Letter on Basic Income Delivered to President Obama in Brazil 

While in Brazil this past weekend, President Obama was personally handed the following letter (below) from the US Basic Income Guarantee Network by Brazilian Senator Eduardo Suplicy, in support of a basic income.

The basic income is a progressive public policy that calls for a guaranteed annual income to be provided to all adults as a human right. As Bertrand Russell put it in 1918, "a certain small income, sufficient for necessities, should be secured for all, whether they work or not."

Popular in the US in the 1930s during Louisiana Governor Huey Long's "Share the Wealth" campaign (which helped lead to the creation of Social Security), and as "guaranteed annual income" in the 1960s with the support of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and prominent economists such as John Kenneth Galbraith, the basic income is now making a comeback as the Great Recession lingers and economic inequality continues to grow.

Brazil has passed a law to introduce a basic income on a step-by-step basis, starting with the Bolsa Familia program, which provides income to poor families that can prove their children are attending school. The program was profiled in a New York Times story in January entitled To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor.

Sen. Suplicy is a tireless proponent of the basic income and author of the legislation in Brazil. Suplicy met with President Obama in Brazil on Saturday and spoke with the president about the basic income and presented the following letter.

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Karl Widerquist, Georgetown University-Qatar
Co-Chair (along with Ingrid Van Niekerk), the Basic Income Earth Network
Newsletter editor, the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network

March 18, 2011

Barack Obama
President of the United States of America

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing you on the occasion of your visit to Brazil—the first country in the world to approve a law authorizing the phase-in of a full Unconditional Basic Income to the whole population. The law (n. 10,835/2004) was passed by consensus of all parties in the National Congress and sanctioned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on January 8, 2004. According to the law, Basic Income will be introduced step-by-step, starting with those most in need, through the Bolsa Família Program.

Basic Income is the simple idea of a small, government-ensured income for all citizens. It exists today only in one place: the State of Alaska. For the last 28 years Alaska has distributed a dividend, financed out of oil revenues, to every man, woman, and child in the state. Alaska’s “Permanent Fund Dividend” usually varies between $1000 and $2000 per person per year. It has become one of the most popular state government programs in the United States. It has helped to give Alaska the highest economic equality and the lowest poverty rate of any state in the United States.

Many opportunities exist to introduce a similar program at the federal level. The Cap-and-Dividend and Tax-and-Dividend approaches to global warming include a small Basic Income. The inclusion of this dividend can help counter the argument (used against the Cap-and-Trade approach) that taxes on carbon emissions will hurt average American families.

While in Brazil, you will have the opportunity to exchange ideas about Basic Income with President Dilma Rousseff and the author of the law that created the Bolsa Família, Senator Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy. He can discuss how the Bolsa Família might be expanded into a true Basic Income and how it might help to attain the main aim of President Rousseff to eradicate absolute poverty and to promote more equality and justice.

I believe that you can improve on the success of the Bolsa Família and the Alaska Dividend by moving toward a Basic Income in the United States. The University of Alaska-Anchorage will hold a workshop entitled “Exporting the Alaska Model” on April 22, 2011. Several researchers will discuss how programs of this type can be introduced and improved. I invite you to send a member of your team to participate in that workshop.

Sincerely,

Karl Widerquist

The U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network Committee:
Michael Howard (chair), University of Maine; Eri Noguchi, Columbia University; Michael Lewis, Hunter College; Almaz Zelleke, New School; Steven Shafarman, Income Security Institute; Al Sheahen, Author; Fred Block, University of California-Davis; Dan O’Sullivan, RiseUpEconomics.org; Karl Widerquist, Georgetown University-Qatar; Jason Burke Murphy, Elms College.
 

