http://excellentfuture.ca/paul-summerville/the-invisible-hand-of-social-justice-0
http://www.excellentfuture.ca/false-choice
The old problem.
The impact of new production and information technologies and their dissemination through transportation and communication linkages is what has driven globalisation for hundreds of years. The challenge that this has always posed for countries is how to manage the social consequences from the big set of winners and the big set of losers that globalisation inevitably produces.The evidence is building that economic orthodoxy that overwhelmly favoured capital over labour and a political culture rooted in the belief in heroic individualism has ill prepared the United States for the challenges brought on by the most recent -- read 30 years -- episode of globalisation.This is not unlike China between 1865 and 1895 in its tragic relationship with Japan.The United States with its inflection to protecting individual rights is discovering that this makes competing in the 21st century more not less difficult.Ironically, individual rights are best protected by a political culture based not on an explicit attempt to protect them but on societal fairness as measured by inter-generational mobility.The keys to a fair society are the rule of law, world class education and health outcomes, and a well functioning market, not it is turning out, laws that specifically protect the rights of the individual to, for example, keep the bulk of their income, send their kids to taxpayer funded private schools, reserve the science of good health for the wealthy, create special racial categories for advancement, and justice that is a function of what can be bought, not argued.This may turn out to be the critical point of differetiation for Canada with the United States for guaranteeing an excellent future.Canada’s inflection to fairness in social policy, the rule of law, and a well functioning well regulated market economy has created the perfect conditions for a high degree of intergenerational mobility including the first born generation of Canadians. Explaining Canada's Excellent FutureEdit 03 November 2010
One simple step to an excellent Canadian future is to provide sufficient income to every Canadian in order to eliminate poverty if only because of the high cost of persistent worst in class education, health, community and economic outcomes that poverty breeds. Building on the ideas of a negative income tax, guaranteed annual income, guaranteed adequate income, and earned income tax credits we consider the Canadian Citizenship Wage.With citizenship comes rights and obligations. The Canadian Citizenship Wage would confirm the right of every Canadian of a sufficient income to have a minimum standard of living which is regarded as acceptable by Canadian society. Quite simply an excellent future requires that working or not citizens will receive a minimum income.The obvious direct benefits are that poverty would be eliminated immediately and the cost of delivering anti-poverty programmes would be reduced dramatically if not removed entirely. The indirect economic benefits include the removal of market distorting income programmes like the minimum wage, an income platform from which citizens that want to improve their lives may do so, and a twinning of social justice with the obligations of citizenship.The standard objection to this type of programme is that it provides a disincentive to work. There is truth in this. There will always be a subset of people that do not want to work and are prepared to live their lives at the poverty line. Yet we know that these citizens can among other things be a social nuisance, tend to spend more time in jail, and develop chronic health problems that ultimately are very expensive to the taxpayer without providing the means or motivation to improving their lives. The conversation and moral imperative with a squeegee kid is different when they have an annual income from the state.It has never made much sense to me to refuse citizens the means of the most primitive life on the premise that they should take of themselves but then extend access to the most expensive health treatments for problems bred by poverty that were preventable in the first place.It may also be true that the Canadian Citizenship Wage may encourage people that are working today to leave the workforce and live at the poverty line. There will always be a subset of citizens like this mostly ill of mind, lazy or incompetent. Not to mention struggling writers and artists. But by focusing on this subset of people the unintended consequence is to make it difficult for people who do want to improve their lives to do so. Poverty is not always a choice.There are four classes of people that live in poverty: first, people that can not work for physical often mental reasons; second, people that want to work do work but are still poor; third, people that want to work but are unemployed; and fourth, people that can work but do not want to. Currently, our social income policies are so complicated that they deal ineffectively with all four classes and ultimately compound the costs to our society in terms of economic and social health in part because we are so caught up in the moral hazard of letting those that do not want to work off the hook but make it difficult for the other three classes to hope for a better life.There is a mean-spiritedness to our social income policies that actually makes those policies less efficient, more costly, and as the persistence of poverty and its consequences demonstrate, ineffective.A more sophisticated objection to this type of programme is that it will not encourage people to move beyond the income level set by a Citizenship Wage. For example, in the case where the income threshold is passed and the tax system is designed where there is a dollar for dollar exchange this is true. For example, if the