Speakers' Corner - "Forget benefits... I'll give everyone £15,000 a year"
The Post has invited all 12 of the candidates for Bristol's elected mayor to contribute to Speakers' Corner. In the second of this series the self-styled independent Eric Mutch, also known as Corrupt Self Serving Lying B'stard 4 Bristol Mayor 2012, offers his views.
INVESTING in "Team GB" athletes resulted in a record gold medal haul at the Olympics. Invest in every man, woman and child on the planet and what would that do? All people have unlimited potential.
All people have unique talents and passions that they can contribute to society. What we need to do is find ways that get people to realise this potential, so that, individually, they can live fulfilled happy lives and together we, as a community, can reap the rewards of living in such a society.
The unconditional basic income is an investment in people.
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Gift people enough resources to live on, and then see what sort of society they create.
If elected mayor, I will pay every adult resident of Bristol an unconditional basic income of £15,000 every year, index linked to inflation, eradicating poverty and giving them the time and the freedom to do stuff just for the love of it.
If they earn extra money doing this stuff, that's an added bonus.
They will receive this annual unconditional basic income whether they are working in other paid work, non working or retired.
I will fund this annual unconditional basic income by introducing a tax on all spending. A small percentage tax whenever money is turned over, transacted or spent.
Here's an example.
The Government gifts me £5. I pass that £5 round a group of ten friends. By the time the £5 comes back to me, it has been "spent" ten times. Creating a turnover of £50. If the government taxes that turnover at ten per cent, it raises £5 in tax. Hence, balancing the books.
Question: Surely the unconditional basic income, just encourages laziness rather than hard work and social mobility?
First. If the concept of the unconditional basic income encourages laziness, why would any right-minded parent pass on an inheritance to their children?
Second. Define work?
If work is about earning a wage, why is there a term "voluntary work"? Voluntary work doesn't receive a wage. Neither do parents, who stay at home, working very hard, nurturing children and contributing many hours of unpaid work towards the family well-being.
If work is about "contributing to society", we need to define contributing, does it matter if the contribution actually creates any value in the world? or is contributing just "doing something"? There are a lot of "jobs/work" that don't contribute anything of value to the world as far as I can see. The manufacturing of land mines, arms dealers and call centres, to name but a few.
So what is work?
I think work is doing something you feel passionate about, that contributes something of value to society, and I think the vast majority of people on an unconditional basic income would use their time to do just that.
A recent issue in Bristol has been the forced closure of care homes, in the name of austerity.
If everyone received an unconditional basic income, maybe more people would decide to use that extra time and freedom to care for their relatives themselves, or maybe with less need to "make a profit" we would see more "social enterprises" springing up to provide services for those in need of them.
If we lived in a society where people were passionate about their lives and what they were doing, we would live in a more fulfilled, creative, dynamic and peaceful world. So ask yourself , "what would you do just for the love of it?"
How do we fund it?
Meeting people's basic needs will bring about a happier, healthier, creative and dynamic society, with less crime and the resulting reduction in Government spending.
The current budget for quantative easing (printing money from thin air), welfare and pensions is more than enough to fund a £15,000 unconditional basic income for everyone.
If the UK economy can fund an average wage of £26,000 a year, that same economy can fund an unconditional basic income of £15,000 a year for everyone (£26,000 is an average wage mind. the basic wage of an MP is £65,000 and that's before all those flipped second homes and expenses)
Most importantly, there are enough resources to meet everyone's basic needs. If the current economic system can't cope with that, then that system is useless.
Obviously no system in itself can create a "better" society.
As I've said all people have unlimited potential, and that includes the potential to be angry, greedy and disrespectful as well as courageous, respectful and wise.
Human anger causes war, and human greed leads to economic meltdown, but by giving people time and freedom to do the stuff they love and feel passionate about, the unconditional basic income is a step in the right direction.
Tin hat on.
Comments
by corruptbstard
Thursday, October 04 2012, 4:44PM
“Hi Expat
ok first, I don't pretend to know all the answers. I do know, from what I have read that the concept of an unconditional basic income makes sense, and has alot of potential.
before going into specifics, lets look at the question?
where does the funding come from to do this?
i.e where do the resources come from to do this?
is there enough funding to do this?
ie is there enough resources to do this?
I say yes there are.
its not about money, money is just a method to redistribute those resources.
the unconditional basic income is also a method to redistribute those resources.
however i have to explain it in terms people understand and show how it can be done with todays monetarty system and thats what im trying to do.
the fact remains though that, if there are enough resources, food, clothing, shelter, heating etc to meet everyones basic needs, then the unconditional basic income (UBI), with all the benefits/advantages it has, is possible. if our current economic system cany cope/allow that to happen, then that doesnt in any way negate the concept of the UBI, its a failed system thats useless to us all.
right now to the specifics.......
