Dear Bob:
I went to the URL you posted and I must admit that the testimonials were
awesome. However when I tried to follow some of the suggestions in red, my
browser went nowhere - so I'm left with testimonials not content. However,
to show that this is an area where I have had some thoughts, I will use your
comments to share them.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob McDaniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: FutureWork <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: September 6, 1998 1:49 PM
Subject: FW: Re: Basic Income
>Hi all,
>
>Another approach to an income for all:
>
>I once made the simple extrapolation that, if the decision to automate
remains
>the prerogative of individual firms, then the collective result may
eventually
>be a totally automated economy (a version of "The Tragedy of the Commons)!
Thomas:
My thought was that every time a machine/robot/innovation replaces human
labour, that labour is still factored into the product price and that
savings to the producer is not passed on to the customer in the form of
lower prices or too the shareholder in terms of increased profits, but is
put into a general pool to pay all those whose work is eliminated by the
technology. If one of our goals is to become more efficient, even to the
point where nobody or only a very small number of people are going to work,
we have to have someway of taking revenue out of the goods and service
sector and redistributing it back into the demand side of the economy. In
this I would say Jeff Gates and I are in agreement. Imagine if we
benchmarked all labour costs in products now and had a set of standards to
evaluate the cost of labour in new products. Lets imagine product x has a
40% labour component and the company through technology was able to reduce
the labour costs to 15%, the remaining 25% could be put in an Unemployment
pool to provide a Basic Income for displaced workers. Shareholders were
making a return on investment before the innovation, and consumers were
buying the product before the innovation. The only difference is that
reduced money paid into labour results in reduced money on the demand side
of the equation. When this happens often enough - as it has in the last 20
years, then you get overproduction, which is another way of saying, we can
make it, but we can't sell it cause there ain't enough consumers.
>With noone having a job then who will buy the output (shades of Reuther)?
>Having read Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler, The Capitalist Manifesto,
>and Peter F. Drucker, The Pension Fund Revolution, I wondered whether all
>people should be shareholders with government, if necessary, buying shares
on
>their behalf.
Thomas:
Without having the benefit of Jeff's thought, the question then becomes do
all the citizen who have been issued shares or have borrowed money to buy
shares then spend the rest of their life trading shares as their only
productive activity short of not trading and hoping that the shares you have
will continue to provide you with a dividend. My guess is that over time,
those with inside knowledge will end up owning all the shares and the poor
will still be with us and the capitalists will just be so much richer.
>
>Now has appeared Jeff Gates's book, The Ownership Solution, detailing such
an
>approach. <http://www.ownershipsolution.com/>
>
>Whereas Tom Lunde's essay, Basic Income, seems to rely on government to
issue
>and control funds,
Thomas:
Yes, I still see a role for government to control the mechanisms of fund
distribution, though in my plan, it would be a fairly mechanical endeavor -
everyone gets their $15,000 less the amount agreed on to fund defense,
medicare and education and that is given over to the citizen through a vote
mechanism based on a yearly budget proposal. A person could not lose the
right to get their Basic Income, though they could still use credit in the
marketplace and in that sense pledge it as security against immediate
gratifications.
the solution envisioned by Gates relies on the operation of
>business firms through ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) and variants
>including other stakeholders, consumers, local communities, etc.
Thomas: It nice to think that business would be honourable and altruistic
in respecting it's shareholders. Current business practices do not always
show this result as CEO's and other managers award themselves high salaries,
stock options and perks. Secondly, the capitalistic system is a predatory
system with each company working to actively eliminate the competition and
gain more market share. Therefore someone is losing all the time, while
someone is also winning. My guess is that in the long run, greed will win
out.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Thomas Lunde
>
>Bob
>
>--
>___________________________________________________________________
>http://www.geog.uwo.ca/mcdaniel1.html
