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The Basic Barrier [1]

['Barry Deutsch', 'Franks Human', 'Mercy Ormont', 'Momma O', 'Greg Dworkin']

Date: 2026-09-02  

Another collaboration with the chicken-fat-mad Mike Lawrence! That trap-filled hopscotch board was entirely Mike’s idea.

(Please support me on Patreon, buy my books, mow my lawn, etc etc.)

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows two friends walking through a wooded park. One is a man wearing a baseball cap and an orange T-shirt, so I’ll call him ORANGE. The other is a woman wearing a red plaid shirt, so I’ll call her PLAID.

PANEL 1

Orange smiles as he reads something on his smartphone. Plaid looks interested.

ORANGE: Look at this! Another study found that basic income works!

PLAID: What’s basic income?

PANEL 2

Orange explains while Plaid hops through a hopscotch grid drawn on the path.

ORANGE: It’s the government giving everyone a basic income, so we’re all guaranteed enough to live on.

PLAID: That sounds amazing. But… if we had that, why would anyone work?

PANEL 3

Orange gestures emphatically with his free hand. Plaid walks with one hand thoughtfully against her chin.

ORANGE: That’s been studied so much… Over and over, when people are given basic incomes, they don’t stop working!

PLAID: Hmm… I’m still against it.

PANEL 4

Orange looks baffled. Plaid shrugs.

ORANGE: But why?

PLAID: I just can’t believe anything that good is possible.

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” is an obsolete cartoonists’ term for unimportant but fun details slipped into the art.

PANEL 1: A little gray alien is flying a flying-saucer-shaped kite.

PANEL 2: The hopscotch grid is full of traps, including a spider, tacks, a Lego brick, a mouse frantically waving its arms as if to say “Don’t step on me!,” a pile of poop, a whoopee cushion, a mousetrap, and a bear trap. A “wanted” poster for a raccoon with an eyepatch is nailed to a tree.

PANEL 3: A sasquatch and an Ewok are hiding behind trees; the sasquatch signals to the Ewok to be quiet.

PANEL 4: The raccoon from Panel 2’s “wanted” poster is hiding in the bushes.

T-SHIRTS: Orange’s T-shirt shows a smiley face in Panel 1, an alien smiley in Panel 2, the blood-spattered Watchmen smiley in Panel 3, and the Hitchhiker’s Guide smiley-faced planet in Panel 4.

Plaid’s T-shirt shows an ear of corn in Panel 2 and a human ear in Panel 4.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/9/2/800093115/community/the-basic-barrier/

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