AUT: RE: general income

[".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nate:

: I'd like to hear your criticisms of the dole.

I'm sure there are byte limits on emails.

: Surely not the
: getting-a-check-in-the-mail part, right? That's
: awesome! :)

The question you need to ask, then, is why more
people aren't on the dole.  The jumping through
hoops is there to ensure you are put to work,
intermittently or otherwise.

I don't know the figures offhand, but there are
two that are interesting: a) there's been a
significant decline in overall numbers of people
on the dole; b) there's been a significant drop in
unemployment levels which is not commensurate with
the first decline.  The 'missing link' is that the
second set of figures do not include anyone who is
doing wage work for an hour a week or more (or is
it a fortnight), even if they continue to be on
the dole; added to which there has been a massive
over-decade-long effort to kick people off the
dole.

IOW, the dole is constitutive of precarity -- or
intermittence, as Martin, the slacker, notes --
and, with increasing severity, does not mitigate
its effects.  Yes, it is about the compulsion to
work, and the dole (or basic incomes) do not
suspend this, but regulate it.  Increasingly that
regulation takes the form of forced labour,
work-for-the-dole, CDEP, etc.

I glanced at something by ATTAC, who insist that
basic incomes aren't a 'recipe for laziness' or
somesuch, but a possible payment for 'community
work'; and a paper by Aust/NZ academics who see a
basic income as a means to 'full employment'
(which, actually, it increasingly does take the
shape of, as in the WFTD/CDEP).

All the talk about basic incomes being a means to
find some security against precarious work are
delusional, if they imagine that the command to
work can be suspended, in capitalism, without
forced labour. I think Negri/Hardt know this, or
should, but reckon it as the price of 'recomposing
the working class,' erm, multitude.  Actually, I'm
pretty sure they know this, given their comments
(where was it?) about the apparently radical
virtues of 'global full employment'.

Angela
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