Government
“We can’t make ourselves perfect;
however, we can optimise our systems via Total-Coopetivity infrastructure.
[Coopetivity: Cooperation first & foremost and, within that context, Competition as the treasured second.]
To optimise ‘sustainable stability-prosperity’, governments must infrastructurally maximise ‘Coopetivity’.
That is, as business’ priority is profit, governments’ priority should become Total-Coopetivity.
And, the Total-Coopetivity prerequisite is all-citizen empowerment.”
In Australia, there’s multi-partisan agreement on 4 civilisational Citizen Empowerment Infrastructure cornerstones:
- Universal Rule of Coopetivity-maximising Law (including Personal & Property security)
- Universal Liberal Democracy (including compulsory-voting)
- Universal Education
- Universal Healthcare.
The Industrial Relations’ Tussle: Employers vs. Trade-Unions
In Australia, Industrial Relations is a perpetual uncivilised scrap – full of bad faith and, even, criminality – which, fractionalising citizens’ living-standards, draws all others in as forced-to-pay spectators.
Yet, many of the protagonists are good-hearted with sincere motivations.
Thus, it’s the suboptimal system that’s attracting and catalysing the various uncivilised behaviour.
The Industrial Relations mess consists of the Socio-Econo- quadrangulation of:
- Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS), which, among other things, manifests as poverty & paid-worker exploitation
- Unemployment/underemployment, which has led to unemployment-benefits then resentment towards recipients
- Other business-enfeebling regulation, which, meaning surplus resources are required to produce a given good or service, detracts from national-prosperity including disproportionately trashing our natural-environment
- Government-wastage, which, among other things, manufactures disrespect for government and government-budget-pressure, which, via increased taxation, leads to citizen partial-strangulation.
[Note: As shall be shown, the latter 3 also result from SIS. Thus, due to just a single system’s absence, there exists the employer vs. trade-union tussle.]
From this quadrangulation, we need emancipation.
Meanwhile, with the employer & trade-union behemoths tussling as the government, media and justice-system attempt to discern and adjudicate, the quadrangulation detracts from all 4 existing Citizen Empowerment cornerstones including driving poorer education outcomes (how can a child in apoverty–afflicted and unemployment-stressed family focus on studying?), mental-illness, homelessness, escapism, ‘The Gap’, crime (including domestic-violence) etc.
Thus, this tussle constitutes the remaining epicentre of the Right/Left divide, which, in turn, is responsible for most of our other social-divisions.
The Economics ‘Discipline’
Economics is a self-complicating unstandardised ‘yet-to-be’ discipline, which, following its meandering (still-maturing) evolution, has never been holistically reconciled.
For instance, while the mathematics’ convention is to graphically represent equations (for example, y = 3x, which shows y as being dependent on x such that if x = 2 then y = 6) with the dependent-variable on the vertical y-axis and the independent-variable on the horizontal x-axis, economics does the opposite – i.e. it puts the independent-variable such as prices and wages on the vertical-axis and the dependent (demand & supply) quantities on the horizontal-axis.
Such confusions add-up to disaffect economists – i.e. compared to the ‘hard’ sciences, the type and degree of disagreement and the forever-predictive-failure in the ‘science’ of economics is excessive.
And, while excuses include ‘it deals with human-psychology’ and has ‘too many moving-parts’, as shall also be shown, the cause is Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS), which is a destabilising economy-architecture superfluity.
Meanwhile, though the economics profession harbours extraordinary talent, like medieval siloed schizophrenic alchemists with nonsensical differentiations between theory and practice, they’re lost and disunified, which means, regarding the employer vs. trade-union tussle, economics isn’t imposed – i.e. most economists are either reticent to get involved or, for those who do enter the fray, it’s often on the basis of loose identity-soaked opinions.
Yet, a potential unifier is the mainstream news/economics media – i.e. instead of forever inviting economists to play Nostradamus on inflation, unemployment, interest-rates, GDP, the share-market & property prices, it can demand definitiveness.
