbate the problem.

Los Angeles’ homeless population has exploded in recent years. Why? Because they’ve made themselves a magnet for the homeless. The county of Los Angeles now spends over $1 billion a year managing homelessness. One of the brilliant ideas they’ve come up with is tiny homes for the homeless. I’m not kidding. There’s an organization called My Tiny House Project LA. They build cracker box houses for the homeless. Right now they’re mad at the city for not providing enough space to put these ridiculous little dog houses. They actually think that solves the problem.

I know this may sound counter-intuitive, but homeless people aren’t homeless because they don’t have homes. They’re homeless because they don’t have jobs. There are myriad reasons why they don’t have jobs. Until we get at that problem we’ll never solve homelessness. 

Many of these people are mentally ill. You can thank a judge back during the Carter era for turning them out on the streets. The rest mostly have substance abuse problems. Putting them in a tiny house is not going to solve either of those problems.

For the mentally ill we need to get them mental health care. And not just a diagnosis and a thirty-day supply of Xanax and put them back on the streets. Many of these people need to be institutionalized. Until we change the laws and overrule that court back in the ‘70s they will continue to roam the streets without proper mental health care.

As for the addicts, there’s only one solution and that is to get off the drugs or alcohol. That’s only going to happen when that person decides they’ve hit rock bottom and they want the help. Until then, giving them a UBI is only going to prolong their misery.

Stockton, unfortunately, will judge their success by how many people they suck into the government system.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Trump's comment about 'sh**hole countries' was correct

We’ve had some time to digest the furor over President Trump’s alleged comments about certain countries as “sh*%holes.” Now it’s time to learn from the experience.

First, the president denies using that particular term. That may make this whole discussion moot if it were ever possible to prove it either way. Several lawmakers back up his account. The usual Trump detractors have feigned outrage over the mere use of the language when they’ve called him far worse. This was a private conversation in the Oval Office about a pressing issue in this country. Immigration—both legal and illegal—is something that needs to be tackled. Having participants in the debate go tattletale to the Washington Post is counterproductive to solving the problem. They sound like little babies who are only concerned about scoring political points and not really doing anything constructive.

But let’s concentrate on the terminology itself. We all know what the president is alleged to have said. Is it true? Without question it is. Haiti, for example, has a poverty rate near sixty percent. It certainly qualifies for what might henceforth be a new informal State Department designation. According to the UN, of the twenty poorest nations on earth, fourteen are in Africa.

Exhibit A in Trump's immigration argument

Critics of the president’s choice of words immediately called it—and him—racist. These are basically the same type of people who’ve stood idly by for generations ignoring the conditions in these very countries. If they haven’t ignored them they’ve applied liberal solutions that have only made matters worse. They blame “colonialism” for the plight of these countries. Most were subjects of either the French or the British. That argument doesn’t hold water. Hong Kong was a former possession of the British Empire. So was Canada. And you may remember a little possession of the British by the name of the United States of America.

The widespread poverty in these now-designated “sh*%holes” is due largely to the tin-horn dictatorships or communist regimes that followed their independence. The liberal solution is to redistribute resources from the countries that have figured this out to the countries who haven’t. Naturally, those resources are bottled up by the same despots who’ve made sure the rest of their country remains poor.

That’s not what the meeting in the Oval Office was about. It was about immigrants from these countries. President Trump’s contention is we shouldn’t be importing people who are prone to either be criminals or wards of the state or both. And he’s exactly right. Immigration to this country should be like a job interview. A State Department official should look across the desk at the applicant and ask him or her what they can contribute to this great country of ours. That doesn’t mean they have to be doctors. It means they need to be able to add something positive when they arrive, not drag the country down.

Yes, there are exceptions for refugees, but as we’ve seen with the recent El Salvadoran flap, some refugees come and never go home. These folks came to escape an earthquake in 2001 and they’re still here.