1. £5 creating £50 of turnover.
a. thats a way of showing how a tax on spending works. its exactly the same as VAT works. VAT is a tax on spending (albeit on a lesser range of goods)
b. there is currently only 3% of cash in our current system that actually exists as cash money. the rest is figures on a screen. 97% of our money doesnt exist, because its been created the same way. its also why if everyone went to take their cash out of the bank as cash, there would be run on the banks, and the whole thing would crash around our ears, like the proverbial deck of cards. lets be honest, thats already happening but our "leaders" are busy runing around like idiots screaming "its not happening, its not happening......" and picking up 1 card, but as they do 10 more fall to the floor.
c. answer this.
if i could take ALL the money in existance and give it all to you as a loan (lets say its £2000 trillion) and ask you to pay interest on it at 5%. when i ask for the money back. you can give me the £2000 Trillion. BUT WHERE DOES THE £100 TRILLION YOU OWE ME IN INTEREST COME FROM? HOW IS IT CREATED? in our current system, the only way to get the money to pay the interest is to get another loan....and so the spiral of debt continues
d. Fractional Reserve Lending is a way the banks "lend" money into the system, Again creating it from nothing. They only need to keep a "fraction" of any money you deposit in the bank as cash, they can lend the rest out. This effectively creates new money from nothing as well.
e. Quantative Easing is actually "printing money from nothing"
my point being that money is created in many ways, ways we rarely think about, because most of us are taking it all blindly and for granted.it is already and often "magiced up from thin air".
We live in unprecidented times. We need to come up with completely different solutions and in order to do that we have to break through our deluded beliefs about money and ask the simple questions about what money really is, how it really works.
like i said i dont have all the answers, i do have alot of questions, but I am at least offering concrete specific solutions/ideas as well. not the same old vague aims and tired old solutions, that clearly havent worked
i am very interested in talking and discussing all this with people like yourself though, who clearly do see something in it, but can also highlight the potential pitfalls, so thanks for the question
cheers
Eric”
by Lone_Ranger
Thursday, October 04 2012, 9:38AM
“My point was that this debate is about Bristol and it's spending, not the Bank of England's policies and spending.
You have singularly avoided answering my questions. I shall try again:
1) Where will the £483,000,000 (minimum each year) to give away actually come from?
2) Who will collect and distribute this money?
3) Where will the funds come from to pay for this collection and distribution?
4) Where will the funds come from to pay for other Council services?”
by Bristolexpat
Thursday, October 04 2012, 7:08AM
“@corruptb'stard
An interesting concept however I dont understand your theory on funding?
"Here's an example.
The Government gifts me £5. I pass that £5 round a group of ten friends. By the time the £5 comes back to me, it has been "spent" ten times. Creating a turnover of £50. If the government taxes that turnover at ten per cent, it raises £5 in tax. Hence, balancing the books."
If the Government gifts you 5 pounds, then only 5 pounds has been put into "the system".....so where does the rest come from??
If you can create 50 quid from 5 then you've definitely got my vote!!
Can someone enlighten me?”
by corruptbstard
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 10:37PM
“Hold on a minute loner, you call me potty for spending money you say bristol doesn't have, but Tue bank of England? Spending £375,000,000,000 England doesn't have......is immaterial? I put it to you sir, that you are the joker ;-)”
by Lone_Ranger
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 9:00PM
“Actions of the Bank of England are immaterial. You are advocating giving away a minimum £348,000,000 per year of money Bristol doesn't have. You are potty. Your best bet is to withdraw from the elction now and leave politics to the grown-ups.”
by corruptbstard
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 6:53PM
“Oi loner. You want to write to the bank of England mate. Do you know how much Qualitative Easing has cost........so far?
£375,000,000,000
What a waste? ;-)”
by Lone_Ranger
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 6:35PM
“This lunatic idea of £15,000 free (index-linked to inflation) would cost £483,000,000 in the first year, increasing over the next years. Absolute waste of time from a time wasting candidate.”
by corruptbstard
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 5:34PM
“@eric same thing should happen with VAT, over a longer period obviously, but it doesn't ;-)”
by EricSullivan
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 4:23PM
“hmmm
500 450 50
450 405 45
405 364.5 36
364 327.6 33
328 295.2 29
295 265.5 26
265 238.5 24
238 214.2 21
214 192.6 19
193 173.7 17
0 300
As you can see after 10 exchanges due to the erosion of the principle sum by taxation the Council is £2.00 short and unlucky Pierre who was the last recipient only got £1.74. If you need a chancellor give me a shout! :) Good luck”
by creators
Wednesday, October 03 2012, 11:51AM
“All the best Eric, I hope you are the first of many and become the model for the world. Keith.”