poverty income threshold was set at $20,000 and if a person earned a dollar more ($21,001) resulting in a dollar of the Citizenship Wage being clawed back. This problem of course is easily corrected by making, for example, the next $10,000 or so non-taxable allowing a person to add to their Citizenship Wage without any income impact and presumably without a disincentive to earn more money and live a life with more not less means.An indefensible objection is that it would break up families because adults would have the economic means to live separately. The objection is indefensible not because this would not happen, there are studies that show this is a result of guaranteed incomes, but indefensible because it is evil when poverty is the only thing keeping a marriage intact. There are also studies that show that in families with children that guaranteed incomes result in the male working more and the female working less confirming that such an income increases choice.In the end the most powerful incentive for the poor to get out of poverty is to participate in all that modern Canada has to offer. A Canadian Citizenship Wage would be a simple step to make that a reality.And the obligations? There are many. At the judge's bench economic victimhood would cease being a defence for crime and the claim of the society on the citizen for civil and socially responsible lives are two.But the real benefit is to give people who want to improve their lives the opportunity to do so without the stigma of being on welfare.The starting point of an excellent Canada is that all citizens are treated equally, under the law, and with the means to live a basic life, with hope and dignity.Edit -- 01 October 2010 http://harpers.org/archive/2010/10/0083150The idea that a country's economy can be boiled down to the parts and sum of the components of GDP is nonsense. Instead, the economy is part of a set of social interactions that turn on one key idea, that what matters is not how affluent a nation may be but how unequal it is. So in this chapter we discuss Canada's social economy and comparing it with other high income countries.Edit -- 27 October 2010How the immigrant issue is resolved in different countries will in part depend on the second theme, that is which countries recognize that individual rights are best protected in societies that are fair measured by inter-generational mobility a function of the rule of law, world class education and health outcomes, and a well functioning market, not ironically, laws that specially protect the rights of the individual to, for example, keep the bulk of their income, send their kids to taxpayer funded private schools, reserve the science of good health for the wealthy, and justice that is a function of what can be bought not argued.Key booksTony Judt, Ill Fares the Land (2010) own copyRichard Wilkerson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level (2009) own copyStefan Svallfors (ed), Analysing Inequality (2005) HM821A53Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams, The Idea of Equality (2000) HM821i33Michael Blim, Equality and Economy (2005) HM821 B56Daniel Dorling, Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists (2010) hm821d67Maxine Berg, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815-1848 (1980) HB85 B35Christine Sypnowich (ed), The Egalitarian Conscience (2006) HM821E32Scott Sernau, World's Apart (2006) HM821S47 2006Tim Butler and Paul Watt, Understanding Social Inequality (2007) HM821B88Poverty and Poverty Alliviation Strategies in North America ed Mary Jo Bane HC95 Z9P626Gernerational Income Mobility in North America and Europe ed Miles Corak HC95 Z9 I5146edit 12 November 2010 -- how countries get rich
How countries become rich.
Pdf below, 'How Countries Get Rich'.
How South Korea and Taiwan became rich.
Pdf below, 'How Korea and Taiwan grew rich'.
Some thoughts on why the United States is so rich. Notice the importance of immigration.
Why Is America So Rich? ECONOMIC gloom and doom aside, America remains the world's richest large country.
Edit 12 november 2010 States that create the ground work for fairness open the door to the codified provision of collective and individual rights (fairness would be measured by intergenerational mobility). -- Summerville Whereas states built on the philosophy of classical liberal individualism like the United States ultimately become so unfair and so unequal that basic individual rights are not advanced. -- Summervilleeg. incarceration, death penalty, gini coeffient, first born immigrant outcomes, social mobility (bottom 20% versus top 20%)This chapter will examine the relationship between social justice and the market in Canada by discussing the economic, political, and cultural framework of public policy to answer the question whether or not the chance at better life is improved over time.Edit -- 28 October 2010The way economists tend to discuss the economy expressed mostly as numbers does not tell us very much about how the economy actually operates. Economies may have similar structures in terms of consumption and investment as a percentage of GDP or male/female participation rates however these may result in tremendously different outcomes and be the consequence of very different types of public policy.The key data point to determine if a country is fair is inter-generational social mobility.Why does contemporary Canada have publically funded universal health care but not for day care.Why are community outcomes in neighbouring provinces British Columbia and Alberta different?Why does Norway have a powerful state oil company -- Statoil -- and Canada's state oil company Petro Canada long ago privatised?The Canadian context for these policy decisions is important to understand as an important step to discussing the future of public policy in areas vital to an excellent future.
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