Basic Guaranteed Income: An End to Poverty

Basic Guaranteed Income

An End to Poverty

A basic income is a proposed system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen with a sum of money that is sufficient to live on. Except for citizenship, a basic income is entirely unconditional. Furthermore, there is no means test; the richest as well as the poorest citizens would receive it.

A basic income is often proposed in the form of a citizen's dividend(a transfer) or a negative income tax(a guarantee). A basic income less than the social minimumis referred to as a partial basic income. A worldwide basic income, typically including income redistributionbetween nations, is known as a global basic income.

The proposal is a specific form of guaranteed minimum income, which is normally conditional and subject to a means test.

Arguments

 

 

One of the arguments for a basic income was articulated by the French Economist and Philosopher André Gorz: "The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet-unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact...

"From the point where it takes only 1,000 hours per year or 20,000 to 30,000 hours per lifetime to create an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the amount we create at the present time in 1,600 hours per year or 40,000 to 50,000 hours in a working life, we must all be able to obtain a real income equal to or higher than our current salaries in exchange for a greatly reduced quantity of work...

"Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: 'the micro-chip revolution'. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis. The work ethic ceases to be viable in such a situation and workbased society is thrown into crisis" Andre Gorz, Critique of economic Reason, Gallile, 1989

The Basic Income Earth Network(BIEN) describes one of the benefits of a basic income as having a lower overall cost than that of the current means-tested social welfare benefits.^[1] However critics have pointed out the potential work disincentives created by such a program, and have cast doubts over its implementability.^[2].In later years, Basic Income Studies: How it could be organised, Different Suggestions, have made a lot fully financed proposals.

 

Examples of implementation

 

 

The U.S.State of Alaskahas a systemwhich provides each citizen with a share of the state's oil revenues.^[3]

 

The USA also have the Earned income tax credit for low-income taxpayers. In 2006 a bill, written by members of the advocacy organization USBIG, to transform the credit into a partial basic income, was introduced in the US congress, but did not get passed.^[4]

In 2008, a pilot project with a basic income grant was started in the Namibianvillage of Otjivero.^[5]

 

The city of Dauphin, Manitoba, Canada had an experimental basic income program ("Mincome") in the 1970s.^[6]

Advocates

 

 

Many countries have political parties that advocate a basic income, such as the Green Party of Canada, Green Party of England and Wales, Vivant (Belgium), De Groenen (The Netherlands), the Scottish Green Party, and the New Zealand Democratic Party.

Worldwide, supporters of a basic income have united in the Basic Income Earth Network. BIEN recognizes numerous national advocacy groups…

In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraithand another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements. In the 1972 presidential campaign, Senator George McGoverncalled for a 'demogrant' that was very similar to a basic income. Mike Gravel, a former candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States and a candidate for the 2008 Libertarian nomination for the President of the United States, advocates for a tax rebate paid in a monthly check from the government to all citizens.^[17]

Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economicsthat fully support a basic income include Herbert Simon^[18], Friedrich Hayek, James Meade, Robert Solow, and Milton Friedman^[19].

In his final book Full employment regained? James Meade states that a return to full employmentcan only be achieved if, among other things, workers offer their services at a low enough price, that the required wage for unskilled labour would be too low to generate a socially desirable distribution of income, and that therefore a citizen's income would be necessary.^[20]

In his Robotic Nationessays, Marshall Brainargues that the growing amount of automation in the workplace will eventually displace a large percentage of workers, and that in order to be able to maintain the economy, an annual stipend will be needed.^[21] A similar argument was made by Jeremy Rifkin, in his book The End of Work.^[22]

Funding

 

Many different sources of funding have been suggested for a guaranteed minimum income:

Income taxes

Sales taxes

Capital gains taxes

Inheritance taxes

Wealth taxes, e.g. property tax

Luxury taxes

Elimination of current income support programsand tax deductions

Repayment of the grant at death or retirement

Landand natural resource taxes

Pollution taxes

Fees from government created monopolies (such as the broadcast spectrum and utilities)

Collective resource ownership

Universal stock ownership

A National Mutual Fund

Money creation or seignorage

Tariffs, the lottery, or sin taxes

Technology Taxes

Tobin Tax

 

See also

 

Asset-based egalitarianism(variant of basic income)

Minimum wage

Old Age Security

Social welfare provision

 

