Re: FW - Some hard questions about Basic Income 1
>Tor Forde wrote: >> >> The danger that a Guaranted Annual Income is posing is that it can >be a >> way to put people away. >[snip] >> A Guaranteed Annual Income could be regarded as a kind of >scholarship >> that lasted as long as it will take for people to be able to make >it on >> their own. >You know one of the problems here: Who will judge who is worthy of >getting such a scholarship? >Do you think that if the Committee on Worthiness was composed of >a bunch of rabid reductionist scientists and their >fellow-travellers, they would fund me to spend my life digging >"critical" [use whatever word you want] tunnels under their position >[Weltanschauung -- err... "physical world which exists and is >knowable independent of what people >think about it"]? If the prescripts says that everybody who wants to get such a scolarship is to have it, then the work of that committee is to help you. Maybe they can give some tips about other people doing a similar kind of study, and how you can fund publishing your work if necessary. > Would they fund me to keep trying to find some >argument >that would do the rhetorical equivalent to them of what the Union >Army >was trying to do with dynamite to the Confederates in >Petersberg by tunneling under their trenches during >the American Civil War? >I've been "at" this project for almost 20 years now, and I have yet >to >get a nickel *from* it (although I've "sunk" probably more than >US$200,000 *into* it -- when direct expenses ($100K?) *and* lost >income >due >to unpaid leaves of absence from work to go to school, etc. >are all added in)
RE: FW - Some hard questions about a Basic Income 1
Thomas Lunde wrote, >I'm sure and so is Noam Chomsky . . . Speaking of Chomsky, I came across an interesting quote, referring to an anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon in 1967, "Dan Ellsberg later told me," Chomsky recalls, "that he'd been standing next to McNamara up in the Pentagon somewhere, the two of them ridiculing the tactics of the protestors and talking about how they would have done it more efficiently. Hate to think how." (Barsky, _Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent_ p. 129) Thanks to the magic of memoirs, Chomsky's "hate-to-think-how" may be answered "In Retrospect" by McNamara himself, "I watched the whole thing from the roof of the building and other vantage points. Years later a reporter asked if I had been scared. Of course I was scared: an uncontrolled mob is a frightening thing -- luckily, in this case, frightening but ineffective. At the same time, I could not help but think that had the protesters been more disciplined -- Gandhi like -- they could have achieved their objective of shutting us down. All they had to do was lie on the pavement around the building. We would have found it impossible to remove enough of them fast enough to keep the Pentagon open." (McNamara, _In Retrospect_, p. 305) There is a sublime irony to McNamara's talk of discipline and effectiveness. By the time of the Pentagon demonstration, McNamara had become convinced that the war was unwinnable, that it had taken on a pathological momentum of its own and that the U.S. should get out of Viet Nam. He was also aware that the pretext upon which the U.S. had escalated the war three years earlier -- the Tonkin Gulf incident -- was a fabrication. All McNamara would have had to do to "shut down the war" was to walk out of the Pentagon, join the protesters and lie down on the pavement. If the protesters' ineffectualness resulted from a lack of discipline, McNamara's stemmed from an overabundance of discipline. "All McNamara would have had to do . . ." is, of course, easier said than done. To cross over to the other side would have been to lose everything that was Robert Strange McNamara and to risk becoming instead some kind of high-level Forrest Gump. Ah yes, from the subject line -- "Some hard questions about Basic Income" -- one might suspect one has stumbled across a digression. Not really. What I'm pondering is not so much the historical content but the dynamics of spontaneity and popular mobilization -- of policy, personality and sublimation. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ Vancouver, B.C. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
RE: FW - Some hard questions about a Basic Income 1
Eva wrote: There is however in my opiniona fairly conscious attempt by the mass media to trivialiseand evade all real political issues to prolonguethe idea, that politics has no relevane to people's lives. The mass media is a private business. One might even call it an oligopoly. Those few owners use their product "news" to confuse, obliterate, deceive, mislead quite consciously I'm sure and so is Noam Chomsky and a host of reporters who work for them. For what purpose? To increase their personal wealth and power. Are they an elite? Most certainly. How do they exercise control over their employees? Through hiring, paying and for disobedience - firing. If those same reporters had a Basic Income to fall back on, might some of them choose to tell the truth as they see it rather than tell it through the unspoken guidelines of management? Of course. Would this benefit the elites? Of course not. Therefore it seems obvious to me that from the elites perspective, economic security - even moderate economic security is a direct threat to their personal goals. There seems much more honesty and critical expose within book industry. I wonder why? Perhaps it is because that the elites have found our what a small percentage of the population have the time to read. And once having read - a book is an individual experience - whom would you band together with - other readers are unknown to you. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde
Re: FW Some hard questions about Basic Income 1
