The danger that a Guaranted Annual Income is posing is that it can be a
way to put people away.
I think everybody wants to make their part of the World their home, in
some away. By putting their mark on it, by understanding it, by defining
it, by creating a part of it. That is what people want!
I am not against a Guaranteed Annual Income, but should it be without
any conditions? I think that might be harmful to those who receives the
Guaranteed Annual Income. People want in some way to be part of their
World, either as the World is today or as they wish the World to be.
A condition for getting a Guaranteed Annual Income could be to do
something they want to do, and tell/show it to the community.
Write a poem, learn something, build something, help somebody, take part
in something. Just do not sit and wither away in front of a TV screen!
Do not spend all week every week just drinking beer!
This question has been discussed in Norway. And the reason given by f.ex
the Labour Party to oppose a Guaranteed Annual Income is that it will
bring up people who live in misery all their lives, many of them in
lonelieness outside society.
I am not going for workfare: that people should be forced to work for
wages less than union wages.
It is not an easy question. The Telephone company here in Norway has
been laying off lots of people. Many of them have been keeping both an
office and their pay for a long time, and their work have been to find
something else to do. It has been a depressing situation to many.
But others have been doing fine with an extra contribution, f.ex people
with a very small farm, to small to make a living from, have been able
to build it into something that they could live from while they were on
a kind of social security.
A Guaranteed Annual Income could be regarded as a kind of scholarship
that lasted as long as it will take for people to be able to make it on
their own.
Tor Forde
email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