The Basic Income Earth Network Executive Committee:
Ingrid Van Niekerk (co-chair), Economic Policy Research Institute, South Africa; Karl Widerquist (co-chair) Georgetown University-Qatar; David Casassas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain; Almaz Zelleke; The New School, USA; Yannick Vanderborght, Facultés universitaires Saint Louis in Brussels, Belgium; Louise Haagh, University of York, United Kingdom; James Mulvale, University of Regina, Canada; Dorothee Schulte-Basta, BIEN-Germany; Pablo Yanes, Secretary of Social Development, Mexico City, Mexico; Andrea Fumagalli, University of Pavia, BIN-Italia, Italy. Honorary co-presidents: Eduardo Suplicy, the Brazilian Senate; Guy Standing, the University of Bath; Claus Offe, Hertie School of Governance, Germany. Chair of the International Advisory Board: Philippe Van Parijs, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium.

MLK's Other Dream: Economic Justice and a Guaranteed Annual Income

Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial equality is close to being a reality. Racism still exists and people of color still face many obstacles, but as our first black President's approval ratings soar after his masterful response to the shooting in Arizona, it is MLK's other dream, of economic equality and justice, that is the dream deferred.

The richest 1% of Americans earn about a quarter of all US income. Corporations had a record year--$1.2 trillion in profits. Wall St. bonuses are up 17%. All while 1 in 6 Americans has no job, real wages haven't increased in 20 years, and someone files for bankruptcy every 20 seconds.

The best way to honor Dr. King may be to take a closer look at a solution to economic inequality that King championed as part of his Poor People's Campaign: the guaranteed annual income.

In MLK's final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), he declared the guaranteed annual income to be the key to abolishing poverty:  "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."

The guaranteed annual income was indeed a "widely discussed measure" in the 1960s. In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for Congress to introduce a system of income guarantees and supplements. President Lyndon Johnson appointed a National Commission on Income Maintenance Programs, which recommended a "universal income supplement program" to "provide a base income for any needy family or individual."

In his last presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967, King said:

"We must develop a program that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income...We've come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will...We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available. In 1879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he wrote in Progress and Poverty:

"The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the task, by the taskmaster, or by animal necessity. It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished."

Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes who have a double disability will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated.

Now our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth."

Today the idea of a guaranteed annual income has evolved into the concept of a basic income for all. In addition to eliminating poverty, it would transform life for working class Americans by providing economic freedom and security independent from work and jobs.

To keep MLK's dream of economic justice alive and support the movement for a basic income for all, join the US Basic Income Guarantee Network by emailing us at Karl@Widerquist.com or visiting www.usbig.net.

Middle Class is Dying, and How We Can Save It

Today's Washington Post profiles people who have dropped right out of the middle class:

The stock market has rebounded. Corporate profits are soaring. And yet, for millions of Americans, the lingering legacy of the Great Recession is a Great Slide, as job losses, declining home values and decimated retirement savings have knocked them down the socioeconomic ladder. For the formerly middle class, this slide plays out in big and small ways, from a loss of identity to the day-to-day inconveniences of life with less.

The middle class has been dying for decades, due to globalization and the attack on unions. But the Great Recession has accelerated that process to the point where one has to wonder: can we save the middle class in America?

I propose 4 Steps to Save the Middle Class that amount to a coherent progressive economic vision: Rise Up Economics.

Step 1: The government must create millions of good middle class jobs. According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, there are almost 6 officially unemployed workers per available job. There's just not enough jobs out there. And if we've learned one thing from the recession, it's that we can't count on businesses to provide the jobs we need. It's up to the government to proactively create good jobs--there's no shortage of things that need to be built or repaired or cleaned, or children to be educated.

If President Obama had used all of the stimulus money on creating permanent, high-quality government jobs, our economy would be in much better shape right now. He can fix his mistake by campaigning for real job creation now. Instead state and local governments are laying off teachers and firefighters. We need to turn this around.

Step 2: Give workers the power to make low-wage service sector jobs into good middle class jobs. The service sector makes up 40% of all jobs now, and will be 95% of all new jobs over the next 10 years. If these don't become good middle class jobs, there will be no middle class in America.

Manufacturing jobs used to be bad jobs, with child labor, 14-hour days, filthy conditions. But workers joined together to fight for their rights, and with the passing of the Wagner Act, they united in huge numbers to transform factory work into good middle class jobs.

