Exactly. I notice the same thing with any discussion of new ideas. Any time discussion goes outside the box society puts people's minds into, people start these personal attacks. I have just been through an experience on another list, to do with voting reform. As soon as I started suggesting that a lot of the trouble with getting people to understand the different types of voting reform is the arcane terminology used. I got lynched. The moderator there put the list on moderation, so I hope things settle down now.
But, in hopes of getting some discussion of what needs to be done about work in the future, I am pasting below something I wrote lately, a book review. It is about the near success of the attempt to get a guaranteed income in the states in the 1970's. A guaranteed income is actually a pretty old idea, but you start talking about it these days and you are likely to be subjected to a hysterical shout down. We will see. This list was originally started by Sally Lerner, who used to be a big advocate of a Basic Income, but has gone silent on the topic. On 2-Oct-08, at 11:20 AM, Selma Singer wrote: > I haven't been paying a lot of attention for quite a while. but has > there > been any discussion about what is wrong with the basic values of > competition > and what we value in our society in general? > > For example, is it possible that the socialization process through > which we > teach our children to work for something other than the value of > doing the > work itself, may be one of the things that is wrong that has the > possibility > of being corrected if enough people were willing to acknowledge it > and try > to work to change it? > > Remember the good old days when Ray Harrell (do I remember his name > correctly?) was here and we had wonderful discussions about such > things. > > However, from the little attention I have been paying, the people > still on > the list are the ones who would not countenance such heretical > thinking so > maybe that is a road we cannot manage to tread on. > > Selma Singer > > "the failed welfare revolution" by Brian Steensland a review by Tim Rourke 2008, isbn# 13-978-0-691-12714-9 Brian Steensland has just put out a book on the attempt to create a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. It has many lessons for Canada, though we very different problems and a different culture. Steensland looks at the way the American culture and existing institutions forced the debate into a particular frame. Especially, he looks at the policy making machinery in government, and the public debate as shaped by the mass media. How GAI started In the the mid 60's the Arden House commission was appointed by president Johnson to examine the welfare system in the U.S.A. In 1966 it issued a report finding that the existing welfare system was based on the untenable premise that good jobs at good wages were available to all. It criticised the existing system for sorting people into different programs according to their perceived ability to work. The Arden house group proposed a system that treated the unemployed and the working poor in the same way. They adopted a Negative Income Tax model (NIT), which would raise people's incomes up to an annual minimum; the benefits would come as a refundable tax credit. At this time, experiments were begun in which test populations were given an NIT and compared with control populations. what happened Today it seems bizarre, but then it was heralded as an "idea whose time has come". It had strong support from left and right. It almost passed into law. It had three things against it. One was the old idea, rooted in American culture, of deserving and undeserving poor; those who really could not work and those who refused to work. The idea of the 'working poor', who were poor despite working hard, was incomprehensible to this ideology. Second, everybody had their own idea of GAI. Many people wanted to use it to solve various problems only tangentially related to poverty. These people usually turned against GAI when it failed to conform to their ideas. Third, the debates did not come only from perceptions about poverty; the way they were framed shaped the perceptions. Social movements were a great force in the debate. Labour unions were not. The weakness and decentralised nature of the American state worked against GAI. four perspectives Thinking about social issues in the U.S.A. tends to follow four perspectives. One is the social movement perspective. This holds that the poor create progress for themselves by social disruption. The second perspective came from business. Much of the business class supported GAI. A third perspective, often ignored, is the role of policy making elites within government. A forth perspective is institutionalism. The structure of the American government, committee systems of the congress, the differences between the south and the rest of the country, and the way local governments are given much control over administering cost shared social programs, greatly influenced the GAI debate. The problem with institutional approaches is that they ignore the effect of what already exists on people's perceptions and actions. For example, in Canada existing social programs served as a natural bridge to the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) of the 1960's. In the U.S.A., existing programs often got in the way of welfare reform. culture People do not just have interests, they have ideas about their interests. These ideas become institutionalised and shape further policy proposals. For this reason, presidents Johnson, Nixon and Carter failed to implement a GAI because they failed to redefine basic concepts. They tried to use the language of the old welfare system and its detractors instead of creating an alternative basis for individual worth. stigmas and categories GAI was based on people's need, not their work, and thus put all categories into one. But this did not make sense culturally. The working poor did not want to be considered as welfare recipients and did not understand GAI as being in their interests. Business leaders began to think that stigmatising the working poor would reduce their 'work ethic'. The opponents of GAI came up with earned income tax credit, EITC, in 1975. It was like Nixon's plan but gave tax credits only to people who were working. It thus split the working and non working poor. At the same time, the numbers of people categorised as the deserving poor kept shrinking as more people were forced onto the labour market. This closed off opportunity to create support for a GAI. By president Carter's time, the boundaries between the working and non working poor were solidly in place. support and opposition Mayors and governors wanted Nixon's plan because their welfare costs were climbing and his plan would have taken all social welfare costs off them. Business leaders supported it at first because it eased urban unrest and removed work disincentives. It also streamlined welfare administration. But it ran up against cultural categories of worth; if you get public money, you are a less worthy being. Nixon's attempt to co-opt the opposition's language infuriated welfare rights activists, even though what he was actually proposing was quite progressive. Then the conservative opposition were given ammunition when the GAI experiments showed a high rate of marital dissolution. This ended defence of GAI on the basis of family stability. the media As the debate progressed in the 60s and 70s media coverage changed with it and largely shaped the debate. In the 60s poverty was seen as mainly a white problem. Somehow it gradually became a problem of black people. That GAI was a response to structural unemployment and low wages disappeared from the media, even though that remained the focus of discussion in government. failure Support for GAI drifted away. Liberals shifted to job creation schemes. Conservatives turned to the 'California style' reforms pioneered by governor Ronald Reagan; forced rehabilitation and strict work requirements. With Reagan as president, all hope died. The old group who had been with it from the Arden house report and Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity went out and got drunk and then found other jobs. GAI now Increasing social distress in the U.S. is reviving the debate about a GAI among academics. Ideas similar to the Basic Economic Security Plan proposed by Robert Theobald in 1963, rejected by the Arden house people, are now becoming prominent. This plan means simply giving everybody a monthly living allowance. Those who continue to put NIT forward claim that because of the EITC, tax rebates are now in the national 'gene pool' and they might as well go with it; extending their rebates down to the part time workers and then the unemployed. Of course, an EITC is not in Canada's gene pool and we do not want it there. final observations relevant to Canada It will take both insider and outsider groups to get a GAI on the public agenda again. There have to be scholars and politicians interested, but there have to be social movements pushing from the outside as well. It is difficult to have a debate about GAI when you do not have the details of an actual plan that is being put forward by government. Finally, conservative opposition to GAI was not based on an economic threat, but a cultural threat. In other words, a feared loss of social control. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
