Will No-One Think of the Artists?
I’d like to see every citizen receive a basic income of AUD$30,000 per year. No exceptions, no means testing. This is why.
Godfrey Moase, “activist and union organiser,” writing in the Guardian:
I once worked in a call centre where a few of the interviewers would be regularly rostered to do phone surveys about female incontinence products. Asking strangers whether they lost a teaspoon, a tablespoon or more in volume per occasion is a tough gig. Then again, the horror of the role was somewhat less visceral than that experienced by a worker I’d once represented who had to manually slit the throats of chickens at a poultry factory. At Centrelink, he had listed his occupation as “killer.” What strikes me about a dirty job isn’t that it needs doing – it’s that someone has to do it to get by. There’s no other choice for them.
A state of affairs that prompts a radical solution:
Imagine the creativity, innovation and enterprise that would be unleashed if every citizen were guaranteed a living. Universal income provides the material basis for a fuller development of human potential. Social enterprises, cooperatives and small businesses could be started without participants worrying where the next pay cheque would come from. Artists and musicians could focus on their work.
One for our series of classic sentences, perhaps. But imagine the creative avalanche that would be unleashed by Mr Moase alone. 30,000 Australian dollars a year, extracted from others and given to him, could result in even more Guardian articles telling us that artists and musicians shouldn’t be expected to earn a living. Because, well, obviously, they’re artists and musicians. Or indeed “activists.” It’s a bold ambition, the goal of which, as one commenter conceives it, is to “distribute drudgery fairly” via some massive rota system, with dirty jobs – say, abattoir work and drain maintenance – being done, intermittently, by doctors, hair stylists and other random individuals with no relevant expertise. I can’t help thinking that’s been tried somewhere, not too long ago, with – how shall I put this – very mixed results. Though presumably artists and musicians would be exempt from this too.
In the comments Tim Worstall tries to shake some sense into Mr Moase’s skull.
Update:
Elsewhere in the Guardian thread, a fan of Mr Moase says with a hint of triumph, “This universal income… makes employment optional.” For him (and no doubt others), that’s the goal. The sweet, sweet cherry of state-sanctioned slackerdom, all in the name of emancipation and virtue. “Submission to a corporation,” we’re told, “will not be mandatory for your survival on Earth.” Though leeching indefinitely on the
skills and effort of others – who will be forced to submit to him – will be perfectly okay, apparently. And as regular readers will know, this is not an uncommon sentiment among our self-declared moral betters.
Yes, Giving It To The Man™ by taking it from others.
It would be better if they didn’t, even if they were slackers.
And there it is. ;-D
” I notice you keep spinning your terms and redefining words in grossly tendentious ways. It’s difficult to play fairly if the ground keeps shifting as and when it suits you.”
That is just not true, if you point out where you think it might be I will be happy to clarify, I have simply been trying to meet objections. Yes, we could just stop subsidising bankers and other wealthy groups, but does anybody think that will ever happen? Honestly now?
“It’s an attempt to highlight why a great many people would rather do something else. To pretend that the caring professions don’t often involve such realities is, well, a little coy.”
It doesn’t work because it is such a one-eyed view of that sort of work. Nobody need deny the realities, but they are much larger that that characterisation allows and the contempt in the description is unavoidable. Why not say instead that geriatric cares spend their days ‘conversing with elderly people and helping them to live safe, fulfilled lives’. It is just as partial, but just as accurate.
I saw the Sowell addition a little late, but it isn’t a big help. Sowell is, to be kind, confused on this issue, I would love to see the studies that he thinks support his position. Notice that he accepts that social mobility has stalled in his first paragraph but them seems not to think that is true by the end of the quotation. All the studies I have seen show very poor social and economic mobility for the bottom 5-20%. It may be because they can’t be arsed,, it may be another thing.
Perhaps there isn’t any more to say, but I would be interested to know, if we could agree that a basic wage could be afforded at these rates without increasing taxation, would it be supportable then (remember, that amounts to an annual £20,000 tax rebate for you)? Or would it just be insupportable that some people (some slackers, arse wipers and the like) seem to get something for nothing?
Torquil,
That is just not true,
Again, I refer you to your own comments, especially those regarding “slavery,” “exploitation” and dcardno’s alleged “cheering” at the woes of the poor. (A manoeuvre you tried to repeat with my alleged “contempt” for people who tend to the elderly and demented.) To depict the various, often quite specific, objections outlined above, made by commenters of various persuasions, as “the standard right-wing characterisation of human venality” is also a bit of a liberty. As are the loaded allusions to children toiling in dark satanic mills.