We need new labor laws to allow service workers to unite without fear that their employer, whether it's Walmart or Wendy's, Target or Taco Bell, will fire them or cut their hours. These big employers are making record profits during this recession--but it's their employees doing all the hard work to make those profits possible. They need to share those profits with their workers by sitting down at the table and bargaining a contract with them.

Step 3: Enact fair trade policies that ensure higher working standards across the globe. We can't hope for good middle class jobs here when corporations can move those jobs to places with deplorable labor standards. That means a real crackdown on below-poverty wages and child labor in China and Malaysia and wherever capital flows.

Step 4: Create a basic income for all. Our current jobs crisis highlights the tragic flaw in our economy: we all need jobs, but they don't need us. We are too reliant on jobs as our only source of income, making work an all-or-nothing endeavor with very high stakes for ourselves and our families.

With the first three steps we can create some jobs and make some jobs better and create incentives for businesses to provide good jobs, but we can't make a business create jobs if it's not in their interest to do so. As technology improves, there will be more and more work that can be done without employing human beings--yet we still have an economy where everyone has to work at least 40 hours to survive (except the rich few).

Work dominates American life in a way that no other institution besides family does. We spend more than half our waking hours working or commuting to/from work. Some have a good job and are married to it and afraid of losing it. Some have bad jobs and need two or three of them to make ends meet. Many families have multiple people working multiple jobs just to pay the bills. And then of course there's the many many millions who are unemployed.

We need to take work down a notch or two by not having to need it so much.

If every worker had a basic, just-above-poverty level income to start out with, independent from jobs and work, then the need to work would be a little less desperate.

Providing working people with $12,000 a year--$1,000 a month--would truly stimulate the economy and create millions of jobs while providing the kind of economic security that is so clearly lacking now.

For the unemployed it would mean replacing unemployment benefits with income that doesn't run out and doesn't go away if you work. Similarly, for the poor on welfare and foodstamps it means replacing those programs with a basic income that they can always count on and won't lose if they take a $10 an hour job. We could finally stop paying people to not work.

For the working poor it would mean a real safety net that would allow them to work a little less and spend more time with their families if they wanted, or a real boost into the middle class, with newfound opportunities to go to school or get new training.

For the shrinking middle class it would provide stability and economic security and a way to step on the brakes on the great slide out of the middle class. The money could be used for education or investment or simply to spend to stimulate the economy.

By taxing the rich and the Wall St. bankers and oil companies etc. and giving to the rest of us, we can make work a much less depressing situation and remake our economy so that it works for all of us, not just the folks at the top.

 

Work Sucks, and There’s Not Enough of It

This holiday season, millions of out-of-work Americans and their families will be screwed by the Republican Grinches. Without an unemployment check, they will either be unable to find a job and have to go without, or they will find a job that is most likely much worse than the one they had before. Worse pay, worse working conditions, worse hours.

After months and months of hoping to find a job, many will come face to face with the sad reality that those of us with jobs know all too well: work sucks.

Work sucks, and there’s not enough of it to go around. It’s like the Woody Allen joke: the old lady at a restaurant complains "the food here is terrible," and her friend says "yeah, and such small portions."

I won’t go into all the ways that work sucks—that’s already been done much better than I could ever hope to. Let’s just highlight the issue of time. We seem to be going backwards from the 40 hour work week that unions helped win. Most people work more than 40 hours, whether at one stressful job or two or three part-time jobs. More than half of our waking hours are spent at work. And that doesn’t count the time and money we spend commuting to and from work.

The real joke is that we live in a world where we all desperately need these jobs that suck, but they don’t need us. More than 8 million jobs were lost in the Great Recession, and many businesses have learned how to do more with less staff. Productivity is way up, and jobs are still down. This problem is only going to get worse as the 21st century goes on. Advances in technology and continuing globalization will mean less jobs and more competition among millions for the remaining jobs.

What’s the progressive solution to this jobs crisis? Either we somehow force corporations to go against their bottom line and create millions of good jobs; or the government steps in and takes responsibility for creating the millions upon millions of jobs needed to sustain an economy that works for everyone; or we change the equation and decide that jobs shouldn’t be our only source of income.

