Commenter JKudler alerted me to one of the less well understood aspects of Martin Luther King’s legacy. I knew that MLK had described himself as a democratic socialist, but I didn’t know that he said this:

In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing — they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

Naturally I agree, and I encourage you to read the whole thing, which ends on the note I quoted in the title. It’s something to ponder as you go about marking the occasion of MLK day — or, as Ron Paul calls it, Hate Whitey Day — in whatever way you find appropriate.