The Guaranteed Hourly Wage
The Guaranteed Annual Wage is subject to much debate.
On the one hand, humanitarians cannot tolerate arbitrarily severe poverty
in a wealthy society; moreover, children raised in poverty are demonstrably
more likely to be a burden on society in adulthood, both through higher
incidence of health problems and through reduced contribution to the GNP.
So it makes sense, for both humanitarian and practical reasons,
to "put a cap on poverty" by guaranteeing a minimum income.
On the other hand, there is the issue of initiative:
a person with hope, confidence and ambition will probably always strive
to make a better life for him- or herself, but
(a) higher income is not the only meaningful definition of "a better life";
and (b) even in a "kinder, gentler" society, not everyone will have hope,
confidence and ambition. Therefore we may expect a substantial fraction
of those receiving the putative Guaranteed Annual Wage
to make little or no attempt to earn more through hard work.
(In the real world there are even more disincentives provided by
taxes, loan payments etc.)
There is much to be done. Moreover, intense competition for the world's wealth
means that a society with a burden of unproductive people will tend to drift
downward in the international pecking order. So the debate continues and
nothing changes.
Enter a new concept:
The Guaranteed HOURLY Wage
Each person (regardless of age) is guaranteed a minimum wage
per hour worked. If you don't work, you don't get paid.
If you work more hours, you get paid proportionately more,
limited only by the number of hours in a day
and the number of hours' sleep you need.
(There may need to be a ceiling on hours/day to prevent
overenthusiastic people from working themselves to death;
and of course it must be a serious crime for employers
to attempt to facilitate same.)
Some arrangement can be made for "sick leave".
The minimum wage should be set so that a person working a 35 hour week
will earn what is considered a typical subsistence income.
(This amount will continue to be the subject of endless debate.)
Employers will be required to pay at least this amount per hour.
This is already in place.
For those who are unable to find jobs in the private sector,
the Government will offer work at the minimum hourly wage.
This should not be hard; there is plenty that needs doing!
Yes, school should count as a job;
but time spent on homework can't be verified,
so (at least initially) it won't count.
You have better reasons to do your homework anyway.
What are some of the consequences?
- Incentive resurrected!
The most obvious effect is to restore the incentive to work:
you may work less if you are willing to live on less,
but you may also work more to earn more. Even at minimum wage
a determined person can earn twice the nominal subsistence income
by working longer hours; such a person is likely to be noticed,
and may soon be earning a higher hourly wage as well!
- Things get done!
The decaying infrastructure of our society could certainly use
some help. It will not be difficult to "find things for people to do."
- More bureaucracy :-(
Not all the consequences are happy.
There will be the problem of ensuring that people performing public works
for minimum wage don't just "lean on their shovels" 12 hours per day.
For this we will need "Monitors" - another Government job,
probably the least popular!
Naturally there will be a hierarchy of popularity of Government jobs.
In fact, it would be wise to determine this hierarchy
by direct polling of the workers.
The "clout" of the Monitors will then be simple:
"slackers" will be reassigned to less popular jobs.
- Pride restored!
It can't help boost a person's self respect
to be an unproductive burden on society.
Perhaps by the time this happens today there are other forms of
disaffection more alarming than low self esteem, but
surely there will be a positive feedback from knowing
that you are really earning your living.
- Social engineering?
Let's imagine what might happen if this experiment "succeeds" -
i.e. if the resultant society has a steadily increasing
standard of living, health, education, productivity etc.
At some point it may become practical to test the following
hypothesis (a favourite of mine):
Every person has at least one thing (s)he loves so much that
(s)he can't stand not to do it. With very few exceptions,
that is the thing (s)he ought to be doing,
simply because nothing else will be done with comparable
enthusiasm, energy, creativity and determination.
If this is true, perhaps society will be well served by a system of
"grants" in which an individual can apply for permission to do
that which (s)he loves best as his/her official
Government-sponsored minimum-wage "job".
This introduces another layer of bureaucracy, true,
but it is certainly not without precedent.
However, in this scenario the spectrum of possibilities
is not limited by the selection of special interests
that have gained sufficient prestige and resources to
offer grants-in-aid. I certainly have some proposals
I would put forward; don't you?
- No doubt there are many others; this will do to get a discussion going.
Jess H. Brewer
Last modified: Mon Aug 16 01:07:24 PST 1999