The Basic Needs of Citizens

Who or what should be responsible for providing the basic needs of citizens?

If you answered "the government," you have some illustrious company, none other than Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the former Soviet Union. In an interview in Pravda, he said:


"...the government should satisfy the basic needs of the citizens – that’s a top priority. If authoritarianism is required to do the job, I’m ready to give my full support to this kind of authoritarianism."

In an unrelated but ironic development, Gorbachev appears in an advertising campaign for luxury luggage maker Louis Vuitton. Perhaps Louis Vuitton luggage is one of those basic needs, at least for those citizens who are more equal than others.