OK, so we know there’s sufficient rent to run government, to support a living wage basic income, and to keep the currency stable? (ATCOR & EBCOR, John Locke, Mason Gaffney, Joseph Stiglitz, &c.)
And that we’d eliminate rent-seeking, and all the deadweight losses created by taxes on productivity. However, after this Twitter exchange with Lindsay David suggesting it would also solve our industrial relations problems, I got to thinking about who might possibly oppose a universal living wage basic income.
________________
Lindsay David@linzcom·
After a week up the coast it’s pretty clear Sydney will eventually lose more locals to regional NSW and elsewhere. And big business could save a fortune shifting administrative roles et al out of the CBD and Metro area320
Replying to @linzcom It’s looking that way. I’m expecting businesses’ 3rd iteration: when an Australian living wage basic income is introduced, they’ll only have to pay some amount additional to the UBI to attract employees. IR solved! 2:40 PM · Oct 10, 2020·Twitter Web App
_____________
So, I began to ask myself who might be against a decent socio-political arrangement that could introduce an economy of abundance. I discovered five potential answers:-
- Although small businesses would be in favour of a UBI, banking and the big monopolies, who currently make super-profits from extracting rent from the economy, would be against the idea because it clearly acts to reduce their super-profits/unearned incomes.
2. Then, if it solves industrial relations problems, what’s the role of the union movement? Wouldn’t it only have a ‘keep watch’ involvement then? And wouldn’t the system act to reduce super-profits of industry superannuation funds, as also with the the commercial funds (and other monopolies)? So, they might be against a UBI, too! (But a UBI would surely help workers!)
3. I also realised that those modern monetary theorists who are wedded to the idea of a ‘job guarantee’ would probably resist a living wage UBI, not because it wouldn’t work for people, but because it shows up the silliness of what amounts to gig jobs (i.e. enforced work for the minimum wage).
4. Then there’s The Church. They’re into rent-seeking, too. In the days of the land rent, they would have supported the idea of a universal living wage basic income, because it wasn’t at all necessary! But in these days, where “The land shall not be sold” and usury have been relegated from any public consideration, isn’t it everyone’s ‘moral duty’ to work? So maybe the churches will resist a UBI, too?
5. Then there’s a media beholden to all of the above, in favour of a ‘rightful and proper status quo‘, even in view of the widening income gap and collapsing economies!
So, it’s not just land tax reform that’s ‘up against it’. There are interests that would possibly also oppose a living wage universal basic income, which otherwise seems to be an eminently fair proposition for both sides of politics?
