[OccupyComms] [OccupyLondon] Surely we can organise something global on this

[Mark Barrett]

Cheers Rob. Yes a lot of good aspects to the piece including also the
question of the need/ exciting possibility for a global approach.
On 9 Mar 2017 09:02, "Rob Blakemore" <RobBlakemore at economicjustice.co.uk>
wrote:

> Excellent article, Mark. Thanks for sharing.
>
> This is exactly what I personally believe a successful future looks like.
> Universal Basic Income, mostly funded by a Location (aka Land) Value Tax.
>
> We have some more information on LVT on our website at
> www.economicjustice.co.uk
>
> Cheers for posting. I'll be sharing the article amongst my networks.
>
>
> Rob
>
>
> On 9 Mar 2017 06:21, "Mark Barrett" <occupylondon at lists.riseup.net> wrote:
>
> TAX THE LAND, PAY EVERYONE AN INCOME
> & RESTORE THE COMMONS
> "Thomas Paine was among the first to argue that a basic income should be
> introduced as a kind of compensation for dispossession. .. Paine proposed
> that those with property should pay a “ground rent” – a small tax on the
> yields of their land – into a fund that would then be distributed to
> everyone as unconditional basic income. For Paine, this would be a right:
> “justice, not charity”. It was a powerful idea, and it gained traction in
> the 19th century when American philosopher Henry George proposed a “land
> value tax” that would fund an annual dividend for every citizen... In the
> US state of Alaska natural resources are considered a commons, owned
> collectively by the people, so every resident receives an annual dividend
> from the state’s oil revenues.. scholars have pointed out that the same
> approach could be applied to other natural resources, such as forests and
> fisheries. It could even be applied to the air, with a carbon tax whose
> yields would be distributed as a dividend to all. And the upshot is that
> this approach helps protect commons against overuse, giving our planet some
> room to regenerate."
> Read the rest below
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals
> -network/2017/mar/04/basic-income-birthright-eliminating-poverty
>
> Every student learns about Magna Carta, the ancient scroll that enshrined
> the rights of barons against the arbitrary authority of England’s monarchs.
> But most have never heard of its arguably more important twin, the Charter
> of the Forest <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_the_Forest>,
> issued two years later in 1217. This short but powerful document guaranteed
> the rights of commoners to common lands, which they could use for farming,
> grazing, water and wood. It gave official recognition to a right that
> humans nearly everywhere had long just presupposed: that no one should be
> debarred from the resources necessary for livelihood.
>
> But this right – the right of habitation – came under brutal attack
> beginning in the 15th century, when wealthy nobles began fencing off
> common lands for their own profit. Over the next few centuries, the enclosure
> movement
> <http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain>,
> as it came to be known, shifted tens of millions of acres into private
> hands, displacing much of the country’s population. Excluded from the basic
> means of survival, most were left with no choice but to sell themselves for
> wages for the first time
> <https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Great_Transformation.html?id=xHy8oKa4RikC>
> .
>
> And it wasn’t only England. The same process unfolded across Asia and
> Africa and most of the global south as European colonisers staked private
> claim to lands and forests and waterways that were previously held in
> common, leaving millions dispossessed. In much of the colonial world the
> goal, or at least the effect, was to drive people into the capitalist
> labour market, where, in exchange for low wages and poor conditions, they
> and their descendants would power the mines, plantations and sweatshops for
> export to the west.
>
> As the era of colonialism came to an end, the governments of many newly
> independent nations sought to reverse these patterns of historical
> dispossession with land reform programmes. But they were quickly forced
> to abandon
> <https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Empire_Trap.html?id=7rSrNAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y> this
> approach by big foreign landowners and international creditors. Instead,
> the new plan for eradicating poverty – the dream of development – came to
> hinge on drawing people ever deeper into the labour market. Jobs came to be
> hailed as the salvation of the poor: as the World Bank puts it
> <http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/jobsanddevelopment>, “jobs are the
> surest pathway out of poverty”.
>  To deal with climate change we need a new financial system
> Jason Hickel
>
> Read more
>
> <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/nov/05/how-a-new-money-system-could-help-stop-climate-change>
>
> But now this promise is beginning to look hollow. With the rise of robots,
> robust employment is no longer a realistic hope. We know that automation is
> a real threat to jobs in the global north, but the threat is much worse in
> the south. The main industries there, such as small electronics and textile
> manufacturing, are some of the easiest to automate. According to a United
> Nations report, up to two-thirds of jobs
> <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/in-the-developing-world-two-thirds-of-jobs-could-be-lost-to-robots> in
> developing countries could disappear in the near future.
> Advertisement
>
> This is all bitterly painful, particularly for the postcolonial world.
> First they were dispossessed of their land and promised jobs instead. Now
> they will be dispossessed of their jobs, and many will be left with
> literally no way to survive. Their dispossession will be absolute.
> Technological unemployment will almost certainly reverse the modest gains
> against poverty that have been made over the past few decades, and hunger
> will likely rise.
>
> Governments are scrambling to respond, and they don’t have many options.
> But one stands out as by far the most promising: a universal basic income.
>
> Once a fringe idea, basic income is now speeding its way into the public
> imagination. Finland is running a two-year experiment in basic income.
> Utrecht in the Netherlands is conducting a trial, too. Y Combinator is
> trying it out in Oakland in the US. Scotland looks likely to follow suit
> <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/01/universal-basic-income-trials-being-considered-in-scotland>.
> And cash transfer programmes have already proven to be successful in
> Namibia, India and dozens of other developing countries, sparking what some