Thomas Lunde wrote: > Dear Tor: > I appreciate your posting and your eloquent comments about everyone > wanting to contribute. I seem to recall when reading the FW archives > that you tried to start a small business growing something in the sea > and that you were forced to discontinue it because you could not find > adequate financing for your project and your livelihood. The original > question posed the question that everyone - man - woman - child > receive a Basic Income. Obviously the combined Basic Income for a > family would be higher than for an individual. With that security and > your desire and stubbornness, would you have felt secure enough to > continue after your major setback? I am teaching now, and it is fine because I have some bright pupils, and I am living a place where I like to live, and I have considerable freedom to develop my education and my situation. > However, let's be frank. If 5% of the people chose to be TV watchers, > layabouts, deadbeats or whatever for 20 years and then decided to do > something - would that be unconscionable? Your question brings into > play the deep seated bias we have in the Western world that work is > the primary consideration for any sane person. However, the reality > is, that there is not enough paid work to go around. Raising children > is work - my daughters have just been sick with the flu for a week and > my days have been long and tiresome - I have worked, I have just not > been paid. In a sense, the Basic Income is a way of recognizing all > the unpaid work done in society rather than work that has been > monetized. Is this a compelling reason to advocate a Basic Income? > For those who work and don't get paid, I'm sure the answer would be > "yes". For those doing monetized work and perhaps some of their > productivity being used to make the payroll, the answer may well be > "no." I hope that we are doing something with a situation like that. The new governement in Norway is going for what is called "kontant-stoette" - "cash-support", an increase in the benefits that parents get by 3000 kroner, about 400 US dollars per month per child under the age of six. If you add to this the regular child-benefits and that parents do not pay taxes from this money, we have got the situation that parents who stay home taking care of three children less than six year old will get the same income as a person gets in a full time job. And today when people stay home to take care of children or relatives etc. who needs care, they get the rigth to pensions. They get the same points in the pension fund as they would have got if they were working earning about 25.000 US dollars a year. This is an example of how an arrangement that already exists and covers a part of the population can be extended to cover larger parts of the population. (First the authorities paid most of the expences by having a child in a daycare-center, and now it looks like everybody with children can get this amount of money). These arrangements are like agreements/contracts: If you are in such or such a situation then you are entitled to this and that. The big problem is for those who are not in any of those situations. They have to rely on welfare, and it is humiliating and in some municipalities it is hardly enough to make a life. There are other arrangements that can be extended to cover larger groups. F.ex students loan and scholarships can be extended to cover everybody that wants to learn something or make a kind of intellectual accomplishment of some kind. Today people have to be a student of a university/college/high-school etc, some formal institution. Everybody, even on their own, should be allowed to take part in this arrangement. It is quite generous in Norway: Everybody gets scholarships, and the loans will never ruin you, because you never have to pay more than seven percents of your income back annualy, no matter how big your debt is. And if you are without an income the governement pays the interest rents. A guaranteed basic income would not cost much in Norway because the arrangements that exists today are already so extensive that it is just a little bit more that is lacking. And why is this "little bit more" lacking? The authorities want to frighten some people: "If you do not behave you end up like those people." The problem about throwing money to everybody without expecting anything in return, is that this will throw some people into isolation. Society ought among other things to be moral relationships in which everybody is included. And to throw money at people do not include them in some kind of moral relationship. But everybody should be included, and of course that means poor people too. Tor Forde
Re: FW - Some hard questions about a Basic Income 1
Tom Walker shared: Instead, some of the problems of governance today stem from the excess of democracy . . . Needed instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy. . ." I was driving my 81 year old mother around the other days and we were listening to the radio news. Some story of interest came up and she said, "Why doesn't somebody do something about that?" Which got me thinking about why somebody doesn't do something about that. On reflection, I realized that every single day, I could find something that somebody i.e. me or you could get involved in and spend a number of years of our lives trying to redress. On reading the above quote, I saw a pattern in which the media presents us with the problem of the day - each and every day - to the degree that the sense of outrage cannot be sustained. In fact it gets so bad that we cannot even remember the problems of a month ago - remember the Asian Flu. We as citizens have been made ineffective by the sheer volume of crisis. So, I see two things, one few can get involved individually because the economy demands so much from us in terms of time to earn and two, the problems are presented so continually that it becomes almost impossible to make a commitment to get involved. When elections come, all those problems get subsumed into the spin doctors hands and we are presented with one or two major problems i.e. the deficit or North American Free Trade. Now, I realize I am rambling here but Tom's point was that the elites create these situations so that the greater citizenry become paralyzed in deciding what is a valid problem to work on. It is this paralysis that I think is one of the main results of the elites manipulation of people through economy. If the economic manipulation was reduced by solving a large portion of peoples economic insecurity through a Basic Income, then there is a vast army of "somebodies" who would and could act.
