One of the
objectives of the ideas of Radical Simplicity is to free us from being
wage slaves. The book suggests the way to do that is to spend less and
save more, so that eventually your savings are enough to live on. I
think that part of the book is naive, since for many low- and
middle-income families, even the most frugal and efficient spending
plan will never get them there.
But the concept got me thinking anew about a very old idea -- the
guaranteed annual income. The concept of a GAI is that, in a just
society, no family should be forced to live below the poverty level. To
achieve this, a negative
income tax is introduced to increase every family's income to the
poverty level -- say $20,000 per adult and $10,000 per child in the
family. Let's set aside for a minute the question of whether we could
afford to do this -- clearly at present we could not -- and ask the
question whether you could live a comfortable life at that income
level. And if so, whether we could actually allow corporations to
become as 'productive' as they want to be -- employing only the
absolute minimum number of people, anywhere in the world, as cheap as
they can get them -- because no one in North America would have to work.
Here's a table that shows how the average middle-income American family
(1.5 adults and 1.0 children) currently spends its 'earned' income, the
budget that would be available under a guaranteed annual income scheme,
and some of the methods suggested in Radical Simplicity and elsewhere
that could make that budget sufficient, even ample, thanks to the
additional 40 hours a week you now have available to look after your
home and family, instead of paying others to do it for you.
|
Current Spending
|
GAI Budget
|
How Achieved
|
Food
|
$9,000
|
$7,000
|
Grow some of your own, eat unprocessed
and unpackaged foods, become vegetarian
|
Clothing
|
3,000
|
3,000
|
Make your own
|
Rent/Mortgage
Maintenance & Utilities
|
18,000
|
18,500
|
Do your own maintenance & repairs;
Improve energy efficiency; Share tools
|
Transportation
|
12,000
|
4,000
|
Sell one of your cars, cycle
|
Recreation
|
3,000
|
3,000
|
Create your own entertainment; swap
|
Health, Education
|
4,500
|
-
|
Make it universal and free
|
Insurance & Savings
|
6,000
|
-
|
No need
|
Personal Goods
|
1,500
|
1,500
|
|
Miscellaneous
|
3,000
|
3,000
|
|
|
|
|
|
TOTAL
|
$60,000
|
$40,000
|
|
The key to all of this is that not working as an employee trades income
for time, and in some cases that time is worth more than the money
we're trading for it (in financial terms alone, not to mention the
social and spiritual value of that recaptured time). The other
essential condition is that we need to re-learn self-sufficiency skills
that our countries' pioneers had -- sewing, gardening, cooking from
scratch. What do you think -- is it a model worth considering, a goal
for our countries to strive towards as a means of solving a host of
social, economic and environmental problems? Or would the average
family squander the money on gambling, alcohol and drugs, as
conservatives would probably insist?
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
