Think the leftists out west went crazy enough when Oakland created no-whites allowed UBI program? Time to think again. Now the California Democrats have created a…wait for it…Mao-themed welfare program. That’s right, they apparently named a welfare program, “BIG: LEAP,” which is strikingly similar to Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.” It’s unclear if the similarity in name was purposeful, but it would be odd for LA’s foray into socialism to only coincidentally be named after one of the most famous socialist programs.
The program is called BIG: LEAP. The name is an acronym that stands for “Basic Income Guaranteed: Los Angeles Economic Assistance Pilot.” LA’s Great Leap Forward is meant to be a “bold” initiative “aimed at confronting poverty.”
The website for the program boldly declares that:
The relentless poverty experienced by too many Angelenos emerges out of a lack of financial resources, not a lack of judgment. While Angelenos are doing everything in their power to achieve financial security, the burdens of a high cost of living, unaffordable housing options, and insufficient wages too often exceed families’ ability to confront those challenges on their own — and we know that the economic difficulties caused by COVID-19 will outlast the pandemic itself.
Before arguing that the only way to alleviate such poverty:
Employment alone cannot always break the cycle of poverty, and research has consistently demonstrated that direct cash aid is a powerful tool for ensuring greater stability for vulnerable Americans.
So, other than a tasteless reference to the largest mass murder of the 20th Century, what is BIG: LEAP? It’s a UBI program that, in the words of the website, “will provide approximately 3,000 individuals with $1,000 per month for 12 months.”
That means that whoever gets it, whatever crimes they commit or how little they contribute to society, will keep getting cash stolen from the taxpayer and handed out by the government simply for existing. Don’t believe me? Here’s how the BIG: LEAP website describes the details of the program:
These will be unconditional, regular, and direct cash payments to individual participants that supplement existing welfare programs. This means there are no restrictions on how the money can be spent and no requirements for the participants. GBI programs are founded upon the belief that the people enduring financial instability or poverty are best positioned to make informed financial decisions that efficiently address their household’s needs— whether that means paying for rent, a new tire, or an unexpected trip to urgent care. These participants are granted the freedom to meet their most pressing needs without delay.”
The program aims to financially “uplift” the 3,000 families chosen not by helping them get better jobs, learn more valuable skills, or educate them on personal finance, but just by redistributing and handing out cash. We’ll see how effective that is, especially since LBJ’s “Great Society” and “War on Poverty” handout programs have been such massive failures.
For reference, the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s mass slaughter of the Chinese peasantry from which BIG: LEAP must have drawn its name, resulted in somewhere around 45 or 70 million deaths by famine.
As Senator Rand Paul put it in his The Case Against Socialism, “Mao led the country to ruin and is responsible for more deaths than either Hitler or Stalin.”
Further, Senator Paul notes, that famine was caused by the very socialist policies the Great Leap Forward was supposed to bring about: “The famine was no accident. When ownership is collectivized, the incentive to work harder, to be more productive evaporates.”
And when the populace proved unwilling to voluntarily starve to death, the type of thugs that Churchill famously termed the “some form of Gestapo” forced them to with truncheons: “Like all attempts at government-enforced equality, the need for the truncheon arose. In China, sticks served the purpose of truncheons.”
So that’s the world that LA is naming its wealth redistribution scheme after; one where tens of millions died thanks to a socialist tyrant and his truncheon-armed thugs.
Applications for LA’s Great Leap Forward open on November 7th.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
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