No one can deny the seriousness of the problem created by unemployment in Canada. Whether such a crisis exists in the United States, or in any other country, in no way alleviates the hardships undergone by the unemployed in Canada.
A few weeks back, the federal government, which seems only now beginning to wake up to the gravity of a problem which has affected everyone, summoned into conference at Ottawa, representatives of the various bodies directly concerned with the economy of Canada. It sollicited from these representatives, as well as from Canadians in general, suggestions as to how best the unemployment problem might be solved.
There were suggestions a plenty. But the victims of unemployment have as yet felt no relief, and each week the lists of unemployed grow longer.
We might note here that one group, the Investment Dealers' Association, a group of individuals who make their living from the profits from sales of stocks and bonds, (essentially a system for putting people in debt), came up with the bright suggestion that all young men should be forced to undergo military conscription. This would diminish the number of people looking for jobs in industry. A brilliant suggestion, isn't it? Take the young people out of productive work and support them with the taxes wrung from the other citizens! And no doubt, these same individuals would be even happier if we could get our lads on to a field of battle. For after all, there's nothing like a good war to solve the unemployment problem at least, according to people of this ilk!
It was a diabolical suggestion, and the fact is proven in that no one took the suggestion too seriously.
During the last election campaign, John Diefenbaker solemnly promised that if his party was returned to power, no Canadian would suffer from unemployment, deficit or no deficit.
"No one will suffer from unemployment" a beautiful prospect, a grand promise. And added to this: deficit or no deficit", could only mean that unemployment would not be permitted because of a lack of money or credit. If he had to go over and above what taxation brought in and get fresh funds from the banking system, John Diefenbaker would do so. But come what may, there would be credit, fresh money, in order to employ all idle hands.
But alas! like all election promises, it never saw the light of day. It "died aborting". The financiers had the upper hand on the chief of a sovereign state, regardless of what his good intentions might have been. The duel between Mr. Donald Fleming, the Minister of Finance, and James Coyne, Governor of the Bank of Canada, which took place before a hopeful public during the electoral campaign, was quietly terminated, after the elections, behind the scenes - terminated in a victory for the Governor of the Bank of Canada. This Governor of the Bank of Canada, who receives from the Canadian people a salary of $50,000 a year, does not take his orders from the representatives of the Canadian people, but from other hidden masters. And these orders he imposes upon the government.
Moreover, the proposals of Diefenbaker which were intended to prevent unemployment, could have brought few lasting benefits since they were tainted with the principles which govern the existing financial system. Employment could only be won by plunging the country still further into debt. What a bright prospect: put the people into debt in order that the people might work to exploit and benefit from the natural resources of their country! Diefenbaker's proposals would have been tantamount to getting a temporary concession from the financiers in exchange for solidifying still further the tyrany they exercise over society.
No, Diefenbaker's proposals certainly do not face up to the realities of the situation. If unemployment is created by a glut of products and produce, then why strive to correct the cause by employment which will only serve to increase the already existing surpluses?
If the existing flow of products is greater than the amount of purchasing power in existence, the gap between production and purchasing power can only be widened by increasing production. The total of products without an equivalent amount of purchasing power can only get greater, and the solution put forward to absorb unemployed can only turn against itself.
A colleague of the Prime Minister, Mr. Alvin Hamilton, the Minister of Agriculture, had a more realistic view of the problem when he declared in Regina last November 7th, that it was tantamount to suicide in our days to seek new stimulants for an ever greater production in a world which already had too much production.
What is required is to put into the hands of the consumers sufficient purchasing power to lay hold of these surpluses of products, at least as much of them as are needed. If indeed all these products and goods are surplus, then by all means, let us cut back on production. But the fact is that there are multitudes in our country, and above all in the so-called "underprivileged countries", who are existing in very real want. Can we then be said to have surpluses when such surpluses have accumulated simply because the people who need them have not the means to buy them?
It seems that we always come back to the question of money in discussing this problem.
Those who, in spite of vast surpluses, still call for universal employment, probably have in mind public works and the production of such wealth as cannot be put on the public market. The money paid the employed for such production will enable them to buy off the common, public market, these people say.
Unless there is a very radical change in the financial system, this reasoning is very shallow.