Check out Roy Beck’s gum ball illustration from Numbers USA on YouTube some time. You’ll understand that we can’t possibly take in everyone who wants to come here. Nor should we. Many of these people should remain in their own countries to bring pressure to bear on the sinister forces that keep them in poverty.

Donald Trump, in his crude but effective style, has finally brought the issue to the fore. We can either call it racist or address it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Common sense inequality

The unions are at it again.  They’ve expanded the fast food strike from 20 restaurants in New York City to 200 nationwide.  Their complaint?  The same old tired refrain of a living wage.  They want $15 per hour.  The minimum wage is $7.25.

The truth is only a small percentage of restaurant workers make minimum wage.  Those are entry-level positions.  In fact, the restaurant industry is one of the easiest industries in which

to advance.  One has to be willing to work hard, work smart and take on more responsibility.  That’s the problem with liberalism.  It’s never the liberal’s fault.  It’s always someone else’s fault. 

Let me tell you something.  If you’re 50 and you’re making minimum wage at a fast food restaurant it’s your fault.  Barring some mental or physical handicap, if you’re trying to make a living off minimum wage you’ve made some bad decisions.

That’s the conversation few in this country want to have.  What is the root cause of poverty?  It’s impossible to say with certainty what the percentage is but it’s safe to say that most people are poor because of bad choices.

You may gasp at that notion but it’s true.  Let’s put it another way.  How do people get to be rich?  Trust-fund babies aside, people who become rich do so based on the choices they make.  Some may call it luck but Bill Cosby was once asked if he felt like he’d been lucky.  He said it’s funny but the harder he works the luckier he gets.

Fortunes aren’t made by happenstance.  They’re built.  That’s why it irks me when people talk about an unequal distribution of wealth.  Wealth is not distributed.  It’s earned.  If these folks striking at these restaurants really want to better themselves they need to get back inside the store and start making it happen.  Make yourself a valuable employee.  I’m not promising you’ll never get fired but I can assure you you’ll go a lot further in life than you will standing out in front of some restaurant holding a sign complaining that you’re not making enough money.

Were I the owner of a restaurant and my employees were striking in front of my store I’d fire the lot of them.  There are plenty of folks looking for a job and, moreover, looking for an opportunity.  That’s what these striking employees can’t see.  They can’t see the opportunity.  

The average salary for a McDonald’s store manager is $42,000 per year.  Too many people turn up their noses at $42,000 a year.  When I first started out in radio I made $6,000 a year.  Six grand!  That’s the equivalent to $17,000 a year today.  Did I think I was underpaid?  I never really thought about it.  I was there for the opportunity.  I was there to learn, to grow, to advance.

These folks standing outside of Taco Bell and McDonald’s have absolutely no ambition.  And they’re being brainwashed by union thugs who’ve convinced them they deserve a “living wage.”  They deserve to be fired!

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Curing American poverty

The Associated Press recently conducted a study based on all manner of government statistics and national surveys and determined that Americans’ economic security is low compared to prior decades.  They based their determination on how many Americans have either lived below the poverty level, taken government assistance or been unemployed or a combination of the three.  Aside from the government assistance, I’ve been there.  Many of us have.

The point of the study was to try and figure out how to make Americans more economically secure but they sidestepped a major factor.  Many Americans are economically insecure for the very reason that they’re trapped on public assistance.

We hear the president and others complain about a shrinking middle class.  If the middle class is shrinking it’s because some are moving up, not down.  The poverty rate was arrested by LBJ’s Great Society.  After a decade of decline in the poverty rate prior to the big social programs the poverty rate has remained pretty much steady since the mid-‘60s.  It fluctuates a point or two depending on whether or not we’re in a recession but the percentage of people in poverty hovers between 12 and 15 percent.  From 1959 until the Great Society the poverty rate dropped from around 22 percent to 14 percent.  Since then we’ve sort of been locked in a holding pattern.

