No Minimum Wage - We Need Minimum Income

One can judge the quality of a society by the way it treats its poor, the government has a role in extending care to those who are unfortunate – “what you do to the least of my brethren you do to me” someone once said – I love the quote because it personalizes the issue. The challenge, of course, is striking a balance between extending help to the unfortunate and spending.

Whether you're poor because you're unemployed, underemployed, retired absent income or disabled – you're poor, you require resources. Presently we have several government departments dispensing funds to the people in need of help, CPP, Employment Insurance, Social Services … the list goes on. Every department has its own administration, set of criteria for helping and complex operations – all of which represent OVERHEAD or add to the transaction cost that is government.

Much of the thrust of the administration of the programs is to ensure that people are only getting what they are entitled to – in large measure these departments assess people against a set of criteria and dispense funds accordingly. This is, at its core, a policing function, the challenge that arises from this process is an administrative cost, dollars spent running a department instead of helping people. If we are going to spend money helping the poor, we need to ensure that the money we allocate for help – helps.

The simplest way to ensure a base living is to provide everyone with a base income. The government would simply distribute cheques to everyone, every two weeks, those who had income exceeding the base amount would have the “base income” “clawed back” (taken back) at tax time.  This is a very elegant solution, we can be more generous, the stigma associated with social service use is gone and a base living is established.

This also is a de facto floor on living generally; minimum wage, for example, would be rendered redundant, given that the marginal advantage of employment would force wages to a living wage. The other advantage here with respect to minimum wage, is that absent the need for a minimum wage for adults, the market could accommodate youth – as it is often the complaint with minimum wages that the youth are affected due to the axis of experience and cost working against them. By way of example, if a $1000 / month minimum income was provided, the marginal benefit of employment would exceed the minimum wage in British Columbia now – at $8.50 / hour the monthly income is $1360 – there would be no advantage of working given the cost of attending work – clothes, transportation etc. This illustrates the “floor” that is formed on human existence with a “minimum income”. 

A minimum income fulfils state obligations to Liberty in Section 7 of the Charter, Life, Liberty and Security of Person. The most coercive element that exists in society is a growling stomach; it is the absence of any secure income that drives people into exploitive circumstance. We can afford to do this, in fact, studies done by the CATO institute in the United States indicate that overall, the minimum income is the most efficient way to deliver resources due to a reduction in administrative costs.

The amount and the “Clawback” regime would need to account for marginal tax considerations, marginal employment benefit and the like. I like this solution – it is simple, efficient and generous – it seems a quintessentially Canadian way to go.

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Economics - Market Transcendence

The combination of our educational system's complete abrogation of teaching economics and the devaluation of enterprise in Canadian society at large has fostered a societal ignorance of the economy. It is as though the separation of us from human endeavours associated with an enterprise is possible. The very essence of humanity is the exchange of goods and services, economics is the medium of expression; a means by which we can observe the vast complexity of human exchange. The attempt by many in the world of academics to marginalize the market-based economy has put us in peril of leaving unexplored the most relevant of human studies. The financial representation of human reality and its influences on our behaviour is the most useful of lenses to view the world. Markets, when properly facilitated provide wealth and prosperity, the wealth and prosperity that facilitates all the rest of the social complex. The unprecedented wealth we enjoy in western society today can be squarely attributed to the unique dynamic that a market-based economy in concert with democracy produces.

  

The generalized state of unawareness regarding matters relating to the economy allows the propagation of policy that ignores the value of the market or worse seeks to curtail the market as the primary means by which we supply people with goods and services. The amount of distortion that takes place around economic policy in the political process is contorting the public’s view of economic policy in a manner that is detrimental to the country as a whole. So much of the political process’ address of economic issues is consumed by class warfare; a particularly pernicious political element, that being people promoting redistributionist policy. Redistributionists would do better to focus on a state of generalized prosperity rather than a state of generalized equality.  Rather than taking from productive people, provide equitable access to a growing pie. The proposition of paramount importance is, that in order to promote the well-being of people we need a vibrant economy, and a vibrant economy starts with businesses being able to respond to opportunity absent distorting policy.

