In our worlds, social security acts as a political correction to the labour market mechanism. This mechanism determines the level of wages and the demand for labour. Demand runs chronically short of supply in many segments, and this means chronical unemployment. Because we do not allow the unemployed's income to fall below subsistence, we make a correction politically: we oblige the employed to pay some tax or premium, and use it to finance unemployment benefits. This is the origin of our discussions of the limits to be set to this correction: we equate this to the limits we have to set to political distortion of the free labour market process. It would take us a lot of effort to explain to a Eunian what we mean by "distortion" in this context.

Eunians have "social security", though, for it is impossible for people with a high labour preference to buy Labour Rights from those with a low labour preference at a price that would set the latter below subsistence. The potentially unemployed would simply not sell their Labour Rights at such a price, and prefer to buy an additional Labour Right and occupy a job. At such a Labour Right-price, everybody would be on the demand side. So, the Labour Right-price will rise.

But the same social security applies to the potentially employed! The Labour Right-price can never rise so high as to bring them below subsistence. Such a price would pull them all to the supply side, and the market would bring the Labour Right-price down.

In so far as the term "social security" is applicable to Eu, it is so in the sense that no one needs fear to sink below subsistence. In our worlds, this is felt as a one-sided warrant to the unemployed, but in Eu it is a perfectly symmetrical guarantee. So, how to explain to a Eunian what we mean by limits to social security?

Eunians do not determine politically what is "minimum subsistence". Everybody has his own ideas on his own minimum subsistence, (though of course you cannot set your limit so luxuriously high that you can reach it neither by working nor by preferring unemployment).

In a sense, therefore, Eunians have a basic income. But unemployed Eunians do not have the feeling they "do nothing for it". They have chosen to sell their right to work, a right they have in the exact proportion of 80%, as determined by the decree of the Labour Bank. This abstinence from labour is, in EU, recognized as a sacrifice.

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