Or would it just be insupportable that some people (some slackers, arse wipers and the like) seem to get something for nothing?
And again, you group together “slackers” and “arse wipers,” as if no distinction might be made by those who disagree with you between people doing unglamorous work and people who think themselves entitled to freeload indefinitely on the labour of others because… well, just because. This is rather sly. So far as I can make out – and intrigued economists may differ – Mr Moase’s guaranteed income seems wholly unviable at the level he suggests for numerous reasons already stated – from unsustainable taxation levels and demographic changes to opportunism, inflation and immigration policy. Further to that, some may well object to what would in effect be state-sanctioned slacking – a license to skive in reasonable comfort that’s been noted quite happily by several of Mr Moase’s supporters. Setting aside all of the practical objections that have been raised, there’s also the question of how Mr Moase’s utopia would affect the work ethic of a great many people and society in general, an ethic that is easily eroded and difficult to rebuild.
But as I said, I’m bored now. It’s rather like trying to shovel air into a balloon.
“Again, I refer you to your own comments, especially those regarding “slavery,” “exploitation” and dcardno’s alleged “cheering” at the woes of the poor.”
Well, I don’t want to get too distracted, but that is grasping at straws. I referred to slavery because someone brought it up, I use ‘exploitation’ in its normal sense (even if you disagree that the relations I mean are exploitative) and dcardno may be concerned about the poor but doesn’t give a good impression of it (although I was only returning insult for insult anyhow (he started it)). Not much matter there.
“(A manoeuvre you tried to repeat with my alleged “contempt” for people who tend to the elderly and demented.)”
It’s not a manoeuvre. The description of that sort of career as ‘fondling soiled bedclothes’ just does suggest contempt. You may not have meant it, I doubt you do, but the language cannot really be read in any other way without strain.
“To depict the various, often quite specific, objections outlined above, made by commenters of various persuasions, as “the standard right-wing characterisation of human venality” is also a bit of a liberty.”
A liberty I didn’t take. I answered specific objections and rejected personally the standard right-wing assumption of human venality that rejects the possiblity of sustained altruism in our contractual relations to explain my own optimism.
“As are the loaded allusions to children toiling in dark satanic mills.”
It wasn’t an allusion, it was a comparison. Children did work in those mills and they died in them. All the arguments made against the Citizens income on here were raised in defence of child labour too. That isn’t a clinching argument, but it is data and it should give us pause at least.
I agree that we probably can’t go much further with this without descending into mud flinging. Thanks for the various responses and I will continue to read your blog with pleasure.
Anyway, about these toilet sweets…
If employment is not optional, then you are a slave, no? That is the definition of slavery, non-optional employment.
I have to work because not working means someone else has to work harder and give me what they’ve earned. I’m not old or disabled so why should I make other people carry me? Who are the slaves then?
Employment is always optional. You do have the option, as a free man, to just lay down and let nature take its course. Or call in sick. Or any number of options. A slave has no option to refuse to work. Slave doesn’t work, slave gets beat. THAT is the definition of slavery. Or, like penury,
1 : a person held in servitude as the chattel of another
2 : one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence
It’s all very amusing looking at these idiots, but what you can call the ‘dirty jobs’ problem will always exist in whatever forms of Communist type utopia you imagine.
For most true believers the simple answer is to ignore the problem.
But it’s interesting to see how an intelligent individual like Iain M Banks ‘solved’ the problem. Despite being a self avowed socialist, Banks kind of let the cat out of the bag about several of the reasons why communism can’t work in his description of his own future communist utopia, The Culture.
The ‘dirty jobs’ problem is solved in The Culture by non-sentient beings (robots/drones) who do everything that is necessary to create and maintain the paradise that human beings live in. The fact that Banks needs to create an entire class of non-persons to maintain the lifestyle he thinks human beings should achieve or aspire to, is quite revealing. Especially in light of the fact that real communist societies invariably managed to turn ordinary persons into non-persons.
Interestingly, two of the other deal-breaking problems of communism are also sidestepped by Banks in the Culture novels. He ‘solves’ the unsolvable problem of central planning by creating unimaginably brilliant and ethically superior higher intelligences (minds) who simply exist in order to protect and preserve humanity. In short, he creates a secular God. He also ‘solves’ the unsolvable problem of the failure of the proletariat to behave ‘correctly’ for a socialist paradise, by having them be genetically engineered to be more ethical. Fortunately this happened before the beginning of all the stories.
