Page 20 - Michael 2024 March

u cheques, is a nation’s productive capacity. The gold There is a logic that clashes head-on with the
standard, for instance, as the basis of the money sup- expectation that purchasing power must be re-
ply, does not make sense. When someone wants to served for workers. Nor is the answer in increased
bake bread, he does not pan for gold but rather culti- wages as a reward for human effort, since human
vates the earth and sows wheat. effort diminishes in duration and intensity because
Today, productive capacity is almost limitless. of progress.
Why should financial credit be restricted? It is re- When financial credit is based on productive cap-
pugnant that the populations’ needs are unmet acity, and productive capacity is due in large part to
when everything exists to meet these needs except technological advances passed from one generation
for the supply of money. to the next, we can conclude that every member of
A real social capital society must be recognized as a capitalist.
Modern productive capacity is huge largely be- This publication frequently comments on issuing
cause of mechanization rather than due to the efforts a Social Credit Dividend to all. Douglas was inspired
of human labour. Machines are the by reality. He studied the economic
largest factor in production, espe- situation, drew conclusions and de-
cially during the last two centuries veloped solutions. The process was
when steam power and the internal logical, and his conclusions respect-
combustion engine replaced work- ed the dignity of the human per-
ers and animal power. We are now son. Even as a professed Anglican,
entering the era of automation. Douglas respected Catholicism, and
(Editor’s note: Since Mr. Even wrote although his proposals do not refer
this article, we have entered the to the Social Doctrine of the Church,
computer age, robotics, and so on.) it is apparent that establishing a So-
cial Credit economy would best al-
But this succession of inven- low the embodiment of the Church’s
tions and technical improvements social teachings.
could never have occurred without
what we can think of as life in an or- Private property has a social
dered society. In such a society, we function, particularly in economies
have a division of labour, specializa- in which ownership of the means of
tion, research and the transmission production is concentrated in fewer
of knowledge. No one human being Louis Even (1885-1974) and fewer hands. Only 8 out of 20
can pretend to be, more than any founder of MICHAEL people receive an income through
other person, the owner of all these employment. A Social Dividend,
community assets which are inherited from past gen- distributed to each individual in the nation, would
erations. All the members of society are co-heirs of provide everyone a slice of the pie of private enter-
these assets, and they must all benefit equally from prise.
them. To limit financial benefits (wages, profits, divi- A Social Credit economy would establish the
dends) only to investors and workers is an injustice to bedrock for a just and humane economy and society
the rest of society. based on Christian principles. Pope Pius XI explained
A Social Dividend to all in his encyclical letter, Quadragesimo Anno, that cap-
italism had been vitiated by an elite of international
Douglas proposed that a financial Dividend be financiers.
issued to every citizen, whether the person was em- A fundamental right
ployed in production or not. The Dividend would
provide purchasing power to everyone, particularly Pius XII, in a radio broadcast on Pentecost Sun-
because human labour is a small factor in production day, on June 1, 1941 said the following:
relative to the cultural inheritance of progress. Pur- “Material goods have been created by God to
chasing power must be made up of Dividends to all, meet the needs of all men, and must be at the dis-
and not only to salaries for the employed. Douglas posal of all of them, as justice and charity require.
explained in the 3rd of his proposals: “The distribu- “Every man indeed, as a reason-gifted being,
tion of consumer money to individuals shall be pro- has, from nature, the fundamental right to make use
gressively less dependent upon employment. That is of the material goods of the earth, though it is re-
to say that the dividend shall progressively displace served to human will and the juridical forms of the
the wage and salary, as productive capacity increas- peoples to regulate, with more detail, the practical
es per man-hour.” How is this explained? The simple realization of that right.”
reason is that the increase is the fruit of progress Douglas did not refer to papal sources, but his
rather than the fruit of greater efforts by workers. work brought him to similar conclusions. Each per-

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