References

1. ^*BIEN: frequently asked questions
2. ^[1]Interview with Philippe van Parijs
3. ^See Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend; the fund's revenues are no longer only from oil.
4. ^[2]Al Sheahen, "The Rise and Fall of a Basic Income Guarantee Bill in the United States Congress", The US Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG), 2008
5. ^[3]BIEN, "NewsFlash of the Basic Income Earth Network", nr. 49, 2008; [4]BIG Coalition Namibia
6. ^Story of Manitoba
7. ^Philippe van Parijs (ed.), "Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform", London: Verso, 1992
8. ^"Das Bürgergeld bringt einen Systemwechsel" (Citizen's Income brings a system change), interview, Kölner Stadtanzeiger, 29 March 2007
9. ^Saar Boerlage: "Het basisinkomen stimuleert op een positieve manier de inzet van het individu in de samenleving" (Basic income stimulates in a positive way the input of the individual into the society), interview, Vereniging Basisinkomen: Nieuwsbrief Basisinkomen 48, 2007
10. ^[5]Andre Gorz, "Critique of Economic Reason", in: Peter Waterman, Ronaldo Munck, "Labour Worldwide in the Era of Globalisation: Alternative Union Models in the New World Order", Macmillan, London, 1999
11. ^[6]Michael Hardt - Antonio Negri, "Empire", Harvard University Press, 2000
12. ^[7]Keith Rankin, "Universal Basic Income: its Core and Essence", New Zealand, 1998
13. ^[8]Daniel Raventós, "Basic Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom", Pluto Press, London, 2007
14. ^Osmo Soininvaara, "Hyvinvointivaltion eloonjäämisoppi" (A survival doctrine for the welfare state), Juva, WSOY, 1994, 298 p, ISBN: 951-0-20100-6
15. ^[9]Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy, "Citizen’s Basic Income: The Answer is Blowing in Wind", USBIG 5th Congress, 2006
16. ^Walter van Trier, "Everyone a King. An Investigation into the Meaning and Significance of the Debate on Basic Incomes with Special Reference to Three Episodes from the British Inter-War Experience", Katholieke Universiteit Leuven: Fakulteit politieke en sociale wetenschappen, PhD thesis, 1995
17. ^[10]Gravel presidential campaign 2008: "How Mark stands on the issues".
18. ^Herbert A. Simon, "UBI and the Flat Tax. A response to 'A Basic Income for All' by Philippe van Parijs", Boston Review, 2000
19. ^Milton Friedman, "Capitalism and Freedom", University of Chicago Press, 1962
20. ^James Edward Meade, "Full Employment Regained?", Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 052155697X
21. ^[11]Marshall Brain, "Robotic Freedom", 2003
22. ^Jeremy Rifkin, "The End of Work - The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era", Tarcher/Putnam, New York, 1995

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Abundance Extinguishes Money

Abundance Extinguishes Money

Money, trade, barter and bargaining are artefacts of unnecessary contrived scarcity

All the tenets, customs and beliefs of today’s civilisations are based on the notion of scarcity. Trade, barter, banking, business, marriage, schooling – all are based on the idea that a finite amount of resources are available and that scarcity is normal. Priests and pundits have been telling us this throughout humankind’s feuding feudal history.

It’s a lie. We live in an infinite universe.

As populations continued to increase, people tended to compete for just about everything. But is scarcity the source of feuds and wars, or is feuding the real cause of scarcity? Cooperation makes possible many things that would be untenable for individuals or families. It’s the true basis of all human civilisations and societies. Competitiveness is a dangerous illusion that deprives everyone of happiness and freedom.

Competitiveness begins at each parent’s knee, when a child is taught either to scream or communicate for attention depending on the actions and reactions of an uncaring or considerate mother and father. Were you taught to cooperate of to compete? Wanting your child to succeed is normal; wanting them to do better than anyone else is paranoid and unhealthy for all concerned.  Wars are more often caused by greed and egocentrism than by competition for diminishing resources.

Competitiveness, not scarcity, is the root of all war. Many war-bred societies view anyone who refuses to compete with their brothers and sisters as incompetent, and these cultures (or families) foredoom themselves to ongoing strife. Societies that reward the biggest bullies with the choicest cuts and most desirable mates are not enacting Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest modes. They’re dumbing themselves down and creating a world where the fattest and least fit thrive – for a little while.

Ever since prehistoric eras – when nomads developed extended kinship relations based on reciprocal interdependence – trade, barter and other forms of exchange have been beset by an underlying anxiety that any bargain struck might be an inequitable deal. Distrust, feuds and feudalism inevitably arise from these impurely forged relationships, and mistrust ends up determining the structure of societies.

When the human race was jostling for position and territory in feudal times, control of populations and produce was the norm. The land’s bounty was taxed and locked into silos by priests who doled out small amounts of food to the farmers who’d grown it, controlling life and death by ‘virtue’ of supposed holiness. Unjust divisions of resources became ingrained in the minds of peasant and potentate alike as a supposedly ‘natural order’ and the priests eventually devolved into tax men, beurocrats and bankers.
This vampiric system of power and control still pertains today, even after centuries of revolutionary ‘Enlightenment’. 
Overprivileged individuals, families, professions, sects, gangs, private clubs and other fat cats glean all the cream for themselves and allow only crumbs to those below via the ‘trickle down effect’ – as they piss themselves laughing from the remote windows of tall towers, pouring their toxic largesse down on the ignorant peons whose life’s blood sustains them.

Professional bankers, habitual CEOs and apparatchik politicians eventually all come to consider themselves ‘born to rule’. As with law and medicine, it’s a natural result of allowing privileged ‘professionals’ to set the parameters of their work, and to control all numbers (doctors control the number of doctors), including votes and money, that entrench their positions of obsolete absolute authority.

