Blogger won't let me do a new post or amend old ones today, so I'm doing this by sending an email. Heck knows what the formatting will end up like.
UPDATE: The post appeared and now I can amend it. Which entails getting rid of all the stupid "div" tags.
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From the BBC:
Low-paid workers who take strike action will no longer have their wages topped up by the state, ministers say. Workers on up to £13,000 a year can currently claim working tax credits to top up their income even when they take part in industrial action. But from next year there will be no increase in benefits if a worker's income drops due to strike action...
Under the new rules, benefit claimants will be identified as being involved in a trade dispute using information provided by HM Revenue and Customs, the government said. The amount a household receives in benefits will then be assessed using the normal, "non-strike"; level of earnings.
I can see the authoritarian appeal of this, even though I'd worry about the administration. HM Revenue & Customs can only provide the information (to whom?) if employers have provided the information first, which is probably a pain in the bureaucratic arse (what if a worker then does a day's worth of overtime in the next week to catch up, for example - he'd lose his top ups in the week he was on strike, and then he earns more next week so loses more top-ups anyway as his income is higher.) and gives employers the whip hand in negotiations. If people go on strike for a day, the employer could "accidentally" inform HMRC that they'd been on strike for a week, thus losing them one week's worth of welfare top-ups. Or the employer could agree a slightly less favourable pay settlement in return for not tipping off HMRC.
But never mind, this is still all a bit sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut.
What if we just had a flat rate kind of welfare, call it Citizen's Income or Citizen's Dividend if you will, which is paid out to every citizen regardless of circumstances*. If somebody goes on strike for a day, then they'd lose a whole day's market wages automatically, instead of losing one day's worth of [below market wages + welfare top up], thus a Citizen's Income would achieve precisely the behavioural outcome which the current lot would like to achieve with absolutely none of the extra bureaucracy, none of the authoritarian overtones and without placing extra hassle on/giving undue extra bargaining power to employers.
* Unless they've got outstanding liabilities like court fines, child maintenance, tax bills etc.
Dark thoughts
2 hours ago
8 comments:
"with absolutely none of the extra bureaucracy,"
What's the point of new legislation if it doesn't create extra jobs for bureaucrats?
" none of the authoritarian overtones"
That won't keep the Daily Mail readers happy: even less point to changing the law.
"and without placing extra hassle on/giving undue extra bargaining power to employers."
Surely one cancels the other out?
How about making land common property again and abolishing taxes first. That way the speculative rent would vanish and be transferred to higher wages and returns to capital investment. This is a moral decision we all make as individuals when we vote if we decide to stop rent seeking.
If so the true rents would be left to government to improve this new tax base or to dish out to the masses or a bit of both. But that is a practical decision for voters to make, it matters little which way it goes if the former is done.
If not see Rome.
Then we cou;d
B, do they cancel out? The net overall effect must be negative as the employer's gain is still the employee's loss.
RS, sure, but to the extent we dish out LVT revenues as CI or welfare (probably the best way of improving the tax base, you couldn't possibly spend more than £10 bn or £20 bn a year on improving infrastructure anyway) then let it be flat rate and universal.
"B, do they cancel out?"
Only for employers. It strikes me that the pressure for an awful lot of legislation is not to make things better for good members of society, but to make things easier for the lazy and incompetent, be they bosses, workers, landlords, tenants, bureaucrats or whoever is exerting the pressure for change. That and raising barriers to entry, which is just another version of the same thing.
MW "£10 bn or £20 bn a year on improving infrastructure anyway"
Free energy and transport along with and health and security would easily do that. Plus a few other public corporations that still stand privatised. But then again you could pay for it all privately with a CI. But which is most beneficial to everyone.
B, possibly.
RS, you're confusing things. There's no real or absolute difference between govt provided free healthcare, healthcare vouchers, higher CI and/or compulsory health insurance. That's not infrastructure spending.
MW You are not listening or thinking. Remember how I discovered this habit about you last week?
CI only is a question of importance once all people have decided that rent seeking is bad. because until then there is no fund for it.
If they decide they like CI before they have decided to stop robbing each other, then what good the CI?
Pause, listen, read, think.
RS, you're as bad as the Homeys sometimes.
Land rents will always arise if there is:
1. A stable nation state.
2. Exclusive possession of land.
3. Some locations being more desirable than others.
Private land 'ownership' is actually entirely unnecessary. Even if all land were owned in common, or if all land belonged to the government, there would be rental values and rents would arise (or the non-cash benefit of having exclusive possession of a more favourable plot).
Thus rents, in their most basic and inevitable form do not arise because of 'rent seeking'. The NIMBYs and bankers merely exacerbate the problem and use this entirely natural and indeed benevolent phenomenon as a force for bad.
So the question is, what to do with the rental income?
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As a separate issue, it is a simple fact that if you have a welfare system, however it is funded, then universal, flat rate benefits are the best (or the least bad).
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