The Foundation for Government Accountability was founded in Florida in 2011 by Tarren Bragdon after cutting his chops in Maine at the Maine Heritage Policy Center and then as adviser to Maine’s governor, LePage. It was in Maine where Bragdon and a cohort of fellow young conservatives gained a reputation for outrageous anti-welfare policies.
“I remember them as a pack of inexperienced, activist right-wingers that went crazy on welfare reform,” said Cynthia Dill, a former state senator to the Washington Post in 2018. “It galled me that they had no expertise whatsoever in health and human services but were appointed to places of power by the LePage administration.”
A common argument made against UBI is some form of “they’re poor so they don’t know how to handle money; if you give them money they’ll just spend it irresponsibly.” At the very least, UBI experiments have shown that the recipients use the money responsibly.
No one points out how wild and inappropriately the rich use money. No one needs a private jet. No one needs dozens of foreign locales in their life. No one needs multiple homes when they can only live in one. The poor they rail against live without those things, so can the oligarchs.
No disagreement from me there. I don’t think billionaires should be allowed to exist.