As hard as it is to imagine a massive jobs program that would be big enough to make a difference, there’s also the problem of creating a two-tiered employment system: one tier of good quality, middle class jobs (mostly government jobs), and a lower tier of private sector, increasingly part-time, low-wage, independent contractor jobs.

And it does nothing to address the problem that no politician dares speak of: work sucks.

A more efficient way to spend the trillions of dollars it would take to provide full employment would be to simply give that money directly to the people, cutting out the middle men.

If we create an independent source of income that people can rely on to cover at least their basic human needs, then people would have the economic security and freedom to work as much or as little as they like.

Work would suck so much less if we didn’t need it quite so badly. If we all had a trust fund that we could count on for a guaranteed monthly income of, say $1,000, then it would be possible to work 20 hours a week and still make ends meet.

Working people would then have some leverage when dealing with their employers: a sort of national strike fund. We’d need jobs less, and they’d need us more.

Sounds too good to be true, right? How much would it cost? How would we pay for this? There are 3 ways to pay for it, but first let’s just step back and acknowledge that this would be a major re-working of our economy. The cost of reducing poverty and economic inequality and changing work as we know it will not be cheap. But it will be well worth it.

There are several papers that are posted on the website of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network that include detailed proposals, including one by author Al Sheahen that puts the price tag at roughly $1.9 trillion annually for a basic income of $10,000 a year for adults and $2,000 for children. I’d envision a basic income of $12,000 a year for people who have worked and paid taxes for a set amount of time, like 3 or 5 years. But for argument’s sake, let’s say that a basic income would cost about $2 trillion a year.

Where on earth are we going to come up with $2 trillion when our national budget is about $3.5 trillion? Again, we need to keep in mind what we are getting for our $3.5 trillion now, and what we would get with a basic income. There are three main ways to pay for a basic income.

First, we need to have the rich pay their fair share in taxes. It’s time for a millionaire’s tax, which the Senate is now considering (but Obama may have already sold them down the river). We also need a CEO tax, which would be a surtax on income over $10 million. We need to end the loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pay less in taxes than their secretaries. We need to tax carbon pollution, track down offshore tax havens, close corporate tax loopholes, increase the estate tax, etc.

Alaska has a tax on oil revenue that it puts in a Permanent Fund that gives a dividend of a few thousand dollars annually to every man, woman and child in the state. It can do that just on taxes on the state’s oil revenue; imagine what we can do nationally by taxing all oil, gas, and coal revenue.

In general, we need to rely less and less on taxing the income of working people, and more on taxing wealth in all its forms. We need to get creative about it, too. The financial industry is sucking up so much capital that should instead be in the hands of working people. Let’s tax financial transactions.

How about taxing advertising? We all hate commercials; they would go down easier if every time we had to watch/hear one, some money would be going to a basic income. We’d then be able to tax global corporations indirectly. Let’s face it: we’ve become a nation of consumers, not producers. Let’s use that to our advantage by using our leverage as the most sought-after market in the world.

Moving from "free" trade to fair trade would also increase revenue from global corporations. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

The second way to pay for a basic income is to cut spending on other things, mostly the military and a spate of all-or-nothing, 20th Century government programs that would be replaced by a basic income. That includes unemployment, food stamps, housing programs, welfare to work, etc. This would also include eliminating corporate welfare that has been disguised as "job creation."

The third way to fund a basic income would be through deficit spending. It was good enough for Reagan in the 80’s as we built up our military and cut taxes for the rich, and for Bush in the Zero’s as we fought two wars and cut taxes for the rich. Despite all the anxiety over our budget deficit, progressive economists agree that we can sustain an even higher level of debt without worry. The question is, what are we going into debt for? For tax cuts for the rich and military spending, or to put a major dent in poverty and economic inequality and provide a real solution to the jobs crisis?

A combination of new taxes, spending cuts, and deficit spending would together provide the funding we need to provide a basic income to all. The real question is whether we can build a movement and the political will for economic freedom and security for all.

Why the Republicans Won: Progressives Don’t Have an Answer to the Jobs Crisis

We had a Democratic President, majorities in the House and Senate, and a mandate to do something about the worst economy since the Great Depression. What went so wrong that millions of independents ran straight into the arms of the Republicans?