Explicitly, journalists can ask:
- “Are Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW) the source of unemployment/underemployment or not?”
- “If The Universal Subsistence Income (USI) is substituted for UMHoW, will unemployment/underemployment be eradicated and the government-budget depressurised or not?”
Straight answers to these will redirect humanity onto a ‘universal sustainable stability-prosperity optimisation’ trajectory.
In sum, economics and economists are the keys yet, as per the extolled ‘freedom of the press’, the news media is the key to leading the creation of an ecosystem, which promotes citizens’ economic education (critical for a Democracy) and, in so doing, forces up the standard of economics debate such that there crystalises a genuine ‘Standard Model’.
Real GDP Per Capita (Nominal)
‘Real GDP per capita (nominal)’, which doesn’t have a standard phrasing, is one of economics’ most important calculations because it allows comparisons of material standard-of-living per person over time and between nations.
‘Real GDP per capita (nominal)’ is defined as:
- ‘GDP’ (Gross Domestic Product) = the value, in a year, of a nation’s production
- ‘Real’ = exclusive of inflation (i.e. in constant, for example year 2000, prices)
- ‘Per capita’ = exclusive of population changes (i.e. per person).
For comparing between nations, there are 2 main ‘real GDP per capita’ versions:
- Nominal, which uses the money-market exchange rate (usually $US) between currencies
- Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) – i.e. it ‘processes’ the nominal calculations to account for, say, one $US potentially buying more in Indonesia than in Holland.
Confusingly, Purchasing Power Parity is sometimes also referred to as ‘real’ even though:
- Real is already used to exclude inflation
- Many economists (and the CDO) believe ‘nominal’ is a more accurate indicator.
…
March 12, 2024
Hello
In the CDO’s experience, finding figures for Australia’s ‘real GDP per capita’ from 2000 to the present isn’t straightforward.
While Australia’s Reserve Bank and Treasury have the figures, that such foundational information isn’t fingertip-available suggests other inefficiencies – for instance, what (if any) information are economic journalists using?
Beware using Wikipedia (Economy_of_Australia) where, in its otherwise convenient table, each figure is in that year’s Australian dollars and, due to inflation, a dollar in 2000 may be worth, say, $2.50 in 2024 – i.e. the figures can’t be directly compared.
The CDO found the readiest was care of The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which, using figures in 2010 U.S. dollars, shows Australian real GDP per capita (nominal) has increased from $US 45,858 (2000) to, extrapolating from the data end point of $US 60,994 (2022), around $US 63,000 (2024).
So, (63,000 – 45,858)/45,858 x 100 = 37%, which means, in 24 years, Australians’ material standard-of-living has increased by around 37%.
However:
- Some of this has been bought with government-debt, which, using Wikipedia, in 2000, was 19.5% of GDP and is now 58.5%; and,
- In terms of potential-productivity, over the last quarter century, a lot has occurred.
Science & Technology (S&T) Memory-Lane
In 1998, Google search began – at the time, it was a mind-blowing drudgery-freeing breakthrough.
In 1999, ‘Windows Messenger’ was released – i.e. type and, in real-time, others (‘anywhere in the world’) could see it, which turned email into the new ‘snail-mail’.
Since then, there’s been a parade of technological revolutions including: Skype (2003), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), iPhone & Netflix-streaming (2007), blockchain (2009), WhatsApp (2009), Amazon (c. 2011 coming of age), Zoom (2013), TikTok (2016), A.I. (2023 coming of age) …
The transition from Windows Messenger to Zoom (not the first video-conferencing platform) is particularly stark – i.e. just 14 years, from a one-to-one real-time reader platform to a popularised multi-person reader-audio-&-video platform.
While much of this S&T innovation is social and entertainment related, underlying each of these (and other) innovations and spurred by each of these (and other) innovations are potential-productivity increases to the economy.
Accordingly, the economy’s potential-productivity may be doubling every 5 to 7 years.
Assuming it’s doubling every 6 years, since 2000, we should not be 2, 4 nor 8 times but 16 times as prosperous; yet, is that the reality?
