Reimbursement for Care is my solution for many of the social and economic problems currently afflicting developed societies.The basic concept is for local authorities to pay citizens for beneficial activities that are currently either performed for free or not carried out. It is better than Universal Basic Income because society gets something in return for its investment and because it is better targeted to those who need it.
Jill is an only child in an affluent mid-western family. She attends college locally and pays tuition fees, and rent to her parents. She takes paid vacation jobs and paid internships, but also tops up her income with RFC, working an average of ten hours per week as a care assistant at a local senior care facility. This way she can graduate without a student loan.
Jill moves to New York to take a job with a major employer. Because her rent is high and her experience low, she agrees a fifty-hour per week annual rolling contract with her employer. She is the vocalist in a band and every fortnight the band spends Saturday’s performing at local senior homes, earning Jill just four hours per week of RFC.
Jill starts living with fellow band member Jack and before long they marry and have twins. For the final month of her pregnancy Jill takes a pause with her employer and self-certifies twenty hours per week self-care RFC. For two years after the birth, the first child entitles Jill’s household to thirty hours per week of RFC and the second child a further ten hours. Jack and Jill split this equally and both reduce their employment contracts to thirty hours. Fortunately, both employers allow a proportion of work from home.
Once the kids are a year old, their parents register them in a local nursery for twenty hours per week. Jack and Jill both become accredited carers at the nursery and each work there ten RFC hours per week. Most of the kids’ RFC entitlement is now transferred to the nursery budget, but they can still claim five hours each of self-certified RFC. The nursery enables both to increase their employment back up to thirty-five hours.
RFC entitlement starts progressively reducing when the kids are two, but the parents initially only sacrifice the self-certified RFC. The kids progress to pre-school and then full school, a blend of classroom, online learning and play-centre. The parents gain accreditation to work ten RFC hours each at the play centre, and stay at thirty-five hours with their employers. Now the band can play again, and it gains approval to start a project teaching music to deprived kids elsewhere in the city each Saturday, paid with RFC.
When the twins reach twelve they no longer need supervision at home and lose their remaining entitlement to RFC. Jack and Jill both increase their employment contracts to forty hours, but now they can expand their band commitments to earn ten hours each of RFC on their project.
Five years later, Jack’s widowed mum Jess has an accident that leaves her disabled and comes to live with Jack and Jill. Soon she needs at home care assessed at ten hours per week, which Jack and Jill share and self-certify as RFC, reducing the band project hours. As Jess requires more specialised help both secure accreditation to higher care levels. The RFC entitlement of Jess becomes twenty and then thirty hours, and Jack and Jill reduce their employment hours accordingly.
Next Jess needs help that can’t be provided at home and so moves to a senior care home. Jack and Jill register as RFC carers at the same home, but can now increase their hours at their regular employment again. After Jess dies, Jack and Jill are in their fifties and only wish to work twenty-five hours per week for their employers. They expand their band project into a second community and continue to care at the senior home, claiming RFC for each.
At sixty-five, Jack and Jill are still healthy and keen to be active. They maintain their RFC activities at the same level but reduce their regular employment to ten hours, giving them more free time to spend with the grandkids and to travel. At seventy they retire from their regular employment but keep up the RFC, until Jack falls sick and Jill must care for him, earning additional ten hours per week RFC entitlement for Jill. Jill continues her other RFC work but scales back the hours.
Jack and Jill have varied their RFC activities and hours as their lives have evolved, and also varied their regular employment hours. Their lifetime income is similar to the time before RFC, but they have been able to look after the mental and physical health of themselves, their family and others in their community.
Another example is Denise, who comes from a deprived part of Cleveland and does not attend college, but becomes a single mother at twenty-one. Her own mother lives with her to help bring up the child, and they share the RFC entitlement as well as hustling with various gig jobs and supporting another RFC funded local community project. The balance of hours varies as the child grows and as the gig work waxes and wanes, but luckily the community project is able to offer unlimited hours so their income is always enough to live on.
All the various RFC projects except the self-certified ones are registered with the local authority and require standards of service. Most of the projects also have paid professionals leading them, qualified at the highest RFC accreditation levels. Each school, nursery and care home need fewer full-time professionals than before RFC, but the pay is better and the total number of projects is much higher because of RFC, so the system efficiency has improved. No longer to mothers have to sacrifice their careers or struggle to find adequate child-care or senior care, and the whole community has become part of the solution.
The RFC incentives also nudges resources towards more deprived neighbourhoods, as well as providing an adequate safety net for those who can’t find sufficient regular employment, either temporarily or permanently.
RFC works best if all regular employment takes a gig like character, because then employees can vary their hours as their lives develop. In most cases, there will be a rolling annual contract specifying an average hours per week, and a rolling weekly sub-contract agreeing hours a week or two in advance, including required particular hours for team activities and location specific activities. Work hours become more spread through the day and the week, so commuting is less of an issue for anybody. With the new concept for schools and child-care, these can also be handled more easily in parallel with regular jobs.
RFC involves a lot of reallocation of budgets but can be self-financing, assuming delayed pensions for most and higher taxes for the highest earners. The effect on national productivity is arguable. Perhaps some firms will be less competitive internationally, especially if corporation taxes increase, but higher staff motivation can be expected, and increased automation can also add competitiveness.
Implementation would be far from simple and there would be transition issues. People currently benefiting from tenured jobs with generous pensions may consider themselves losers. There will be fraud, though mobile communications can reduce that risk.
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