The most common distortion is the linking of capitalism to negative outcomes related to displacement, dislocation and exploitation. Capitalism is a means of exchange ONLY, capitalism if un-distorted by an authority will distribute wealth broadly. Marx linked the painful events for the working people around the industrial revolution to capitalism, wrongly. The causes of dislocation and poverty as the industrial revolution unfolded, were a product of disequilibrium of labour supply in the context of new technology. This disequilibrium in concert with the government failing to respond to a changing circumstance, or perhaps in some cases exacerbating dislocation with policies that exploited the vulnerable, was the cause of the pain experienced by the working classes. 

Capital is a mere abstract representation of human action, if something bad happened or happens, it is the product of human thought as opposed to the capitalist process. Capital allows for the aggregation of energy (Capital) which is fungible, this aggregation of capital does afford power to the holder and raises the possibility of the power being misapplied. The misapplication of power happened throughout history absent capitalist processes, and in regimes that sought to function by eliminating the pooling and use of capital through central planning, evil happened; evil happened on a grander scale in these regimes because power was concentrated with one government, instead of a million capitalists. While capitalism can greatly enhance human progress by providing a fungible energy resource to apply to any human endeavour, it is value-neutral – it cares little whether it is directed to good or evil – remember if you don’t like what you see it is us your looking at. In the presence or absence of capital processes, evil can occur or the beauty that resides in humanity can shine. What this document is advocating is enlightened capitalism, where there is a culture and regulatory commitment to universal prosperity by giving access to an ever-growing human dynamic.      

Social issues around meeting humanitarian obligations are best met by providing a floor on human existence and then providing access to the education necessary for people existing at that floor to progress. The presence of universal healthcare is mute when universal prosperity is present. Social services are only relevant when the economy is so poorly managed that people are unable to pay for the services they need. I offer these statements only to demonstrate how abundance transforms lives, realizing there is a requirement at present for social services. The desire to promote a competitive and productive economy stems from the view that prosperity fosters more prosperity. The key recognition necessary for people holding redistributionist inclinations is that the economy is unlimited. The economy can grow large enough to provide abundance to all people all the time. The abstract element of this realization is that the economy is detached from the physical world as services represent a larger and larger portion of the overall economy. When services generate prosperity the wealth generated may be directed at physical requirements and so draw on raw resources, but a likely outcome is that wealth will be directed at services. Read these words, there is no limit to the size of the economy and the abundance it can provide. As the economy grows, equitable access brings people off the floor to various socioeconomic circumstances depending on their abilities, chosen life cadence and circumstance. All it really takes for this realization to take hold is to concede that abundance is at least as common as scarcity and that both scarcity and abundance are mental constructs.  

Human endeavour emerges out of the entire panoply of resources, circumstances and environmental variants. Human actions in the context of what earth offers reaches unfathomable complexity, just trying to contemplate the most basic of human endeavours soon becomes intensely complicated. The Dali Lama teaches a concept called Dependent Origination, of which one element relates to time, as the origination of the present is dependent on the past and the future, the present can only exist in the context of the past and the future. The second element relates to the physicality and thought of the origination of an item. The example of a clay pot is used, when one begins to contemplate a clay pots creation, one begins with the creators' thoughts of the design, the gathering of the clay, the composition of the clay, the temperature of the kiln, the make-up of the glaze, the construction of the kiln; as one embarks on this process with one of the humanities most basic and early furnishings, the level of complexity is staggering. Some elements occur in a state of tacit awareness, knowing what thought process the pot maker went through in the creation of design is almost unknowable absent perhaps years of exposure to her actions. Now imagine the process with a computer, and staggering complexity takes on a staggering complexity. Our marketplace does all this absent any central knowledge bank; the complexity of human action is managed and valued by each other’s perception of the value of one good relative to the other. There is absolutely no facility available to humanity to manage the mass of human action; it simply must emerge out of the natural inclination for people to engage each other in the context of their respective needs and desires – people left to their own interests and good intent will make a million flowers bloom.    

