Spotted by MBK in The Guardian:
So where do we look for the idea that can make hope more powerful than fear? Not to the Labour party. If Ed Miliband cannot bring himself even to oppose a bill which retrospectively denies compensation to cheated jobseekers, the most we can expect from him is a low-alcohol conservatism of the kind that doused all aspiration under Tony Blair.
Last week I ran a small online poll, asking people to nominate inspiring, transfiguring ideas. The two mentioned most often were land value taxation and a basic income. As it happens, both are championed by the Green party.(1) On this and other measures, its policies are by a long way more progressive than Labour's.
I discussed land value taxation in a recent column. A basic income (also known as a citizen's income) gives everyone, rich and poor, without means-testing or conditions, a guaranteed sum every week. It replaces some but not all benefits (there would, for instance, be extra payments for pensioners and people with disabilities). It banishes the fear and insecurity now stalking the poorer half of the population. Economic survival becomes a right, not a privilege.
A basic income removes the stigma of benefits while also breaking open what politicians call the welfare trap. Because taking work would not reduce your entitlement to social security, there would be no disincentive to find a job – all the money you earn is extra income. The poor are not forced by desperation into the arms of unscrupulous employers: people will work if conditions are good and pay fair, but will refuse to be treated like mules. It redresses the wild imbalance in bargaining power that the current system exacerbates. It could do more than any other measure to dislodge the emotional legacy of serfdom. It would be financed by progressive taxation – in fact it meshes well with land value tax.(2)
1) And YPP of course, although for slightly different reasons.
2) As I said in the comments:
Yup, LVT and CI is an intellectually coherent match.
The gimmick being that people in the middle pay neither tax nor receive benefits as the two sides net off to zero. So it's like feudalism on its head, instead of The One Per Cent collecting all the rent, interest and tax and people in the middle paying for it, the bottom half receive a small net payment from the people willing and able to occupy the best locations.
Happy Birthday
52 minutes ago
38 comments:
Funny chap - maybe not quite as bonkers as he seems. Does he sense the distant rumbling of a bandwagon? I wonder.
One giant flaw with CI accepted theory:
1) With LVT wages and profits would normalise at the level. Rising compared to rents. The wealth divide would disappear. So a CI would be like unfair benefits again. Duh!
So Monbiot sounds good. But does not understand what he is saying yet. A bit like Caroline Lucas of the Greens by strange coincidence.
No one seems to understand that no one wants an LVT, so it will not happen. Its no use complaining about it, this is the free choice of 6.2 billion people. To force it on them would be violence and anti democratic.
And its no good then saying "but they just need education" when they already know it very well indeed already, but are simply in denial and prefer to play The Game in the hope of being one of the few winners. Civilisation is founded on pyramid selling. You cannot tell 'em. They already decided what they want. Forcing anything else on them is against their free will and stateful and slavery inducing. Duh2!
What staggers me is no one is asking why all people prefer to be dead while living... and then to die anyway. Why is it that no one wants to live and only wants success and money? Well a few have asked this over the aeons.
No one is asking why LVT is impossible for people to accept. Its the same kind of denial as we complain about with KLN's, but this time with us doing it. Duh3! Victims become perpetrators.
RSI *is* asking this very question if anyone wants to join in the dialogue.
The problem for you guys, just like the faux's and the believers is that it means you will have to go to a place you are not willing to go to. You will have to stop believing. And start to know.
Monbiot's a decent sort. Where some people are ideologically interested in something, or, like the watermelons, use something to achieve a different objective, Monbiot does seem to look for solutions to help people.
On nuclear power, he did an about-turn after Fukushima, openly declaring himself having changed sides on it. Yes, long after the rest of us, but he was man enough to admit it.
MW: there seems to be a frenzy of comments, very few about his main thrust unfortunately. Other than that, good stuff.
RS: probably more than a grain of truth in what you are saying, but I'll take my chances on cheering for the tiny probability that change will come about before the dwindingly smaller probability that everyone reaches rhetorical-question-nirvana. It's no big conundrum, people are attracted to unearned income because it's less work.
AKH, I started liking Monbiot after his "Saul on the road to Fukushima" article (to which TS refers). He now talks sense more often than not (instead of all this greenie nonsense he used to spout).
RS, yes, we know the rules. They are bad rules. And the "wealth divide" would not disappear under an LVT/CI system, why would it? People still keep their earned income and non-land assets.
TS, agreed.
