You NEED to be guaranteed some basic and fundamental rights. They include:
From RollingStone.com:
Guaranteed jobs, universal basic incomes, public finance and more
Millennials have been especially hard-hit by the downturn, which is probably why so many people in this generation (like myself) regard capitalism with a level of suspicion that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But that egalitarian impulse isn’t often accompanied by concrete proposals about how to get out of this catastrophe. Here are a few things we might want to start fighting for, pronto, if we want to grow old in a just, fair society, rather than the economic hellhole our parents have handed us.
That’s odd. When I stepped into the work arena at the age of 14, I didn’t think of my work atmosphere as the “hellhole our parents have handed us.”
I simply thought it would be cool to throw papers from my bicycle early in the morning whilst it was dark. And make up to $50 a month which was, then, unheard-of.
I subsequently made an amazing discovery: I had to have a sturdy bicycle in the first place, and then I had to have a big bag suspended on my handlebars and, if I could support it, bags suspended off the rear tire if I had a rear rack. Which I did. I could carry a lot of papers.
Not only that, but I had to get up at the UnGodly Hour of 4 am in order to receive the papers at the end of my driveway. Unbanded. They got thumped down in a huge vertical stack and I had to fold them into thirds and then rubber band them. Each and every one of those things.
The faster I got my job done, the earlier I could go home. And the closer to the porch and the front door I threw them, the fewer complaints I received. Actually got a few tips.
Then there were “collections.” I would have to knock on the door of the neighborhood alcoholic, the neighborhood recluse, the neighborhood wife, and say “Collecting for The Bee.” Sometimes they paid, sometimes they put me off. It was a continual struggle. But if I wanted to get paid, I had to persevere.
And that’s when I learned about the “Work-to-Success” ratio.
If I applied myself, I could kick out collections in a few days. There were some people who didn’t want to pay and were deadbeats. McClatchy went after them in other ways that I didn’t understand then. I can remember, for whatever reason, the first time I was called “sonny.” As in: “Sonny, I don’t have your cash.” Oddly enough, the more papers I accepted, and the more papers I took on my bike, the more money I made. That became pretty clear. That’s how I learned to work. That’s how I learned to make money. That’s how I learned to have any kind of work ethic whatsoever.
That said, what are your “economic reforms,” Mr Myerson?
1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody
Unemployment blows. The easiest and most direct solution is for the government to guarantee that everyone who wants to contribute productively to society is able to earn a decent living in the public sector. There are millions of people who want to work, and there’s tons of work that needs doing – it’s a no-brainer. And this idea isn’t as radical as it might sound: It’s similar to what the federal Works Progress Administration made possible during Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. vocally supported a public-sector job guarantee in the 1960s.
Right. Guaranteed work for everybody. Just like McDonalds. Or WalMart. That’s work. But those jobs don’t guarantee full work hours or full benefits or Apprentice or Journeyman or Master wages.
Because in order to earn those wages, one must display the skill of an Apprentice, then the skill of a Journeyman, then the ultimate skill of a Master. Because everyone knows that the fry cook at Mickey D’s is just as valuable as a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist.
2. Social Security for All
But let’s think even bigger. Because as much as unemployment blows, so do jobs. What if people didn’t have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone’s bank account every month. A proposal along these lines has been gaining traction in Switzerland, and it’s starting to get a lot of attention here, too.
Right. Paid not to work. Sounds like the current definition of Generational Welfare, does it not? Better yet:
Put another way: A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.
Perfect. Hot and cold running free everything. No one works. Everybody can surf and play drums.
3. Take Back The Land
Ever noticed how much landlords blow? They don’t really do anything to earn their money. They just claim ownership of buildings and charge people who actually work for a living the majority of our incomes for the privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn’t build and rarely if ever improve. In a few years, my landlord will probably sell my building to another landlord and make off with the appreciated value of the land s/he also claims to own – which won’t even get taxed, as long as s/he ploughs it right back into more real estate.
Think about how stupid that is. The value of the land has nothing to do with my idle, remote landlord; it reflects the nearby parks and subways and shops, which I have access to thanks to the community and the public. So why don’t the community and the public derive the value and put it toward uses that benefit everyone? Because capitalism, is why.
Yes, Mr Myerson, just have your building owner turn it over to you. I’m sure you’d be willing to pitch right in and lubricate elevator cables, do maintenance, paints walls, and other mundane tasks. Uh, no. You said you want a “life.” You’d instead be out surfing and beating drums.
4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody
Hoarders blow. Take, for instance, the infamous one percent, whose ownership of the capital stock of this country leads to such horrific inequality. “Capital stock” refers to two things here: the buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent’s ownership of the means of production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets.
A Perfect Utopia. No ownership. No Capitalism. People can leave their trash where it sits and no one is forced to clean it up. Property, buildings, forests, infrastructure, power generation stations, energy distribution, it can all be “owned” by the people. But if the people surf and beat drums, who really takes care of anything at all? This is the perfect incentive for no incentive.
5. A Public Bank in Every State
You know what else really blows? Wall Street. The whole point of a finance sector is supposed to be collecting the surplus that the whole economy has worked to produce, and channeling that surplus wealth toward its most socially valuable uses. It is difficult to overstate how completely awful our finance sector has been at accomplishing that basic goal. Let’s try to change that by allowing state governments into the banking game.
But here’s what I find interesting: Myerson’s “Five Economic Reforms” was written in the Perfect Isolation of a Capitalistic Society where his trash gets dumped, the markets have perfect produce by way of a transportation system that is technologically the best, coordinated, working on the thinnest of margins and effective like no other nation. And all the other aspects of a society that is not rife and corrupt with Socialism and Communism — where the striations of rich and poor are even more marked than Capitalistic nations.
Every Socialist thinks that they can “do” Socialism better than the last guy. But Socialism just doesn’t work. Never has, never will. There’s a little niggling thing called “history” which indicates so.
This guy’s article hearkens me to a line from Monty Python (to be read in your best British accent): “You’re a looney.”
And so it goes. A little Kurt Vonnegut, there.
BZ
It makes you vote with your feet.
