Day 257: Living Income Practicality

Q: Will LIG result in the replacement of jobs by machines?

A: The foundation of LIG is to provide the necessary access to the living necessities as a human right, therefore if jobs are replaced by machines as an on-going trend, people will receive the LIG as a means to have their living needs covered. Therefore we don't directly endorse the idea of replacing human labor with machines as that is at this stage decided by each corporation's capacity to implement it in their business. However, also to consider that with LIG, due to financial security, many will feel more confident to start new business ventures, which will again create more jobs.


Q: How do we prevent those receiving LIG from being exploited by greed? For instance: Everyone working is receiving at least double the Living Income. What is to stop the price of goods from moving up so that it's not feasible for people on LIG to afford goods?

A: There will still be short-term fluctuations in the prices of various goods. However, when the prices of the commodities that represent living necessities follow an upward trend to such an extent the Living Income becomes inadequate – the Living Income amount will be increased. If the Living Income goes up, it means the minimum wage – which is defined as double the Living Income – will proportionally increase as well – thus increasing costs for firms. In the long-run it is therefore in firms’ best interest to expand operations in order to meet the increased demand rather than increasing prices. The period where inflation due to an increase in demand is most likely to occur is after the implementation of LIG. It is key, therefore, to ensure that the implementation is done in a transparent way, so that any increase in demand is not unexpected, but firms are prepared for the change and have defined strategies to expand their output.


Q: How will people be motivated to work and perform well under LIG?

A: The classical notion that money is what motivates people to perform well – where the more one earns, the better one performs, has been disproven – for perspective, watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc.
By setting the minimum wage at double the Living Income, every worker is recognized as a vital part of the company, which creates loyalty and a commitment to the goals of the company. It has been shown that when employees receive more than a subsistence income, a firm incurs less turnover costs as well as less costs relating to monitoring the employees. That being said, the relationship between employer and employee is likely to change as LIG increases the bargaining power of employees significantly; no-one will ‘need’ to work anymore. Currently – the threat to lose one’s job is often enough to compromise oneself within one’s job by accepting inferior labor conditions – because one knows that there are always others who will do any job just in order to survive – and thus one is replaceable. With LIG – working is no longer a matter of survival and employers will require to put in the effort to make jobs attractive by creating optimal labor conditions and treating every employee as an individual and not merely as a cog in a machine. The above-referenced video includes several examples of how appealing to employees’ sense of purpose creates far more effective motivation than the threat to lose one’s job.


Q: One point that came up for me is that with the Erasmus program in Europe many students travel to other countries for one year. The student is integrated into the local university system and learns about the culture and the language. In general students' mobility is highly supported by the EU. If there is a country that offers LIG at lower age than most other countries, then that country might see an influx of immigrating youth - would this play a role?

A: Being a student in a country doesn’t make one a citizen, and so, one is not entitled to a Living Income. Countries can specify whether permanent residents would receive LIG, as well as citizens – this could also go in stages, where initially only citizens can claim a Living Income and later, as more countries implement LIG, permanent and perhaps even temporary residents can receive LIG as the inflow of immigrants will not be as intense at that stage.




For context and more information:

Living Income Guaranteed - the Proposal: http://livingincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/the-proposal/
Living Income Guaranteed YouTube Channel - watch the hangouts: https://www.youtube.com/user/BIGuaranteed?feature=watch
Living Income Guaranteed Website: http://livingincome.me

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Day 2: From ENCAGEment to ENGAGEment - The Origin of Laziness

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to submit to the idea that people will only be willing to work if they are rewarded for it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to subject myself to a limited view of the human being, where a human being can only be motivated by motives of personal gratification.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that laziness and aversion to work are an inherent trait of humankind.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see and realise that as a child, I was keen to learn new things and about new things and I didn’t need anyone to tell me that I would be rewarded for it.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that we have created the human condition of laziness and aversion to work through our educational system where a distinctive line has been drawn between funtime and worktime.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that by creating school to be an environment of boredom and compulsion, we limit the natural inquisitive nature of children as human beings to explore, engage and try out different things.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that by making children be quiet and sit still while having to listen and essentially take orders, we are programming children to limit themselves to only that: a passive robot who eventually doesn’t want to do anything but sit on his ass and have other people tell him what to do and how to do it as long as the right incentives are provided.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that schools are a production house for rotten children and rotten humans who have forgotten what it means to be a child, what it means to be a human and have completely subjected and limited themselves to external incentives to move their ass.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that if we change our schooling and education system, where we allow children to learn through engaging with and exploring the world in a relevant and practical way, we will create human beings who are self-motivated and passionate about life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to assume to know the true nature of human beings without considering that this nature was not inherently there at birth, but created throughout a child’s formative years by his/her environment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to claim that the free market system that works with personal incentives and personal gratification is the only one that can ever get human beings to engage themselves to do the tasks that need to be done to sustain humanity and the environment we share – because it is based on the apparent ‘true nature’ of the human being, without realising that what/who human beings are now is not necessarily who they have to be and all they can be.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that in claiming that the free market system is the best economic system imaginable based on the argument that it provides the correct incentives for human beings on an individual level to produce needed goods and services for society at large – is merely begging the question, since it is this very system, through the educational system, that created human beings to be these rotten creatures in the first place.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up any sense of self-respect within and through the very acceptance of the belief that all I am and all I ever can be is a creature that needs to continuously poked with external incentives and motivations to do something, to be something, to make something out of myself and my world.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that the reason why children are ‘cherished’ in the eyes of adults is because the children show them who they were, who they could have still been, if only they hadn’t given up on themselves.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that what’s done is done and that it is too late now to try to re-educate ourselves and re-discover ourselves.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to content myself with simply rotting away in something I call ‘my life’ – occupying myself with that which gives me the fastest and highest level of personal gratification – while completely detaching myself from the actual, real, physical reality, missing my life as I encage myself in a bubble of my mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trade engagement with enCAGEment and actually believe that this was a good deal.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget what it means to give and only look at what I can receive.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that an outflow of our current economic system is that, because everyone is so busy focusing on what they can ‘get’ – there are billions who don’t get anything, because no-one remembers to give what was received in return.

I commit myself to re-designing the educational system in the world so as to create effective human beings who understand and embrace the act of giving and receiving – through providing an environment where children are able to flourish and develop and express their unconditionality.

I commit myself to exposing that suppressing a child’s natural expression is a crime to life.

I commit myself to break through the limitations we as humans have subjected ourselves to, through walking back in time to correct our mistakes and find ourselves again.

I commit myself to the redefinition of what it means to be a human being in such a way that to be a human being as the living word is something to be proud of.

I commit myself to expose incoherent, fallacious and disgraceful justifications free marketers use to defend a system of abuse and horror.

I commit myself to become a human being who motivates and moves self with great ease within the understanding of how I can fulfill myself in participation with what is here and what is here to be done.

I commit myself to redefine the word ‘work’ in a way that it includes rather than excludes fun, where work flows as who we are, here, in every moment.

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