Kj, I can't bear to read the comments. I sent him my message of support and he can make of it what he will. The good news that being slagged off for being Georgist tends to make you even more hard core :-)
@MW
My impression was that he'd been reading your stuff. Perhaps as well as lending him support, you should send him a ready-to-print digest of how your scheme meshes LVT with CI.As you know I favour the Millite from-here-on Land Tax plus massive Keynesian demand stimulus, but would support any LVT scheme that stands any chance of being implemented -as the Mesh ( a graveyard smesh)surely does.
Robin Smith said...
.... No one seems to understand that no one wants an LVT, so it will not happen. Its no use complaining about it, this is the free choice of 6.2 billion people.
========================
6.2 billion? Huh?
The LVT and CD go together as one.
You are then billed equally for state services which tends to right-size the extortion funded sector.
A good start would be to create the LVT and use it to push up the 0% personal income tax band.
VFTS, I think RS means "everybody in the whole world".
SB, with LVT/CI there is hardly a bad place to start. Anything has got to be better than the existing tax and welfare systems - unless you want to prop up the One Per Cent and play "divide and rule" by pitting the people in the middle against those at the bottom.
RS - "1) With LVT wages and profits would normalise at the level. Rising compared to rents. The wealth divide would disappear. So a CI would be like unfair benefits again. Duh!"
Ironically, I don't think you've thought this through.
LVT on it's own does not do away with Rent, nor the Law of Rent, for the simple reason that NOTHING can short of repealing physics itself (if you have a plan for *that* I'm all ears!). Rent will always outstrip wages and profits as civilisation grows, whoever is collecting it.
The question is not how to get rid of or minimize Rent because you can't. The question is what to do with the Rent collected. LVT on it's own, while necessary, doesn't answer that question.
http://fraggle.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/caplangochenour-v-georgism-part-5-reflections/
It seems to me that any dispersal of the collected Rent other than a CI just establishes Rent-seeking around whatever it is the government does instead.
As for imposing LVT before the hearts of the people are ready? I think the problem is not that it can't be done (I'm sure it can), more that it wouldn't last and would require terrible evil to try to maintain.
Fraggle: I think the theory is that speculation causes rent that is above community produced advantages; remove it, and it will disappear and behave like normal profits that are reduced by competition. I don't find that there is empirical evidence such a thing has ever happened to rent. If it were to happen, no biggie, if free land was abundant, you wouldn't have that much need for a CD. If the more likely is to happen, that there would be surplus rent, the most logical thing to do, as you say, is to distribute it universally.
Kj - Agreed, agreed, and agreed.
What's interesting is that you and the greens both think that LVT/CI will solve opposing problems. You like LVT/CI because it removes distortions and encourages people to invest more in productive pursuits. The greens like it because it will give the state more money and power to distort the economy with.
Go figure.
BE
DBC, maybe he does read my stuff, who knows?
F, broadly agreed, up to a point:
"The question is not how to get rid of or minimize Rent because you can't. The question is what to do with the Rent collected. LVT on it's own, while necessary, doesn't answer that question."
There is an extreme theory that say what you do with LVT doesn't matter. A govt could just pay off the national debt and just keep shrinking the money supply for ever. That's maybe not the ideal use, but it would get rid of leveraged land price speculation etc, which is a huge plus.
Kj, agreed.
BE, yes, the Greens see it largely as an additional tax, but hey, two steps forward and one step back is better than the status quo.
"No one seems to understand that no one wants an LVT, so it will not happen. Its no use complaining about it, this is the free choice of 6.2 billion people."
Not so. LVT used to be the backbone of at least the UK's taxation system. It was the norm. Income tax was a suspicious newcomer. The knee-jerk anti-LVT reaction has been nurtured over decades since Winston Churchill had a go at reintroducing it at the start of the C20th. Who has done this? I don't know, but the tiny powerful minority who would lose out under it have to be the prime suspects. The rise of the anti-LVT lobby has occurred at the same time as the rise in influence of the urban landowner and the decline in influence of the rural landowner. Coincidence? perhaps but perhaps not.
B, it's no particular coincidence. It's just a vicious circle, whoever benefits most from any particular govt handout usually spends most time on lobbying to maintain or increase those handouts.
Another crass example is "the pensions industry". All they need is a couple of simple slogans to justify it and they are made for life for little effort other than lobbying.
Have you read the comments under the Monbiot article? There's over a thousand of them and they're totally clueless.
