SR,

Following your usual modus operandi of ignoring all the points you've lost and homing in on one where you think you have a chance.

So assuming that your claims being bollocks of
1) The kibbutzim being the cornerstones of Israel,
2) The Scandinavian countries outperforming the US
3) Democratic socialism being the panacea for 3rd world ills

Your heartwarming homily about the 11 homeless chosen from thousands who given a pile of dosh suddenly turned their lives around is wildly unrepresentative of real life. The quarantining of welfare had one purpose, and that was to stop people with drug habits spending their money on drugs and using it for housing, food etc, which it did.

I have no doubt that there are people for whom a hand out will change their lives, but for the other 99.9% of people, the money is simply a waste.

//The most effective treatment so far is to quarantine drug addicts' welfare payments.//

How does that help the unemployed who don't have drug problems, i.e. most of them?

Dear Shadow minister,

You wrote;

“Following your usual modus operandi of ignoring all the points you've lost and homing in on one where you think you have a chance.”

No you clown, I just stopped enabling your normal diversionary tactics and focused on the topic at hand which was UBI.

I could have shown how the Kibbutz movement started in the Ottoman era and continued to grow through British rule. I could have pointed out that at its peak the movement represented over 7% of the population at its peak and over 120,000 members. I could have gone on to say that over 15% of Israel's cabinet members were made up from those in the movement and to illustrate how important they were in the defense of Israel. But then you could have found this out yourself by a quick look at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

Next I could have pointed out how shallow your notion of a country's success is., that to measure these things purely on blunt economic statistics shows little imagination and is quite revealing of your base beliefs, that the average GDP per capita of the Scandinavian countries combined outstrips that of the US, that you were quoting indicators not confirmed data.

Sweden GDP Growth rate = 3.3%
http://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/gdp-growth-annual

USA GDP Growth rate = 2.6%
http://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth-annual

I could have mentioned that Sweden has a workforce participation rate of 72.9%
http://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/labor-force-participation-rate

While the US languishes at an abysimal 62.9%
http://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate

I could have gone on to note that Sweden ranks 9th for the life expectancy of its citizens while the US ranks 31st, one above Cuba. That the US has the highest ratio of its citizenry incarcerated than any other country in the world.

Why do you think I no longer have the inclination got to this extent with you any longer? Because you have turned into a lightweight. You are not quite to runner's standard but the neo-con mantas that you spew out so regularly are so easily disassembled and shown for the nonsense they are that the challenge has gone out of the game.

SR,

Resorting to ad hominems again? The first sign of a feeble intellect.

As for lightweights, introducing targeted trial on a handful of people as representative of a nationwide policy is intellectually shoddy if not dishonest. What do you recommend next? Investment in Lotto tickets based on the experience of winners?

As for the kibbutzim, while important to Israel culturally, normally makes up a tiny fraction of the population, the rest of whom are strongly capitalist and even then have given up much of their pure socialist origins with many differentiating on pay and outsourcing teaching etc.

Similarly, employment/unemployment rates are based on those looking for work, and the US's unemployment is 4% which is pretty close to full employment. Participation rates are calculated differently in different countries, for example, Sweden's official retirement age when one is excluded from the calculation is 61 and in the US 67.

Similarly, average life expectancy is greatly affected by genetics and lifestyle, and Singapore which is rampantly capitalist has the same life expectancy as Sweden.

However, I do admit that the two graphs I pulled from trading economics appear to be using different scales:
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/sweden-gdp-growth.png?s=swgdpaqq&v=201802280853v&d1=20080101&d2=20181231
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-gdp-growth.png?s=gdp+cqoq&v=201803281234v&d1=20080101&d2=20181231

You still have yet to provide any evidence that a UBI is in any way superior to a decent welfare system.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You wrote;

“Resorting to ad hominems again? The first sign of a feeble intellect.”

Oh my dear fellow, not withstanding my feeble intellect any ad hominems from me pale in comparison to calling someone anti-Semitic, something you never properly retracted. So get over them as they are likely to continue.

Well done on conceding you were wrong with your figures on the relative GDF growth rates between the USA and Sweden. You originally contended that they supported the merits of hard capitalism over democratic socialism. Now that they have been shown to be the other way around you will of course be conceding the opposite.

As to employment participation, since 2001 the trend for Sweden has been positive steadily rising from under 71% to over 72% while the US has fallen from nearly 68% to 63%.

What criteria for success are you now going to tout?

Meanwhile UBI is something worth having a look at. Nixon was actually seriously considering one for the US.

"The next year, Richard Nixon was on the verge of making these economists’ dream a reality by enacting an unconditional income for all poor families. It would have been a massive step forward in the War on Poverty, guaranteeing a family of four $1,600 a year, equivalent to roughly $10,000 in 2016."
http://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-income-welfare/

This from a republican president. Why won't you even give it the most basic consideration?

SR,

Well done on conceding your feeble intellect. Now I see why you struggle with the concept of unemployment vs participation rates.

In small words, the unemployment rate is the % of people willing to work who cannot find employment which is 4% (considered full employment) in the US and 6.3% in Sweden (worse than Aus in the GFC) So essentially if you want to work in the US, you can, but not necessarily so in Sweden.

The participation rate is the % of people either in work or looking for work within the employable age. If fewer people need to work in the US why is that necessarily a bad thing?

Having spent some time in both Sweden and the US, the costs of just living in Sweden is vastly higher than in the US, from food to cars to petrol, and as a result life in Sweden is generally far more modest than in the US even on nominally the same income.

Finally, giving money to poor families is called welfare, giving money to everyone is UBI.