APPENDIX
DRAFT
SOCIAL CREDIT SCHEME FOR SCOTLAND
(1) Obtain from existing sources, such as company balance-sheets,
land registration offices, and insurance companies, such information
necessary to place a money valuation upon the whole of the capital
assets of Scotland, such as land, roads, bridges, railways,
canals, buildings, drainage and water schemes, minerals, semi-manufactured materials. No distinction between public and
private property. Replacement values to be used where the
property is in use.
Add
to this the sum representing the present commercial capitalised
value of the population. Such a figure exists and varies with
the actuarial expectation of life and the plant capacity of
the country, and is something like £10,000 for a citizen
of the United States at the age of twenty-five. From the grand
total thus obtained a figure representing the price value of
the Scottish capital account could be obtained. Financial credit
to any equivalent can be created by any agency such as a Scottish
Treasury empowered by the Scottish people.
(2)
As from the initiation of this scheme, the holding of any stock,
share, or bond by a holding company or trustee will not be recognised.
It is the intention that no shareholding in any industrial undertaking
shall be other than in the form of equity shares of no par value,
i.e. preference or common shares or stock. Bonded indebtedness
will be recognised for purposes of compensation where held by
individuals, upon a proper investigation, but where held by
corporations will be subject to such terms of redemption as
may seem desirable.
No
transfer of real estate directly between either persons or business
undertakings will be recognised. Persons or business undertakings
desiring to relinquish the control of real immovable estate
will do so to the Government, which will take any necessary
steps to re-allot it to suitable applicants. No Government Department
shall administer either directly or indirectly any business,
whether agricultural, productive, or distributive, other than
the administration of the financial and credit schemes, or receive
payment for any services rendered to the public, other than
in bulk.
THE
INITIAL NATIONAL DIVIDEND
(3)
For the purpose of the initial stages an arbitrary figure, such
as 1per cent of the capital sum ascertained by the methods outlined
in clause (1), shall be taken, and a notice published that every
man, woman, and child of Scottish birth and approved length
of residence, with the exception mentioned in the paragraph
that follows, is to be entitled to share equally in the dividend
thus obtained, which might be expected to exceed three hundred
pounds per annum per family. It will be clearly understood that
no interference with existing ownerships, so called, is involved
in such a proceeding. The dividend to be paid monthly by a draft
on the Scottish Government credit, through the Post Office and
not through the banks.
Any
administrative change in the organisation of the Post Office
should specifically exclude transfer of the money and postal
order department and the savings bank. No payments of the
national dividend will be made except to individuals, and such
payments will not be made where the net income of the individual
for personal use, from other sources, is more than four times
that receivable in respect of the national dividend. The national
dividend will be tax-free in perpetuity, and will not be taken
into consideration in making any returns for taxation purposes,
should such be required. Except as herein specified this dividend
will be inalienable.
"ASSISTED
PRICE" FOR REGISTERED BUSINESSES
(4)
Simultaneously with the publication of the foregoing notice
a figure to be published known as the discount rate, to replace
the existing bank discount rate, a suitable value of this
for initial purposes being 25 per cent. It is important that
the figure should not be less than 25 per cent, and it might
reasonably be higher.
(5)
Simultaneously, an announcement to be published that any or
all business undertakings will be accepted for registration
under an assisted price scheme. The conditions of such registration
will be that their accounts, as at present required under the
Companies Acts, should contain an additional item showing the
average profit on turnover, and that their prices shall, as
far as practicable, be maintained at a figure to include such
average profit, where this is agreed as equitable for the type
of business concerned (the suitable profit being, of course,
largely dependent on the velocity of turnover). Undertakings
unable to show a profit after five years' operation to be struck
off the register.
HOW
FREE CREDITS WOULD BE ISSUED
(6)
In consideration of the foregoing, all registered businesses
will be authorised to issue with sales to ultimate consumers
an account on suitable paper for use as explained in the following clause.
(7)
Payment for goods will be made in the ordinary way, either by
cheque or currency. The purchaser will lodge his receipted account
for goods bought with his bank in the same way that he now pays
in cheques, and the discount percentage of the amount of such
account will be recredited to the consumer's banking account.
Unregistered firms will not be supplied with the necessary bill
forms for treatment in this manner, with the result that their
prices will be 25 per cent, at least, higher than those of registered
firms. (It is obvious that the larger the discount rate can
be made, the greater will be the handicap of the non-registered
firms.)
The
total of the sums credited by the banks to private depositors
in respect of these discounts will be reimbursed to them by
a Scottish Treasury credit. The capital account will be "depreciated"
by such sums, and "appreciated" by all capital development.
The existing banks will be empowered to charge an equitable
sum for the services thus rendered.
HOURS
AND WAGES
(8)
The hours of Government offices will be reduced to four hours
per day. To meet the temporary congestion of work, additional
staff will be employed, such staff, however, doing identical
work with the existing staff in the form of a second shift,
and sharing with the existing staff the chances of promotion
irrespective of seniority. (The object of this is to discourage
the well-known bureaucratic tendency to enhance the importance
of existing staffs by employing additional numbers of persons
ranking by virtue of seniority below the original officials,
and, at the same time, to afford an opportunity of appointing
a duplicate set of officials to check reaction without dislocation of existing routine.)
(9)
Wage rates in all organised industries will be reduced by 25
per cent where such reduction does not involve a loss to the
wage-earner exceeding 20 per cent of the sums received in the
form of national dividend. The wage rates ruling in 1928 to
be taken as the basis against which the reduction would be made.
Any
trade union violating a wage agreement to render its membership
liable to suspension of national dividend, and any employers'
organisation committing a similar offence, to be liable to
suspension of price assistance or wage reduction.
MUST
ACCEPT EMPLOYMENT, OR -
For
a period of five years after the initiation of this scheme,
failure on the part of any individual to accept employment in
whatever trade, business, or vocation he was classified in the
last census, under conditions recognised as suitable to that
employment (unless exempted on a medical certificate), will
render such individual liable to suspension of benefit in respect
of the national dividend.
(10)
Taxation of specific articles or specific forms of property
to be abolished. Any taxation found to be necessary to take
the form either of a flat non-graduated taxation of net income
or a percentage ad valorem tax upon sales, or both forms
of taxation together.
NOTES.
The
price level of 1928 has been taken for the rough estimate of
the items which, when added together, make up the Real Assets
or Real Capital account of Scotland. The Financial Credit, which
is equivalent to this, appears in a National Account as a contra-item.
Money and Real assets are on opposite sides of the account (and
should balance) not, as in a commercial account, on the same
side of the account.
