Do
You Know Where Your Next Paycheck is Coming From?
by Thad
Williamson
Tikkun,
Jan/Feb'98
Page
3 of 3
What steps,
then, can be taken to forward a fresh, far-reaching vision
of economic security for each and all, beyond the usual liberal
wish list?
- We should
further develop and drastically expand democratic economic
alternatives that are committed to their communities, including
municipal enterprise, community-rooted worker firms, and
community development corporations. In the long term, if
corporations cannot or will not provide stable jobs to communities
over time, we must ensure that another institutional form
capable of doing so evolves.
- Bolster
smaller scale efforts to start building a different sense
of community here and now. These efforts should move beyond
the current civil society discourse on the need to "bowl"
together to create ways to start sharing together too. The
burgeoning community supported agriculture movement, "Time
Dollar" and local currency programs, day care cooperatives,
cohousing experiments, and community land trusts are all
examples of this form of community-building. While none
of these initiatives alone can make a drastic impact on
a particular community, they are important ways to begin
rebuilding the different cultural sensibility needed if
larger-scale solutions are to become possible.
- Provide
an income stream to all citizens, as a matter of
right,
regardless of whether one is lucky enough to have
a good
job or not. A discussion of ways to establish
guaranteed
minimum incomes?such as using profits from
community-owned enterprises to fund a social
dividend?is
now a hot topic in Europe due to the work of
the Basic Income European Network. A related
possibility
is to gradually shift to shorter work weeks and
thereby spread the existing work around, as much
of Europe
is already doing, while supplementing workers'
incomes with some form of "social dividend".
- Another
important, if less dramatic proposal is that of Business
Week economist William Wolman, who advocates establishing
public job "catastrophe insurance" policies. Such job insurance
would be more generous than current unemployment benefits,
and would lend public recognition to the fact that almost
any worker, no matter how diligent or productive, can quickly
lose their job, through no fault of their own, in today's
roller-coaster economy.
Just as
individuals should have some form of ongoing security and
not be left to face the market unprotected, so should there
be mechanisms to provide communities with ongoing economic
security. Ultimately, this may mean not simply public assistance
to community-based firms to help anchor communities, but establishing
a full-blown planning agency which could provide funds to
communities transitioning from one industry to another or
recovering from a plant closing. An important precedent in
this regard is how military base closures have been handled--the
federal government, responding to very vocal political insistence,
has set aside billions of dollars to help affected communities
like Charleston, SC survive and even flourish after base closings.
Another
important lever which points to the same goal is the Tikkun-sponsored
Social Responsibility Initiative, which would make a firm's
record in laying off workers and abandoning communities a
key criteria in assessing a firm's total "ethical impact."
A company with a poor record in this regard, unless the closings
were absolutely necessary to ensure the firm's survival, could
be denied access to government contracts and subsidies, and
even, conceivably, lose its corporate charter. This plank
of the Social Responsibility Initiative/Ethical Impact Report
idea moves beyond much of the existing discourse on "socially
responsible" business, which has not often challenged the
prerogatives of corporations to shift capital and close plants
at will.
These ideas
are only suggestive of a larger range of specific, practical
policies which might be implemented if progressive politicians
and thinkers faced up to the full harshness of what the downsizing
trends mean: that American capitalism does not value anyone's
economic security or the need of human beings to grow, plan
for the future, and not be consumed by anxiety; that all the
career self-help books in the world cannot change that fact;
and that a different economic system based on different priorities
needs to be pieced together.
To be sure,
serious progressive economists have been making similar arguments
for a long time. But today the audience likely to be receptive
to such an argument, honestly stated, is probably far larger
than anyone suspects. Indeed, that audience is certain to
grow in time, as conventional policy "solutions" continue
to fall far short of addressing Americans' real economic pain,
particularly the politically explosive pain of those who once
felt entitled to economic security but now have learned the
hard way that capitalism's promises cannot be trusted.
The logic
of the choices before us remains unavoidably clear. If the
notion of an economically secure nation of stable communities--the
middle class ideal at its best--is to be saved from the chopping
block of history, then the response of white-collar Americans
cannot simply be to spice up their own resumes, nor to focus
solely on the short-term, woefully inadequate political correctives
offered by politicians in both parties. Ultimately, the wheel
of history must be turned in an entirely different direction,
or the very idea of a healthy, people-centered economy based
on secure incomes will become but a historical curiosity in
the new century.
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