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Whether it be question of consumer goods or of enlarging factories, building roads, bridges, schools or any of a multitude of similar projects, all of these things must be paid for, with or without delay; and if there is a delay the end result is an increase of the original cost. Whether it is the grocer over the counter who is paid in cash, or whether one pays taxes to a bureaucrat in the department of internal revenue, it is always money which is demanded from the public, which public simply hasn't the money with which to pay.
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Unemployment is a problem of money and not a problem of employment. Since it is money which we lack, then it is money we must seek for, instead of employment in production, especially since there is no lack of goods, services and produce.
And why not, in the name of good reason and justice, allot money to the unemployed in sufficient amounts, instead of dribbles and drabbles, especially in view of the fact that products are flowing forth by the ton?
When a man is working, a part of his salary... is held back as a contribution to the unemployment insurance fund. A contribution is also exacted from his employer. Such contributions are included in the price of goods, but they are withheld from the sum total of purchasing power. Is this any way to facilitate sales and prevent unemployment?
It is true that the allowances made to the unemployed re-distribute purchasing power thus deducted originally from those engaged in production, but they do so only in a very incomplete fashion. There is usually a great outcry when the unemployment fund gets low. Well, at least it is an indication that the lack of purchasing power is being supplied even if in this inadequate fashion. Such deductions from the revenues of employer and employed creates a hole in purchasing power which even before such deductions, was less than the total of prices.
If there were no money problem there would be no unemployment problem. Almost certainly the time is approaching when, more and more production will dispense with human hands. But if there is no money problem, no one will give this fact, a second thought. They'll exit from the production picture. No one will speak of them as "unemployed". Rather will they be said to have been liberated from the necessity of working in production. We won't talk of "unemployment"; but rather of "leisure time", of freedom to devote ourselves to whatever pursuits we wish.
Now, the problem of money is a very easy one to settle, when we have made up our minds, once and for all, to make finance what it is supposed to be, a faithful reflection of realities, a servant to, and not the master of, the economy.
Of the some 450 suggestions and briefs which the Prime Minister received with reference to putting an end to the unemployment problem, we would like to put forward - for the one thousandth time - that proposal which every thinking, perceptive individual who reasons in terms of realties, the realities of men, of needs, of possibilities, and not only in terms of the rigid and sacrosanct principles of money, would tender:
Supress that which we call unemployment by suppressing the very humiliating and mortifying conditions which accompany it.
To this end, it is necessary to modify that financial regulation which says that purchasing power must be bound up with employment, with participation in production:
Distribute production by some other means than through the recompense (salaries) paid to those who participate personally in production; distribute production through a periodic dividend paid to all, employed or not — a dividend which more and more will become the sum total of purchasing power, in the measure that production requires less and less the employment of men.
So it becomes more and more a question of dividends and less and less a question of salaries and wages. There no longer would be any unemployed; all citizens would have become, in fact, capitalists.
John Smith is one of the unemployed. When he was working, he earned a salary which permitted him, his wife and his children to live in modest comfort. When, because of the over accumulation of stocks or the introduction of new machinery (automation) the company decided to let John Smith out, he drew, for a time, a small pittance in the form of unemployment insurance. Then, one day, this, too, stopped. John Smith must now go deeper and deeper into debt or rely upon public charity if he is to live.
Jones van Jones is no more employed than is John Smith. In fact, he has probably never worked in his life. He earns no salary. Yet no one would think of calling Jones van Jones, "'unemployed" for the simple fact that van Jones has a certain amount of capital which periodically brings him dividends, as regularly as day follows night. And van Jones never earned a cent of this capital; it was left to him by his wealthy father.
What are the similarities and the difference in the cases of John Smith and Jones van Jones?
The similarity in the two cases is that neither is employed in the production system. But Smith, on the one hand is desperately searching for just such employment; on the other hand, van Jones isn't remotely concerned with such work. If Smith stops looking for work, he is called lazy, shiftless, lacking ambition, stupid. But Jones van Jones? He can spend his days and nights in the most blatant idleness and no one will think of reproaching him, or urging him to rush out and look for work; on the contrary, if through boredom let us say, he did take a job, he be blamed for taking work needed by someone else, Smith, for example. (And right here let us remark how money so very often falsifies our judgement of men.)
