Index

You are a human being. Your birth gave you a natural right to be alive. As long as you cause no harm to others, no one has any higher right to control or exploit you. Your personal sovereignty shall remain supreme.

But our current political and economic systems deny you these rights. They disrespect your sovereignty and force you into a state of servitude and dependency. To develop your human potential and engage your talents in society, you must submit to a higher power that has written the rulebook of life. And even though their laws and systems cause harm to billions of people and threaten the ecological foundations of life, their power and authority has remained untouchable.

Until now.

The Financial Party has discovered an alternative way to organize society… a way that respects the natural rights and personal sovereignty of the individual… a way that prevents corporations and governments from expropriating the productivity of the working people… a way that ends the ridiculous income inequality that stifles the lives of the poor… a way that redefines money and eliminates the need for profit, debt and interest entirely. The examples below use Canadian data from Statistics Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency, but the same simple logic and arithmetic can be applied to any economy in the world.

In 2021, Canada's Gross Domestic Product (or GDP) was just under $2.5 trillion dollars ($2,493,129 million dollars). GDP measures the total net value of all goods and services produced in Canada. The total number of hours worked in 2021, including both full-time and part-time work, was 32,243 million hours. If you add paid time-off to the hours worked you get a total of 35,727 million paid hours.

If you now divide the GDP figure by the total number of paid hours you get an average paid hour value of $69.78. So an average paid hour of work generated $69.78 in GDP. Remember this number. It is a useful benchmark.

How much of that $69.78 per hour were you paid in 2021? At $15 per hour, minimum wage workers got only 21.5% of it. If you worked 40 hours a week for 45 weeks in 2021, you should have earned $125,610. But according to Revenue Canada, over 90% of Canadians make less than that each year. So where does the true value of our labour go?

You guessed it, into corporate and government assets, into business empires of office and bank towers, apartments and shopping malls, into machinery and equipment, corporate jets and the outrageous lifestyles of the overpaid. All of this wealth was generated by average workers, but only a small percentage of it will ever belong to them.

So what can we do about it? The Financial Party believes that money should be created by the people themselves, automatically each time they perform socially productive work. Money would simply be a receipt for productive labour already performed. No middlemen, no government, no bankers could limit the amount of money available to society. Employers would no longer pay their employees from sales revenues. Workers would pay themselves simply by working. Productive labour itself would automatically generate new money. Spending would extinguish money. Money would not recirculate.

All employers would switch to a labour-based accounting system that uses time to measure value. Employers already track labour hours so nothing new would be required. Once employers switch, all other production inputs (raw materials, components, energy, etc.) would be priced in hours as well. Costs would be calculated in hours, as the sum of internal labour plus external inputs plus asset depreciation. Nothing else would be added to prices.

With this simple change, the value of GDP would always be exactly equal to the total hours worked. Prices would finally be based upon something concrete and measurable. Subjective value and inflation would disappear completely. Technological improvements that reduce the need for labour would finally bring prices down.

With this simple change, workers would earn the entire value of GDP, not just a small percentage of it. In 2021, with workers earning $69.78 per hour, a 40 hour work week would have earned you $125,610. Part-time work at just 24 hours per week would have earned you $75,366.

But it gets even better...

At birth, all people inherit an equal right to a share of the Earth’s natural resources. Our natural resources are a free gift from nature to all living things. Currently however, people without income cannot access their fair share. Society must provide a means to correct this.

Every time that a resource is extracted and used, a tiny portion of the amount used rightfully belongs to each and every one of us. We are all shareholders in the wealth of nature, and each and every one of us should receive a dividend whenever that wealth is sold and consumed.

Also, all people contribute far more to society than just their paid employment. Raising families, caring for loved ones, maintaining friendships, all have enormous social value. So how can we redistribute the GDP fairly, to recognize our resource rights and to reward our voluntary social contributions, without diminishing the incentive to work?

What if everyone 21 years or older was entitled to an endowment of 10 hours per week, whether they worked or not. Plus, they could earn as many additional employment hours as they like by contributing their productive labour to society. So a person who chooses not to work receives only 10 hours per week. A part-time worker working 24 hours per week, receives 10 + 24 = 34 hours per week. A full-time worker working 40 hours per week, receives 10 + 40 = 50 hours per week. And what if all workers received paid time-off benefits that equalled 20% of their working hours, and all post-secondary students were paid to continue their education. What effect would this have on the distribution of our 2021 GDP, and what would the incentive to work be?

In 2021, 29,690,000 people in Canada were 21 years of age or older. If each of these people earned 10 hours per week for simply being alive, an additional 15,432 million hours would be added to the 35,727 million paid work hours. In 2021, 1,795,749 Canadian students were attending post-secondary institutions. If full-time students received 40 hours per week and part-time students received 24 hours per week throughout the school year (30 weeks), plus 20% in paid time-off benefits, another 2,320 million hours would be added to the total. And to raise the paid time-off benefits of all workers to 20%, another 2,965 million hours would be needed.

The value of the GDP divided by the new total hour figure of 56,444 million would reduce the average hour value of the GDP to $44.17. Working 40 hours/week for 45 weeks/year would now earn you $95,408 but your endowment, worth $22,968 per year (52 times 10 hours), would bring your total full-time annual income to $118,376. Part-time work at just 24 hours per week would earn you $57,245, plus your endowment, would bring your total part-time annual income to $80,213.

Full-time work would generate 5.2 times the income of endowments alone. Part-time work would generate 3.5 times the income. This should be enough to sustain the incentive to work. Overall, the additional hours reduce the value of working full-time by 5.8%, but raise the value of working part-time by 6.4%. This provides a small incentive to help people reclaim some of their working time for their own personal use. There is always a trade off between income and free time. The endowment idea just makes it a little easier to relax.

Now before you ask "where will all this money come from?" consider this... we already have it. It's already being spent to generate the GDP. It is simply being distributed differently. In 2021, wages and salaries accounted for only 44% of the GDP. Employee benefits (7%) profit and capital (40%) and taxes (9%) accounted for the rest. But income taxes reduced the purchasing power of wages by 28%, leaving workers able to purchase only 31.5% of the GDP. With profits, interest and taxation removed from the economy, workers would be paid, and keep, the full value of the GDP. If the entitlements above seem "too good to be true", it is only because you have failed to appreciate the magnitude of the economic scam that is currently being used against you. Consumers and taxpayers now pay all of the costs to transfer major assets (that they created themselves as workers) to private owners. Profit and interest doubles or triples the total amount they must pay. The ever increasing net worth of governments and corporations is proof that these asset transfers are being paid for faster than the assets actually depreciate. This is the "dirty little secret" of Capitalism.

Although the value of our time on Earth is equally priceless to us all, time alone cannot accurately measure the value of all work. The nature of the work itself must also be considered. Certainly, work that is extremely dangerous, which could seriously injure or shorten the life of the worker, should earn a premium. Also work that is extremely difficult, stressful or unpleasant either physically, mentally or emotionally deserves a higher reward. Talent, skill and the social importance of the work must also be factored in.

Likewise, when determining a basic income for all, individual need must be considered. A person with a disability who is unable to work, and families with children, will have a greater financial need than non-disabled individuals or people without children to support. Click on the banner below to see a few suggestions for optional social benefits and unequal income rates.