First of all you have not read the report or you would know that the report contains point form summaries of lengthy interviews with over 40 women as well as excerpts from the interviews. Second, you have also not read the economic rationale for a Guaranteed Livable Income which is contained in the report so I will post it here. Next time read the source material instead of skimming a inaccurate review.
The Strong Case for a Guaranteed Livable Income
by Cindy L'Hirondelle
"Reasons given by men for their failure to account for women's work are (1) conceptual problems and (2) the practical difficulties of collecting data. It does not seem to occur to them that if you have a conceptual problem about the activity of half the human species, you then have a conceptual problem about the whole." -- Marilyn Waring, "Counting for Nothing", 1988
"For being in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibilities for the consequences from the very beginning." -- Albert Speer, "Inside the Third Reich", 1970
"There are no right answers to wrong questions." -- Ursula K. Le Guin, "Planet of Exile," 1966
Over the last five years, I have organized, spoken and presented at hundreds of community meetings to express the urgency of providing a guaranteed livable income (GLI) to all world citizens. However, even after presenting irrefutable statistical evidence that poverty is killing many people every day -- including mothers and children -- the question people repeatedly ask is where will the money come from to pay for a GLI?
Upon reflection this question is not really shocking because centuries of relentless social, political and economic propaganda has blamed 'the poor' for causing their own poverty. This has created almost unanimous consent that ending systemic poverty would be too 'costly' and 'we' might not be able afford it. This idea is deeply-rooted in the historic fallacy that 'the poor' are somehow inferior and that 'others' have learned to escape the ravages of poverty through hard work: producing their own food, housing, fuel and so forth.
Not only is this easily proven false, it has become even more obviously false since 1776 when Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith published his famous economic treatise "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations". In regards to 'who is dependant on whom,' Smith wrote: "When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. [emphasis added]
"Division of labour" means people must specialize to produce enough products to sell to make a living. For example, Smith was a professor, tutor, government employee and writer. If he had to produce his own food, fuel, clothing and everything else he needed to survive, his time to devote to thinking, teaching and writing would have been greatly reduced.
What is even more crucial to the economic survival of social theorists like Smith, is that if everyone (including children) were forced to be self-sufficient, no one would have the time to consume or money to purchase Smith's lectures or books. As he stated, "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it."
When we take into account how producers are economically dependent on 'consumers' it becomes very apparent that the 'division of labour' itself is a sufficient argument for legislating a universal guaranteed income. More production becomes a loss if there is not an equivalent increase in consumption. But because society has an almost religious obsession with production, the essential role of consumer to producer is obscured.
At the same time there is an imperative for industry to cut costs through technological innovation whenever possible.
"the economic goal of any nation as of any individual, is to get the greatest results with the least effort...It is for this reason that men use their ingenuity to develop 100,000 labour saving inventions. ...The progress of civilization has meant the reduction of its employment not its increase." -- Henry Hazlitt "Economics in One Lesson", 1944
The end result?
"A global surplus of everything from food to videos co-exists with hundreds of millions of people living in destitution... astonishingly large and increasing number of people are not needed or wanted to make goods or to provide the services that the paying customers of the world can afford."-- Jamie Swift, "Civil Society in Question", 1999
"Global oversupply of commodities is a direct consequence of the decline in purchasing power and rising levels of poverty." -- Michel Chossudovsky, "The Globalization of Poverty", 2003
"Under the market system, there is demand for a product if a lot of people want it - but that demand counts for nothing if those people have no money." -- Linda McQuaig, "All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism", 2001
Without money people can't consume, and without enough consumers, businesses go bankrupt. So without a GLI, Smith's 'division of labour' sinks the economy regardless of the increased productivity due to industrial innovations. If the number of products being produced rises (e. g. digital products for sale) then either people will need more money to buy them with or the prices of these products would fall until people had enough money to buy them.
"We have come to the point where we must make the nonproducer a consumer or we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer goods. We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution... I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income. " -- Martin Luther King Jr., "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?", 1967
To further complicate the economic problems caused by 'free market' economic theory, there is no scientific or ethical principle that compels anyone to 'consume' goods or services other the life-giving necessities. In fact, the opposite is true for there is rapidly growing scientific evidence that the 'goods' and 'services' being produced are destroying peoples' health and that of other species while severely damaging the air, water and soil that make life possible.
Next, but most importantly, 'the division of labour' into paid and unpaid work has meant that vast numbers of mothers and children have lived and died in abject and humiliating poverty even while free market social theorist have been well-paid to maintain the fiction that mothers and children are a 'cost' to the productive members of society. If this were true and women stopped having babies altogether then everyone should become increasingly wealthy. But in reality, if all women stopped having babies (so they could do paid productive labour), the world's economy would collapse and then the human species would go extinct. This gross reversal of 'dependency' can be revealed by simply asking "where do consumers come from?" For in addition to needing money to consume, consumers need first to be born. However, instead of recognizing the essential economic role of women's unpaid work, women are vilified for making "bad choices".
"It is hard to understand why so many women are having babies that they cannot support. Many suspect the welfare system has been an enabling factor in these women's bad choices..." -- Isabel V. Sawhill, The Behavioral Aspects of Poverty, The Public Interest, Fall 2003.
