19 | Fact & Comment
To bring about an economic boom, a regular government check for all is the wrong prescription.
It’s called universal basic income, and the idea is gaining ground here and in Europe, especially with Covid-19 hitting economies so hard. The government would pay every adult a certain amount of money every month, whether you work or not. Democratic party activists love the idea. So do some Republicans. The Pope came out in favor of the notion. A candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Andrew Yang, advocated paying every adult $1,000 a month. He didn’t win, but his idea is catching on. Italy has a minimum-income measure that tops up one’s income if it falls below a certain level. Spain is mulling over something similar.
While Yang’s proposal sounds enticing—who wouldn’t want an extra $12,000 a year?—it would do real harm.
Let’s make clear that we are not talking about such safetynet programs as food stamps, unemployment benefits or Medicaid. A guaranteed income would be corrosive to people’s work ethic, especially as politicians raised the benefits whenever elections rolled around. It would eat away at the crucial link between effort and reward and would lure many people away from pursuing more productive lives. This is wrong, morally and economically.
Work is critical to making our lives meaningful. It gives us purpose. It provides structure and encourages discipline, helping us to look beyond the immediate moment and think about the future. It encourages the can-do spirit that is unique to the American culture. Work produces the resources that we consume and the innovations that improve our standard of living.
Then there are the major practical problems of implementing such a program. It would be hideously expensive. It’s estimated that Yang’s scheme would cost $3 trillion a year. He would impose a 10% national supersales tax on top of all the other taxes you pay. And, realistically, that rate would have to be considerably higher. A car that currently costs $30,000 would set you back $35,000 to $40,000 under Yang’s plan.
These new and very heavy tax burdens would damage the economy by destroying capital, thereby hurting the productive investments that are essential for higher incomes and a better standard of living. A stagnant economy would worsen opportunity and exacerbate inequality.
A more constructive approach would be to reform and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is, in effect, a rebate of the payroll tax. This would give lower-income individuals higher take-home pay, tax-free.
And creating the conditions for a booming economy— such as tax cuts—would be the most beneficial plan of all. Remember, before Covid-19, the pay of lower-income workers was rising at a faster pace than that of anyone else.
a distillation of millennia of hard-earned human experience about justice, morality and self-advancement. He could quote entire chapters of it by heart.” Yet he had clearly come to believe there was a larger force at work in the world, once telling a general, “Did I not see the hand of God in the crisis—I could not sustain it.”
There has been no shortage of books about this crucial time in American history and about this speech. But Achorn, a noted editor and author, does a splendid job of recreating the atmosphere and experience of being in Washington on the day before and the day of Lincoln’s second inauguration. He has a gift for evocative, elaborate detail, and his descriptions of Washington—from a canal of stinking sewage to the new Capitol dome to the brothels and the various social functions—give readers a full flavor of the good and the plentifully ugly.
Achorn is masterful at sketching known personalities, such as Frederick Douglass, Clara Barton and Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, as well as the lesser known, such as the severely wounded General Selden Connor (who survived to become governor of Maine) and the Reverend John Bachman of South Carolina, who bring the era to life.
Especially moving is Achorn’s portrait of Walt Whitman (whose book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, was hotly controversial; Salmon Chase, the newly minted Chief Justice who would swear in Lincoln for his second term, thought the book obscene). Whitman wrangles an easy clerical job in order to spend immense time on his true mission: tending to wounded and sick soldiers. “On his rounds, Whitman brought with
him gifts of candy, fruit, tobacco, stationery, stamped envelopes, newspapers, small amounts of money—all materials the hospitals did not provide. But his greatest gifts were surely his sympathy, his encouragement and his presence.”
The author does a fine job with Lincoln himself. “Some of the most damaging ordeals any child could suffer— the loss of a mother, abandonment, nights filled with fear, loneliness, filth, cold and hunger—were among Lincoln’s formative experiences. And when he was nineteen, his beloved sister, Sarah, died in the agonies of childbirth. In an 1862 letter to a grieving child, he wrote: ‘In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares . . . . I have had experience enough to know what I say.’”
Lincoln’s rise in the world was jagged, but all his life experiences had prepared him well for the harsh ordeals of the war, in which disappointments and setbacks were constant. Looking back, one is still astonished at all the obstacles he faced, from incompetent generals to bitter political divisions in the North— and in his own party—not to mention domestic troubles and tragedy.
Achorn’s book is filled with memorable anecdotes, such as General Sherman’s blowing up 23 cannons in Charleston, South Carolina, including the one that fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, which formally began hostilities. Sherman blew up the cannons at the time he figured Lincoln would be taking his second oath of office.
Of course, over everything looms the sinister figure of John Wilkes Booth, a dashing actor. Distinctly interesting in this ugly episode was Booth’s relationship with Lucy Hale, daughter of a prominent political figure: “Strangely, Lucy—who surely had extensive knowledge of Booth’s activities leading up to the tragedy—would be left out of the investigation entirely.”
The contemporary reaction to Lincoln’s speech was all over the map. Lincoln’s own assessment was that the speech would “wear as well as— perhaps better than—any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular.”
Stop at Nothing—by Michael Ledwidge (Hanover Square Press, $27). Here’s a book that retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, victim of rogue agencies in Washington, would find grimly satisfying. The rest of us will simply enjoy a fast-paced thriller by an author who has mastered his craft, with lots of action, knowing detail, plenty of twists and turns and characters to cheer or hiss.
Mike Gannon, an American expat and Bahamas-based diving instructor, is out on his boat when he witnesses a Gulfstream crash into the ocean. He can’t call for help because of a radio mishap that occurred when he was trying to haul in the proverbial big fish that got away. Surprised that no rescue planes or boats are coming to the site, he decides to go over the side and dive down to the wreckage. There are no markings on the aircraft, but inside are six dead bodies—and two cases that he brings up only to discover that one is loaded with hundred-dollar bills and uncut diamonds. Gannon’s conclusion: drug runners. He decides to take the loot and hide it in an obscure blue hole—“cave-like water-filled sinkholes that had been formed by eons of rain eroding through the soft Bahamian limestone.” This one has the advantage of an “amazing subway-like network of corridors and caves” that will make discovery by other divers impossible.
But instead of a windfall, Gannon soon learns he has poked an African hornets’ nest of high-powered, highly placed government officials who have all the scruples of ISIS—beheaders with a deadly must-do agenda all their own. Torture, cold-blooded murder, cover-ups and quick but lethal gun battles abound. Along the way we learn that Gannon has a rather intriguing past of his own, which makes him a formidable foe.