The idea of a basic income or a universal salary is not new.
Thomas Paine was one of the founding fathers of the United States. In 1795, he presented the first model of a basic income paid unconditionally to all citizens in his book “Agrarian Justice”. One basic income model has been called the social dividend. This is based on the fact that every citizen can be considered to own the right to the common national property, as if it were a national share. Every citizen has the right to what state-owned enterprises, state investments and the state as a whole produce. The justification for a basic income is therefore based on the fact that all citizens jointly own their land in a republic.
The basic income would be the same for everyone, but would decrease depending on what income a person receives, such as wages and dividends. An algorithm could be used to calculate this. The algorithm would calculate it with cent accuracy, for example if the wage income was €2,500, the basic income could be €550. The Finnish think tank Libera has also proposed the idea of a “basic account”. Every citizen would be given a basic account with, for example, 100,000 euros, which they can use as they wish during their lifetime, for example, to study or start a business.
The UN Agenda 2030 has set the goal of eradicating poverty from the world. We live in a world where the common good has been ignored and conservative forces are trying to prevent development, trying to restore a world order based on injustice and “the strongest power”. We will not eliminate poverty by 2030, but we have time. A global basic income should be established for all inhabitants of the planet.
People are suffering. The World Bank defines extremely poor people as people who live on less than $3 a day. There are about 840 million of them, or 1/10 of humanity, most of them in Africa and Asia, but even in Europe there are a couple of million people this poor. This is a great injustice: every person has equal human dignity and the right to a good quality of life and a happy life, regardless of what they contribute to society. About half of the world’s population is in one way or another disadvantaged. That is why a global basic income should be established for all inhabitants of the planet.
A world order based on solidarity, freedom and equality should be created. A communist central government is not the solution to this, as history has shown. China, for example, is a very dystopian state and the Soviet Union was a tyranny. A society based on a new kind of democracy and international cooperation should be built. As early as 1795, the philosopher Immanuel Kant presented the idea of a united world in his book ”Perpetual Peace”. The wisest option would be to unite the world under the UN into a kind of world federation. This is the only realistic option to end wars. In this way, we would enter a new kind of planetary world order, where the world’s problems can be solved jointly. This federation would be built in layers, securing local democracy. Global development has long continued in this direction of integration and unification. A global village, a great goal for humanity.
Humans have survived as a species precisely through cooperation throughout our 4 million years of evolution. Sociality and learning have been the most important abilities for our species to survive. Even early humans may have dreamed around a campfire of a world where suffering is gone and where there is connection between peoples.
Daniel Elkama