"They need to sterilize those that have children and are on welfare." -- Crystal, April 17, 2005, (U.S.) internet forum, Hannity.com.
"Others have to work, so single mothers on welfare shouldn't expect a long sojourn at home." -- Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun, Dec. 17, 2001.
"One of the reasons that women aren't climbing the ladder as fast as men is simple: C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N."-- Rush Limbaugh, "The Way Things Ought to Be", 1992.
"Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life..." Ayn Rand," The Virtue of Selfishness", 1961.
"The rewards of a market system are linked to productivity..." -- Karl E. Case, Wellesley College, Ray C. Fair, Yale University, "Principles of Economics", Prentice-Hall, 1996.
"Conventional economic statistics, such as the national accounts and employment measures, are largely designed to measure the market economy and exclude (in developed economies at least) most of the non-market productive activities occurring within the household." -- Malika Hamdad, "Valuing Households Unpaid Work in Canada, 1992 and 1998:Trends and Sources of Change", Statistics Canada, 2003.
"Why have children at all (or more than just one or two), especially when there are so many reasons not to?" Eric Cohen, "Where have all the children gone?" The Public Interest, Spring 2005.
"Motherhood is the single biggest risk factor for poverty in old age." Ann Crittenden, "The Price of Motherhood", 2001.
"Relative to other kinds of applicants, mothers were rated as less competent, less committed, less suitable for hire, promotion, and management training, and deserving of lower salaries. Mothers were also held to higher performance and punctuality standards. Men were not penalized for being a parent, and in fact, appeared to benefit from having children on some measures." Cornell University, Department of Sociology (Shelley J. Correll, Stephan Bernard) "Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?"
The consequences are two-fold: fewer women will make the "bad" economic choice to have a child which translates into economic problems for the 'producers': "Never in history has there been economic growth without population growth", (European Population Conference, 2005). Over the last few years more and more news articles raise the alarm: "Not enough babies: Report fingers new threat to economy" ( Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2005) and "If we are not producing more citizens who will ultimately consume, that is a problem," (Alan Mirabelli, Vanier Institute of the Family, quoted in Globe & Mail, Aug. 12, 2003) and worries over the dropping birth rate took up four and a half full pages and one editorial in the National Post's series on "Canada's Baby Gap" (Feb. 18-22, 2006).
The evidence for a strong argument for a Guaranteed Livable Income is mounting:
1) A GLI is necessary to stop the killing of poor people (genocide) and more babies and children will continue to die from easily preventable poverty-related causes despite the obvious fact they can't take paid jobs and yet need income with which to consume.
2) As long as money is used as means of exchange, everyone needs enough to consume to prevent businesses from going bankrupt.
3) Without a GLI, more women will have no choice but to not have children (and all non-market activities including all types of unpaid care work and volunteering will dwindle).
4) Without a GLI, increasing ecocide is inevitable because every citizen will have no choice but to produce products regardless of the impact on life as whole and on the planet.
Despite the life and death urgency and irrefutable evidence, many people will still ask "where is the money going to come from?" This is due to the belief that money magically comes from 'working.' However, all money originates from government legislation allowing bankers to produce money, while forbidding all others from producing it -- or face going to prison for the crime of counterfeiting.
"We often speak of someone 'making money,' when we really mean that he or she is receiving an income. We do not mean that he or she has a printing press in the basement churning out greenbacked pieces of paper." -- Milton Friedman, "Money Mischief," 1992
Some free market economic theorists (politicians, university professors, etc) will insist a GLI is unscientific and 'inflationary' even while they cash the taxpayer-provided guaranteed livable income cheques they get paid to produce 'thoughts' refuting the need for GLI. Thus they exempt themselves from the very scientific laws they insist that others must obey or live and die in poverty. They embody the expression: "The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself."(Jane Addams, 1860-1935). By way of comparison, people living on farms with wells, wood lots and so forth can at least be self-sufficient in the necessities.
Given their own obvious economic dependency and their need to be supplied with a guaranteed income either directly (politicians) or indirectly (university professors) from the government, it becomes understandable that most so-called free market social theorists are categorically opposed to the concept of universal guaranteed income. After all, if social theorists publicly acknowledged that they are not economically independent then their social theory collapses. The reasons for this are not difficult to fathom.
"By this time, we should be familiar with the sincerity with which people will protect the economic territory which provides them their livelihood and wealth. Besides the necessity of a job or other source of income for survival, people need to feel they are good and useful to society. Few ever admit even to themselves that their hard work may not be fully productive. This emotional shield requires most people to say with equal sincerity that those on welfare are lazy ignorant and non-functional."-- J.W. Smith, "The World's Wasted Wealth 2", Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994.
It is ironic that in all the worry about the costs of a GLI, that the most costly thing we can be doing -- to the environment, to health, to democracy, to peace and to justice for those needlessly living and dying of lack in the era of grotesque waste and luxury -- is to try to produce our way to full employment.
"We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980 jobs in their cars or buses, spending trillions of dollar's worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home." -- Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, 1981
There is no difference between voting for a law providing a government service than voting to legislate a guaranteed livable income. After all, we give our consent to allow the government to authorize banks to print money; therefore, using the very same logic, we could vote for GLI. Without it, genocide, ecocide, and war will continue to be the norm.
Email this thread to someone!
posted 23 July 2006 04:44 AM
