A chara, - The loss of 1,400 jobs at Seagate, Clonmel is made all the more traumatic for the workers and devastating to the local economy because unemployed people can only collect benefit or assistance if they enter the culture of signing on and, in effect, remaining idle - or, as the expression goes, "available for work".
Let us stop and think about the changes necessary to meet the needs of a society living with mobile multinationals and flexible work practices. If tax-free allowances and social welfare payments were merged, the Government could then start to pay a dividend from the existing State coffers to all citizens unconditionally as a guaranteed basic income (GBI). At least, then each Seagate worker would know that some portion of his or her pay packet would be guaranteed.
To prepare for such a shift in social policy, serious tax reform is needed to shift the tax burden away from plentiful resources such as human labour to limited resources and polluting activities. Such tax reform will ensure that income tax need not rise to pay for a realistic subsistence GBI payment.
The current social welfare system is needlessly humiliating and fraught with loopholes and complications. The vagaries of open market competition and mobile investment make employment unpredictable enough. With a GBI payment each week, employed and unemployed would have one constant income. How can any Government encouraging an enterpreneurial spirit fail to grasp the opportunities and social justice which the Guaranteed Basic Income would bring? - Le gach dea-ghui,
(Green Party/Comhaontas Glas), Dail Eireann, Dublin 2.