In message <3EC024C7.1030001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Henry C.K. Liu
<hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
The unemployed and the underemploy ought to start a right to work union
to protect their civil rights, to weed out fraud and to pressure
government to adopt policies. There are between 10 to 15 million
officially unemployed and another 10 million who have given up looking,
or those forced into early retirement at 50. Plus another 20 to 50
million under-employed. It would be a powerful lobby with enough swing
votes in swing states. For starter, how about a negative income tax in
the current tax package? Or a tax rebate, not just a limited time income
averaging, but a tax rebate equal to say 70% of your previous high
income before unemployment. If you made $100K last year and paid $30k in
taxes, you get back $70K this year if you are unemployed. Unemployment
ought to be made to hurt the system than than it does the individual,
then you will be surprised how fast Congress will eliminated unemployment.
Henry C.K. Liu
I still have a campaign badge Fight for the Right to Work from the early
1970s. The campaigners marched on London and were beaten up and
dispersed by the police well before they got anywhere near the corridors
of power, though the story was reported as mob violence in the media.
Friends of mine were on that march. That story was similar to the
famous Jarrow marchers in the mid 1930s.
From that time on I began to take a much more serious interest
in the future of the labour market and the theories being proposed in
both the UK and Europe. So much so that when Jacques Chirac, then mayor
of Paris, wrote an article for the Guardian newspaper in 1994 with his
scheme for getting France back to work, I knew that he was echoing
Mitterand's familiar speeches on the same topic. So I replied as
follows, which was published.
.....
A new kind of revolution for Europe
(letter published in the Guardian Jun 25, 1994)
Jacques Chirac argues (Guardian June 21), like many in the UK do, that
getting people back to work is vital to prosperity. Few disagree with
such a proposal, but it is never explained what these new employees are
going to do, or how much they are going to be paid. Produce more goods
and services? But neither country is short of producers, rather the
need is for consumers to purchase existing production. Simply creating
more production will exacerbate the existing problem, almost certainly
with further environmental deterioration.
Moreover, job creation programmes tend to create jobs we do not
need, while neglecting work that needs doing. In my exploration of this
area of social policy I have never met so many people whose job it is to
find jobs for other people in a tragi-comic echo of C Northcote
Parkinson''s First Law, that officials exist to create work for each
other. Yet in France as in the UK, there is an urgent need for a
house-building and repair programme which should be high on the agenda
of any incoming government.
Top of the agenda has to be a monetary reform programme whereby
an elected government creates its own credit at zero or near zero
interest. In fact the kind of social contract M Chirac describes has
been commended for many years by French thinkers who argue for a
'service social' in which individuals contribute to society, and a
'revenu social' which enables individuals to purchase other people's
output. If that means a new kind of money system, so be it.
... KD
But while Henry is right in my view to put forward ideas like
those he has done, I wonder where the leadership for such ideas might
come from. James rightly notes the absence of the sort of righteous
anger needed to generate widespread resistance and constructive
alternatives. Maybe Galbraith's "culture of contentment" explains the
problem, so perhaps when the so-called middle class finds itself
somewhat downwardly mobile things might change, though not, I hope, in
the way that the business and middle class did for Germany of the 30s.
Tonight there is a meeting in Manchester Town Hall of the 'after
New Labour' resistance. See how we go.... As usual, I'm hopeful but
not optimistic.
Kevin