Knowledge is best applied at the point of action. Imagine a circumstance where the government with all its resources decided that by synchronizing people's food consumption with a view to bringing better knowledge to the process by accessing professionals and by standardizing everyone’s meals the government could buy food in bulk and get it cheaper. You might turn on your radio every morning and the government representative would provide the meal plan for the day, the ingredients for which you draw from a box of foodstuffs provided by the government. Begin the process of dependant originations on this process; it is impossible to know where to start. How would you manage leftovers, because it would be impossible for any government to predict the appetite of a given individual at any point in time? Extra food would have to be provided to ensure enough for big people even though most people are average, wasteful to say the least. As one begins to contemplate the government managing our meals for us, you realize what an absurd notion this is. Yet, in spite of thousands of instances where central planning has failed, there are people still advocating it as a solution. Clearly, everyone can see that their lay knowledge applied at the point of action will generate a more appropriate result than professional knowledge at a distance. The closer the management of resources is to the point those resources are actuated, the more appropriate the use of those resources.  

Money measures and facilitates complex human action. The attachment of value to a given item in the context of other items or services value can only take place efficiently with an abstract representation and money is what we use. The more valuable an item the more of that item gets supplied. All the complexity associated with the delivery of a good or service is managed by itself as the spontaneous response to demand occurs. This process is so finely nuanced the details of value and production and delivery are almost imperceivable. Our society has been well rewarded for allowing humanity to manage its own affairs and it's done nary a single central planner, it all happens out of the spontaneous association of actors. Please though, mine is only one word, take a look around, in every circumstance where there has been central planning, the government has reduced the population to impoverishment and subjected them to totalitarianism.

This position, of allowing humanity's spontaneous actions to determine the action of the collective still allows for collective action. The critical point in accessing the value of spontaneous human action as a thought process is to consider policy creation in the context of the individual as opposed to the aggregate. Inherent in all human action is the choice of one person to do something, so this is the logical spot to start designing policy for the collective, in contrast to planning for the aggregate. In this way, knowledge is best applied and resources are most effectively distributed and utilized. The policy is “planned” in response to human action as opposed to a policy that plans human action. As stated previously, the sum of human action is impossibly complex to plan from a central point, to direct the actions of every individual is a Herculean task even if it were possible, however, a policy can respond to trends that become apparent from the observation of human action. If provisions are made for the individual to accumulate wealth then society will be wealthy and for those who are unable to care for themselves, special programs can be developed. Policy needs to be directed toward excellence and the outliers mitigated for, central planning for the aggregate tends to take policy to manage for the lowest common denominator. 

The single most critical thing for a successful society is the provision for people to be able to capitalize on their efforts. Karl Marx spoke of this in great detail, where labour exercised action with the incremental valued-added of that labour was extracted away from the labour to the extent they remained in subsistence. In an enlightened capitalist society, we understand, that if we want people to be capitalists they need to have capital. To the extent generosity (capital) is bestowed at large is the extent to which prosperity will be accelerated. By provisioning the masses with capital a virtuous upward cycle moves us from a world view of scarcity to a world view of abundance. The industrial revolution occurred absent the ability to manage the displacement that took place leaving people in an exploitable circumstance, Marx and Engels observed an injustice and we got communism. The unscrupulous leveraging of capital, over the offer of an honest day's work, created communism; a scourge that has demonstrated its ineptitude at every attempt at execution and yet people are still promoting it in varying degrees. I wonder when people will realize the source of the Marxist view and address it with generosity.

To bring people firmly to a state of believing in an enlightened capitalist economy they must see the fruits of others' labour and see the path to access that abundance. The most effective way for people to progress, assuming they have skills to apply to occupation, is to allow them a means to accumulate a portion of the fruits of their contribution to capital. A generous credit policy to purchase a home is an excellent example of a policy that empowers the individual. A young couple caught in a circumstance where they are both working to pay rent and to feed their family is greatly supported by a 100% loan on a home; as it releases them from the rental trap and puts them on the path of capitalizing on their efforts. A free education, as demonstrated later, provides the state with greater revenues and builds human capital reserves and empowers people. Generosity in human development and empowerment works. As demonstrated so aptly by the homestead acts, the government gave land and on that foundation, people responded by accumulating 25% of modern US capital reserves. The key to all successful economic policy is to seed prosperity with the individual and watch the collective result.

