There is no problem concerning unemployment

Leisure time

Unemployment is not really the problem of our times. Unemployment, incredible as it may seem, is a blessing. It is a goal to be aimed at, an objective pursued by our scientists, our universities, our men of wisdom throughout all the centuries.

Unemployment, free time, leisure - are not these, things which all men desire with all their heart? Could we not say that the studies of men across time have had for their end to develop science to that point where machines would more and more form the auxiliary of men's hands until some day they would replace man completely while producing for him an infinite variety and quantity of the goods he desires? And is it not true that today we are rapidly reaching that point where machines (automation) will soon replace the worker in producing all that society requires? Are we not even fashioning electronic brains which in many cases have replaced the minds of men in some of the more difficult branches of the sciences? Is not the advance of modern science truly marvellous? Of course it is!

Marvellous indeed is the genius which has made such great discoveries. Marvellous the super-abundant production which such discoveries have made possible. And marvellous above all is it that such abundance can be realized with so little intervention on the part of man.

So, we say, let man now sit back and enjoy the repose and leisure which he has earned! Yes, produce more while working less certainly equivalates being able to enjoy leisure. Would you not agree? To be unemployed means to stop working and rest. God, the Bible says, rested on the seventh day; and for this reason He has commanded that men should be unemployed and take his repose on Sunday.

And when unemployment is general does this not signify that men in great numbers are able to enjoy leisure time and that there is an abundance of goods at hand for their use?

If unemployment, then, is general, prevailing in all countries of the world, should this not be a matter for universal rejoicing? For would not this signify that there was no longer need for all men to labour in order to have for their needs all the goods they required. Certainly a matter for joy!

But the sad fact is, there is no such rejoicing because of such unemployment. On the contrary there is universal lamentation. The world deplores progress. It is terrified by the fact that machines now do the work of men and produce more than men, more efficiently and in less time. The whole world bewails progress, the machine, leisure, unemployment.

Lack of money

But when we are unemployed we have no money!

- Ah! so you are complaining not because you are unemployed but because you have no money with which to live!

So let us admit right off that the problem is not one of unemployment but one of the lack of money. The problem is, there isn't enough money. - Let us repeat it again · there is no unemployment problem! And it is precisely because the governments and the various organizations of the country are breaking their heads trying to find a solution to unemployment that they have succeded in achieving exactly nothing at all.

Let us consider one rather ridiculous example of how the governments go about tackling this "problem". Winter works. Here is a gang of men pecking away at mountains of snow in the streets, ladling it into trucks with puny shovels. And yet lying idle are rotary plows, marvels of automotive engineering which can clean up an entire street in as little time as it would take this same gang with shovels merely to walk down the street! Is it not stupid that progress should thus be hamstrung? That men should work in a primitive fashion while the marvels of men's ingenuity lie idle!

Then why not pay the workers to watch the machines while they, the machines, do the work - more speedily and efficiently than the men? After all it makes more sense to pay the men to stand and watch the machines work than it does to pay the machines (in the cost of progress) to stand idly by and watch the men labour and sweat. The spectacle of men laboring with their ineffective shovels, while great steel monsters with mamoth jaws stand by idle, is sufficient testimony to the obtuseness or callous disregard for humanity which seems to be affliciting our governments.

- But giving money to people for doing nothing, why that's the same thing as giving them a dividend!

Exactly! It would be a dividend. The problem is not one of unemployment but of dividends. It is not a problem of production but a problem of distribution. The solution to the problem which exists is not in making men work in the place of machines. Rather we must seek to distribute the products of machines to men who have needs, without obliging these men to work, for, after all, it is the machines which are doing the work.

The purpose of the salary is to buy the products of brawn and muscle; the purpose of the dividend is to buy the products of the machine. When a man works with his hands he receives a salary. When it is machines which work in the place of men, all men should receive a dividend. The products of men's hands are paid for by salaries. The products of machines will be paid for by dividends. Goods produced by human hands are the fruit of human efforts.

