Photo: Emily Bowler
Welcome to Worst Hot Take of the Week – a column in which @MULLET_FAN_NEO crowns the wildest hot take of the week.
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It was only last week that our (now corona-struck) Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused to rule out the prospect of a Universal Basic Income. During the PMQs, Johnson said that he would "certainly consider" the idea as a means to alleviate the financial woes of the UK populous in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. However, on Tuesday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak downplayed those calls for Number 10 to implement such a scheme, stating that they were “not in favour”.In response to absolutely no one, professional Brexiter Douglas Carswell tweeted his critical insights on the notion of a no-strings payment to UK citizens: “Universal Basic Income? The Romans tried it from 123BC and it destroyed the republic. It would destroy our liberal economic order today, too.”Some might argue that UKIP's first ever elected MP condensing the multi-faceted collapse of the Roman republic into the singular cause of Gracchus subsidising grains for the citizens of Rome, because the free labour of all the slaves they had procured had massively devalued paid labour, is hugely disingenuous to the current set of circumstances. But maybe Douglas Carswell is right to turn to history of the Romans for guidance.
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