For many, compared to 24 years ago, our society seems worse-off including there being more Disempowered and more Disempowerment.
[Aside: The spark for the CDO’s formation occurred when its founder, following being mostly out of Australia from 2000 (‘Windows Messenger’) to 2017 (‘TikTok’), upon returning was struck that, despite all the S&T innovation, our streets seemed ‘home’ to vastly more homeless.]
Also, it’s not like, individually, we’ve slowed down – if anything we’re more frantic and stress is higher.
However, given S&T potential-productivity benefits don’t flow equally across all industries with, particularly some services (such as waitering) not yet all that affected, to be conservative, the potential-productivity increase over the last 24 years is assumed to be not 16-fold but 4-fold – i.e. it’s assumed to be doubling every 12 years.
Quadruple-Trouble
“Since 2000, our actual-productivity has increased 37% but it should have increased 400% – that can’t be right,” the mind may reflexively reject, “it’s too much; then again, wastage and distortion are pervasive”.
If the 37% to 400% productivity-gap is correct then, every 12 years, we’re annually adding almost an entire 12-year-previous economy to the already existing wastage.
Putting it another way, if there had been no potential-productivity improvement – i.e. if we were still using Windows Messenger – then our real GDP per capita (nominal) would have decreased from, in 2000, $US 45,858 to, in 2024, 63,000/4 or $US 15,750.
[Aside: 260+ years after the machine-engendered-subsistence-transcendent-event known as the Industrial Revolution, with perhaps potential-productivity increases of around 10,000-fold, how can our economy only be valued at around 4-and-a-half-times a Universal-Subsistence-Income (USI)? Yes, compared to 1760, our standards are higher (such as expectations of plumbing and electricity) but still, except for monumental wastage, how is this gap explainable?]
Thus, the economy isn’t improving; on the contrary, its inefficiency is exponentiating; however, this inefficiency is camouflaged via S&T innovation.
In turn, with the Econo- typically viewed as the lone bright-spot amongst our Socio-Econo-Enviro-[international/natural] (SEE-in) variables, this error means all 4 SEE-in components are deteriorating – i.e. we’re accelerating backwards on:
- Socio- Empowerment
- Econo- Efficiency
- International-Enviro- Sovereignty
- Natural-Enviro- Sustainability.
Yet, the good news is, increasing our potential-productivity actualisation can solve all 4.
So, currently, how and where can so much waste be occurring?
First, while understandably, employer vs. trade-union productivity negotiations relate to paid-worker ‘individual-productivity’, this doesn’t necessarily correlate with ‘universal sustainable SEE-in stability-prosperity optimisation’ – i.e. ‘individual-productivity’ doesn’t necessarily correlate with ‘national-prosperity’.
That is, for ‘individual-productivity’ and ‘national-prosperity’ to maximally correlate, our systems must be optimally efficient.
The Economy’s Internalities: Producers, Distributors & Streamliners
An economy, which includes government departments, businesses and not-for-profits (NFPs), should have just 3 types of organisations/jobs:
- ‘Producers’ of the goods & services we need/desire such as food, housing, health, education, fuel, cleaning, electronics, entertainment etc.
- ‘Distributors’ such as freight-drivers, sales people etc.
- ‘Streamliners’ such as managers & administrators, accountants, HR, justice-personnel, economists, bankers etc.
Many jobs have 2 or more elements – for instance, a teacher educates but may also have a partial administrative role.
Producers, distributors and streamliners are all imperative; however, if our systems are optimally efficient then, within the economy:
- Producers and distributors are maximised
- Streamliners are minimised.
And, in maximising the efficiency of production, distribution and streamlining, the optimal systems will automatically shoulder most of the load with individuals manually assisting where needed – for example, a factory production-line is a system.
However, if the systems are suboptimal then ‘individual-productivity’ (whether producer, distributor or streamliner) will be miscorrelated or, perhaps even, counterproductive to ‘national-prosperity’.
Regarding a neutral ‘individual-productivity’ and ‘national-prosperity’ correlation, it’s represented by the ‘dig-a-hole-&-refill-it’ metaphor.