The answer is that there was nothing done while Democrats had control of all three branches of government that voters believe was effective in improving the economy. Why would they give Dems more time?

And I blame us, the progressives. The sad truth is that after helping elect Obama and winning big Democratic gains in Congress in ’06 and ’08, progressives didn’t have an economic philosophy and program to hand to them, to demand they make it happen.

Sure, progressives argued for a bigger stimulus and for a public option. But even if we won those and passed cap and trade and the Employee Free Choice Act, there still wouldn’t be enough of a change in the economy to stop the Republicans from winning big on Nov. 2nd.

There was nothing proposed by us that voters could have seen, touched, or felt to believe that we were turning the economy around. There was nothing that would have made a real dent in unemployment.

And we still don’t have an answer to the 8 million jobs that were lost in this Great Recession or to the millions of good middle class jobs that have been lost to globalization over the past thirty years or to the decline in income over the past decade.

It’s time for progressives to take a long, deep look at our lack of an economic philosophy and come up with a new vision and solutions that will really make a difference in people’s lives.

The biggest problem we face in our economy is the fact that the vast majority of Americans are completely reliant on big corporations (and to a lesser extent non-profits and government) to provide us with the jobs that are our only source of income and health insurance.

Ours is a job-based economy, but the creation and maintenance of jobs is totally random, unplanned, and left to the vagaries of the market.

If there ever was a time for a massive jobs program, this was it. If ever there was a chance to convince the American public that the business community has proven totally incapable of providing good middle class jobs and that the federal government has to step in to play that role, this economic crisis was it.

But we, the progressive community, were not ready. We hadn’t come together around a massive government jobs program; it wasn’t anywhere near the top of our to-do lists. We organized for and blogged about our usual array of single-issue concerns, and we were totally unprepared for the economic collapse and had no answers because we don’t share a common economic vision.

We now need to go forward with a new progressive economic vision, and pound away with a message that we need to directly create 10 million new good middle class jobs. We need to tax the Wall St. bankers, hedge fund managers, and CEOs and use the money to create good middle class jobs, permanent jobs, not temporary construction gigs.

Who cares if we can’t get that passed in the new Congress? We need to be for something that inspires voters, and then campaign like hell against the Republicans that are against it. No more nuance, no more shades of gray. We push a massive job creation program in events all around the nation, and build our own Tea Party around it.

It seems like the voting public is swinging in a new, different direction every 2 or 4 years. With the right message and the promise of real jobs, we could be back in power in November 2012. You know that the economy won’t have created enough jobs on its own by then.

If we’re going to have a jobs-based economy, government needs to step in and create jobs, because big business is going in the opposite direction. Technology, mergers and globalization have allowed big business to significantly lower its labor costs while increasing productivity. We need jobs, but they don’t need us.

Sometimes I think we have no vision on jobs because most progressives actually have pretty decent jobs. We do interesting things, get paid pretty well, and our minds are engaged, whether we’re teachers, social workers, or part of the "professional left."

Most of us have no idea how bad the rest of the country’s workers have it. The vast majority of workers in America are fucked; they have shitty jobs that they hate and have to do on an or-else basis in order to get enough money to live. And that’s not even considering the hell of being one of the almost 10% who are unemployed.

As the main character in Office Space said, "human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements."

Right now jobs are everything: they determine how much money we have, what kind of health care, what we spend the majority of our hours doing. Jobs dominate every facet of American life. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem right, and it certainly doesn’t seem logical.

A truly alternative progressive economic vision would be to accept the fact that there will be less and less good jobs created, and just reduce our reliance on jobs, and prepare to move away from a totally job-centered economy.

If we need to tax the hell out of the rich to fund a massive jobs program, it would actually be more efficient to give the money directly to working people. A basic income of about $1,000 a month for everyone making less than $100,000 a year would provide enough to at least cover our most basic needs and give us the ability to work a lot less if we want to. Or work smarter, work better. Take classes to get better jobs. Spend more time with friends and family. Have a better life.

