That's why the residents of Switzerland, a country in the heart of Europe which has opted out of the European Union and chosen to continue issuing its own currency, have signed sufficient petitions to put the proposal for a guaranteed stipend for each adult to a referendum.
Media reports refer to a minimum monthly wage equivalent to $2800, but, since no work will be required, it's not a wage, but a distribution of currency directly from the Swiss Treasury.
I suppose the question still to be answered is whether the system of taxation will be adequate to keep the franc flowing back to the Treasury (as revenue) at a sufficient rate. What will prevent hoarders from siphoning off the francs and sequestering them in vaults or hiding them in overseas banks?
That the U.S. still serves as an inspiration overseas perhaps comes as a surprise. But, one of the proponents of the initiative, credits us honestly.
“It could be one of the landmark historical moments, like the abolition of slavery, or the civil rights movement – of course, those who don’t want it will find excuses, but those who do want it will find solutions,” Enno Schmidt, founder of the Basic Income Initiative, told RT.
It could be that the European Union's move to a common currency has inadvertently revealed the disability under which the several United States have been suffering since the end of the Civil War and the adoption of a common U.S. currency, whose availability is "managed" by Congress.
Richard Cook opines on his blog:
The grinches also claim that nations are too broke for such largess, ignoring the fact that they are broke because they have mortgaged their budgets through borrowing from the private banking system instead of exercising their own sovereign power of money-creation.
While that critique may apply to the euro zone to the extent that the European Central Bank is a private entity, the problem in the U.S. is slightly different and, I would argue, one of convolution. That is, although the Treasury issues our sovereign currency, the Congress, in setting up the Federal Reserve Bank, a public/private partnership, has effectively diverted the distribution of our currency through the banks, into Wall Street and thence back to the Treasury to provide a "cut" in the form of dividends and interest (unearned income) to the banksters. And this unearned income on which, by the way, the money bags pay no taxes, then constitutes our national debt and serves as an excuse for Congress not providing for the general welfare as they should.
This diversion of dollars through the Wall Street banks, a sort of money laundering operation, is in contrast in the U.S. to the direct distribution of pensions and supplements from the Social Security Trust Fund, as well as the Unemployment or Worker's Compensation Fund, over which Congress has minimal control. Which is exactly what motivates the constant refrain that the system is at risk of being deep-sixed, if we don't keep our "protectors" in place. That's how a goodly number of members of Congress extort electoral support, by threatening to withhold currency from one population or another. Moreover, both the sequester and the recent shut-down were designed to make believers out of an electorate that might have doubted it could be accomplished.
Of course, one reason Congress has to resort to such drastic measures is that decades of putting on the squeeze have already slowed the flow of our currency from a trickle to a drop. So, a full shut off was needed to make the point.
If Republicans were sincere about having a smaller federal government, they'd support a guaranteed income, as Richard Nixon proposed, and eliminate all the busibodies and middlemen who now vett the citizens and determine whether they are deserving not just of lunch, but of breakfast, dinner and medical care. Not to mention all the eleemosynary institutions dedicated to leper-licking and delivering paliative measures to burnish their own egos.
What will happen to charities, if all adults get access to their currency by right?