> scholars have billed as “a development revolution from the global south
> <https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/just-give-money-to-the-poor-the-development-revolution-from-the-global-south-an-excellent-overview-of-cash-transfers/>”.
> In Brazil, to cite just one example, cash transfers helped to cut poverty
> rates in half in less than a decade.
>
> But the success of basic income – in both the north and the south – all
> depends on how we frame it. Will it be cast as a form of charity by the
> rich? Or will it be cast as a right for all?
>
> Thomas Paine was among the first to argue that a basic income should be
> introduced as a kind of compensation for dispossession. In his brilliant
> 1797 pamphlet *Agrarian Justice*
> <http://www.constitution.org/tp/agjustice.htm>, he pointed out that “the
> earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have
> continued to be, the common property of the human race”. It was unfair that
> a few should enclose it for their own benefit, leaving the vast majority
> without their rightful inheritance. As far as Paine was concerned, this
> violated the most basic principles of justice.
>
> Knowing that land reform would be politically impossible (for it would
> “derange any present possessors”), Paine proposed that those with property
> should pay a “ground rent” – a small tax on the yields of their land – into
> a fund that would then be distributed to everyone as unconditional basic
> income. For Paine, this would be a right: “justice, not charity”. It was a
> powerful idea, and it gained traction in the 19th century when American
> philosopher Henry George proposed a “land value tax
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism>” that would fund an annual
> dividend for every citizen.
> Advertisement
>
> The beauty of this approach is that it functions as a kind of
> de-enclosure. It’s like bringing back the ancient Charter of the Forest and
> the right of access to the commons. It restores the right to livelihood –
> the right of habitation.
>
> Critics of basic income often get hung up on how to fund it. But once we
> come to see it as linked to the commons, that problem becomes more
> tractable. In the US state of Alaska natural resources are considered a
> commons, owned collectively by the people, so every resident receives an
> annual dividend
> <https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/karl-widerquist/alaska-model-citizens-income-in-practice> from
> the state’s oil revenues.
>
> The Alaska model is popular and effective, and scholars have pointed out
> <http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137006592> that the same approach
> could be applied to other natural resources, such as forests and fisheries.
> It could even be applied to the air, with a carbon tax whose yields would
> be distributed as a dividend to all. And the upshot is that this approach
> helps protect commons against overuse, giving our planet some room to
> regenerate.
>
> Implementing this idea will require political will – but it is far from
> impossible. In fact, some research indicates that it might be politically easier
> to implement
> <https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/direct-dividend-payments.pdf> than
> other social policies. Even in the US, leading policymakers – including
> former treasury secretary Henry Paulson and two former Republican
> secretaries of state – have just put forward a carbon tax and dividend
> proposal
> <http://basicincome.org/news/2017/02/conservative-carbon-dividend-proposal-welcome-development-introduction-partial-basic-income/>.
> The idea of a basic income also has broad and growing support from
> high-profile figures including Elon Musk
> <https://futurism.com/elon-musk-automation-will-force-governments-to-introduce-universal-basic-income/>
>  and Bernie Sanders
> <https://medium.com/basic-income/on-the-record-bernie-sanders-on-basic-income-de9162fb3b5c>
> .
>  Does the west really care about development?
> Jason Hickel
>
> Read more
>
> <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/mar/05/does-west-care-development>
>
> There are risks, of course. Some worry that a basic income will only
> increase the nativism that is spreading across the world right now. Who
> will qualify for the transfers? People won’t want to share with immigrants.
>
> It’s a valid concern. But one way to address it is to think in more
> universal terms. The earth’s natural bounty belongs to all, as Paine
> pointed out. If the commons know no borders, why should a commons-linked
> income? Indeed, why should people in resource-rich nations get more than
> their neighbours in resource-poor ones? A tax on resources and carbon
> around the world could go into a global fund, in trust for every human.
> Dividends could be set at $5 per day – the minimum necessary
> <https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/1-90-per-day-what-does-it-say> for
> basic nutrition – corrected for each nation’s purchasing power. Or we could
> set it at each nation’s poverty line, or some ratio thereof. Scholars are
> already thinking about how such a system could be designed
> <http://www.earthrights.net/pubs/the-earth-belongs-to-everyone.pdf>.
> Advertisement
>
> We already know, from existing experiments, that a basic income can yield
> impressive results – reducing extreme poverty and inequality, stimulating
> local economies, and freeing people from having to accept slave-like
> working conditions simply in order to stay alive. If implemented more
> broadly, it might help eliminate “bullshit jobs
> <http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/>”
> and slash unnecessary production, granting much-needed relief to the
> planet. We would still work, of course, but our work would be more likely
> to be useful and meaningful, while any miserable but necessary jobs, like
> cleaning the streets, would pay more to attract willing workers, making
> menial work more dignified.
>
> But perhaps most importantly of all, a basic income might defeat the
> scarcity mindset that has seeped so deep into our culture, freeing us from
> the imperatives of competition and allowing us to be more open and generous
> people. If extended universally, across borders, it might help instil a
> sense of solidarity – that we’re all in this together, and all have an
> equal right to the planet. It might ease the anxieties that gave us Brexit
> and Trump, and take the wind out of the fascist tendencies rising elsewhere
> in nativism that is spreading across much of the world.
>
> We’ll never know until we try. And try we must, or brace ourselves for a 21
> stcentury of almost certain misery.
>
>
>
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