The right wing crazies in the Tea Party movement propose stuff that’s batshit crazy all the time. But it moves the entire national conversation to the right. Isn’t it about time that we on the left have something as simple and clear and truly left wing as Robin Hood economics, taxing the rich and giving it to everyone else? They call us socialists anyway and accuse us of trying to redistribute wealth; why not be out there for something that may be a little socialist but would clearly be in the economic self interest of most people?

After thirty years of trickle down economics from the right, how about some Rise Up Economics from the left? Whether it’s a massive government jobs program or just giving a basic income to all working people, we desperately need a new progressive economic vision.

 

Wash Post business writer accidentally hits on the biggest problem in American economy

There was this amazing nugget today by Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein:

It is only in the world of Chamber of Commerce propaganda that businesses exist to create jobs. In the real world, businesses exist to create profits for shareholders, not jobs for workers. That's why they call it capitalism, not job-ism. There's no reason to beat up on business owners and executives simply because they're doing what the system encourages them to do.

This bears repeating: "businesses exist to create profits for shareholders, not jobs for workers."

It's a truth that we on the left sometimes ignore, to our own peril.

Our entire economy is set up so that we are reliant on "jobs" as our only source of income, as well as our health insurance, our place in society, our self-image, etc.

We desperately need jobs, but the corporations who control the jobs don't need us. In fact, they are making huge profits now because they have found that they can get along just fine with less workers.

So why is it that we have this irrational economy where so many millions are so reliant on jobs, which are becoming ever more transitory, elusive, and hard to find?

How can working people have any economic security at all when we are so reliant on jobs? How can we fix this problem?

The history of the last 150 years is filled with the struggle between capital and labor, the owners and the workers, over how much of the profits should go to the workers.  How's that been going lately? Private sector union membership in the US is now down to 7% and dropping, and corporations have moved jobs across the globe with impunity, looking for the lowest labor costs.
As more jobs get replaced by technology and businesses figure out how to do more with less workers, working people will continue to come out on the losing end of this battle with business. I wonder if it's the only battle we should be fighting right now.

Maybe we should acknowledge that businesses will always be looking to cut labor costs, and that we'll never have enough power to force them to act otherwise.

Maybe we should accept the nature of capitalism and instead of fighting it, we should find new solutions to get what we want: economic security for all--decent income, affordable health care, a retirement with dignity.

If we can't get those things from private employers, that leaves two options: jobs or income now, to steal the slogan from the 60s.

We could insist on government creating enough good jobs for everyone, a full employment program. This would at least force private businesses to pay employees enough so that they could compete with government for employees.

If businesses don't exist to create jobs for workers, maybe government programs should. There's probably enough work out there to be done, such as cleaning up our cities, repairing our crumbling infrastructure, teaching our children, etc.

A full employment program would cost a fortune, but it would ensure a thriving economy, as all workers would have a decent income, which would stimulate the economy as a whole.

A less expensive and more efficient option would be to just provide income directly to the American people. Just cut out the middle-man and provide every American with enough income to at least get by, and then they would have to work at jobs for whatever income they want on top of their basic universal income.

This approach de-emphasizes "jobs." Instead of dominating American life, jobs could be things that we do to earn extra money, be productive in society, use our talents, and interact with others. If work and jobs become less "all or nothing," then they might be more enjoyable and workers might be more happy.

Either way, it seems like as a society we need to rethink our economy and acknowledge that we can't count on jobs from corporations as our sole means of income anymore.

The job trends of today--massive unemployment, outsourcing, part-time work, using "independent contractors" instead of full-time employees, etc.--will continue to expand in the future.

Corporations are sitting on a huge pile of money--because they are afraid of the state of the economy, which is bad because there are not enough jobs. We're stuck in a vicious cycle, and we can't count on corporations to do the right thing. We can only count on them to do what is best for their bottom line. And if we owned a business, we'd probably do what is best for our bottom line also.

Instead of trying to convince them to create new jobs, or pay their current employees more, maybe we should just have them pay an Economic Security Tax and give that money directly to the American people. Providing the people with a basic universal income would actually help corporations by ensuring a strong consumer base and stimulating the economy, and lead to even greater profits down the road. We've tried trickle-down economics, and it didn't work. Let's try Rise Up Economics instead.

