Ed, Several remarks
from the point of view of Classical Political Economy. You’ll remember
that. If Ricardo is
correct, all that will happen over time is that wages will fall by about the
amount of the BI. (The so-called “working poor” are an example of this.) I think that
Ricardo’s Iron Law of Wages is correct (that’s the constant pressure downward
on wages). However, I would add the element of land speculation to the equation
– something he didn’t do. So, this year’s
great Basic Income addition to income would become not a useful extra – but
would be linked to lower real wages as incomes become not much different from
before BI. (Of course, the “dollars” would no doubt be greater.) Secondly, I
would adopt a premise that Canadian land belongs to Canadians. Not some
Canadians, but to all Canadians. People who want more valuable land than the
margin should compensate the rest of the owners by paying Rent. In other words,
though the houses and other structures built privately belong to those who
built them – the land is held in trusteeship and requires a Rent payment to
compensate the rest of the owners. This collected
Rent belongs to all Canadians and could well be shared among them. However,
unlike most suggestions for BI, which would be financed by the “rewards for
screwing Canadians” (or as I would put it, Privilege income) – this
distribution would merely be returning to Canadians what belongs to them. I have no idea
what the I make it a bit
more than $5,000 but don’t trust my arithmetic. So, a family of 4 would get
$20,000. (Ricardo’s Iron Law would be squelched by collection of Rent.) Some Georgists
are active in pursuing this. They call it a Citizen’s Dividend. Its advantage
over the BI is that it is a recapture of values that belong to the people of (When I discuss
this kind of thing, an ancient memory intrudes. TIME reported this at the time
of Johnson’s “War on Poverty”. The income tax collected from those below the
poverty line was greater than the entire budget of the OEO (Office of Economic
Opportunity) which fought the war on poverty.) The poor paid
for the war on poverty. I must say, a
trifle smugly, that all this is predictable by After all this,
I must add that I don’t agree with the amount of Citizen’s Dividend. Further,
although a land tax makes much more sense than any of our present impositions –
the amount collected is not so important. What is
important is the economic consequences of collecting land Rent. (It used to be
called Economic Rent, but the neo-Classicals have appropriated the name for
something else. Essentially, it removes the most basic privilege of them all --
the right to appropriate privately values created by the entire community. Churchill, in
discussing monopolies, called this the “Mother of all Monopolies”. He was right. Harry ******************************************** From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Ed Weick Wow! If I read you right Ray, you are
still associating BI with work, whether for profit or not for profit. I
can't go there with you. It sounds a little too much like workfare,
essentially grabbing people by the scruff of the neck and making them do the
shit work nobody else wants to do in order to teach them
"responsibility" and "self-reliance". IMHO, a BI has
to be based on need and if there is a moral purpose behind it, it has to be
that everyone has a stake or "entitlement" in society that must be
respected by society. How great is this entitlement? I don't think
that a liberal democracy could function properly unless it recognized that
everybody's entitlement is equal. If one were to look at this entitlement in
terms of income, which is only one of many ways, one might say that everybody should
have an income that provides for the basic needs of families, including needs
associated with education and health. For families that need that income,
whether their heads are working or not, that level of income should be provided
without any stigma and without grabbing people by the scruff of the neck in
order to teach them "self-reliance". Indeed, the underlying
assumption has to be that people are self-reliant, but they are not in a
position to exercise their self-reliance due to circumstances beyond their
control. People who do not need the income should have it available to
them for the sake of universality, but it should be withheld or clawed back via
the tax system. What I've argued is that a variety of
programs for the poor that are currently operated by governments be cobbled
together to form at least part of a BI. What can happen when these
programs are kept separate and administered by separate bureaucracies using
different rules is illustrated by a tragic case which occurred here in Ed --- --- |
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