The Undeserving Society

From the bottom view, ruling class society is above all a society of deprivation, insecurity and constant toil. They are the undeserving society, while We in the ruling class are the deserving class. Recent events have demonstrated this reality.

Finland has just concluded its first year of a universal basic income experiment. Two thousand unemployed individuals were paid a monthly sum of 560 euros ($635) with no strings attached, even if they found a job. Observers found that the subjects were happier and healthier.

The New York Times quotes chief researcher Olli Kangas, “The basic income recipients of the test group reported better well-being in every way.” Has Finland found a new and better level of existence for the lower orders?

A young unemployed IT consultant, Sini Marttinen, had been out of work for almost a year when she began receiving her monthly check. Reports the Times:

Her basic income gave her enough confidence to open a restaurant with two friends. “I think the effect was a lot psychological,” she said.

“You kind of got this idea you have two years, you have the security of €560 per month,” she said, adding: “It gave me the security to start my own business.”

Another trial participant, an out of work journalist named Tuomas Muraja, published two books while during the trial. “‘If people are paid money freely that makes them creative, productive and welfare brings welfare,’ Mr. Muraja told Reuters about his experience of the pilot.”

Seems like they are onto something. It must be a positive development for the lower orders. Creative, secure, happy individuals stimulate creativity and business. It instills a sense of possibility to the bottom dwellers.

Says Muraja about his experience, “If you feel free, you feel safer and then you can do whatever you want. That is my assessment.” This of course does not sit well with Our kind. This is the complete opposite of the environment the ruling class strives to maintain. The masses do not deserve things unless they deliver the goods, or toil for more than something is worth.

Naysayers of the basic income, like Zero Hedge point point to the lack of jobs created during the trial: “Give people free money for doing nothing, with no conditions, and they will be happier to sit around all day in non-productive utopia.” Clearly they had not read the NY Times piece. The patriarchal guilt society blanketing the masses makes this propaganda easier to accept. The basic Primal Division of neighbor against neighbor is revealed the socially fictitious division between the “industrious” and the “lazy”, the “responsible and irresponsible”. The masses are comforted by these constraints, and the thought that they can’t have it better because it isn’t possible, nor do they deserve better for just being a part of society.

Bloomberg titled their article “In Finland, Money Can Buy You Happiness“. Yet the author’s does his hatchet work, unaware of insight in the title of his piece:

The first results of Finland’s two-year experiment with a universal basic income are in, and if they’re confirmed by further research, they will probably hurt the unconditional income cause. The trial run showed that “money for nothing” makes people happier but doesn’t inspire them to find work any more than traditional unemployment benefits would.

“Money for nothing” is the trigger for guilt, for the chastisement of believing in the silly impossible. All the articles We read focused on the fact that the UBI didn’t not increase the prospect for work for these unemployed individuals. Receiving a monthly check does not change the employment landscape when only 2000 people are getting it. Why should it? The Times reported,

The chief economist for the trial, Ohto Kanniainen, said the low impact on employment was not a surprise, given that many jobless people had few skills or struggled with difficult life situations or health concerns.

“Economists have known for a long time that with unemployed people financial incentives don’t work quite the way some people would expect them to,” he added.

Nobody should have expected much in the way of employment. It is well know that the New Deal did not end the depression but it helped to redirect the flow of “social nutrients” in a healthier manner. Employment came with the war production. But the UBI trial has thus far demonstrated that industry and creativity happen, which probably will involve employment at some point.

No critical article We read mentioned the positive experiences of the trial participants. They simply repeated the general assertion that UBI made individuals happier, nothing about feeling secure and confident, nothing about a sense of freedom and possibility and the little flowers that blossomed thereof. These are not supposed to exist for the many. The articles pronounced the experiment a failure because it failed to get these individuals back to work. The project did help spur new business and creativity after all.

