tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440117683736860632.post232612514324369896..comments2023-08-31T15:14:58.287-07:00Comments on London Green Left Blog: Is the Citizens Income idea becoming Mainstream?Mike Shaughnessyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16796480031110991460noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440117683736860632.post-42396077500520377202016-04-19T14:51:21.672-07:002016-04-19T14:51:21.672-07:00You should write a blog post yourself Laurence. I ...You should write a blog post yourself Laurence. I think it is important that CI is universal - everyone gets it, regardless of income, wealth etc. There would need to be a huge expansion in free good quality education for everyone too. But if someone wanted to get drunk all day, it wouldn't bother me.Mike Shaughnessyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16796480031110991460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440117683736860632.post-23394039517618349312016-04-19T14:35:43.911-07:002016-04-19T14:35:43.911-07:00(continued .. )
Thus, arguably, the introduction o...(continued .. )<br />Thus, arguably, the introduction of a CI under neo-liberal conditions (long-term mass unemployment), with no mechanism to ensure "contribution", could be a recipe in the mdeium-to-ling term, for downward pressure on taxpayers' contributions to the welfare / CI budget, and therefore for the CI to end up being a payment insufficient to allow full participate in the life of society / "full citizenship". Perhaps a kind of apartheid?<br /><br />My own conclusion is that the answer is not CI, but full employement + decent welfare payments + a French style limit on working hours.<br /><br />That means we have to break with the noe-liberal economic consensus, and devise a new economics which at the same time provides jobs without destroying the environment.<br /><br />There are ideas on this, but obviously it's a massive challenge. Sadly, although I love the utopianism of CI, I fear for the likely realtiy of its implementation under neo-liberalism.<br /><br /><br />Laurence Pilfoldnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440117683736860632.post-25101846818796406032016-04-19T14:34:53.864-07:002016-04-19T14:34:53.864-07:00Yeah, I've got something to say about that.
I ...Yeah, I've got something to say about that.<br />I spent a lot of the 90s trying to work out where Andre Gorz was coming from in his advocacy of something like a Citizen's Income / Basic Income, but not a C.I. / B.I. Until very late in hbis life he insisted that there has to be some kind of conditionality / quid-pro-quo with respect to income: he wanted to retain an idea that the right to an income implied a corresponding obligation - to contribute to society. To cut a very long story short, he though the state should work out how much work we needed to do as a society, do the math, and then work out how many hours all able-bodied adults of working age would need to do per year. You then had to do that minimun number of hours per year to qualify for your CI. And you could arrange how and when you did them flexibly according to your needs / wishes. And if you wanted to do more work you were free to, paid or unpaid. Children, pensioners, the ill, the disabled did not have this work obligation and got a CI automatically. You could also arrange things like taking a X-year sabbatical and making up your hours in other years. Later in his life Gorz decided this scheme was impractical and went over to the unconditional CI idea, which one receives based on citizenship status, without any obligation to work / contribute.<br /><br />But why did he originally insist on conditionality? Why the stress on a link between the right to income and the duty to contribute? I think the answer is this. "Rights" are not immune from economic and political changes. In a given society, while rights are enshrined in laws, those that involve an economic entitlement are also conditional on the will of the state / citizen-body to support/guarantee/ provide them. I believe there is a kind of "logic" of welfare based on fundamental - at an anthropological legel - understandings of reciprocity (rights to receive imply duties to contribute)which are common to members of that society. I think this could be seen in the design of the post-war Beveridge welfare system: unemployment benefit, for example, was understood to be a kind of "insurance payment" for principally male workers against the background of a virtually full-employment economy. With enough work to go round (at least for the men), and a degree of social solidarity, there was (arguably) a common assumption that most employees would prefer to work and earn rather than just receive "dole" - so the assumption was that unemployement benefit would be a short-term recourse between jobs for those unfortunate enough not to be able to find work for a period. The system was based on mutual trust and a sense of shared risk - it could happen to me, I assume you are as honest as me - so I accept paying tax / national insurance contributions in order to support you in your hour of need.<br /><br />Under conditions of long-term mass unemployent (neo-liberalism), this logic breaks down, and there is the potential for the scapegoating of the unemployed. There is potential of a collective action psychology to kick in whereby the long-term unemployed are labelled "free riders". The sense of reciprocity underlying the system is weakened, and the willingness to contribute at a level which will provide a decent level of income (one which allows full participation in the life of society - or "full citizenship") is challenged. There is the potential for taxpayers to revolt and thus to push down contributions, meaning those dependent on welfare fall into poverty and social exclusion.<br />Laurence Pilfoldnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440117683736860632.post-44996156274768520082016-04-19T13:07:11.160-07:002016-04-19T13:07:11.160-07:00BIEN should have come into reality after Thatcher ...BIEN should have come into reality after Thatcher left power it would be an pathfinder for all post industrial natioinsThe Devil's Advocatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11494196643632213452noreply@blogger.com