It might very well be that, without being employed in production, Jones van Jones employs his time and energy in a truly edifying fashion - as a free producing agent, as an inventor and perfector of techniques or machines, as an artist, a writer, as a social worker, as a man devoted to the intellectual and spiritual improvement of his fellow men.
But poor Smith, even with all the free time on his hands, has neither the capital nor the mental freedom to devote himself to such pursuits. He is burdened with the cares and worries of trying to keep himself and his family alive; he is subject to the daily pressure of privation; and he'll be a lucky man if he doesn't lose heart, fall into melancholy and wind up in despair which might lead to almost any tragic end.
But, just what makes the difference in the status of these two men, neither of whom is employed in production? It is the fact that Jones van Jones has an assured revenue, completely unrelated to employment. Smith, on the other hand, has only one sort of revenue, that which he gets as a salary when he is employed. And the moment he is no longer employed he finds himself in the most distressing situation of not having a revenue off which to live.
Set up a distributing financial regime which will give a periodic dividend to everyone. Thus, John Smith will benefit from this periodic dividend. If he is unemployed, he has a revenue. If he is employed, then his dividend is an addition to the revenue of his salary. But the effect of the dividend is that John Smith's condition is completely changed for the better.
And if the dividend is sufficient to cover Smith's essential needs such as food, clothing, lodging for himself and his dependents, then, although he may not have the same amount of income as van Jones, still he is free from the worries attendant upon an increase income. Unemployed, he can now look for work in order to augment his revenue, but look for work without the care and anxiety which formerly constituted a daily torture.
And no doubt, he will have greater success finding work, for the dividend, added to salaries, and the adjustment of prices, which will permit a greater flow of goods to meet the needs and requirements of the consumers, will give far more opportunities for employment; there will be a greater variety of jobs; individuals will have more opportunities to find positions best suited to their capabilities.
Here then is the factor which expands the class of capitalists under a Social Credit system. Each citizen is a capitalist, a true capitalist with capital. A capitalist, not with money-capital invested in some enterprise, but as an heir, a co-heir with all his fellow citizens, in a real community capital. This is indeed a formidable capital, for it is a capital made up of all the knowledge acquired and transmitted to us by previous generations: all the progress, all the advance in techniques of production, a process that has continued without interruption over the centuries, passed on from one generation to the next by all the generations before us until it has finally come down to us. This is the great preponderant factor in modern production. Without this real capital, of which no individual or groups of individuals is the owner, production today would be infinitely smaller than it is and would require infinitely greater expenditures of human energy and time.
Why, then, should not each living human have a right to a dividend on the real, common capital, a right to a share in its fruits? In other words, why should not each citizen, from birth, have a right to a share in the fruits of production?
Let's throw out that hoary old law which says that only those who participate in production shall have a right to share in the fruits of production. In its place, let's introduce that just and human law which says that all shall share in the fruits of this production as capitalists, sharing in it through the dividend, under the same title of right as Jones van Jones enjoys the fruits of his capital.
Thus, unemployment will become a thing of the past, of a past which was bound up tightly with a financial system completely devoted to the worship of Mammon, a system which completely ignored the human, a system completely out of harmony with reality.
Jacques Maritain, the French, Thomist philosopher, wrote in L'Humanisme Integral:
It is an axiom of "bourgeois" economy and the mercantile civilization, that no one gets something for nothing... But, very much to the contrary, to begin with at least, in what concerns the primary spiritual needs of the human being, it is better that one should have as much as possible of things for nothing.
That the human being should be served in his most elementary needs, is, after all, nothing more than the simplest and most fundamental principle of an economy which does not wish to be classed as barbaric.
The principles of such an economy lead to a better understanding of the deepest meaning and the essentially human origin of the idea of heritage...
Each man, on coming into this world, should effectively enjoy, in some fashion or other, the title and conditions of heir of the preceding generation.
The problem of unemployment, which can never be solved under the present financial regime except through war or going into debt, must decide the modern world to lift itself out of this barbaric economy which deprives human individuals of what they need although society may be flooded with surpluses; it must decide the modern world to institute an economy of dividends under which every man being born. can enjoy the title of co-heir to the great and real community capital which has been bequeated by preceding generations.
The essential mechanism of totalitarianism is centralized control of the real credit of the community.
Bryan W. Monahan
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