Migration and global social security systems
To view a Basic Income on the level of a national state brings the problem, that this state acts like a magnet for people, who live in a poorer situation and who have no chance to get out of their situation. But many states waste a lot of money to secure their borders against the mass of immigrants.
In the USA there are thoughts to use the money, which is put in to secure the border to Mexico, better and more useful to strengthen the economy and infrastructure of the Mexican region near the border to decrease the migration. This approach can be seen as global social security system. Namibia is another example. The same could be implemented by the European Union at the border to Eastern Europe.
More information about this topic:
A global labour market trend
Jean Fourastié (1954) differentiated three stages of the historical occupation trend, which characterized the history of work significantly. The first stage of a “traditional civilization” he associated approximately with the stage of development in Europe in the early middle age. In that time, about 70 percent of the population found their center and basic of life in agriculture – the so called primary sector. About 20 percent worked in these times in antecedent of that, what should get later to the industry – the second sector. And maximum 10 percent were occupied with organization, administration, infrastructure and other antecedent of that, what we call today service – the tertiary sector.
In the second stage, which Fourastié described, the industry started to take workers from agriculture. But also the agriculture was gradually “industrialized”, thus automated and rationalized. Only about 20 percent of the population found work there. 50 percent worked for the industry. And 30 percent did jobs, which flanked the industrial work. In the third stage, the “tertiary civilization”, the sector of service grew to 70 percent of occupation. Less than 10 percent were necessary for the agriculture and only about 20 percent for the industry.
From the point of view of our times, the picture of Fourastié shows some blur. The occupation in the agriculture, for example, amounts in Western Europe in some places only 3-4 percent. And the area of service on his part chanced in a way, which some call the quatiary sector – the work with knowledge. Nowadays the raw scheme of Fourastié can be seen as early projection of an “postindustrial society”, which is just developing (Bell 1973). Anyhow it shows clearly (in the 1930x it was not a common property at all), that beside agriculture and industry another form of work could be “productive” and first of all, social important. Only with the discussion about the service society the economy recognized the meaning of further factors to analyze economic growth and looked to technique and scientific research – first as residual category, but more and more as central factor of production. Because of this, today we see knowledge, organization, innovation, research and development and more and more the public opinion similar to former properties, work and capital.
Needs
At the first stage the agriculture dominated clearly, a form of work, which on the one hand guaranteed social security of those, who were occupied there as an integrated part of it, and, on the other hand, put a huge part of society in broadly similar relations of life and being. The village community cares about the social livelihoods and needs in a traditional agriculture. And the livelihood is for the most members of the society similar. Individual ideas of life and exceptional destinies, interests or needs are rather unusual.
At the second stage of the scheme, at the heyday of industry, a governmental social security system gets to a must. The elemental unit of an extended family, a farm and a village is more and more unable to secure the livelihood, if someone cannot work. Anyhow the ideas of life are quite similar to the needs of those who work in the industry. The workers see themselves still as homogeneous class in Western industrial nations. Those, who work in agriculture, refer themselves on the one hand still to the traditional forms of security; on the other hand they differentiate their needs not too much from those of the workers. The gradually growing service sector, which is caused by the industrial work, is not very clear, but jobs like “administrative officers” or “clerks” (there were the first social scientific studies, like Kracauer 1929/1971) show, that a new, more heterogeneous class is growing, which is more and more individual and has therefore less and less common ideas of life and similar needs.
At the third stage of the scheme this group got very dominant. Within this group are the known existences of the modern, primary service-doing urban society, which consists of clerks, teachers, doctors, businessmen, managers and “new freelances”, but they are only unique in the sense, that there is nothing unique. The members live their life explicitly and individual and do have very different needs and reasons to work.
There is nothing else than a national organized welfare state to guarantee their social security. This form of state developed in the context of the industrialization. It does not surprise, that this state bumps into problems, which are connected with very different needs and which should be solved with methods, which were developed for a relative homogeneous group of workers.
