Thomas Lunde wrote:
> Dear Tor:
> I appreciate your posting and your eloquent comments about everyone
> wanting to contribute. I seem to recall when reading the FW archives
> that you tried to start a small business growing something in the sea
> and that you were forced to discontinue it because you could not find
> adequate financing for your project and your livelihood. The original
> question posed the question that everyone - man - woman - child
> receive a Basic Income. Obviously the combined Basic Income for a
> family would be higher than for an individual. With that security and
> your desire and stubbornness, would you have felt secure enough to
> continue after your major setback?
I am teaching now, and it is fine because I have some bright pupils,
and I am living a place where I like to live, and I have considerable
freedom to develop my education and my situation.
> However, let's be frank. If 5% of the people chose to be TV watchers,
> layabouts, deadbeats or whatever for 20 years and then decided to do
> something - would that be unconscionable? Your question brings into
> play the deep seated bias we have in the Western world that work is
> the primary consideration for any sane person. However, the reality
> is, that there is not enough paid work to go around. Raising children
> is work - my daughters have just been sick with the flu for a week and
> my days have been long and tiresome - I have worked, I have just not
> been paid. In a sense, the Basic Income is a way of recognizing all
> the unpaid work done in society rather than work that has been
> monetized. Is this a compelling reason to advocate a Basic Income?
> For those who work and don't get paid, I'm sure the answer would be
> "yes". For those doing monetized work and perhaps some of their
> productivity being used to make the payroll, the answer may well be
> "no."
I hope that we are doing something with a situation like that.
The new governement in Norway is going for what is called
"kontant-stoette" - "cash-support", an increase in the benefits that
parents get by 3000 kroner, about 400 US dollars per month per child
under the age of six. If you add to this the regular child-benefits
and that parents do not pay taxes from this money, we have got the
situation that parents who stay home taking care of
three children less than six year old will get the same income as a
person gets in a full time job.
And today when people stay home to take care of children or
relatives etc. who needs care, they get the rigth to pensions. They
get the same points in the pension fund as they would have got if
they were working earning about 25.000 US dollars a year.
This is an example of how an arrangement that already exists and
covers a part of the population can be extended to cover larger parts
of the population. (First the authorities paid most of the expences
by having a child in a daycare-center, and now it looks like
everybody with children can get this amount of money).
These arrangements are like agreements/contracts: If you are in such
or such a situation then you are entitled to this and that. The big
problem is for those who are not in any of those situations. They
have to rely on welfare, and it is humiliating and in some
municipalities it is hardly enough to make a life.
There are other arrangements that can be extended to cover larger
groups. F.ex students loan and scholarships can be extended to cover
everybody that wants to learn something or make a kind of
intellectual accomplishment of some kind. Today people have to be a
student of a university/college/high-school etc, some formal
institution. Everybody, even on their own, should be allowed to take
part in this arrangement. It is quite generous in Norway:
Everybody gets scholarships, and the loans will never ruin you,
because you never have to pay more than seven percents of your income
back annualy, no matter how big your debt is. And if you are without
an income the governement pays the interest rents.
A guaranteed basic income would not cost much in Norway because the
arrangements that exists today are already so extensive that it is
just a little bit more that is lacking. And why is this "little bit
more" lacking? The authorities want to frighten some people: "If you
do not behave you end up like those people."
The problem about throwing money to everybody without expecting
anything in return, is that this will throw some people into
isolation. Society ought among other things to be moral relationships
in which everybody is included. And to throw money at people do not
include them in some kind of moral relationship. But everybody should
be included, and of course that means poor people too.
Tor Forde
