A discussion at Penny U
7:00 p.m., Friday, December 4, 2015Town Hall Seattle, downstairs cafe
Late last
year, a video was posted on Penny U’s blog telling of a Swiss proposal to
guarantee every citizen a minimum yearly income, regardless of other wealth or
employment. A similar idea came up again at the end of Robert Reich’s talk at
Town Hall earlier this fall. Below, I posted a short piece,
“Guaranteed Income and Unrigging the System,” highlighting this aspect of
Reich’s talk.
Reich
proposes it as a way to counteract the widening gap between those with extreme
wealth and power and those without, a condition that threatens, he says, not
only our economy but our democracy. He suggests that this minimum might be funded
through a “citizen’s bequest,” that would, in his words, “distribute the gains
from technological advances in such a way that nearly everyone would have the
means to benefit from them.”
Variations
on this idea are not new. In the final chapters of his book, Reich mentions
both Thomas Paine in Agrarian Justice,
1797 and conservative economist F.A. Hayek
in 1979 as precedents. The last question posed to Reich at Town Hall quoted
Martin Luther King, who, in the last years of his life, advocated for a guaranteed
income as the solution to poverty. But the debate is far from settled.
We will
discuss aspects of this debate at Penny U beginning with these questions:
• Assuming
that rules could be changed and funding found, is a guaranteed minimum income
even a good idea?
It
would support the leisure and “freedom from pressing economic cares,” that
economist John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1928 that we would achieve by 2028. It
could provide a decent living for the workers with a “calling” who are now unpaid,
mentioned in my essay, “Unpaid, in Spite of Their Value.” It could allow
today’s overworked workers to live fuller lives. But would people use their
time well or are we inherently lazy, with tendencies toward free-loading?
• If
it’s a good idea, how would such a mechanism be put in place?
Reich
contends that, first, the existing system would have to be unrigged, and, to do
that, a knowledgeable “countervailing power” would have to emerge
among the “vast majority.” Is that possible? What would it look like? Is it
beginning to exist already? How would it gain momentum?
• If
it’s a good idea and the rules could
be changed, how would it be funded?
Robert
Reich proposes a citizen’s bequest. Jaron Lanier has proposed that big
companies using your data – Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. – should pay a tiny royalty
whenever they use it; it’s valuable data, it’s yours, and the small amounts would
add up. We could learn from Alaska’s experiment with the oil dividend that it
gives all its citizens. And others propose that funds for this purpose could be
freed up by eliminating our whole welfare system. Which of these idea are most
useful or likely? What other good ideas are out there?
On Friday,
after short opening introductions and a little background, we’ll break into
small groups around cafe tables for individual conversations that allow
everyone to participate.
If you’re
in the area, please join us!