A National Dividend for All

Today, one mechanical shovel can replace 350 workers!

We have all seen a mechanical shovel at work, whether it is digging a hole in the earth, or doing road work. What power and speed the shovel possesses at it chews up the hardest of soils and fills trucks lined up to receive the shovel's work. 

Have you ever stopped to consider that a mechanical shovel does, in one day, the work of 35 men working ten-hour days? All that is needed is one mechanical shovel, an operator, and a handful of trucks to do the work of 350 men. Have you ever asked yourself what happens to the 349 redundant men? 

When visiting a mine or quarry, one will see air- driven jack drills operated by a single man doing the work of twenty men using pickaxes. What fate befalls the 19 men no longer needed for the job?

 Cranes dominate at seaports, in bagging machine systems, and in grain elevators. Other machinery does the work of hundreds of dock workers. What happens to the workers replaced by these mechanized methods? 

Those of you old enough will remember that, every summer, thousands of workers from the provinces of Quebec and Ontario would go to Western Canada to harvest crops. There they would find needed jobs and wages, exchanging the comforts of health and home for work. None of this remains today. Combine harvesters are now used on large grain farms and can replace 160 or more workers. What do these displaced men do now?

We could continue with many other examples. The world of production has changed in the last fifty years. Mechanical power has grown twentyfold. In the province of Quebec alone, electricity, harnessed by waterfalls, produces between seven to eight million horsepower, which is equal to approximately 70 million manpower. If this power was divided equally among the province's inhabitants, each man, woman and child would have the motor equivalent of 15 men available to serve them 24 hours each day. [Mr. Even wrote this essay in 1965; figures for 2025 would be much greater.] These innovations represent amazing progress and development in the means of production, and even more growth can be expected in the future.

Unemployment

But the question remains that if machinery replaces workers, how will the redundant workers survive when they no longer earn a wage or salary?

One might answer: "How have they survived over the last decades?" Repeated recessions have forced the population to spend their savings, and then borrow and accumulate debt. Whether we are speaking of private or public debts, to have debt means that one is relying on the incomes of others. Those whom technological progress have deprived of incomes depend on the incomes of others, or else they do not survive. We live off the revenue of others, not only when we panhandle, but also when we make useless products, occupy a parasitic job in an unnecessary business, or work in a redundant government agency.

What have these displaced workers lived on? We fought two wars in less than thirty years (the First and Second World Wars). The needs of modern warfare puts workers, displaced by technological advancement, back into the workforce. Sadly, their jobs result in producing goods that will be destroyed by the machinations of war. When wars end, workers rebuild the ruins, and jobs arise from the ashes in the process. But crisis and recessions will emerge anew in the future. 

During the Marshall Plan initiative [1948-1952], the Secretary of State of the United States said that without the Marshall Plan to revitalize Europe, production would accumulate in America, and Americans would become eventually unemployed. President Truman appointed Mr. Gray, a former Secretary of the Army, to determine how, at the end of the Marshall Plan, Europe could have the means to buy American products. Otherwise, the President stated, the United States would suffer because of the abundant accumulation of their own products. 

Technological progress, which could place mechanical power and machinery at the service of society, should give men a better standard of living while freeing them from work. Progress and its abundant production, guaranteed by machinery and improved processes, should free men from fearing the future. As goods are abundantly available, and will be even more so in the future, why should we worry about tomorrow?

Insecurity

Yet, notwithstanding today's abundant production, and tomorrow's potential for even greater production, we have never had so many worries about the future. Most people no longer own anything. One hundred years ago, families owned a piece of land and could rely on the earth to provide them with sustenance. Where is the land that families once owned? Alas, technological advancement has driven families out of the countryside and concentrated them in industrialized areas. 

Ownership has become the exception. Property is subjected to mortgages and taxes. Families no longer freely own their properties. 

Employment, the only source of income for most families today, is more precarious than ever. Employment is secure only during times of war when destruction is massive and methodical. When the production of consumer goods becomes prolific during peacetime, workers again suffer from insecurity, and risk layoffs and recessions. 

