Why believe that the state should pay for the lives of citizens
In recent years, network users are actively discussing the fact that the real incomes of the population in developed countries stop growing, and automation of labor destroys jobs. Some well-known economists and bloggers offer to rectify the situation with a guaranteed income — cash payments, gratis government. “Ribbon.<url>” I discovered how Internet users relate to the idea regularly to get money without working.
There are examples
At the end of 2015, the 53-year-old Dutchman Frans Kerver became a real hero of the Internet. Working freelance-copywriter, the father of three children became famous as a member of the government’s experiment to introduce a guaranteed income. Now, if he stops working, he won’t have to go into debt or to eke out a miserable existence: until July 2016, every month he will receive the equivalent of 1100 USD.
Before the Dutchman began to receive money from the state, his life was pretty bleak: he rose at seven in the morning, and went in the morning, spending to work almost all the time.
Photo: focusgroningen.nl
Participant in the pilot program receive guaranteed income Frans Kerver.
Now many netizens put Cervera as an example, when talking about the need to quickly introduce a guaranteed income worldwide. The Dutchman said that the experiment gave him the most important — time. Now he just works 50 hours a week, and he has much more opportunities to communicate with family and working on his own projects, which he wouldn’t have paid.
Hot discussion case Cervera caused in the post in the popular left blog Aangirfan. Most commentators agree that a guaranteed income allows you to “put up with capitalism” — because people will be able to do what he wants without having to earn their daily bread in the sweat of their brow. “If all this was available to me earlier, I would not have earned so many chronic diseases because of the constant need to work hard from morning till night. Capitalism almost killed me, I retired for medical reasons, and are on the mend very slowly,” writes one commentator.
Another anonymous user do not agree with him. In his opinion, guaranteed profit — is inherently flawed practice. “The income should match the price that produces the society — in other words, is variable depending on what can afford to buy the consumer,” he notes. He admits that production automation will allow mankind to have more than the required number of goods, but believes the increase in net Industrialists immoral and leading to growing discontent in society, after all, except by raising tax rates to redistribute money from rich to poor will not succeed.
Robots, not people
The logic of guaranteed income simple: the person gets it constantly and regularly, his wealth will never fall below the poverty line — thus he will always have money for utilities, food and clothing.
The reasons for the introduction of such a system are many. Economists have long noted that since the 70-ies of the last century real wages in many developed countries stopped growing and even started to decline, while corporate profits continue to go up. Moreover, alive today, workers are replaced by robots, and the production gradually automatizarea. Scientists project that in 20 years machines will consume more than 47 percent of jobs.
Out of the situation two: or you can create by government regulation jobs, taking people who will be doing uneconomic work, or to come up with a more efficient and equitable method of allocation.
On the popular website Reddit devoted to this topic a separate branch, where Internet users discuss all aspects of the implementation of guaranteed income. According to them, it will bring to society just one favor: in the future, many responsibilities can be to entrust artificial intelligence and neural networks, which will significantly reduce costs in all sectors of the economy. The savings can be spent on payments to the population that will allow people to more efficiently use your creativity.
Nixon and canadian town
The idea of a guaranteed income was proposed quite a long time. In August 1969 to enter the annual basic Federal payment” in the $ 1600 urged U.S. President Richard Nixon. In his opinion, the new system would directly link the state’s desire to help those in need and desire of the needy to help themselves. The plan Nixon caused a heated discussion, he twice passed a vote in the house of representatives, but was rejected by the Finance Committee of the Senate of the United States.
Photo: Babu / Reuters
Automated production will reduce costs in many sectors of the economy.
The Canadians were more fortunate. They proved that the idea of guaranteed income — not a utopia and can actually help society to end poverty. Network like to remember that in 1974 the government of Manitoba began funding the experiment, during which one third of the inhabitants of the small town of Dauphin received on a monthly basis a certain amount. Came to power in 1979 the conservative Cabinet of Ministers rejected the initiative to introduce a guaranteed income and shut down the experiment, but the researchers had five years to prove the efficacy of their ideas.
The positive results of the project become obvious in recent years when its sponsor, experts and bloggers have turned to statistics. It turned out that the Dauphin, whose population in the 1970s were on the poverty line, grew into a thriving settlement. Readings were collected of the participants: it helped them to improve their well-being, to give a decent education to children, to improve their own skills and obtain timely medical care. All this had a positive impact on the status of small and medium business in the city.
Experiments with the introduction of a guaranteed income has been successful and in third world countries. In 2004 in Namibia such initiative allowed reducing the share of the poor population from 76 to 37 percent, and the country has significantly improved the quality of medical care and education, and crime has decreased. In India under this project 6,000 citizens per month received only seven dollars, but even that is a positive impact on their quality of life.
