In case you missed it, and wonder what the devil I’m rattling on about here, here are the links to a series that has appeared over the last few days in these pages. In this article I want to expand on some of the thinking behind the suggestions and points that have been made, because I’m 100% sure that there are many people out there who are saying things like “Well how’s that going to work then?” and so on.
Part I – https://dorseteye.com/south/articles/excess-and-poverty-time-for-a-real-change
Part II – https://dorseteye.com/south/articles/excess-and-poverty-time-for-a-real-change-part-2
Part III – https://dorseteye.com/north/articles/excess-and-poverty-time-for-a-real-change-part-3
The first thing to realise, folks, is that if you don’t unite your voices and DEMAND it, it won’t work at all. People who have power don’t give it up because a couple of people stick their hands up and ask nicely. It takes thousands, even millions of people to make those power-mongers realise that their behaviour is unacceptable and harmful to the majority. So, please come and join us over at P.L.E.B. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/414895271976252) and let your support for Change be a visible presence. We’d love for you to chip in and comment on the topics raised, but it’s not mandatory. Topics such as the following, for example…
HOME OWNERSHIP
In Part III I say that I don’t see any need for people to own their homes, but that those who do should continue to do so until they no longer have any personal need for them. At that time they should be absorbed into national ownership. In order for this to work, there will need to be a house-building programme such as the country hasn’t seen since the late 1940s, but there are workers available, just about all of whom are sick to the back teeth of the DWP’s behaviour towards claimants and who would be delighted to have the ability to provide comfortably for themselves and their families.
But what about the mortgages that are held on those properties? Well, this is one area in which the banks have shot themselves in their corporate feet. The money that supposedly changed hands when you bought your house doesn’t actually exist. It is nothing more than a virtual debt created within the bank’s computer system and has no collateral backing it. If your property was suddenly confiscated from the bank, and you were authorised to cease making mortgage repayments, the bank would not actually suffer a physical loss. Fractional reserve banking, as it is known, allows banks to effectively create money out of thin air without the need to print extra bank-notes. So we can apply cold logic to that virtual debt and declare that if the money doesn’t actually exist, the debt cannot exist either.
So, if we were to achieve our aim and bring the system that is being proposed into existence, the banks would find that they had to write off all of that virtual debt and it wouldn’t harm them in the slightest. In your case, you would still make a payment towards your property from your annual allowance, far lower than a mortgage commitment, and this would merely cover the time-costs of anyone who had to come out and make a necessary repair.
If you found that you needed to move – say, you couldn’t manage the stairs any more – you wouldn’t need to go through all the kerfuffle of finding a buyer, engaging a solicitor, finding out if you could move your mortgage, and so on. You’d simply notify the local branch of the Central Management Organisation (CMO) and they would be responsible for finding you a suitable property to move into. The property that you were moving out of would then be allocated to a suitably sized family, single person, couple – whoever was appropriate.
You would no longer have the worry of a recession affecting the value of your home. You could never again be trapped into staying put because of negative equity, which has become a regular feature of recessions since the 1980s and the advent of the free market economy. You would just get on with what made your life easier and so the system would go on, filling the spaces behind you as other people moved up, down or into vacated properties. This is one way in which the proposed system would insulate you from the fluctuations in the world’s trading markets.
TAXATION
In an economy where money was not used, taxation would also become obsolete. The need to support national infrastructure, building projects, museums and other public works would all be budgeted for at national level, as they are now, but it would also become the responsibility of the CMO to ensure that the means to pay for those works was available. In the matter of internal works, the labour would already be paid for in the form of the credit allocation system. The cost of materials would only come into play if they had to be imported from a private capitalist source, and that kind of cost would be defrayed by the CMO’s wage income, as negotiated by them for the services of people working for foreign companies, import duties, exported goods and services, and so forth. Those workers would all be receiving credit allocations at the national rate, and so would not need to have any part of wage negotiations. This means that, rather than receiving just a portion of a worker’s wages in the form of tax, the CMO would be taking in the ENTIRE wage amount for that worker, which would increase the nation’s ability to pay its way internationally. The worker, having his/her credit allocation, would have no need of that physical money.