We should use our strength in numbers in the voting booth to create a new kind of economy that establishes economic security for all, outside of the corporate job box that we are stuck in.

We can't change the essential nature of business. But by acknowledging that, we can make other changes that provide working people with a better life and help companies' bottom lines in the long run. We can have an economy that works for everyone, but only if we think outside of the jobs box.

Give the (oil, gas, lithium) revenues directly to the people

An interesting story this morning on NPR about an idea to make sure the people in Afghanistan and Africa benefit from lithium, oil, and other natural resources that have been found there: give the revenues directly to the people.

From the NPR piece:

Afghanistan's big deposits of lithium, copper and gold have some economists worried. As we noted earlier this week, the discovery of natural resources often leads to conflict and corruption, which in turn hurt economic growth.
But a handful of economists are pushing an idea they say could break the natural resource curse.
Take all money that comes in from foreign companies — for lithium in Afghanistan, oil in Nigeria, natural gas in Bolivia — and give it to the citizens. Literally have a government official sit down with piles of cash, maybe with some international oversight, and divvy it up.

A similar program has been successful in Alaska, where the state's oil revenues are put into a "Permanent Fund" which pays out a dividend to the state's residents each year. It has helped make Alaska the state with the most economic equality in the nation.

This is a great idea for people in third-world nations where big foreign corporations are digging up the land to support the western way of life and our need for gasoline, cell phones, and laptops.

But it's also a great idea for re-balancing the American economy and providing real social justice. We could create such a fund nationally in the US, with all the oil companies paying into it. Let's include natural gas, coal, and nuclear as well.

Then let's create a CEO surtax on those making more that $5 million a year, and put that money into the fund. And close the loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pay less in taxes than their secretaries, and put that money in there. Crack down on the offshore tax havens, corporate welfare, etc.

I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to make the rich pay their fair share into this fund. Let's get creative with this. Since we've become more of a nation of consumers than producers, maybe a small tax on advertising. That would add up quickly, and bring in revenue from foreign companies like Lexus and BMW and Sony that will gladly pay a small fee to gain access to American consumers.

While we're at it, end the wars and put that money in there too. And eventually, throw in the money that we are currently spending on welfare, food stamps, unemployment, housing programs, and other bureaucratic, 20th Century social programs. Just give money directly to the people.

Consider it a trust fund for working people. Maybe have people pay into it for 5 years or so before they can get a monthly check, so they will have to earn it.

We have enough resources and wealth for everyone, but our economy isn't structured rationally, and usually benefits mostly the people at the top, where wealth tends to pool. Creating a trust fund for working people gives us the best of both worlds: all of the freedom and entrepreneurship of capitalism that allows people to use their talents to become rich, with a basic level of economic security for regular workers.

Imagine a world where, if you work hard and pay your taxes for five years, you get a basic income, a monthly check or direct deposit from the trust fund for working people. Enough to at least cover the most basic of human needs, maybe $1,000 a month to start with. You are free to continue to work and earn money; just like those rich kids, your trust find provides you with income each month that you can count on.

Consider it a permanent stimulus program that will help small businesses, as people have more spending money. That would mean more jobs, alleviating the high levels of unemployment in a sustainable way, not like the temporary jobs created by last year's stimulus package. It could lead to an economy that works for everyone, not just the people at the top.

It could also subtly change work as we know it. We would have an independent source of income, above and beyond what we earn at work. Work then becomes less of an all-or-nothing situation. We could afford to work a little less and spend more time with family and friends. Or take some classes and develop our talents without all the pressure of having to make a living doing just one thing. Think of all the frustrated artists and poets and musicians freed up from having to work 40 hours a week doing something that has nothing to do with their true talents and passions.

A movement is building for a basic income for all. The Basic Earth Income Network has groups in Germany, Italy, Brazil, South Africa, Ireland, Canada, and many other nations. The US Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) has an annual conference where academics and activists gather to discuss policy, theory, and action.