atomic_fungus (atomic_fungus) wrote,
atomic_fungus
atomic_fungus

#6007: "Experts" don't know anything

"Experts Say a Universal Basic Income Would Boost US Economy by Staggering $2.5 Trillion" claims the headline of this piece.

No. No, it won't. Do you know why?

Because if the government is going to hand out $1,000 per month to every Tom, Dick, and Harry over the age of 18, it is going to have to get that money from somewhere. Governments tax things. Money spent on taxes cannot be spent on other things; so if Joe Richguy has to pay an additional $100,000 in taxes to satisfy the government's demand for money, he's not going to have that $100,000 to spend on a new boat or Corvette or whatever.

What this would do is move $2.5 trillion from one segment of the economy to another. It wouldn't boost the economy, any more than you get $10 richer when you move a Hamilton from your wallet to your front pocket.

"Universal basic income" is pie-in-the-sky socialism. The United States is already groaning under a staggering national debt; we literally cannot afford any more spending.

* * *

Huge failure for Britain's much-celebrated National Health Service. To be fair, operations do not always have perfect outcomes. There are times when the simplest procedure can go bad; it may be well-understood but shit happens and there's always a possibility that something serious can go wrong. It does happen.

That said, however--this poor woman went in to have some kind of ovarian cyst removed, and now is facing the possibility of having a colostomy. I don't know how you get to the point she's at from there unless the surgeon really fucked up.

* * *

So, Tom Baker is going to help them finish "Shada", a lost episode of Doctor Who which was never completed due to a strike at BBC.

Tom Baker refused to appear in "The Five Doctors" because "When your character dies, he's supposed to stay dead." (Quoted from memory, from when I saw him at a DW convention in Saint Louis in 1984.) Suddenly, though, 40 years lader he's coming back to finish an ep?

I have a tape of the episode, incomplete as it was, with him doing some narration etc. I'll probably pop for the completed ep with the much-older Tom Baker in it.

Or not.
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