Walter Stanners
It was interesting and surprising to notice that of the score or so of
contributions, eight (Bryan, Lister, Patton, Schaunk, Stanners, Szreter,
Weir, White) stressed the importance of more re-distribution of income
(and time and work as some added). Re-distribution through increased
taxation, I need hardly say, is entirely absent from official "Third
Way" rhetoric. Five contributions (Schaunk, Stanners, Szreter, Weir,
White) were strongly in favour of what is variously called a basic
income, citizen's income or minimum income.
The following puts an eloquent case for the basic income from one
generally associated with a liberal free-market standpoint.
"The idea of ... Basic Income was that an affluent society could provide
a standard of living above subsistence for all. The government would
stop trying to hunt down scroungers and shirkers on the welfare state.
The potential shirker would be told in effect: The community is now
rich enough to give you choices. You can opt out if you wish and you
will receive an allowance which will be far from princely and well below
the normal wage, but will allow you to live. Alternatively,you can work
and go after much larger material prizes. Or you can try to find your
own compromise - for instance, using the Basic Income to allow you to
take part in part-time or badly rewarded work, which you might,
nevertheless, find more fulfilling to pursue.
"Such an income should help with the problem of the underclass -
although there are many other factors behind the rise in numbers of
homeless and beggars, not easily amenable to an overall financial
approach. Basic Income would also be helpful to, among other groups,
artists at the beginning of their careers, those opting for a simple
lifestyle or following vocations with low or variable market returns, or
students without grants. People ranging from 1960s hippies to the
scholar-gypsy would be provided with a place in the sun, but would not
be able to impose their values on the rest of us.
"I also had much in mind the benefits which the traditional upper-middle
classes derived from the possession of a modest private income which
gave them a degree of independence and saved them from being complete
wage-slaves. European civilisation, as it developed from the
Renaissance onwards, depended on unearned income and inherited wealth.
Among the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European bourgeoisie,
a private income was for long a supplement to income from work - and a
major element of flexibility. It enabled people to embark on careers
which would not otherwise be possible and to take risks with their
professions and lifestyles.
"Such means must indeed play a role in the contemporary United States
and Japan (for example, the Kennedys and the Rockefellers). But the lip
service paid to the work ethic leads to silence on these matters. In
fact, the main thing wrong with unearned income is that too few of us
have it.
"In the past the choice was between such an income for a few or for
none. My hope was that if the productive possibilities of the new
technologies were even a fraction of that claimed for them, the modest
competence, which was the ideal of Victorian novelists, might eventually
be possible for all citizens."
This is from the opening paragraphs of a chapter on basic income in
"Capitalism with a Human Face", by Samuel Brittan, 1995. The past tense
refers to an earlier publication in 1988, in full mid-Thatcher
prosperity, so this is not part of the drift of Conservative and Liberal
intellectuals towards the new power.
Politicians of any colour cannot possibly mention or entertain such
ideas. "I am not a tax and spend Chancellor", said Mr. Brown when
explaining his disagreement with a Frank Field proposal which the latter
had admitted "involved redistribution". If academics and commentators
also fail to speak clearly for fear of seeming un-third-way, off-message
and impractical, then the case will never be made. It is likely that a
sizeable fraction of the relatively well-off are ready to redress the
balance of income distribution at least towards the existing European
norms. It remains for the writers and communicators of all sorts to try
to alter the mind-set of the voters in that direction.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Posted to 3way, a service of Nexus. http://www.netnexus.org/
Hosting and email provided by new media consultants On-Line Publishing