insurance....

so....  eye am going to approach the basic income discussion in as many ways as possible....  eye think that eye got some of your attention....  simply by saying basic income....  because some of you....  like andrew yang....  are already sold on the subject....  although he and eye disagree on implementation....  eye would give it to everyone....  eye am pretty sure that he would not....  and....  eye would use it to replace the existing welfare state....  eye am pretty sure that he would not....  but eye know....  that many democrats....  are already sold on the basic income concept....

hopefully....  eye got more of your attention....  when eye wrote the chapter on actually ending poverty....  because eye believe that many of you want to eliminate poverty....  eye believe that most of you have good hearts....  and you do not want to see people living in poverty....  so....  when eye changed the title of the chapter....  to actually ending poverty....  hopefully eye got more of you to take a second look at a basic income....  because....  a basic income....  could end poverty overnight....

so....  this chapter....  is my next attempt....  phrasing it in a different way....  as an insurance policy....  for all of the unfortunate people in the world....  the people....  like the people who lost thier farms in africa when we dumped cheap rice on their markets....  or the people who live in detroit....  where jobs have gone away....  and then property values have plumetted....  and people have lost their entire life savings....  through no fault of their own....  it is easy for the people of my city....  the people of boulder....  to look the other way....  to say....  eye am a self made man or woman....  even though half of their wealth has come from luck....  half of their wealth has come from choosing the right city to live in at the right time....  from an increase in property values....  and so....  these people will find it hard to imagine....  a life without money....  a life where nothing is going their way....  but....  it can happen....  everything that you have worked for....  can be stripped away from you....  in an instant....  would you not want an insurance policy....  a floor....  on which you could not sink any lower....  if everything went wrong in your life today....  you would have some level of support....  to keep you from being homeless and starving....  think of it this way....  many of the poor today....  were doing well at some point in their lives....  do you think that they ever imagined being poor....

one of the major problems with psychology....  if you have money....  you cannot imagine losing it....  and so it is difficult for you to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has lost it all....  it is difficult for you to understand....  that most of the time....  it is not their fault....  it was just a run of bad luck....  it is so so so hard for the rich to see any of this....  part of it is arrogance....  you want to think that you are in control....  you want to think....  that you are a self made man or woman....  

AND....  once you have lost it....  you cannot convince the rich....  that it was by no fault of your own....  and you cannot convince them to help....  and you cannot convince them that you are not dumb....  and you do not need them to tell you what to do....  what you can eat....  where you can live....  how to do this....  how to do that....  

it is one of the hardest things to do....  to convince the rich....  that they are not the smartest people in the world....  and that the poor....  are not the dumbest people in the world....  and they do not need to be told what to do....  or how to live thier lives.... 

and even harder....  is to convince you....  that one day....  you will need an insurance policy....  you will need a basic income....  but eye am here to tell you....  many of you will....  

eye have a feeling....  that this is going to be my weakest arguements for a basic income....