As the companies would not be required to pay business rates, or charge VAT or fuel duty, their UK-manufactured products, and their international services, would become very competitive in terms of price. We could also become a haven for call centres, as our wages for those jobs could be set far cheaper than even some of the third world countries that have taken over those roles in recent years. Likewise finance management for companies that have an overseas base. The opportunities for increasing employment by removing the tax barrier would be considerable.
Some jobs are more demanding or arduous than others. Should those people receive a greater credit allocation? No. They would work for fewer hours in those jobs but still receive the national CA rate. There would also be Social Merits tied into the system, through which respect, or “social worth” would be adjudged and recorded. EVERYONE who provided a service to the nation would earn a minimum of one Social Merit per day and there would be innumerable opportunities to add to this allowance.
INDUSTRY AND UTILITIES
The utilities would need to be completely re-nationalised. With willing workers in the UK being available, it makes no sense whatsoever to keep paying outside companies to manage our gas, electricity and water, nor our telecommunications. Even our mobile phone services could be taken in-house and separated from the major conglomerates who currently supply them. There would be no reason to charge for phone calls, mobile calls and texts, or even internet access. The old days of mechanical wear and tear are long gone, and electronic parts last longer and are cheaper to replace. Many of the utilities suppliers have not met their end of the privatisation bargain, which was to improve services for the consumers. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the water industry, and the former national telephone service is still running on lines that are incapable of carrying the traffic volume that modern broadband demands. Why is this? COST and shareholder greed has prevented their replacement. You might recall that in 2011/12 the government handed out £530 million to the telecomms companies in order to “encourage” them to upgrade lines in semi-urban and rural areas. The taxpayers paid for those privatised companies to make more profits in the future.
Under this proposed system, that work could be done at zero cost to the organisations and the whole nation could, in a matter of just a few years, be completely upgraded to cope with 21stCentury communication demands. As an example of the “1970s time capsule” state of the BT infrastructure: My own line with British Telecom, where I was living until November last year, would only carry up to 2.3Mb/s. It wasn’t even copper – it was aluminium! And it has been in place since 1973, when the estate was built. No matter which way up you put that information, it is never going to portray an improvement of service. Yet BT was still trying to kid me that their 20Mb/s service, “Infinity,” was a good thing. That kind of con would stop under the system that has been proposed and is being discussed in P.L.E.B.
I’m sure there are other questions that you have. Please do come and join the group and let’s discuss them. If we’re to produce a system that purports to be fair to all, then we must have as wide a range of opinion as is possible.
There are two reports that I’ve seen today that make the rapid growth of P.L.E.B. a real necessity now. The first is about the move towards the free trade agreement between the UK and the USA. This will give the conglomerates enormous political power, to a level as yet unseen. The other is this one: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/15/benefits-uk-welfare_n_4596173.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics&ir=UK+Politics
A natural offshoot of this alarming move by the coalition government will be the complete disenfranchisement of anyone who has no work, earns below a certain amount per annum, or who does not own property. Your right to vote for your representative in Parliament will, quite simply, be taken away from you and you will have no say in the matter.
Capitalism is dying. It needs to expand its means to acquire resources. That means invasions of other nations in order, as we’ve seen in the aftermath of the Iraq war, for “preferred partners” to take over the management (read “ownership”) of those resources. The same is happening with Afghanistan. Mineral wealth is being surveyed and reported upon and private sector companies who have supported the invasion will be granted the rights to exploit them. Afghanistan was never about opium or terrorist control. Those were side-issues.
So, with no right to refuse, people will find themselves conscripted into the armies of the future, but they won’t be fighting for the interests of their home nations – they’ll be the cannon-fodder of multi-national corporations. If that’s the kind of world you want your grandchildren and their children to face, do nothing. If – as it does with me and more than a few others – it scares the bejasus out of you, come and join us at P.L.E.B. And let’s get cracking on putting the alternative, that will ensure future fairness, together.
Darren Lynch
