A major motivation to initiate this list, back in the mid-'90s, was to stimulate discussion of the changing nature of work and how best to respond morally, socially and economically to the changes. So I am pleased that Ed has suggested we return to a consideration of guaranteed annual income - which is also called basic income, citizen's income, social dividend and various other names.
Let me recommend an excellent recent book: Freedom and Security: An Introduction to the Basic Income Debate by Tony Fitzpatrick (New York, NY:St. Martin's Press Inc, 1999) ISBN 0-312-22313-7 [Try your library - the book is, sadly, expensive] For a brief intro to BI, visit our new BI/Canada website at www.basicincomecanada.org There you can connect to the website of BIEN (Basic Income European Network), the mother ship of contemporary BI thinking. Sally Ed wrote: The economy of any major country is a very large thing, with billions of decisions and transactions going on all of the time. Transactions are, of course, real, but the decisions that determine those transactions tend to be subjective, affected by moods and the nuances of what people believe is happening whether it really is happening or not. Economic institutions spin out numbers based on the relatively few things in the economy that are measurable. The media picks these numbers up, treats them as though they were the word of some all-knowing god and very often distorts them into something they were not intended to be. I sympathize with your call for "a workable plan", but of course that leads to the question of workable in whose eyes, to what purposes and with what horizons in mind. And the last thing that I would want to see is plans disseminated by great orators and statesmen. Surely we've had enough of that! So, what do we need? What we may have learned from the dot.com and telecom debacles is that not all that glitters is gold and that what goes up must come down. We've learned that before but it doesn't seem to have stuck. And, as the economy keeps demonstrating but we keep wishing away, we have to learn to live with considerable uncertainty. Not all of us will have jobs, at least not all of the time, and we may not have the jobs we would like to have. The economy is not nearly as generous of steady work and career choice as it was three or four decades ago. This would suggest that, in good societies, we have to accept that we are to at least some degree our brothers' keepers. Societies which can spend trillions of dollars chasing illusory paper wealth must surely have the resources to build social safety nets that are genuinely supportive and do not make those in need feel like pariahs. There was considerable discussion of guaranteed annual incomes on this list some time ago. Perhaps that should be resumed. Whatever it is, the economy will keep chuntering along. What we have to recognize, increasingly, is that it is not there to make a few us super-rich, but to provide support to all of us because we are all part of it. Ed Ed Weick 577 Melbourne Ave. Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7 Canada Phone (613) 728 4630 Fax (613) 728 9382
