Perspective: “Simplistic socialism” fuels pols' idealistic, money-wasting ventures

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You get a free house, and you get a free salary, and you get a free attorney! Steve Heimoff of Coalition for a Better Oakland explains that local welfare state proponents may be well-meaning, but fail to bubble in the crucial question: Where are we, you know, getting the money to fund expensive social programs? (Eyeing you, Ellenberg & Cortese's guaranteed income initiative.) In case you've lost the answer key, Heimoff clarifies: from raising your taxes.

The phrase “simplistic socialists” has been bouncing around the internet. It has no established definition yet, but generally refers to the kind of people (think of the Oakland City Council) whom we call “woke.” They believe in Big Government—confiscatory taxes to redistribute money to poor people, and sketchy schemes that generally are totally untransparent to the public—but they have no idea of the consequences of their actions. …

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One example of simplistic socialists or simplistic socialism is the belief, common in Oakland, that homelessness can be done away with if “the government” would simply build cheap housing for everyone. You hear this all the time from simplistic socialists. Any candidate who promises to “build housing for everyone” is likely to get elected, even though the promise is a lie.

The reason this position is “simplistic” is because the idea is preposterously unmoored from reality. The people who say “Oakland should build housing for everyone” never stop to ask, Where will the money come from? That’s a very simple question; it doesn’t take an Einstein to understand that somebody has to pay the workers who construct the housing, and buy the materials it’s built of.

Another example of simplistic socialism is when wokes demand that the police department be defunded or abolished and the money “reimagined” elsewhere. In their fever dream of a police-less city, they never get around to explaining how their plan, if enacted, would deal with the mass criminality that surely would overwhelm Oakland were the police department significantly reduced.

This article originally appeared in Coalition for a Better Oakland. Read the whole thing here.

Related:

• Perspective: Bucking Ellenberg's views, universal basic income a “terrible tool” for income disparity

• Economic expert: Guaranteed income programs “either very expensive or very stingy”

• Study: Guaranteed income makes recipients less likely to seek more or improved work

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