APRIL 2024 MAGAZINE

The leadership of both the Democrat progressive wing and the Republican reactionary wing voted against passing the legislation to allow the debt ceiling to be raised.

There is growing interest in the concept of providing a basic income to all adults, unconditionally. The idea is even being tried out in various places. The goal is to provide an income floor for everyone, including especially those who are living in poverty. However, this is a costly, and poorly targeted approach to the basic problem for every human society, namely, how to ensure the satisfaction of our basic biological needs, of which there some fourteen distinct categories. Here I will propose that we concentrate on ensuring the end – meeting our biological survival and reproductive needs -- rather than promoting an insufficient means.

The US budget is again teetering on running out of money because the Republicans and Democrats are playing a game of chicken on whether to raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling caps how much the US can borrow through issuing bonds. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that failure to pay US bondholders will cut revenue to foreign countries, corporations worldwide, US IRA accounts, and personal holdings, which “would undoubtedly cause a recession in the US economy.”