Re: FW Some hard questions about Basic Income 1
Tor Forde wrote: > > Thomas Lunde wrote: > > > Dear Tor: > > > I appreciate your posting and your eloquent comments about everyone > > wanting to contribute. I seem to recall when reading the FW archives > > that you tried to start a small business growing something in the sea > > and that you were forced to discontinue it because you could not find > > adequate financing for your project and your livelihood. The original > > question posed the question that everyone - man - woman - child > > receive a Basic Income. [snip] I guess I haven't been reading closely enough, because I really *like* this idea of a Basic Income for every man, woman -- and *child*. Children are, IMO, still far too much at the mercy of the relatively unchecked power of their family, at least in the United States and the N > 2 th Worlds. Providing children with a Basic Income would give them a better chance of getting away from parents who are either wilfully injurious, or "well intentioned" with injurious effects (the latter was mostly my case -- check out http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/stalag.html if you are interested in my particular "case"). Such a Basic Income for children would not need to take the form of a "handout", since most kids have full time jobs anyway, even though "our" [at least sometimes, only so-called...] society does not define going to "that place called school" as a job, or the tasks these persons take home with them (AKA "homework") as work either. (Yes, I've written about my "schooling", too: http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/thoughts.html#Chapel ). Now I'm sure somebody's going to tell me that children are not mature enough to choose for themselves, and, of course, in a certain measure, varying inversely with age in general and varying in specific ways with all sorts of factors in particular cases, that is correct. But society often holds up as paragons children of ages between ca. 7 and 15 who do an adult's job of taking care of their families (e.g., alcoholic parents...), so the issue is *largely* one of irrational power politics, self-righteousness, "projection" (see below...), etc. Yes, definitely: School kids and housewives are both full-time workers, and deserve their aliquot share of income, instead of, in the case of the housewife, the husband receiving it, and in the case of children, the parents receiving it. We need to make childhood and apprenticeship (whether "blue collar" or "Phd" or whtever) less painful, so that, when the young persons themselves get into positions of seniority they won't have the pent up hostility to need to persecute the next generation (ref.: Alice Miller, _For Your Own Good_, and _Thou Shalt Not Be Aware_, etc.). Great idea! Let's "Just do it!" \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] (914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re FW - Some hard questions about basic income - 1
This post is addressed to Elinor Mosher and Saul Silverman under the original thread. First let me thank you both for great answers and though I have read many of Galbraith's books and have found him excellent, I have not read this one - next trip to library. As to your answer Saul, great history lesson and I'm sure accurate without the criteria of research, anyway good enough for me. What strikes me in the two democratic systems in North America is why voting is considered a "right" to be invoked instead of an obligation to be fulfilled. Surely, as these ideas of parties and voting were discussed and it was decided who had the right to vote - which has been expanded from property owners to everyone over a certain age - the option was there to make it mandatory for everyone qualified to vote. It would have been a simple matter to make it into law, everyone who is a citizen must vote. There could have been penalties for not voting - fines and other disincentives. As everyone has to live under the rules that government make, it would seem to me a logical step to ask each individual as a matter of their citizenship to indicate their preferences. One of my arguments for this might be that the elite, knowing that they are always numerically outnumbered would have found it to their advantage to make voting a "right" to be invoked by the individual rather than a must as decreed by a law. In the cases you mentioned Saul about the different periods of history when a major effort was made to get the poor to vote, it would have been much simpler to lobby for mandatory voting. Now in regards to the concept of a Basic Income, it would seem reasonable to me to tie the "right" of a Basic Income to the "mandatory right to vote". In other words, if the state is going to pay you a dividend of citizenship, then it would seem logical that the state should demand that you assume the responsibility of choosing who will govern. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde
Re: FW - Some hard questions about a Basic Income 1
And how well it works! Not just to create alienation and political passivity, but also to keep the lower and lower-middle classes at each other's throats via racism, sexism, etc. When things are tough, they attack each other instead of the elite that is the source of their problems. On Mon, 23 Feb 1998, Tom Walker wrote: > > Huntington's prescription for encouraging democratic "self-restraint" was > for governments to _deliberately fail_ to deal with economic problems. The > point of doing this was to create a generalized alienation, which in turn > could, "reinforce tendencies towards political passivity engendered by the > already observable decline in the sense of political efficacy." > > Note that Huntington didn't reckon economic distress as the result of the > government's inability to deal with economic problems, but as a strategy to > assist the governing elite deal with it's political problems. In retrospect, > Huntington's prescription is plausible as an explanation of policies that > western governments have actually pursued over the past two decades. It's > also credible as a prediction of what would be the political result of a > purposeful anti-prosperity regime -- the entrenchment of the elites whose > policies were designed to spread poverty and insecurity. > > > Regards, > > Tom Walker > ^^^ > Vancouver, B.C. > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > (604) 669-3286 > ^^^ > The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/ > > Selma *Don't Just Do Something, Sit There* Sylvia Boorstein