Meanwhile, billionaire and color revolutionist George Soros chastises Europe in an article he wrote. Europe is “sleepwalking into oblivion,” and that “the people of Europe need to wake up before it is too late.” Is he urging the populace to seize upon the Finnish experiment as a stepping stone to liberation? No. He is talking about the anti-EU sentiment rife in every state of the union. He is disturbed that the extra national consolidation of political power known as the European Union is losing favor among the Euro-masses.

Soros is worried that the leadership’s immigrant quotas are detested. He blames the the “extremist” party AfD of Germany, the most powerful EU member. The AfD gained major prominence because of immigration issues. He doesn’t blame the unelected bureaucracy for its simplistic and brutal contradictory policies of austerity and immigrant importation. He has no problem with the EU setting budgetary restraints on member disregarding their sovereignty and needs as a national state.

Things were supposedly okay so long as no one challenged the mainstream parties including Merkel’s mainstream CDU. Soros writes,

The EU’s dominant country is Germany, and the dominant political alliance in Germany – between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU) – has become unsustainable. The alliance worked as long as there was no significant party in Bavaria to the right of the CSU. That changed with the rise of the extremist Alternative fiir Deutschland (AfD). In last September’s lander elections, the CSU’s result was its worst in over six decades, and the AfD entered the Bavarian Parliament for the first time.

Democracy ruined the whole setup. He informs us “an antiquated party structure prevents the popular will from finding proper expression.” But the “proper expression” has been found Mr. Soros! And that it is a rejection of corporate EU policies. All over Europe there has sprouted up many expressions of anti EU sentiments. Eastern Europe, the election of Five Star and Lega in Italy, Brexit, among many others show signs of a fraying system. Everywhere, the corporate finance era of capitalism demands austerity instead of industrial development.

Instead of paying attention to why the AfD rose to such prominence Soros essentially blames the voters and their outdated democracy. He says, “it is difficult to see how the pro-European parties can emerge victorious from the election in May unless they put Europe’s interests ahead of their own.” Soros was essentially rebuffed by the the CDU’s new leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer only a day later:

“We have made it clear that we will do everything we can to ensure that 2015 [when nearly 1 million refugees entered Germany] won’t ever be repeated,” Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said on Monday.

“We must make clear that we have learnt our lesson.”

This was also a rejection of Angela Merkel, at least superficially, reflecting popular sentiment. Zero Hedged pointed out it “It’s not often a party leader rebukes a head of state from the same political party.”

All these groups, whether they support immigrant quotas or not, do support austerity and undemocracy. It is anathema for the masses to feel expansive, confident and free as the basic income participants experienced. Many staes are contemplating the UBI. At a critical mass such an attitude poses an existential threat to ruling minority domination. And so the establishment teaches “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” and leave out “unless you are the military, very rich or big business”. In that case lunch is on the masses.

Only two days before the NY Times article announced the end of Finland’s first year of the experiment with the UBI “fantasy” the LA Times reported on military exercises taking place in downtown LA. “Don’t worry,” writes the “reporter”, undoubtedly unaware of the true irony of his words, “those low-flying dark helicopters buzzing around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach this week belong to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.” Comforting.

“The local terrain and training facilities in Los Angeles provide the Army with unique locations and simulates urban environments the service members may encounter when deployed overseas,” the LAPD said in its news release.

“There is no replacement for realistic training. Each location selected enables special operations teams and flight crews to maintain maximum readiness and proficiency, validate equipment and exercise standard safety procedures. The training is essential to ensure service members are fully trained and prepared to defend our nation overseas.”

Its all “to defend our nation overseas.” Better think twice about your possibilities and ambitious green new deals. That is another system, another reality. The ruling class society is the undeserving society.

The masses can choose their rulers like Soros and the EU squabbling over migrants while supporting austerity, the corporate order and endless war, or they can choose liberation as glimpsed through experiments in UBI. They can make it work somehow. But the establishment breeds its masses have contempt for liberation. How can someone deserve something without toiling or sacrificing for it? Thus freedom and “doing whatever you want” become irresponsible and childish canards. That is the difference between the people and the masses. The masses are resigned to their undeserving status. The people think they deserve it.