The number of jobs is going to decline and such jobs as remain are going to need increasingly higher levels of abilities. The proportion of the population in full-time, well-paid, wealth-creating employment, will continue to decline.
Socialism would mean that those still in employment would have to be taxed at higher and higher rates from year to year in order to support an increasing proportion of dependants. Long before the working elite declined to 10% of the population (or 30% or 5%), then they would have to be taxed at 100% or more of their incomes. Reductio ad absurdum.
Free enterprise would mean that the 10% working élite (or 30% or 5%) would be the only ones with sufficient incomes to afford to buy what they produce. Production of goods would thus decrease and become inefficient; prices would rise; and then even the élite would not be able to afford to buy their own products. Reductio ad absurdum.
What we really need in the coming years is both: on the one hand, social care and welfare, for the sake of our humanity; and on the other hand, continuing free enterprise and competition, for the sake of efficiency in the production of goods. But we can't run with the hares and hunt with the hounds in the same cash economy that we have now. We will have to separate them. We need a cash economy and a non-cash economy running in parallel.
Nothing better than cash has yet been devised for the efficient production and distribution of goods. Consumer products have been dropping in price relative to inflation for many decades. On the other hand, welfare costs, increasingly paid for in cash, have been rising remorselessly during the same period. Theoretically, the costs of health care, housing benefits, unemployment pay, pensions and so on are capable of rising to levels that would completely absorb all possible taxation and, ultimately, all possible capital investment. Sooner or later, the welfare society must be unhitched from cash.
These individuals will be paid very high salaries or fees and will be able to buy many more consumer goods than they have the personal time, or need, to make use of. They will, in fact, do so for a very good reason. They will be able to exchange their excess consumer goods for the services and facilities supplied by the rest of the villagers. These will include security of their person and property, health care, sanitation and waste disposal, some home-grown fresh food, some electricity generation perhaps, sports and other recreations, an attractive local ecology, child care and nursery, primary and junior education for their children, property maintenance, and several more. All these services can be supplied very cheaply by the villagers, but they would be very expensive if the richer individuals moved elsewhere to more affluent housing developments having to purchase all their services from commercial firms at the going rate.
Most of the villagers don't need cash, nor is there any way of getting hold of it because the national government will have long since been unable to supply it to the unemployed, needy or old. They will, however, be able to supply almost everything they need by exchanging services among themselves and by receiving working capital (for equipment or materials) or consumer goods or cash (for exceptional circumstances, such as specialised surgery in distant hospitals) from the minority of villagers who are importing money from the global economy in exchange for their specialised skills. The villagers (both the 'unemployed' and the fee and salary earners) will even be able to have holidays simply by booking accommodation in other villages around the world with which the village has reciprocal arrangements.
Although most of the fee-earning specialists will probably want to stay in regions in which they were born, there is likely to be considerable competition between neighbouring villages in order to retain their own high-earners and possibly attract others. So each village will want to supply first class services, offer excellent facilities and recreations, and will endeavour to maintain and even re-create an attractive natural environment around itself.
Keith Hudson, The Job Society, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5XH (tel 01225 312622; fax 01225 447727; e-mail: <k.hudson@bbcnc.org.uk>).
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