Power tends to corrupt and mammon corrupts absolutely. The person who truly resides at the top of the pyramid of consciousness is not the time-poor authority figure atop the totem pole. The crown of creation is worn by any and every individual who’s managed to find a route to freedom – freedom from and freedom to – way beyond all approved routes, far from the monolithic tombstones of penis-envy skyscrapers and the ticky-tacky fakery of toxic suburban feedlots, where stupid workers and bosses alike have priced themselves out of life itself.

Iniquitous inequitable wealth is the major problem facing the world, along its inevitable creation; widespread poverty.  And yet as megalomaniac bankers have demonstrated time and again there is no scarcity of money, as money does not exist – it’s an illusion, not a real, actual good or commodity. Most who become addicted to striving for it are doomed to seek more and more until they become lost in greed and disappointment, for no matter how much they have, that which they seek isn’t tangible. You can’t eat, taste or feel long lists of zeros – but you can easily compete each other out of affordable homes and lifestyles by subscribing to an unfair system.

Inequity and unfairness are the primary issue for those interested in human evolution and collective enlightenment. Better to keep your eye on the prize than your nose to the grindstone – and the prize is freedom NOW, not in some putative future, but for you, the one who is reading this. If not now, when? If not you, who? Better still – dare to dream of paradise for everyone.

A civilisation that develops true abundance will have no need for money or other forms of formal exchange. In a world of plenty trade is unnecessary and cumbersome. Believe it or not, it’s technically feasible to create anything from nothing. All it takes is energy, and energy is free and abundant when you aren’t trying to smash atoms to boil a cup of tea or dig up a mountain to electrify blankets. We live at the tail end of stupid times.
The once ‘futuristic’ notions of working for credits and electronic transaction systems will be superfluous when everyone has access to everything they require or desire.

Decades ago it was realised that automation would do away with most mind-numbing and dangerous jobs. For many years people seriously discussed how humankind would deal with expanding amounts of leisure time. What do you do with all that free time when no-one’s ordering you around any more – when all you’ve really been taught is to obey and conform? Instead people have been suckered into working like dogs until they die for no real purpose at all, propping up endless wars and needless competitiveness that profit a self-chosen few.

Now it takes three working parents to ‘afford’ to live in a house and no-one is free, least of all children. What a terrible, deplorable joke – and yet the majority have fallen for the dumb rise and given up all their time – their freedom – for handfuls of imaginary potage, to pass imaginary debts down to their grandchildren instead of patrimonies.

Few people can stand being idle for long. Most want to create, to work, to build and be constructive. But in the world we’ve created people can’t easily choose to work at the tasks they wish. It would be so easy to contrive a truly civilised civilisation, where people could pursue their dreams and exercise innate talents, instead of being coerced into humdrum or makework jobs because of artificially contrived shortages and carefully maintained inequities.

Today’s humans have been so thoroughly brainwashed with images of the necessity of ‘working for a living’ and the ‘virtue’ of endless work that they imagine toil is a virtue in itself and that peaceful enjoyment and hedonism are vices. Enslaved societies of tired workers have long been entrained to keep each other on leashes and lock themselves into barred suburban cages at night. Domesticated primates are trained to keep each other ‘in line’. It’s remarkable how peaceable most people are – how millions can cohabit tiny cramped spaces with such extraordinary harmony. We are truly a cooperative and well meaning species.

We now have unprecedented abilities and technologies at our fingertips. We can tap inexhaustible supplies of eternal energy and create any material or form we like from energy itself. The implications are astounding – but who’s ready to live in such a truly brave new world of unparalleled freedom?

Who is prepared and able to live in a world of abundance, where there’s no need for work or for lord, god or master? Who’s ready to simply kick back and enjoy the ride, secure in the knowledge that the universe will provide if we only believe it will? Who can cope with the wisdom of non-security?

Some are always ready to take this next step. A new era dawns and humankind evolves to suit the changing times, piecemeal, one at a time. Do you want to be free?

When?

Freedom IS free. Turn on. Tune in. Opt out and drop into the party. Stop working for the Man and jump off the treadmill. There’s plenty of REAL work that needs to be done, and plenty of fun to be had. Stop using the redundant tools that keep the planet-munching juggernaut of destructive corporate competitiveness rolling onward. Get out from under. Tell the boss he’s wrong. Make a real friend, and spend time with your real friends and family. Go for a walk at take a good look at the extraordinary wonders of all creation. It’s your world.

Listen to the strange thoughts banging around in your head. How many are yours, and how many are repetitive programmed mush? You create your own reality with every deed, word and thought. You are a child of the universe. The world responds to your will, and will always provide for your true needs if you realise the truly benevolent nature of nature and human kind. Open your heart and mind to the wind and the wild.

The other, ‘normal’ option is a nasty road to oblivion. Do you really want a normal life for yourself and your children?
Scarcity is bullshit. Abundance is real. Make some now.
Time appears to flow onward…

- R. Ayana

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