When prosperity is seeded with the individual, people are free. When prosperity is doled out from a central source people are controlled. The damaging precept of much government policy is one of control. In all societies that focus on control of people, society entrenches in a state of fixed stratification and the number of impoverished people grows. In Peru, for example, where the process to gain property rights is so convoluted that average people are unable to secure property, impoverishment grows. The backdrop of Peru's policy development has been one of an elite exercising control; that is the purpose of complex and convoluted legislation, to facilitate access for the well capitalized and keep those who are without capital in a ready state of exploitation. This circumstance happens at the expense of the elite and the general population as well, as generalized prosperity provides more opportunity for capital use and returns, a charming paradox. Contrast this with counties like Canada and the US, which have extended more opportunities to allow access to capital by appropriate rule of law and effected a more generalized state of prosperity. Seeding the individual with a generous means to accumulate and access capital is the ticket to prosperity. The chatter for equality will become muted when a generalized state of abundance transpires because equality is the language of the have-nots, and talk of equality fades when the consideration is focused on the degree of prosperity.

The essence of any government's action must be prudence. Generosity with prudence requires engaging in generosity in the context of return on investment. In the case of homesteading, assets that were idle came into action, and people who received the land paid taxes to governments commensurate with the new assets' value and infrastructure grew up around them. Government spending must be rationalized to government benefit in clear terms. Present funding through government rarely is submitted to the rigours of cost and benefit. The value of a Doctor to the tax roles is greater than the average, a doctor then represents an incremental benefit in tax revenue, and the funds provided to the creation of a doctor need to be rationalized to that incremental benefit. The assertion of generosity here is in the creation of a value-adding, wealth-generating investment as opposed to grants without condition.  

Self Reliance - The Lost Cultural Artifact

Self Reliance - The Lost Cultural Artifact 

Self-reliance has nearly become unspoken, even maligned to a degree in society at large. Self-reliance is ofttimes mocked by the left as “anti-government” and promoted by the right to the point where the only things a baby needs are bootstraps. Self-reliance is critical to independence and from independence comes freedom of person, and by extension, freedom of thought. So self-reliance is a gift we can give to all people, a little at first and more as knowledge and resources allow. It is neither to be assumed to be innate nor to be assumed to be absent, it is something to nurture, or to acquire in ourselves. The government could be a part of its delivery, too often, however; the quest for power inhibits the extension of self-reliance by the government.

Self-reliance as a cultural artifact has left Canadian society in much the same way as the “pioneer spirit” has. The pioneer spirit, the willingness for a person to enter the wilderness and shape the land by the sweat of their brow into a productive enterprise absent the trappings of civilization, was a large part of the collective Canadian psyche pre-1960. The whole pioneer spirit entity had as large components self-reliance, do it yourself and independence; to be a pioneer has as reality these components by virtue of the physical realities of pioneer life. The local midwife was the neighbour that rode a horse 15 miles in a snowstorm to deliver your baby OR as often as not, was your husband. Pioneers were forced by their chosen life course to find their own solutions, to be self-reliant. The narrative until 1960 supported this pioneering reality as a quality, as a cultural component.

Since 1960 there has been collectivization in Canadian society, granted with some positive outcomes, but at the near annihilation of self-reliance as a cultural artifact. One can contemplate self-reliance as a meme in many ways, a way of "being" passed from one generation to the next.  Self-reliance has been attacked by the migration in the general narrative away from independence as a virtue, to a narrative the increasingly directs people to find a solution from society. The seeking of solutions from each other, neighbour helping neighbour is generally a good thing, the relationship is pure functionality, uncorrupted if you will, human by humanity.

The challenge comes, however, when the narrative drives people to self-serving institutions, in main created by or supported by government legislation.  The nature of our political system coupled with the migration to collectivism generates a pernicious circumstance where people become increasingly dependent, and with dependence comes subservience. It is subtle in execution and insidious by nature. Little by little, each year, fewer choices are our own.

