Our social consciousness lags far behind the possibilities, which are offered by the worldwide division of labour and the productive development arising from it...
In a global economy, in which we live on the initiative and service of everyone, a tax system is anachronistic. The tax system influences the process of value creation and the weight of one's own initiative. A tax which leaves the contribution of the single taxpayer untaxed, is the consumption tax (in the form of the VAT).
It is a contemporary tax of the global division of labour. A step by step reorganization of the tax system; into a pure taxation of the consumer is easy, because even today all taxes are included in the prices.
Where in a consumption tax system is there room for a non-taxable minimum? We call this amount Basic Income. A Basic Income is also a modern concept, because in a work-sharing creation of Value system, more and more work is done more effectively by machines, which are built through the organization of the human mind. The result of the global division of work is that labour is done increasingly without an income – working poor – and income from capital is paid increasingly without work.
The dictum, that the technical progress and the growth of productivity creates jobs in the same way as it destroys them, these days is the wrong idea. If we do not back up the dwindling earned incomes for the people, who are losing their jobs to automation; i.e. pay for more machines to produce more goods, a huge part of our society will become poor. “We starve” – as Goethe said in “Faust” – “in the fullness.”
If we had an unreserved basic income for the security of our existence, the need would be cancelled for a huge number of the regulation measures, which couple work and income to each other. Basic living needs would be taken care of by this basic income. In addition, it would form human productive strength. “ The higher the “cost to produce goods” in Germany, the more pressure there is on companies to shift production to cheaper foreign countries. The cost of labour is high because Germany has many societal tasks – like social security of children, invalids or senior citizens – to the acquisition of employment, which is becoming less and less available.
With an Unconditional Basic Income humans do not just depend on income through work.
Companies could reduce net salaries, depending on the competitive situation, to the level of the Basic Income – a substitute aspect. The companies, which are in competition, could reduce their net prices as well. If the value added tax would stay unchanged, the prices would subside. A gradual increasing of the consumption tax could be used to increase the Basic Income. The lower “cost of Labour” increases the readiness of companies to employ new workers as a productive power. If people do not depend on employment, they are disposed to work less. With a Basic Income it would be possible to expand creativity in the family, education and care, as well as in science, art and culture.
In a society with a Basic Income more young families could decide to start their own family and to form their career and family depending on the situation, because a Basic Income includes money for parents, as well as for children. As personal freedom increases, the subsidiary principle reaches the individual and gives him or her freedom, which is necessary to get an individual involved in giving back to society.
The impact of the economy these days is quite substantial. The economy is found in all aspects of society, from politics to culture. However is it not the rich cultural life (research, science, education, sport, art and religion), from where the economy gets its intangible funding.
From the point of the organization of the society, the economy as production pole faces the cultural life as a consumption pole. The polarity of the economy and culture could be explained as follows:
Culture – to develop skills and to spend economic goods
Economy – to use skills and to produce economic goods
The productive development of human potentials, which means, the human as a skilled being, with his necessities for food, clothes, accommodation, education., i.e. the human as necessity-being, are two sides of the same coin. The production is one pole, consumption is the polar opposite. The Economy can only exist through the organized work of humans.
All produced goods and services finally become income, through consumption ;, either as employment, or as transfered income for the “pure consumers”. The latter are children, long term care patients, invalids and retirees, but also all people, who do personal social services. Furthermore the group of “pure consumers” contains scientists, pedagogues, officers, politicians, clerics and artists.
These people need a basic income. Because of this awareness, it is the task of a state, to build the normative framework requirements for the right to an income, so that the antidromic circularly process of the economy and culture in the future will continuously and constantly progress and sustain the needs of the people. Basic Income is the financial ground of these social areas.
A tax-system, based on consumtion, takes a part of the national total output for funding an Unconditional Basic Income and gives financial means to the social and cultural sphere. It transforms the frozen industrial society into liquid again and helps, to change society to an information, service and ultimately into a cultural society.
The welfare state with an industrial term has done its service. The regulative constitutional state has the task to allow self-determination as well as social justice for the purposes of the subsidiary principle. The consumption-based Basic Income is the foundation of our individual and society in the future.
