#QuarantinedThoughts — Irony

My first experience of receiving universal income will be in the United States. Now isn’t it — as Alanis might say — Ironic?

I’m among the millions of Americans waiting for a check from the Federal Government, although I have tried to give them my bank details since I’m really not keen on having Donald Trump’s autograph, as much as that might be hard for him to believe.

For so many years I’ve struggled to explain to baffled Yankees the fact that Socialism does not equate to a penchant for burning money, eating children, and curtailing all their cherished liberties such as eating fried foods, watching endless adverts on television, or even owning a gun.

But it did mean — and they could never really quite wrap their head around this — that if and when I got sick, my first thought was unlikely to be “how much is that going to cost me?” There’s a very good reason why the Breaking Bad plot only works in this country…

And if I really wanted to mess with their heads, I told them about the conversations I’d had with some friends in Finland, about the reasoning behind the idea that you could/should provide every citizen with a certain amount of money — enough to meet their essential needs — pretty much with no strings attached, but perhaps excluding the very rich.