The Dig-a-Hole-&-Refill-It Metaphor
Optimal efficiency requires: ‘individual-productivity’ maximally correlating with ‘national-prosperity’.
In the dig-a-hole-&-refill-it scenario, if a shovel is swapped for an excavator, the time taken to dig a cubic metre then refill it is fractionalised, which means, in one sense, the individual’s productivity has gone through the roof; however, there’s no net national-prosperity benefit – i.e. at best, productivity is still zero.
Meanwhile, the wastage includes:
- The individual’s wage, superannuation and conditions
- Facilities for the individual – office, desk, bathroom, kitchen, carpark
- The equipment – it’s purchase, storage, maintenance and fuel
- The managerial overseeing of the individual
- Support including accounting and HR
- Their union support
- Personal clothing and health & safety items
- Transport.
However, our economy’s wastage is so colossal – i.e. increased national-productivity of just 37% vis-à-vis 400% – it cannot be confined to individual government-departments, businesses and NFPs; on the contrary, it must be due to economy-wide phenomena, which means it must derive from governmental suboptimal (perhaps, counterproductive) and/or absent infrastructure.
Our Squandonomy: Our Infrastructurally Squandering-Economy
A Coopetonomy is an economy that embodies ‘Cooperation first & foremost and, within that context, Competition as the treasured second’ – i.e.:
‘An economy that maximally efficiently
(including being universally empowering)
produces and distributes the goods & services citizens need/desire’.
However, as the 37% vis-à-vis 400% gap indicates, we have a Squandonomy.
And, the Squandonomy’s cause is The Universal Subsistence Income (USI) absence, which leads to Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS).
At the individual level, society’s greatest infrastructural division is:
The independently-wealthy (often via inheritance) vs. the SIS-afflicted.
Structurally, SIS disaffects society in 2 mutually catalysing ways – i.e. it is:
- Socio- Disempowering; and
- Econo- Inefficient.
Regarding the economy, they directly disaffect the supply-side particularly the labour-market, which, uncoincidentally, is the realm of the employers vs. trade-unions tussle.
The SIS Socio-Disempowerment Perverted Labour-Market
SIS most directly disaffects the economy’s supply-side by forcing citizens into it as either:
- Small-business operators; or,
- Employees.
And, because citizens are forced into the labour-market, the labour-market isn’t free, which means the idea we have or all-but-have ‘free-markets’ is a misnomer.
To be clear, a free-market system is good; however, it must include the freedom to enter or not.
Thus, to achieve full ‘free-market’ efficiency benefits, there must be Universal SIS emancipation.
Meanwhile, SIS forces citizens to prioritise obtaining a Subsistence-Income over everything else including what would, otherwise, be best for:
- Their family – for example, prioritising their children’s upbringing
- Society – for example, prioritising the natural-Enviro-.
Regarding the former, it can have future individual, family and societal disaffects – for instance, a child’s mis-growth, misadventure or harmful-influences, which parents are usually best-placed to understand and circumvent, may trigger tragedies including lives of crime and/or mental-illness.
[In 2021, the Productivity Commission estimated mental-illness & suicide cost Australia around $200 to $220 billion per year (10% of GDP)).]
SIS also adds to general family-stress and is often a component in domestic-violence and/or escapism such as drug & alcohol abuse.
Moreover, in the case where a paid-workplace has SIS-afflicted employees who, other than for the Subsistence-Income, don’t want to be there, there will be wastage.
For instance, SIS-entrapment may mean, due to anxiety over a loved-one who they wish to in-person support, one paid-worker may be less productive than another who genuinely wants to be there.
Furthermore, if some employees are only there under servitude, like an apple spoiling the barrel, this can disaffect an organisation’s morale, which is highlighted by comparing volunteer and conscript militaries.
For example, in the author’s experience at Ford Motor Company, on one shift, 1 employee produced around 21 barrels of silicon-infused engine-heads and, on another, 2 less motivated employees produced around 7 barrels – a 600% productivity-difference.