It's the Grauniad so what do you expect...
http://store.steampowered.com/app/225420/
"Building the transportation network will directly affect how the city grows. Affordable transportation brings middle class housing and work places, while more expensive and exotic choices bring high end businesses. Take advantage of many different types of vehicles including buses, trams, ferries and more."
I wish there would be a more geo-libertarian game.
"...The poor are not forced by desperation into the arms of unscrupulous employers.. So he still can't quite let it go...Not quite there yet.
Lola: The argument about bargaining power isn't all leftism, there's something to it. The difference in bargaining power between having a 35K JSA that may go away if you don't work for Tesco for free, and a 35K CI that doesn't, is subtle, but still there.
SB: have you tried the new Sim City?
KJ - i get the whole 'forced into employment bit', but GM (how appropriate) is generally a bit watermelon-ish and can't quite get his head round the fact that the state is just as capable of exploiting employees as private business. And IMHO, more so.
Lola: true that.
On a general point, it does seem that,a la Wince C, George Lucas (!) still see LVT as an extra tax, which means that they just do not get it.
DBC, no they are not totally clueless. Somebody called Aetherbeliever linked to the KLN blog, so one of them knows what he or she is talking about.
And this is a good lesson for GM. Mention LVT or mention CI and you get a kicking, mention both in the same paragraph and you are doomed.
SB, I like the train dangling over Wuppertal, now that is exotic.
L, as Kj says, a CI has little or no effect on people's willingness to work. And there are unscrupulous employers every bit as much as there are unscrupulous employees. That's far from saying that all employers or all employees are like that. Most of them are fairly decent.
And as I've said before, the best guarantee of workers' rights is 'full employment', you just need a tax/benefit system which is most likely to create 'full employment' (whatever that is).
L, that's not quite true. They have both said it would be a replacement for e.g. council tax and business rates, possibly SDLT. Lucas got a researcher (Andy Wightman) to do a summary for her and he definitely chucked in SDLT as one to be replaced.
MW: No I did mean that a CI does have an effect on people's willingness to work, vs. a JSA, and vs. nothing I guess.
Anyway, anecdote alert, I've had about 20 employers in my life, from crappy backroom outfits to large firms, including quangos. The only one's I've felt slightly screwed over with were the ones with Mission Statements and separate HR staff.
"SB: have you tried the new Sim City?"
I don't buy EA games anymore sorry.
separate HR staff.
Once you call your employees "human Resources" you've decided their not people, they're fungible. It's a sign the organisation has turned sociopath.
MW Ah. I stand corrected. Good oh.
MW I never assumed that CI would increase people's 'willingness to work'. Personally, under a full on LVT system, I don't think it matters. Surely you could live in a hovel so your LVT was > CI and live off the difference, but doing so would not be at anyone else's expense. You would not have any more than anyone else. So, if you want to be a hermit and contemplate your navel and the eternal verities you would be free to do so.
Kj, I know what you meant. Of course a CI has SOME effect on people's willingness to go to work, it means SOME people won't bother.
L, well don't stand too corrected. The Greens have some very disturbing ideas about higher rate income tax.
Re hermits and hovels, I completely agree, but I doubt the Daily Mailexpressgraph would.
In re hermits and hovel, were it not for Mrs L I would be very happy living in a factory with a small mezzanine floor with a kitchen on it, and all my toys on the floor below...now how low would the LVT be on that? (Compared to a 'nice' property in a 'good' location?)
L, that all depends on where the factory is. Everybody would be able to find something that costs no more than their CI.
MW Eggsaktly! I am looking forward to it...
Question for MW
What is your view on GM's caveat:
It replaces some but not all benefits (there would, for instance, be extra payments for pensioners and people with disabilities).
It seems to me that one of the principle benefits of CBI is to eliminate the armies of welfare bureaucrats. This will only work if the CBI is simple. Once different levels are granted for "deserving" groups, the benefit is undone. My view is that there should be one CBI for all with but one qualification and that is that the recipient be a citizen over the starting age. After that, no one gets more regardless. Gaps are plugged with charity.
JM, given where we are starting from, I don't think that having different rates for different age groups is too much hassle and I'm in favour of extra payments for severe disability, you never know, there but for the grace of God etc, it's just a low-cost mass insurance scheme.
But the existing welfare system is so complicated, even if we have three CI rates (kids, adults, pensioners) with extras for severe disability, that is still a 99% reduction in paperwork and rules and fraud and disincentives and other crap.
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