The government was forced to implement Unemployment Insurance in Canada [in 1940]. Was this social program needed in the past when strong arms, pickaxes and shovels were necessary for production? No.

Unemployment Insurance does not offer genuine security to the population. It falls short of distributing the amplified abundance made possible by mechanization. First, a premium is deducted from the employee's pay check to pay into the Unemployment Insurance fund. This is indeed a contrary way of showing workers that progress has benefitted them. Unemployment Insurance is a strange remedy to a disease that should not exist. Why should abundance create conditions of poverty that require treatment?

Is progress an enemy of mankind? Should we abandon education and innovation? Should we close universities and laboratories?

Change the Rules

There is no need to eliminate technological progress, but it must be used to free mankind. For this to happen, we must change the rules of allocation and distribution so they reflect the positive effects of progress. 

Distribution follows the same formula it did when work was done by hand. Products are distributed to those who have money. Yet we say that only people with a job should receive money. Progress tends to decrease the number of jobs. If wages remain the only means to acquire products, then progress has, in fact, slashed the capacity to secure what is needed. 

If wages are the only means by which individuals and families can obtain money, the more machines working in place of men, the less money individuals and families will have. Even if wages go up, this will give nothing more to those who are without work. Moreover, wage increases cause price increases, which makes matters even worse for those who do not receive these increased wages. 

It can be said that workers, whose jobs are taken over by machines, will find other jobs since new needs create new jobs. This is more or less true. Some may find a suitable job; but how many must satisfy themselves with jobs that do not suit them and accept work conditions that are imposed upon them? Others will find occasional work; the rest find none. All must endure insecurity, and many will suffer some important losses. None will find in the mechanized advancements that replaced their labour the degree of security that modern abundance should provide.

 Additional Income 

For machines, science and progress to be a blessing instead of a curse, we must first acknowledge that progress is the result of scientific and cultural discoveries that are transmitted and increased from one generation to the next, and from which all must benefit, be they employed or not. Progress is a commonly held inheritance.

Secondly, without eliminating the wages that are a reward for work done, we must introduce an additional source of income; another means of obtaining money that is not tied to work but that has a relationship to the total amount of products issuing from nature and industry. The more machines replace men's work, the greater amount this second source of money must be, since it is issued to buy the fruits of progress, and not to compensate for an individual's work. 

This second source of income is what Social Crediters call the National Dividend. It is a Dividend given to all to buy the products available because of mechanization. The Dividend would allow people to pay for the products that salaries are less and less capable of buying, since products are made more and more by machinery, and less and less by the efforts of workers. 

The words "Economic Democracy" or Social Credit" mean that a new method must be used to distribute the abundant goods that result from modern production techniques. A new way that does not suppress the old way, but that adds to it, is needed. The old inadequate method is the salary paid in recognition of work performed. The new way includes wages and salaries, which are in addition for some, to the Dividend, which is issued to all.

The salary must continue to be issued to the worker, since it is the reward for individual effort. But the Dividend would be given to everyone, since it is the fruit of progress, the common good. 

No matter what is said against the Dividend, it is the only formula capable of rectifying the economic situation owed to technological progress. It is also the only means to circumvent the problem of unemployment that should not exist as long as some needs remain unsatisfied. By facilitating the sale of products that would otherwise remain unsold, the Dividend would stimulate the sale of consumer goods that now sit idle on store shelves while new products pile up.

The Dividend would increase the country's total purchasing power. It would democratize this purchasing power by spreading it to every corner of the country, including to individuals who have no jobs. 

How many benefits would this yield! By guaranteeing to everyone a modest monthly income, the Dividend would banish from people's minds the painful uncertainty for the future. By adding to the family's income, the Dividend would allow us to turn away from state-run programs such as Medicare, which turn individuals into numbered files, subjected to scrutiny, to administrative procedures, and to the corruption of political patronage. He who possesses enough money does not need all of these programs; he can run his own affairs.