So would all the other frights on ES's list.

It is depressing that there is still an audience receptive to this recycled 60s-era "economic democracy" (which is itself recycled marxism). But the incentives are obvious --- everybody wants a free lunch, and, unfortunately, many people are not too fussy about what they must do to obtain one. They will find almost any rationalization for stealing someone else's money and handing it over to them plausible. And since they have absorbed since childhood a whole corpus of nonsensical doctrines regarding the nature of rights, the structure of society, and the basis of law --- not to mention American history --- populist screeds like ES's go down quite easily.

I don't expect this latest collectivist free lunch scheme to pass (though I would not be greatly surprised if it did), but if it is rejected, it will be, unfortunately, for pragmatic reasons of the sort you mention. And then it will be resurrected in another decade or so by the next cohort of populist ideologues. What's needed is to root out the misguided basal beliefs which render it plausible to many uncritical minds.

 out of  found this valuable. Do you find this valuable?