the
idle poor
However, in Western societies, a continually growing
group of people are not able to command sufficient
return from their work to sustain a minimal standard
of living, unless they go begging to the governments
for handouts. Such people are also placed in a position
where large corporations can gouge their wages,
because there is a considerable surplus of people
with insufficient skills to fill a steadily lessening
number of low-skill positions. Both the demeaning
demands of socialistic governments, and the puritans
of the right, must adapt to modern conditions,
not continue with practices that grew from a far
more backward and poverty-stricken era.
Much of the reason for low wages is that market
competition in the presence of a growing over-supply
of lower skilled workers will not allow corporations
to pay a reasonable living wage. The competition
among the weak for limited wages is also unreasonable
because of the fear and health-threatening insecurity
that is associated with such stress. A citizen’s
wage can be set to allow the markets to clear, while
those on a small citizen’s wage will have
the free choices and independence to take jobs only
if they wish to increase their basic standard of
living, thus removing the unreasonable power and
bullying by the more fortunate and the more able.
taxation
Some have suggested that a citizen’s wage
should be funded from a very large inheritance tax,
but this is to misunderstand basic economics and
the nature of tax.
All tax
is collected from current production
It does not matter a fig where a tax is applied,
it is always a tax on current transactions or production.
There is no special merit in an inheritance tax,
and much difficulty in the application or collection
of such a tax. The citizen’s wage would primarily
be spent on goods here and now (or saved/invested).
It would not be spent on deals concerning the great
concentrations of wealth. It would be spent on the
production from the factories, or on services, or
go towards accommodation (for instance, on land).
A large amount of intrusive modern government is
devoted to deciding just to whom they award a mess
of ‘allowances’ and ‘wage supplements’,
‘pensions’ etc. All this can be steadily
and systematically removed with a citizen’s
wage, and the great superstructure of government
administrators released instead to do useful work.
Much everyday government intrusion would no longer
be ‘necessary’.
Citizens would be considerably more free to choose
their activities and contributions. They could in
due course live frugally on the citizen’s,
while writing their masterpiece; or learn to play
a banjo in the attic. If they wanted to move into
better accommodation, purchase a new music player,
eat more luxuriously or visit the cinema regularly,
they could select the work and hours necessary,
while not constrained to accept wages below a level
they considered acceptable. So, there would be no
need for minimum wage laws either.
common
wealth and the common wealth dividend
Some dislike the term ‘citizen’s wage’
because it is not a wage for any effort or work.
It is a right allowed to all citizens.
Some claim that any such wage must be taken from
the work of others but, in fact, a very great deal
of the wealth available to modern society does not
stem directly from the hand and head work of those
performing the tasks. It comes from the inventions
and efforts of long dead ancestors, and from the
fact of the earth we find ourselves upon and the
air we breathe. Quite apart, this argument fails
on the inconsistency that very large amounts are
already distributed by taxation.
It is quite reasonable to regard any fund as a
royalty upon those efforts of past generations,
distributed as a dividend to those now living. What
Marx was pleased to call “Mister Moneybags”
did not somehow gain a moral right to the results
of the inventions of Newton, or to possession of
the land. That Moneybags builds a great industrial
empire from his (or her) creativity
and energy is admirable and useful to us all. But
his children have no obvious ‘right’
to the power
that accrues to large accumulations of wealth, once
the founder and builder moves on to the great factory
in the sky.
However, breaking up such organisations on the
demise of Moneybags and dispersing the organisation
for whatever it will fetch is a bit harsh on the
rest of the ‘family’, especially if
some of them have spent years training under the
originator to run the organisation effectively.
A tax to repay the windfall extending over say 20
years may mitigate such complications.
The part of the productive machinery that is not
down to the creativity of Mr. Moneybags can easily
be considered common wealth, and hence our citizen’s
wage can as easily be called the common wealth without
even changing the initials! Or else, call it the
common wealth dividend – c.w.d. In due course,
it is probable that the c.w.d. would become converted
into actual share or loan certificates. With these
certificates, future Moneybags or co-operatives
could assemble the large concentrations of wealth
required for productive corporations.
The ‘right-wing’
puritanical classes [2]
use different excuses from the ‘left-wing’
socialist puritans to keep the poor enslaved
(always for the ‘moral good’of the poor,
of course). The‘right-wing’ puritans
wish to ensure that government ‘charity’
is not ‘misdirected’ and that the poor
do not lose the motivation to work! It is strange
that the puritans do not imagine that their own
wealth has no such deleterious effect on their moral
standing and motivation!
An examination of a large
proportion of those who have contributed to the
advance of civilisation shows that they have indeed
come from the ‘idle’ moneyed classes.