Before I make this next point I want you to suspend your emotions and think logically.  Poverty, by and large, is the product of bad choices.  Yes, I know there are some exceptions but the vast number of poor people are poor because of the choices they’ve made in life.  Whether or not you’re poor is based largely on whether or not you can find and hold a job.  The recession notwithstanding, many people can’t hold a job either because of their personal habits – i.e.: drugs and/or alcohol – because they don’t show up for work or because of their attitudes while they’re at work.

Plenty of people show up for a job interview ill-prepared, improperly dressed and lacking basic personal hygiene.  These are easy fixes but for reasons unknown some people don’t want to be told what to do.  But a major culprit of cyclical poverty is the very Great Society that was designed to lift people out of it.  You know the drill.  We have people now in third generation dependence because that’s the way they were raised.  Living free of government shackles is not even an option for too many Americans.  It should be.

Conservatives judge success of their policies by how many people are off welfare.  Liberals judge their success by how many people are on it.  Take the food stamp program, for example.  The number of people on food stamps has exploded during the Obama administration and they crow about it.  It’s a national disgrace.  Abuse is rampant and Obama made it even easier to get on the program.  He justified that by saying he needed to do it because of the recession but think about that for a moment.  If there’s a level at which one needs public assistance then hard times will bring more people to that level.  We don’t need to go out to the street to greet them.

We also need to come to terms with the fact that plenty of people are poor and happy.  Elitists love to look down their noses at poor people and assume they can’t be happy unless they surround themselves with the trappings of wealth.

I’m all about showing poor people a way out but first they have to want to go.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Money can't buy you good health

I love the way the mainstream media refer to any disparity in income as "inequality."  Like it's not fair that some people are rich while others are poor or that the money was just doled out unevenly instead of actually being earned.  In fact, the media elite are obsessed with fairness.  But what is fair?

A recent article in the Washington Post decried the life expectancy gap between the rich and the poor.  It was as if to add insult to injury the rich not only enjoy a more prosperous life they enjoy it longer.  Somehow they equated money to longevity and nothing could be further from the truth.  It's not the money itself that makes people live longer.  It's the people who earn the money.

Could it be that many of the same principles that make people rich also make people healthier?  Let's look at some of the things that kill us.  Smoking, for example.  This is certainly not to judge anyone who smokes but we all know that smoking increases your chances of dying early.  It's common knowledge that poor folks smoke more than rich folks.  A gallup poll from a few years back shows that 34% of those making less than $12,000 per year smoke as opposed to only 13% of those making more than $120,000.

Obesity is another big killer and it's a well-known fact that, at least in the United States, the lower the income the higher the obesity rate.  What's ironic is those are the people most likely on food stamps.  Were we really concerned about obesity we would be making sure that food stamp cards could only be used to purchase healthy food.  Instead, people like Mayor Bloomberg in New York would rather target all of us.

Picture in your mind the guy standing in line at the convenience store with the six-pack of beer waiting to get to the counter to buy cigarettes and lottery tickets.  Do you think he's more likely to be rich or poor?  So, what if he scratches off the right number combo and wins $10 million?  Do you think just because he's now rich he's more likely to live longer?

People who are well-disciplined generally are well-disciplined across every aspect of their lives.  They're not only more successful but they're usually better educated and they're most likely healthier.  We don't need income redistribution because, as I just illustrated with the lottery winner, windfalls don't lead to healthier lifestyles.

If the nanny state people really want to see a huge change in this country then make it illegal for anyone to get any kind of public assistance if they're buying cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets.  If they have money for all that then obviously they don't need my help.  If they really need the assistance then they'll change their bad habits.

And for crying out loud, why haven't we instituted drug testing as a prerequisite to getting any kind of welfare?

But here's the thing.  If they changed their bad habits they wouldn't need our help in the first place because the problem is not obesity or smoking or income inequality.  It's personal responsibility.  The moment we begin to encourage that is the moment we begin to actually solve the problem.