I have to work because not working means someone else has to work harder and give me what they’ve earned. I’m not old or disabled so why should I make other people carry me?
Indeed. As I said, Mr Moase and his supporters envision a society in which an undefined but apparently unlimited proportion of one’s earnings (and therefore one’s freedom) will be expropriated by the state in order to keep in comfort people who choose not to support themselves – say, on grounds that they consider themselves “artists and musicians.” Or “thinkers,” perhaps. Or “activists.” After all, it’s hard to let the world know just how radical you are when you’re busy earning a living like a bourgeois nobody.
This chap, for instance – that’s this guy – isn’t, it seems, overly keen to start work, which rather signals the end of childhood. He’s a self-declared “anti-capitalist” who likes the idea of work being “abolished.” He is of course a student, of what I’m not sure, possibly English literature. He nonetheless still has to be fed and clothed and spared the elements. And any children he produces will also have to be fed and clothed and spared the elements too. And educated, obviously, and treated for any ailments – by people who generally expect to be paid for their trouble, using resources that have to be conjured somehow. If our anti-capitalist class warrior rejects employment – perhaps as “exploitation” and “slavery” – someone else will have to labour to ensure that he and his don’t starve, or freeze, or die from an infection. Someone else will have to work harder and longer, or surrender even more of their earnings and themselves do without, in order to prevent his beggary and the beggary of his dependents.
As you say, in that scenario who’s the slave?
…dcardno may be concerned about the poor but… I was only returning insult for insult anyhow (he started it))
Perhaps – but unintentionally: I genuinely wondered if you existed or were invented to liven things up. I have to admit, I am not sure that you could pass a Turing test, but that is always a matter of opinion.
To depict the… objections outlined above… as “the standard right-wing characterisation of human venality” is also a bit of a liberty.”
A liberty I didn’t take.
Bullshit, pure and simple. You then go on to take the same liberty: I answered specific objections and rejected personally the standard right-wing assumption of human venality that rejects the possiblity of sustained altruism in our contractual relations to explain my own optimism.
You have still failed to respond to the issue that we do not see any significant number of the unemployed volunteering to take on the “dirty jobs” that Mr Moase thinks we should all be freed from. No one here has made an assumption, standard or otherwise, of human venality – the closest anyone has come is to note that giving people money (and I should clarify – for *not* working) reduces their incentive to work. As I observed, Mr Moase’s plan has the specific intention of reducing the work put into “dirty jobs” – so far you have not explained how that work might be accomplished.
Oh lord, I said I would stop but some of this is directed at me and I … just … can’t …
“You have still failed to respond to the issue that we do not see any significant number of the unemployed volunteering to take on the “dirty jobs” that Mr Moase thinks we should all be freed from.”
I have repeatedly addressed this. People are reluctant to work for free and live in great poverty, that does not mean that they do not have powerful altruistic motives, which we see at work when they can afford to volunteer (even many relatively poor people do this, my local choir and judo club is run, for free, by an NQT). Our welfare system is also an obstacle to the unemployed taking low paid work, an obstacle removed by the citizen’s wage.
“No one here has made an assumption, standard or otherwise, of human venality”
I think it is implicit in the assumption that nobody would work in old people’s homes if they could live in idleness instead (even if thee idleness was relatively impoverished). That assumption is founded on the belief that there are no positive gains for the worker from doing social work, in other words doing good is not a natural human motive, but greed for wealth and power are. If you do not agree with that, why are you so sure that ‘nasty’ social work would not be performed in the scenario we are discussing?
“so far you have not explained how that work might be accomplished.”
I have, repeatedly, and I have given an historical example: when child labour was banned from the textile mills, those machines still had to work. How was it accomplished?
” Mr Moase and his supporters envision a society in which an undefined but apparently unlimited proportion of one’s earnings (and therefore one’s freedom) will be expropriated by the state in order to keep in comfort people who choose not to support themselves”
We already have this system. Anybody who makes part of their income from shares benefits from it. the state apparatus allows non-workers to remove the wealth produced by workers and be passed on to people who make no productive contribution, they simply own shares, often shares they have inherited. I am a capitalist and support that system, but we don’t have to be coy about it, without the army to back it up, those dividends would not get paid. The relationship is exploitative (of the poor by the rich). Why the poor should seem so beyond the pale for wanting some part of what the wealthy take for granted is beyond me. We may think their demands impractical, but it is strange to think them immoral.
