I agree Ray, but not to the denial of BAI and the help it can offer
those who need it. I refer again to the experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba
in the 70's (http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100) which helped the
people there i.e.
"For four years Dauphin was a place where anyone living below the
poverty line could receive monthly cheques to boost their income, no
questions asked. Single mothers could afford to put their kids through
school and low-income families weren't scrambling to pay the rent each
month.
For Amy Richardson, it meant she could afford to buy her children books
for school. Richardson joined the program in 1977, just after her
husband had gone on disability leave from his job. At the time, she was
struggling to raise her three youngest children on $1.50 haircuts she
gave in her living room beauty parlour.
The $1,200 per year she received in monthly increments was a welcome
supplement, in a time when the poverty line was $2,100 a year.
"The extra money meant that I was also able to give my kids something I
wouldn't ordinarily be able to, like taking them to a show or some small
luxury like that," said Richardson, now 84, who spoke to /The Dominion/
by phone from Dauphin. ..."
But, since the educational systems of this and your country have failed
the general populace (due to a perverted government will), most people
will feel lost. An education including the arts would have offered
thought processes and outlets no longer available to the average student
that is now simply prepared to be a wage-slave for the rest of his or
her life.This, would then appear to be a burgeoning opening for 'arts'
teachers and a re-education chance for all those lost years and lost
souls. Perhaps a new cottage industry to take advantage of these BAI
payments with local schools as meeting places and a rebirth of artistic
endeavour.
Just attempting to stay on the positive side here.
D.
On 22/06/2012 7:50 AM, Ray Harrell wrote:
I do not agree. I believe payment for work is a better option. For
evidence I sight the idle rich and the problems that people have
living on interest and government payments for mineral rights.
Everyone needs to feel that their life has purpose beyond mere
survival and consumption.
REH
*From:*[email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Ed Weick
*Sent:* Friday, June 22, 2012 10:06 AM
*To:* RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION
*Subject:* Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1]
I agree, but I doubt that the Harpers of this world would.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
*From:*Arthur Cordell <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:*'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'
<mailto:[email protected]> ; 'Keith Hudson'
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Cc:*[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:*Friday, June 22, 2012 9:58 AM
*Subject:*Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1]
So now may be the time to consider some form of basic annual
income. A BAI may be cheaper in the long run than creating jobs
that are really not needed.
arthur
*From:*[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Ed Weick
*Sent:* Friday, June 22, 2012 7:38 AM
*To:* RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; Keith Hudson
*Cc:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1]
Since I was the guy who started the 'gloomy America' discussion,
perhaps I'd better say a little more.
IMHO, it's not something at the demand end that promotes growth
and development, it happens at the supply or really technological
end. Consider the enormous impact that the development of steam
power, electrical energy power and the growth of the factory
system have had. Consider the growth of railroads, highways and
air transport and their capacity to enable billions of people to
improve their lives. Consider the energy developments needed to
make such things possible. Even events that have not obviously
been growth promoting have had an impact -- yea, we've done it,
we've landed on the moon! I don't think the mobile phone has had
much of an impact because it's little more than an add on to what
was already there.
I would agree that we've reached something of a hiatus now and we
seem to be going in a reverse direction. When I began working in
the Canadian public service some fifty-odd years ago, there were
no computers and there was no internet, but there were plenty of
young women to type memos and plenty of young guys to take them to
where they were supposed to go. All those girls and guys are gone
now. And you see technology being intruded into the lives of the
working class wherever you look.
I'm not saying we're totally stuck, but we do seem to have reached
a point where redistribution, not growth, has become the primary
interest of business and government. Over the past few decades, I
attended many meeting in which the objective was not how to make
things more abundant -- growth -- but how particularly groups such
as the oil industry might get a larger share of the pie. If what
Giroux is saying is that what's important now is how to collude,
press your case, and get more out of the system, I would agree
with him. The growth of the lobby industry demonstrates this.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
*From:*Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:*RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
<mailto:[email protected]> ; [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:*Friday, June 22, 2012 3:14 AM
*Subject:*Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1]
Mike,
The paradox is that the most popular consumer product ever --
the mobile phone -- and also spreading among the world's poor
as well as the rich -- is also turning out to be the most
impenetrable by advertisers. If it was ever true that ". . .
centralized commercial institutions . . . tell most of the
stories that shape the lives of the American public", Henry
Giroux (Galbraith revisited) is no longer correct. But it was
never true anyway. If an economy looks as though it's
demand-led it can only be so if there happens to be something
tempting at the supply end. No matter how much cash and
credit governments and banks throw at the general public,
unless new status-friendly products are in sight the economy
stalls. The world may beat a path to Emerson's better
mouse-trap, but the thing has to be invented first.
Keith
At 18:45 21/06/2012, Mike wrote:
Following up to my own post (mea culpa) where I quoted Henry
Giroux
thus:
For the first time in modern history, centralized commercial
institutions that extend from traditional broadcast
culture to the
new interactive screen cultures - rather than parents,
churches or
schools - tell most of the stories that shape the lives of the
American public.
I commented
mds> ...any corporation that's playing in [the $700 billion] price
mds> range will be prepared to spend a $100 million or so on
salaries,
mds> bribes, support for favored educational or other
institutions --
mds> in general for subversion of the public interest wherever
that
mds> kind of return can be anticipated (hoped for?) in the
short- or
mds> medium-term future.
Here's a piece on "stealth lobbying".
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9889-exposed-the-other-alecs-corporate-playbook
Clearly, the corporate playbook in the statehouses extends far
beyond the tentacles of ALEC, which is but a small part of
a vast,
complex network of nonprofits.
The multilayered, dynamic system of corporate representatives
mingling with state legislators and public officials in a
network
of quasi-governmental nonprofits, allows the small number of
people who are part of the interlocking directorate to wield a
huge amount of power in shaping public policy. Under the
guise of
conducting educational activities, the stealth lobbyists
of the
"other ALECs" reduce the choice of citizens to which
version of
the corporate agenda to accept.
Will citizens, then, continue to accept such a scheme?
Time will
tell.
Not precisely congruent with telling "most of the stories that
shape
the lives of the American public" but parallel. The same
arborization
of intentional, coordinated corporate/big-business agenda and
viewpoint, fed from the same financial wells and using the same
ingenuous techniques of persuasion (if not more aggressive ones)
permeates media, penetrates public and post-secondary
education and
tilts the "the stories that shape [our] lives".
In YADATROT [2], those ingenuous stories essentially mask out
much of
what meaningful work, meaningful career or just availability of
adequately-paid and adequately-respected jobs and replace the
masked-out portions with a Disneyland version of reality to
which we
are expected to aspire. Critical thinking, actually seeing
"what is on
the end of your fork" is anathema to the Disney-fied version
of your
life and aspirations. The above-cited article reflects the
propagation
of the corporate Disneyland stage set into local and state
products of
the legislative process. As the author writes:
Will citizens, then, continue to accept such a scheme?
Time will
tell.
- Mike
[1] Jeez, the "Gloomy America" subject is getting a lot of
mileage.
Are we having fun yet?
[2] Yet Another Desperate Attempt To Remain On Topic
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
/( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/
<http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0>^^-^^
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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