To all FW'ers: I will be leaving for Amsterdam in a couple of days to present a paper I wrote entitled "The Family Basic Income Proposal" at the BIEN Conference. The genesis of this paper came from a challenge by a FW participant arising from some comments I made in a thread called "Some Hard Questions on Basic Income" last February. I tried posting my rebuttal to the challenge as an attachment several times but for some reason the server did not put the post through. After several months, I privately posted it to several list members asking for feedback but received consideration from only one individual. I then became aware of BIEN, a European organization that has been exploring the concepts of a Basic Income in Europe and of their upcoming Convention in Sept. I submitted my paper and it was accepted and I have been invited to present it. This summer, I had the opportunity to travel across Canada for 6 weeks and visit friends and family. In each instance I tried to open conversations on the concept of a Basic Income. In each and every conversation, the idea was ridiculed and conversely I had trouble explaining the whole concept because in conversation, it is difficult to fully develop a complex idea. Out of the frustrations of those conversations, I feel I learned a lot. Most important, I learned that those I spoke to, a farmer, a small business owner, a lab technician, a bus driver, an artist, a housewife, a government employee, that each was totally indoctrinated with the concept that work was so important that the thought of giving all Canadians the security of a Basic Income was basically unthinkable to them. Out of the anger my questions and explanations my subject had generated, I have come to a tentative conclusion that until the "middle class", primarily those who work by selling their time and skills can be convinced of the need for a massive change in the redistribution of income, the concept of a Basic Income will not become a reality. I found myself sitting down and writing a rebuttal to this attitude which I called "A Message to the Middle Class on the Financing of: The Family Basic Income Proposal". It is a long essay but sometimes it takes some time to develop a new viewpoint. I am going to post this by E Mail tonight in 5 separate posts, each representing a page of the complete essay. Today, I was investigating for the first time our new Web Page and it was with some surprise, that I read about BES, a Conference held in Ottawa on June 3 this year to explore the concept of "Basic Economic Security" for Canadians. Many of the questions raised at this Conference were questions that I wrestled with in putting together my paper. I had to make choices and develop an economic explanation of how my choices could be financed. The choices I made are not necessarily "right", only the choices that I made but they are a start from which a critique or support could rally around and as such, I believe they have value. Because my circle of friends do not include "experts" and my time and financial resources are very limited, there may very well be glaring errors in my assumptions. If so, I will try to accept criticism gracefully. I plan to put my original paper on the list in E Mail format on Thursday, allowing for some time for response to my first paper. This message is to inform those who may choose not invest the time to just file or delete the ten or so posts that I will be sending under the Subject heading - Basic Income. So, let the adventure begin. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde
