One Economic Proposal, Four Possible Choices for the Nation
from a guaranteed minimum income to ending exploitation
The political process is the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole. In geopolitical terms “the community” can range from a village to an entire nation. Effecting choices (choosing among alternatives and taking action to bring that choice to fruition) is a constant process. If we are not choosing to do something different, we are choosing to keep doing the same thing: that is always one choice — and almost always the easiest.
In the U.S. (or any other nation, for that matter) doing “the same thing” no longer seems to be a smart thing to do. Here, we are mostly fighting over who is to blame as the ship we are sailing in catches fire and begins to sink. Politically, ‘left’ and ‘right’ vie desperately for control with no plan for doing anything different, materially, than we have been doing since the Great Depression (more than 90 years now): diddling with taxes and public debt. Adherents on both sides are absolutely certain of one thing: the other side is wrong about every important thing.
A different economic possibility that, as it happens, I stumbled upon offers a way forward that is revolutionary but not radical. That is, it would transform the outcomes from the existing economy for our nation without requiring any changes to its institutional structure. The only change that would have to be made would be to change the uses to which money (as currency) are put as it enters the economy (well, that and having some way to return some amount of money to the administrator of the paradigm — probably the central bank, though it could be a new entity created for that purpose only).
Here, I want to point out how that one change has the potential to produce three distinctly different outcomes. The most conservative outcome would be to establish a minimum guaranteed income for adult citizens — one a person could actually live on — without taxes/pubic debt and without redistributing anything. Alternatively, this proposal could be used to establish a uniform income for all people employed in any business or government, but with varying — unlimited — benefits still accruing to different positions. The third choice would be to go ‘all the way’ and eliminate economic exploitation altogether by taking that second format for remuneration and eliminating benefits accruing to any position: everyone employed in any business or government would have the same total remuneration and therefore have the same access to all goods and services available in the nation.
All of those choices share certain other outcomes. In every case the economy would be self-regulating. In every case there would be no unemployment or poverty for adult citizens. (Welfare and Social Security would no longer have a rationale in the U.S., where I live.) In that vein, in every case it would be as easy as not to pay the guaranteed income to one parent in a household with at least one child living there. (The income would be the same regardless of the number of children.) In every case using taxes/public debt to fund government — all government, from central to local — could be eliminated. In every case sustainability would be increased (more, the further we went). In every case people could still make more — or less — money than that designated income. In every case there would be no cost imposed on employers, no redistribution of anything (other than a redistribution of property that freely operating markets might induce), no limit on how much income people could generate or how much wealth people could acquire, and no requirement for people to act any particular way.
It is perhaps easier for the reader to see now how this proposal is “revolutionary but not radical.” It is in many way downright ‘conservative’. In that way it is very much in keeping with our first Revolution. Only now, we have a fully developed democratic political process and bondage slavery has been constitutionally abolished. Talk about a “yet more perfect Union!”
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