Re: [ox-en] Re: Basic income as an option?
- From: Michael Bouwens <michelsub2003 yahoo.com>
- Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 20:11:21 -0800 (PST)
Stefan:
What you say below is correct and is exactly what makes the basic income interesting. It strengthens the hand of labour. Lots of low paying jobs will loose their appeal and will have to be paid more or made more interesting: this is a gain not a loss. At the same time, creative people will engage in a full activitiy mode, doing free software, art, organic farming or what have you, but periodically returning to the job market for their surplus needs.
This goes against your argument of a minimalising of wages, on the contrary, the competition will be to make them higher, in order to attract labour. Perhaps some sectors will thereby fall outside of the sphere of the market, and will need cooperative or state-based initiatives, and there is nothing wrong with that,
This makes only sense if you imply that if you work and get an
unconditionalized basic income in addition you have a much higher
gain. In other words you add a normal wage of today to your
unconditionalized basic income. On the other hand: If, however, the
wage under unconditionalized basic income conditions is exactly as
high as the difference between a wage and the conditionalized basic
income then the gain is as low as before and people have once again no
incentive to work.
Is this correct?
If so then you need to say something about the minimum wages when you
promote for unconditionalized basic income. I mean a wage of
20EUR/month doesn't really improve your living conditions if you
already get 1000EUR/month from an unconditionalized basic income.
Well, there are some contradictions to value theory. The value of the
work / anything relates to the costs to produce the workforce / thing.
If basic income is already enough to produce the workforce then the
add-on by a normal wage actually *can* be minimal - which is different
if the buyer of the workforce needs to produce the workforce by the
money paid for wages. In capitalism this means sooner or later it
*will* be minimal. Otherwise you'll need heavy state regulations and I
can already hear the outcries then...
Mit Freien Gr��en
Stefan
- --
Please note this message is written on an offline laptop
and send out in the evening of the day it is written. It
does not take any information into account which may have
reached my mailbox since yesterday evening.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.7
iQCVAwUBRCOi4QnTZgC3zSk5AQHjiwP+M44kIfJazxi1MMLd0lJQSSly6Sm0vT2n
083kHRkKB+zQQhPlz0xgOVKNnmqApV3d88C1SePMVEJ4QjOXIBq7PpgIDvlBnrtU
25k7PbhDERFp52nJs8a+Aap2BbXax24/fMJfmls+h2zLKGESFylBIFbk3CiJflzX
1yRQVH2SzDE=
=iUkP
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.