Potentially, management could have ‘cracked the whip’, which they didn’t; however, even if they had (and the reason they didn’t) was it could have backfired in numerous ways – i.e. because of SIS, there is the potential for employee-exploitation, which, in turn, understandably, has led to both trade-union-militancy and invasive business-regulation including restrictions on firing.
However, if SIS is eradicated, there’s next-to-no employee-exploitation.
Accordingly, management had only partial control except when it came to the ‘nuclear option’ of closing-up, which, in 2016, they triggered.
So, was SIS the reason Australia lost its entire car industry?
Yes; notwithstanding other countries are also SIS-afflicted.
Regarding the “I don’t want to be here” attitude, it can transmute into an “us against them” one, which may manifest, for instance, in a quest for overtime-wages.
At Ford, for the sake of overtime, there was the admonishment, “You’re making too many parts,” and, very occasionally, the mass wilful crashing and trashing of expensive machines.
In addition, SIS-distortions spawn Band-Aiding or ‘compensatory-streamliners’.
Compensatory-Streamliners
All compensatory-streamliners are pure wastage because they ‘compensate’ for a suboptimal or absent system.
Also, in the absence of the optimal system, other systems don’t work efficiently, which means they’re usually highly labour-intensive – i.e. it disproportionately involves one-on-one face-to-face assistance such as through the legal-system, charities, health, education and other government bureaucracies.
Worse, compensating usually manufactures the need for secondary and then tertiary and so on compensatory-streamliners.
Hence, compensatory-streamliners are the main manifestation of the gap between our actual standard-of-living and potential-productivity.
There are 3 types of compensatory-streamliners:
- Jobs
- Organisations
- National-policies, which then generate even more compensatory-streamliner jobs, organisations and policies.
Compensatory-streamliner jobs & organisations are a 4th type after producers, distributors & streamliners.
Regarding national-policy, it exists as government:
- Anti-infrastructure
- Stopgaps.
And, consistent with Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS) being the source of our Squandonomy, virtually all Western societies’ compensatory-streamlining emanates from SIS.
The Main SIS-Anti-Infrastructure ‘Compensator’: Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW)
Historically, SIS arose with the Industrial Revolution when subsistence-farmers became income-earning-machinists, which led to paid-worker exploitation, which, amongst other things, led to the anti-infrastructure of Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW).
Regarding UMHoW, it is the creator (‘the God’) of unemployment/underemployment.
That is, currently, in Australia, in the market, a person’s labour must be worth more than $23.23 per hour (the UMHoW rate) before they can be accepted as an employee.
Thus, without UMHoW, there would be no unemployment/underemployment because no one would be locked-out of paid-work.
[Note: if someone doesn’t want paid-work at the ‘going wage-rate’, they’re not unemployed, but are labour-market ‘non-participating’ – i.e. in this case, they’re neither employed nor unemployed.]
And, UMHoW’s creation of unemployment means its effect on:
- Poverty is ambiguous – i.e. a person with a job may be better-off but the unemployed are worse-off
- SIS is to unambiguously exacerbate it because it means some will be SIS-afflicted yet unable to obtain employment.
Unemployment also impacts paid-workplaces.
For example, with the author previously employed at a food & beverage wholesaler (S.E. Asia), there were about 20 accountants/bookkeepers who, rather than being streamliners, were so structured as to make work for each other via creating and shuffling papers such that, following being efficiently restructured, there was only 1 and reports were quicker and more accurate.
In this case, it was a matter of top-down management discerning and eradicating bottom-up resistance – i.e. even though the workers were in soul-destroying knowingly unproductive jobs, they weren’t leaving or suggesting efficiencies because they were better-off than being unemployed.
Hence, unemployment reduces vitality, which means the economy is suboptimally agile.
Also, because there is unemployment, managers are often reluctant to dismiss employees.
Thus, there’s a SIS double-whammy – i.e. it directly demands a person be at a paid-workplace and, indirectly, via its UMHoW-procreated unemployment grandchild, may also demand they stay at their current paid-workplace.
