 |
citizen’s wage,
with commentary on the misconstruing of property,
ownership and subsidy
a briefing document |
site map |
We brought nothing into the world, and we
take nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away:
blessed be the name of the Lord.[1 Timothy 6.7 [1]]
Index
introduction
confusions with ownership
heritage of knowledge and resources
citizen’s wage
the idle poor
taxation
common wealth and the common wealth dividend
useful background reading
introduction
A citizen’s
wage, or common
wealth
dividend (c.w or c.w.d.), is an amount
paid out to every member of a society as a matter of right. It
is normally discussed in terms of tax neutrality. The c.w.d. is
directed to replacing all the array of means-tested,
and other, handouts from government. This includes pensions, wage
supplements, child or family allowances, and so on. Everybody
is then taxed according to the same rules.
Taxes are set at levels that effectively recoup the c.w.d. from
the better-off. The c.w.d. is steadily raised to replace the various
allowances etc. referred to above, which are then phased out.
This removes ‘poverty traps’ and the dependency culture,
while greatly simplifying administration. This results in the
removal of much unproductive (counter-productive) make-work.
-
confusions
with ownership
I have written in power,
ownership and freedom on some of the basics of ownership.
I now intend to extend the analysis of ownership in order to remove
some other confusions.
Marx, in confusion and resentment, outlined a wholly false pseudo-analysis
of the sources of ‘profit’ in response to the perceived
inequity/injustice of the control of power and wealth in his society.
Arriving at a conclusion that profit was ‘exploitation’
of ‘the workers’ and that ‘them’ were
to ‘blame’, he thence embraced ideas of ‘class’
warfare and revolution inherited from Saint-Simon.
While it is clear that ‘the workers’, in the sense
of those working directly upon an artifact, impart some of the
value produced; in modern society, a very great deal also goes
into organising, transporting, publicising and marketing the products
from the factory system of mass production. A very great deal
of the value of these products is
that of accrued knowledge transmitted down the ages through culture.
Without Newton and the founders of libraries, without the organisers
of factories and those who worked out the production processes,
without the thousands of ancestors who worked out how to use materials
like metal and rubber; there would be no products for ‘the
workers’ to produce and little wealth to spread around,
including productive wealth to improve the lives of the majority
of working people.
heritage
of knowledge and resources
I discussed the logic of power in power,
ownership and freedom, and I will not repeat that here.
It is clearly necessary for able people to build and run the factories
of modern production. However those, who apparently own that capital
and the power that accrues to the ‘owners’, heavily
rely upon appropriation of the cultural heritage. The manufacturing
capital and resultant power is no
more ‘all their own doing’ than is the air we breathe
or are the elements we access from the earth. Often, this power
is inherited by those who currently claim ownership without having
made any contribution to that accumulated wealth, and by people
with little ability to develop or manage that largesse. Such claims
to individual ‘ownership’ of this cultural accumulation
are dubious at the minimum. This wealth
is an inheritance of the culture of the world at large, and not
that of some particular living individuals within that culture.
Such wealth has no natural
rightful living owner.
This wealth makes up a considerable proportion of the items valued
by present humans. Current production is at least fifty or a hundred
times greater than it was one hundred years ago. The quality and
efficiency of the products have greatly advanced, and include
the means to push back disease and starvation. This inherited
common wealth does not ‘belong’ to
the government. It does not naturally ‘belong’ to
those with signatures on documents.
It is a trust inherited from our
ancestors.
It is the general natural human patrimony.
The society at large, the natural inheritors, have
a reasonable claim on at least a large proportion of the common
wealth. A citizen’s wage is not a ‘redistribution’
of the wealth of natural ‘owners’; it is a reasonable
distribution to those who naturally inherited it from the past;
in a false sense, a return of misappropriated goods. ‘False’
because I have little reason to believe that those currently with
their names on title documents took any deliberate acts to ‘steal’
that wealth.
|
advertising
disclaimer
advertising
disclaimer
|
citizen’s
wage
Now, in some degree this is recognised by the clumsy tax and redistribution
programmes of modern states. But it is not tolerable to have this
wealth taken arbitrarily and redistributed through ‘means
tests’ by those assuming the power of control over such goods;
nor are the goods theirs to control. As stated, they are the common
inheritance. Those administering a citizen’s wage are merely
intermediaries, not legitimate power brokers.
A citizen’s wage is a natural right, not
some human administered charity or dole
A citizen’s wage is not something to
be begged for by mendicants from the largesse of a controlling class.
The change from begging and intrusive means testing represents
a considerable difference from the puritanical attitudes of the
socialist state,
and even from those of the self-righteous, self-anointed ‘owners’
of wealth.
To introduce the citizen’s wage, at a high value suddenly
and without thought, may well disrupt work motivation and the current
culture to which people are habituated.
It should be started at a fairly low level, and steadily phased
in until the plethora of ‘allowances’ (pocket money)
doled out by the state, with all the associated spies and intrusions,
are eventually removed and replaced by the universal unconditional
right of the citizen’s wage.
A citizen’s wage will bring a raft of associated
advantages to society at large
Now we are entering an age wherever more is produced with ever
less labour, to such an extent that those of little skill cannot
make a reasonable living in the advanced cultures. This is aggravated
by a situation where ever more jobs require ever higher skills,
while the numbers of low-skill jobs shrink continuously. I see no
reason why this process will not continue until the amount of leisure
time available to most people becomes very great indeed. As Iain
Banks puts it in his novels on ‘the culture’, “Money
is a symptom of poverty”; or as an old joke has it, “Work
is the curse of the drinking classes”.
France, where
such matters are being handled with more sense that elsewhere, have
now introduced a 35-hour week and are beginning to discuss a citizen’s
wage [2003]. In my view, modern societies are reaching the point
where it will not be possible to function without such a wage.
It is essential to educate to the greatest possible degree, in
order that an advanced civilisation can function and move forward
(see franchise
by examination, education and intelligence); but education
is also necessary in order that people become not bored or destructive.
There remains vast work around the world, if we are to improve the
lot of the poor and to develop an advanced civilisation where low
technology methods do not destroy and poison the planet. The
West is in an advantageous position to train and educate the millions,
in such a manner that they will come to know how to apply the best
and least damaging, current technology.
|
advertising
disclaimer
|
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.
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
million dollars of thet wealth to provide for retirement, health
care, and the alleviation of poverty. We still have millions of
people without comfortable retrements, 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]
“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.
 |
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]
|
|
End notes
- There is also a version at Ecclesiastes 5:15
As
he came forth from his mother's womb, naked shall he go again as he
came, and shall take nothing for his labor, which he may carry away
in his hand.
Then
Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell upon the
ground, and worshipped,
And he said, “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked
shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;
blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Bible, Job (ch. I, v. 20-21)
We
brought nothing into the world, and we take nothing out. The Lord gave,
and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.
1 Timothy 6: 7
Or in another version:
Paul
wrote to Timothy: "Godliness with contentment is great gain. For
we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.
But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that"
1 Timothy 6: 6-8
For the love of money is the root of all evils
1 Timothy 6: 10
- Because those whom I am discussing here impose their
puritanism upon others through mechanisms such as church and state,
rather than merely practicing their vices in isolation, they are also
obviously authoritarians. For more detail see socialist
religions.
|
|