The leisure has, in fact, given them time to think
and to develop human knowledge. I see not the slightest
reason why greater freedom to choose among all citizens
should not also greatly increase the numbers who
choose to benefit society and study with that objective
in mind. Increasing leisure, and spreading that
leisure around throughout society, is a high public
good. Most of what is necessary is reasonable access
to adequate education when necessary.
a
considerable proportion of waste is caused by the
wage and dole economy - what to do
The drive to ‘get a job’ and to ‘stay
off the dole’ pushes people to waste time,
energy and resources producing rubbish. Then they
seek ever bigger peacock feathers as they strive
for meaningless status with 10,000 sq ft houses
and SUVs.
The normal person does not have to strain to ‘be
different’ in among a herd of conformist sheep.
Individuality comes along naturally by simply doing
whatever you want to. In among a bunch of sheep,
‘individuality’ amounts to an ear-ring,
a shorter skirt, or a pierced belly button.
The richest man in the world lives in the same
house he purchased in 1950. Children are now being
taught that the bigger the box, the more important
the scraps of plastic inside.
Only with a citizen’s wage will people be
able to decide whether their time is of more value
than pieces of plastic crap.
You do not need a full-time job to feed, clothe
and house yourself, but to work for just enough
to feed, clothe and house yourself requires a full-time
job. After all, you cannot just go and do a bit
of casual work when you wish or the mood takes you.
You must register with the government and satisfy
their spies.
To pay the dole requires a vast army of means testers,
tax collectors and other useless time-wasting parasites.
Earn enough for the full-time job and the parasites
are on your case. Don’t earn at all, and you
must go begging to the parasites.
With a citizen’s wage, vast amounts of this
time-wasting, followed by inevitable resource wasting,
can be removed.
With a citizen’s wage, there is nothing to
stop you earning more, and there is no need for
the begging bowl.
With a citizen’s wage, most of the parasites
become redundant, so you do not need to work to
keep them either.
And there is no need for Gordon Brown the Clown’s
ever expanding, polluting, useless make-work.
useful
background reading
In
our hands
by Charles Murray 
This book studies a worked-out form of citizen’s
wage based on giving every American $10,000 a year
for life from the age of twenty-one.
The book is fairly short at a little over a hundred
pages, with another hundred pages of appendices
and other notes. It has a lot of detailed work.,
but at points, in one or two of the short chapters,
verges on ‘idealism’ and the rose-coloureds’
puritanism.
“America’s population is wealthier
than any in history. Every year, the American
government redistributes more than a trillion
dollars of that wealth to provide for retirement,
health care, and the alleviation of poverty. We
still have millions of people without comfortable
retirements, without adequate health care, and
living in poverty. Only a government can spend
so much money so ineffectually. The solution is
to give the money to the people.” [p.1]
Murray also discusses setting aside $3,000 of the
$10,000 citizen’s wage for health care coverage
[chapter 4, pp.37-51] and implications of such a
plan.
As you will see, McCain during his presidential
bid was also moving along these lines to improve
health care coverage for the poor.
McCain,
6 Oct. 2008
“At issue is McCain's proposal to offer
a $2,500 tax credit for individuals and $5,000
for families to help them afford private health
insurance. That credit would be offset, however,
because workers would no longer to be able to
exclude from their income taxes the value of the
insurance coverage paid by their employer.”
There has been some discussion on whether a citizen’s
wage should apply to ‘children’. Charles
Murray thinks in terms of an age of majority
of twenty-one. Unfortunately, any allowance that
goes unconditionally to ‘children’ would
motivate the feckless and/or incompetent to select
breeding as a career choice. [See also darwin,
economics, citizen’s wage and population]
To select an age in the mid to late teens may well
motivate the rebellious to leave home and/or education
in order to escape from discipline, but also possibly
from dependancy. [See also Franchise
by examination, education and intelligence.]
So this decision requires a cautious and experimental
approach.
“The experimental NIT [negative income
tax] produced disappointing results. The work
disincentives were substantial and ominously largest
among the youngest recipients. Marital breakup
was higher among participants than among the control
group in most of the sites. No headlines announced
these results, but the NIT quietly disappeared
from the policy debate.” [p. 8] For
extended details, see chapter 11 of Losing
Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980
by Charles Murray, Basic Books, 1984. This is
one of the seminal books of the twentieth century.
The central message is
that welfare causes poverty and social dysfunction.[This
book by Murray is reviewed at linked page.]
 |
In
our hands by Charles Murray
American Enterprise Institute [AEI Press
2006,
ISBN-10: 0844742236 / ISBN-13: 978-0844742236
$13.60
[amazon.com]
£9.45
[amazon.co.uk] |
|
