‘Deeper questions’ surrounding Basic Income Guarantee

To the editor:

Thank you to Roger Tatlock for his letter (April 26, 2023) bringing to our attention Wolfville town council’s motion regarding Basic Income Guarantee and related efforts.

Although governments obviously can’t afford to take on every desirable project all at once, it would appear that, in the short term, a ‘basic income’ might be the initiative most likely to succeed in eliminating many degrees of poverty, as advocated, for example, in Evelyn M. Forget’s Basic Income for Canadians and Radical Trust.

However, as a concerned observer of the shortcomings of the economic status quo, it seems to me the implementation of a basic income policy will eventually also require us to face deeper questions, some of which are already being posed in various ways.

• Given that we inhabit a finite Earth whose resources are all limited, that our global population is still expanding and that we all require essentially the same range of goods and services to thrive as human beings, can we justify a marketplace dominated by a competition to consume and accumulate as much as one can of desirable things? This would inevitably result in some participants ending up with fewer resources than they require to thrive, while others end up with access to more than they’ll ever need.

• Given that it probably takes thousands of workers, performing a myriad of indispensable functions, to turn raw materials into any of the hundreds of goods and services we use or consume daily, and make them available to the final consumer, can we justify a marketplace where some workers end up with less lifetime income than they require to thrive, while other workers end up with more than they really need?

• Given that any unit of earned income represents the product of labour expended on producing some exchangeable good or service, can we justify a marketplace in which those who come away with more income than they need to thrive can generate even further income in exchange for producing no additional product for the marketplace (as, for instance, by betting their surplus in the stock market), while many others, after a lifetime of productive work, end up with less income than they need?

• Given that it’s only humans who, in exchange for income, actually expend the effort needed to produce all goods and services, using the resources and tools at their disposal, can we justify a marketplace in which non-personal entities such as corporations may also receive income (in the form of annual profits which may be in the billions) without producing any corresponding products for exchange, while the actual producers of goods and services often end up with less income than they need?

• Is there any basis for believing the marketplace as we know it, over any period of time, could ever achieve a degree of balance such that all the units of every product required to satisfy everyone’s needs would be produced? That there would be just enough workers able and available to produce them and that everyone would end up with just the purchasing power required to buy all the goods and services they require - without the coordinated collaboration of all stakeholders?

• Given that we now participate in a single interdependent global marketplace, can we address the issue of a basic income in one country without also taking into account the workers, in any country with which we trade goods and services (directly or indirectly), whose incomes aren’t sufficient to enable them to thrive?

• Could we be content with just the pleasures of living sustainably on a fragile and finite earth and co-operating to create the beauty of a global community in which everyone has access to just the goods and services they need to thrive, instead of (as now predominantly) pursuing the pleasures of competing to get as much as we can of whatever we want, (mostly) heedless of the negative consequences for the health of our global habitat and the fate of marketplace losers?

Meanwhile, best wishes for every success to those advocating for a Basic Income Guarantee in Canada.