The new economy
Since then the income has a new important task: not just to eradicate poverty, but to solve the problem of economic growth, but also to motivate people to do their own thing. After the start of the experiment, which is now involved France Carver, initiative, interested in other Dutch cities. In Switzerland June 6, 2016 will be a referendum on the question of the introduction of the country’s income. In Finland, New Zealand and the canadian province of Ontario government is ready to begin payments to citizens. The business incubator Y Combinator is also preparing a large-scale project in this area.
Professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego, a well-known blogger Matthew Zvolinsky rejects the popular idea that having a guaranteed income people will not work at all. According to him, the current program benefits much more contribute to the fact that receiving them people do not think about the work: “Earning more, you lose all the benefits because your earnings begin to levy extremely high tax.”
Photo: Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP
According to some economists, a guaranteed income will allow you to defeat unemployment and poverty.
According to the founder of a private crowdfunding Internet project Mein Grundeinkommen (My guaranteed income”) German businessman Michael Bohmeyer, the idea of guaranteed income is based on trust person to person. “It gives the citizen the freedom to ask the question: how do I want to live? Guaranteed income — not left and not the right idea. This humanistic idea, giving people the opportunity to fight against the system and change it”.
As he writes in his article in the publication New Statesman writer Laurie penny, this freedom looks like a real heresy for conventional economists, Pro-free market: “In the modern sense of economic facts, the individual is free to choose how it will operate, but he can’t avoid operating, if he is not lucky to be born in a rich family”. Penny argues that the main task of the guaranteed income is precisely in eliminating the exploitation of man by man and the crisis on the labour market will not leave the authorities of all countries of the world other way to solve it.
We’ll go the other way
Of course, not everyone agrees with the idea of introducing a guaranteed income. The most popular argument of opponents of such a scheme summarized the known economic blogger don Bordeaux: “I am opposed to any kind of guaranteed income. This is a fundamental point of view because I am against any confiscation of private property, regardless of the motive or the identity of the repo man,” he writes. Here Bordeaux has in mind that a guaranteed income does not occur out of nowhere — because funds for the payment of any state taken from the state budget, which is replenished at the expense of tax collection. He notices that some libertarians support this idea, believing that it will lead to reduction of forfeiture (because a guaranteed income is supposed to replace the majority of taxes), but the economist does not support it.
A more interesting criticism of the initiative from the citizens left-wing views. Journalist Evgeny Morozov, exploring the impact of technology on public and political life, in his column for The Guardian writes that a guaranteed income will be able to untie the hands of large technology corporations who advocate its introduction: “This is a Trojan horse that will allow technology companies to position themselves as progressive, even caring about social welfare organizations — to play “good cops” in defiance of “bad COP” with wall Street, at the same time disassembling all the obstacles in front of its further expansion”.
Photo: Susana Vera / Reuters
Experts fear that a guaranteed income can put an end to social programs.
Morozov warns that in the case of the introduction of the guaranteed income “will have to say goodbye to all the “onerous” social assistance to the population and employment regulation, which ensures the rights of workers”.
His view is shared by German scientists Thyme, Bessemer, Christian Crell and Henning Meyer, the authors of “Social democratic values in a digital society”. Their alarming sympathy to the idea of a guaranteed income conservatives and libertarians such as economist Charles Murray and political scientist Milton Friedman, who allegedly wanted to destroy the system of benefits that protects in difficult situation of the citizen and replace it with a soulless money transfer from one pocket to another. Moreover, the introduction of such a system will allow employers to lower the salary to employees.
These opinions are well founded, but then something special starts. Some Marxists, as the authors of the publication believe that a guaranteed income is the exploitation of the working class layabouts, the transfer of the surplus product in the hands of people privy to its production. In this they are strangely in solidarity with far-right libertarians, guided by the principle “if you hadn’t earned, it’s not yours.”
Perhaps the most fun of the left argument against guaranteed income leading journalist Jennifer Baker at the online platform for left-wing bloggers Revolution News. She believes this initiative is a step towards communism, however, it is abhorrent that a guaranteed income is obviously a capitalist idea. But it’s the collaboration! Where, then, the idea of world revolution? Do you want to sell to the bourgeoisie? Handouts, pacifying the proletariat, do not contribute to the intensification of the class struggle, should be guided by the principle “the worse, the better” and to go the other way.
So, of course, you can do that, but the history of the twentieth century in paint suggests how it all ends.