Consequently it is salaries, remuneration for human efforts, which can pay for the products of hands. The products of machines come gratuitously without human effort. They are at gratuity, these products of machines. Hence, it is only logical that the money needed to purchase these gratuitous goods, should also be gratuitous. And free money is nothing more than a dividend.

But a dividend for whom? For the workers who labor? for the unemployed who toil not? No! There can be no discriminating classifications of any sort. The dividend must go to all consumers, to all who buy, to all Canadians. A dividend for you, for your father, for your mother, for each of your children. To the rich and the poor alike. A dividend is a social thing. A dividend exists to buy the products of machines, to buy the produce of progress which is a social good.

Without taxes

- But, then, who's going to pay this dividend?

- Society. For it is a social dividend.

- But if society is to pay this dividend, will not society tax us for it?

- Not at all. If society taxes us it will be taking money away from us. Which is just the opposite to giving that is, to granting the dividend. If the fruits of progress are to be bought, then money must be given, it must be free. The last thing we need under such circumstances are taxes.

But where is society to get the money which it is going to give to us as dividends? Where will Canada get so much money to pass out to all Canadians?

- In the ledger books of accounting. Money is nothing more than a system and a rather simple system of accounting. Money is nothing more than figures. The money system is made to operate by the banks. And at the head of our banking system we have the Bank of Canada.

The Bank of Canada should see to the issuance of the necessary money in order that each Canadian should receive a monthly dividend, of, let us say $25.00 a month, in order that each Canadian might buy his share of the fruits of progress through the purchase of goods turned out for us by machines.

The problem of unemployment vanishes

And unemployment? There will be no unemployment problem since each one will be in receipt of a dividend. The merchants will sell their wares. Manufacturers will produce new goods. The unemployed will be called back to work as they are needed. All the products, desired will be sold. And when production exceeds consumption, then production will be slowed down and everyone will have more leisure time. The amount of the dividend will grow in the measure that the amount of production by machines alone, grows. What is produced by man's efforts will be compensated for by salaries. What is produced by machines will be paid for by dividends.

Without the dividend, progress is an evil, for it creates unemployed without revenue. With the dividend, the fruits of progress will be distributed to all.

Without the social dividend, progress results in a multitude of hungry, unemployed citizens. With the dividend, the unemployed have revenue, and unemployment is no longer unemployment, but leisure time, free time for the development of the person, intellectually and spiritually. The great and the wealthy are not considered to be in a state of "unemployment", they are said to enjoy leisure time. A man truly rich is he who can dispose of his time as he wishes, not someone who is tied to the treadmill in order to earn his daily crust.

The communists who have infiltrated our organizations, public bodies and universities, prefer to see man tied to employment, forced to work. They are raising the cry for universal employment.

Social Crediters would see all men become truly rich, rich from the fruits of progress, men liberated by the machines, men free to do with their time as they wish, to devote it to culture, to the arts, to philosophy, to the betterment of himself and his neighbor. Social Credit would see a man liberated so that he might become a truly civilized man. For Social Credit is the one doctrine which would bring the essence of high civilization, and make the teachings of Christianity more readily applicable.

Employment, when it is no longer a factor in production, becomes nothing more than an excuse for functionaries, power-hungry, to bend men to their will; it becomes the means whereby the agents of Moscow would turn the free spirits of men into broken reeds and put them under the yoke of Communism; it is the instrument, whereby the petty tyrants who make up political parties, seek to impose their wills, their ideas, their principles upon the people to whom they are supposed to be servants.

As long as our universities do not teach the principles of Social Credit, we might very well ask for what reason they should be enlarged and endowed with more money. Why should everyone be encouraged to study? Under the systems taught in universities, men are sent back to the slavery of factories and work by hand; machines are allowed to gather dust or are discouraged; men die of hunger throughout the world, while food by the millions of tons, rots slowly in the underground warehouses of the governments.

What is the purpose of universities if they can produce nothing but a society where men die in the face of abundance; where workers labour with picks and shovels in the face of machines which are the miracles of science?

Universities can be abolished until such time as they have learned to teach the principles which Social Credit ennunciates. Teach the dividend to professors and pupils and they will soon discover that their is no problem concerning unemployment, but rather a problem concerning the universal dividend.