We already have this system. Anybody who makes part of their income from shares benefits from it… without the army to back it up, those dividends would not get paid… The relationship is exploitative (of the poor by the rich).
Most shareholders have day jobs, like me. I own a few shares (no I didn’t inherit them) and I use my savings to help someone else (and yes hopefully make a few quid). I’m not *imposing* on anyone or expecting a free ride. I’m helping someone grow their business.
We already have this system. Anybody who makes part of their income from shares benefits from it. the state apparatus allows non-workers to remove the wealth produced by workers and be passed on to people who make no productive contribution, they simply own shares, often shares they have inherited. I am a capitalist and support that system,
And you call yourself a capitalist? Inconceivable! You use this word but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Money paid out in dividends or reinvested as CAPITAL is the result of WORK done by InVESTORS who did considerable work up front, first to acquire the seed money and then to decide WHERE and HOW it is invested. It is a RETURN on INVESTMENT. The investment is then watched over and maintained lest it fall into ruin. This you equate with some slacker sitting by the mailbox waiting for his check to arrive? You are a profoundly ignorant man in matters of finance. Though in your defense, I suspect you were “educated” in this direction.
“You use this word but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Money paid out in dividends or reinvested as CAPITAL is the result of WORK done by InVESTORS”
No it isn’t. Many investors own their shares simply by being born to it. Many others have simply had the luck to invest in very successful companies (it takes no work). But receiving dividends is collecting money from productive workers without making a productive contribution oneself. Morally speaking it is no different, as far as I can see, as collecting a cheque from the government (especially since many share values today are upheld only by massive government subsidy). We can only justify this sort of rent seeking behaviour (backed up by massive governmental coercion) because overall the system is more efficient than the alternatives.
I suppose we can play Notisntyestis with this all day. You are simply playing games with language here and expecting me to accept it as fact. “Many”? How many? Not that it is relevant because there is still considerable effort involved in watching over that investment. You fail to understand that even the wealthy inheritors who lack the skills must pay financial managers to do this work for them, lest the investment go to ruin. You willfully ignore large parts of the picture to suit your arguments, oblivious that such factors only disappear inside your own head. To casually dismiss investment as simple luck that “takes no work” reflects how profound your ignorance on these matters is. You do not grasp the fundamental concepts of wealth, how it is created, nor how it is maintained.
Torquil Macniel says:
Hiring someone to do a job is exploitation.
Paid employment is slavery.
Investment is rent seeking.
Investment is exploitation of the poor by the rich.
Investment takes no work or skill.
Freeloading on taxpayers isn’t immoral.
Dividends wouldn’t be paid without the threat of the army.
Hilarious.
Seriously, are you for real?
Hilarious.
Seriously, are you for real?
Hate to break this to you, Cass, but this is standard university thinking across the civilized world. You’re the ignorant being in that world. Sadly, after a couple short decades of simulated reflection, that world is expanding quite rapidly again. There’s a thermodynamics joke in there somewhere, I’m sure. No time to mine it now.
I think it is implicit in the assumption that nobody would work in old people’s homes if they could live in idleness instead
But that is the premise of Mr Moase’s article: not that people would live in (absolute) idleness, but that they would then be free to follow their muse as poets, artists, philosophers, etc.
Up-thread you made the argument that there might be a net saving due to cancellation of other benefits and the costs of administering them. You also asked:
Perhaps there isn’t any more to say, but I would be interested to know, if we could agree that a basic wage could be afforded at these rates without increasing taxation, would it be supportable then (remember, that amounts to an annual £20,000 tax rebate for you)
Which is, quite honestly, one of the most laughable propositions I have ever read.
I am not familiar with Australia (Mr Moase’s home), or the UK – in particular, I don’t know my way around the government statistical offices, so I based my research on Canada; I doubt the results are significantly different.
Mr Moase proposed a basic wage of $30,000 AUD on the basis that Australian per capita GDP is ~$70,000. Canada’s per capita GDP is ~$55K (CAD), with a population of ~33M. Scaling back Mr Moase’s proposal for the difference in per capita GDP, I considered a ‘basic wage’ of $20K CAD – that comes to $660 Billion (in case of confusion between North American and English usage of ‘billions’ and ‘trillions’ that’s $660E9 – what you might call six hundred thousand million, if I have it right). Well, that doesn’t sound too outlandish: what’s a couple of hundred billion to a rich government?