You see, the government always has the choice to liberate, to grant self-reliance but rarely does. Contemplate our medical system. Ask yourself, why do we have a shortage of medical services and no government-sponsored self-diagnosis websites? Or ask yourself why is the process for getting the 10th same medical prescription the same as the first? Ask yourself, why are we required to have a prescription at all?  When you come up with the quick “obvious“ answer; please ask again.  

Medical care is only one place where there could be more self-reliance, there are many places in society where the extension of more judgment to the individual should exist in the context of personal choice, but more, however, more self-direction is needed so that people can exercise themselves in their best interest. 

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Law, Legislation and Liberty - THE PARADOX OF THE INDIVIDUAL & THE COLLECTIVE

Law, Legislation and Liberty - THE PARADOX OF THE INDIVIDUAL & THE COLLECTIVE

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Individualism, as a concept, beyond the reality that individuals exist within a group or community, has, in part, found its origins in the protestant privilege to be one’s own conduit to god. This comment is made in a value-neutral context, that is to say, individualism was given a forum due to the empowerment of the individual in protestant worship modalities, relative to the centralized modality of Catholicism and other religions. The concept of an individual as an ideal also found support in the enlightenment movement, where it was fashionable to construct one’s own map of reality away from the church and traditional norms. To an extent, Stoicism, as a byproduct of the need to be free of human want, in this case, the needing for typical social interactions, has served to shore the other contributing factors to becoming an individual.  

With the advent of mass media a homogenization of society began to occur, the individual at once gained access to a larger volume of information to feed individualism, however, the communitization of the general societal narrative resulted in the perception of the Individual being distilled down to perhaps a dozen stereotypes – a circumstance that had “character type” and “Individual” becoming synonymous. Individualism incurred a challenge with the escalation of media influence; in much the same way that the homogenization of theology had done in earlier times.

Individualism tends to be challenged in the general discourse of humanity, as Individuals become challenged they seek support from others, and from there a collective within a given society begins to form. As the collective coalesces around an imperative or common desire, the organization begins to demand a degree of uniformity – and so, uniformity and Individualism are inversely proportionate or at least inverse to one another – proportionality is affected by what drove the coalescence at the outset. Oft times, like the coalescence of individuals to a collective takes place in the face of extreme human conditions, where the group is highly dependent or a unified front, hazing mechanisms are utilized “break down” the individual, to effect a state of merged egos or perhaps a “common ego”. The individual is then wholly defined by their association with a group.

It may be said in general terms, that a commonage derived from like-minded individuals, who have coalesced in a common interest or cause finds a generally healthier state of being, than, a commonage formed of conscription and hazing. The commonage of free accumulation finds common action by responding to environmental realities from a core set of beliefs; the commonage that forms from conscription finds common action at the behest of a central power entity. The commonage of fee accumulation is very difficult to corrupt, as ideals inform action, and the association began in a healthier place, in a place of intellectual commonality. By contrast, centralized power, absent support of the individual expression is inherently corrupting – as the core of the centralized power always works to its self-interest, as those subordinated seek to further their lot through acquiring favour from the central power and work around the central power for selfish and practical reasons.  

It is important to note, that conscription takes many forms in the creation of a commonage, the indoctrination of children to a given belief structure is a form of conscription. Conditioning is a form of conscription. Our very existence is conscription, by way of example, we are all conscripts of the human race.

Individualism, or the act of developing one’s sense of oneself as an independent entity, and the societal act of provisioning the discovery process to build an individual, in no way impairs collective action, it serves to diversify the informing of collective action. There is a common misperception that Individualism and Collectivism are resident at opposite ends of a continuum; the fact is however, they are mandatory companions existing as an entity. The question is, under what conditions has the collective coalesced and by what means it is being maintained – how these questions are answered determines the health of a collective. A collective that permits individual expression and functions under a premise of common ideas results in a reverse hierarchy, a collective that emerges out of conscription of one type or another results in a hierarchy that leads to a central power.

When the individual is co-opted by the collective, thought that panders to leadership emerges – often effecting “group think” and disastrous tangents in the human enterprise. When the individual within a collective is nurtured, critical thought governs individual action, and by extension, thought governs the collective – inherent in this reality is diversification of power.  

             

“The natural effort of every individual to better “their” own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations” Adam Smith