Well, actually, it’s quite a lot. Total spending, by all levels of government in Canada (Federal, Provincial, and Municipal), including the national pension scheme was $631 Bn in 2009 (the last year I could find figures), so the basic wage would cost about 5% more than ALL current government spending. That’s health care, roads, national defense, education, pensions; the whole enchilada. Of that spending, about $190 Bn is “Social Services” – which may be more than just payments to individuals, but for sake of argument, let’s assume that ALL of that could be replaced with the ‘basic wage’ you are proposing. That leaves additional expenditure of $660 Bn, less savings in existing programs of $190 Bn, for a net increase of $470 Bn in spending. Against a base of $631, that represents a shade less than a 75% increase in government spending. This increase in spending would either have to be matched by a similar increase in taxation, or the currency would be debased to the point of worthlessness (and it still might be, if such a scheme were to be adopted).
I can assure you that the purported 20,000 GBP (or, in this case, 20,000 CAD) as my share in the scheme (and even including the rest of my family) would be pretty small beer against the taxes required to fund this program. Rather than discussing what style of saddle we should design for our unicorn, let’s just agree that such a program cannot be adopted; “supportable in principal” is irrelevant.
“Artists and musicians could focus on their work.”
I have to add my 2c on this – although somewhat tongue in cheek…
I’m currently in my third year at an ‘arts’ institute – the Dunedin School of Art in New Zealand. Due to my experiences here I would offer a very different approach to the issue of artists focusing on their work. This approach works by changing dominant attitudes towards artistic practice in our art schools (I’m conflating aus and nz here, sorry) First, drop all pretense of the postmodernist, deconstructive kind, where; “beauty” can mean anything you want it to, merit is a wholly relative concept, practical standards are forever elusive, and artistic skill is woefully undervalued next to dubious feats of pure ideation. Drop the infinitely malleable categories of study such as ‘performance art’ and develop and apply a rigorous set of standards for achievement in one of the regular majors (printing, painting, sculpture, photographic and electronic mediums) Stop laying waste to the traditional practices in the name of ‘progress’ and feminist equality by turning them into caricatures of patriarchal oppression, and demand that students apply themselves fully to the study and application of their craft rather than its subversion. I propose that this approach could go a long way to getting
leftistsartists to focus on their work.Torquil Macniel says:
Hiring someone to do a job is [sometimes] exploitation.
Paid employment [can be] is slavery.
Investment is [in some circumstances] rent seeking.
Investment [can be] is exploitation of the poor by the rich.
Investment [sometimes] takes no work or skill.
Freeloading on taxpayers isn’t [always] immoral.
Dividends wouldn’t [always] be paid without the threat of the army.
Leftists [often] will lie, connive, equivocate, and deceive rather than admit that they have no idea what they are talking about or possibly be just plain wrong.
Investment is [in some circumstances] rent seeking.
Investment [can be] is exploitation of the poor by the rich.
Dividends wouldn’t [always] be paid without the threat of the army.
Posted by: Torquil Macneil | June 26, 2013 at 09:42
Previous day (replying to David’s comment that “Mr Moase and his supporters envision a society in which an undefined but apparently unlimited proportion of one’s earnings (and therefore one’s freedom) will be expropriated by the state in order to keep in comfort people who choose not to support themselves”):
We already have this system. Anybody who makes part of their income from shares benefits from it. the state apparatus allows non-workers to remove the wealth produced by workers and be passed on to people who make no productive contribution, they simply own shares, often shares they have inherited. I am a capitalist and support that system, but we don’t have to be coy about it, without the army to back it up, those dividends would not get paid. The relationship is exploitative (of the poor by the rich).
Posted by: Torquil Macneil | June 25, 2013 at 09:24
Cass,
What he said yesterday is superseded by what he says today… which will be superseded by what he says tomorrow. Arguing with him is like trying to nail smoke to a log.
For decades, Holland famously had the most generous art subsidies in the world (although precious little generosity towards taxpayers.)
And the fruits of this largesse? Great modern Dutch artists such as, um, uh, let me think here…
Fortunately these subsidies have been reduced in favour of more pressing priorities, opening up the possibility of Dutch artists once again producing work people actually want.