This has spawned both other anti-infrastructure (including legislated business-regulation that goes beyond the citizen Empowerment ‘Universal Coopetivity-maximising Law’ cornerstone such as many ‘hire & fire laws’) and stopgaps.
SIS-Stopgap Compensatory-Streamliners
Leaving Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS) untouched, governments increasingly battle 2 of its Disempowerment symptoms – i.e. poverty and unemployment.
Governments, while ignoring SIS, have increasingly become SIS–symptom battlers via using stopgap compensatory-streamliners such as:
- Social-housing-for-the-able
- Subsidised-childcare
- Income-Welfare including unemployment-benefits.
Regarding social-housing-for-the-able, while citizens need shelter, rather than being tied to a particular abode, they should be invested with the capacity to be agile so they can take advantage of opportunities including, if need be, moving away from dysfunction.
Also, governments’ track record on building appropriate housing in the right-places for the right-people in a timely manner at a good price isn’t impressive – i.e. governments are structurally ill-suited to this and can be expected to do it as well as they would create a great car.
Regarding subsidised-childcare, is it moral to be encouraging parents to prioritise paid-work over caring for their children especially when there’s a growing epidemic of mentally-ill young people? Why not empower parents to make their own decisions?
Regarding unemployment-benefits, which, in Australia, is also known as ‘the dole’, it’s one matter for citizens who’ve inherited wealth and aren’t SIS-afflicted to pay for some other citizens to receive it; however, it’s another when SIS-afflicted citizens (especially, if they’re also living in poverty) must finance ‘the dole’ when they don’t receive it.
Thus, we have the society-dividing ‘dole-bludger’ narrative including its racist, sexist, disablist and ageist variants.
Meanwhile, to ‘the lifters’’ disgust, they note a certain reticence on the part of some ‘leaners’ to find paid-work.
That is, there’s a ‘gain-paid-work-lose-income-Welfare’ distortion such that when a dole-recipient gains employment, they lose the dole, which, therefore, punishes them for taking-up paid-work.
Accordingly, this naturally leads unemployment-benefit-recipients to calculate ‘Is it worth it?’, which is a ‘business decision’ where the main-stake is, rather than profit, subsistence.
[Note: All forms of income-Welfare, which is, by definition, means-tested – including the dole, disability benefits, study-subsidies and aged-pension – are distortionary.]
Understandably (given the system), this inspires ‘the lifters’ to adopt a ‘get a job any job’ attitude (and accompanying harassment) even though this is also distortionary because most of our ‘any jobs’ are ‘compensatory-streamliners’ – i.e. perhaps over 80% of jobs are either exclusively or mostly compensatory-streamliner – whose average wastage may be over a hundred thousand dollars (5 times the dole) per individual.
[With a tweak, as much of the end need/desire goods & services currently produced by our 14.5 million labour force can be produced from 3 million paid-workers.]
Regarding compensatory-streamliner organisations, these include dole administering bureaucracies – i.e. Centrelink and its private-enterprise job-seeker ‘assisting’ associates.
And, via these bureaucracies’ harassment, they manufacture the ‘disservice’ of mental-illness, which leads to an explosion of further ‘compensatory-streamliners’ in the form of mental-health experts, other medical-staff & social-workers, the judicial system, private security (there’s 155,000 registered private security guards, which is more than double the, since 2000, automotive manufacturing industry’s peak employment) etc.
Moreover, with many of our best-hearted and most-talented attracted to social-justice, for want of an optimal system, the efforts of our most valuable are being disproportionately wasted.
Regarding a Centrelink-worker’s productivity, if it increases then the generated destruction will likely be more – for instance, Robodebt reflects this.
Meanwhile, a dole-recipient’s social-status is obliterated, which, among other things, helps force governments to overtly create a Squandonomy.
The Overt-Squandonomy: Government Employment ‘Management’
Due to the unemployment and ‘dole-bludger’ phenomena, instead of the economic system automatically managing employment, government is increasingly manually managing it.
That is, while the economy’s natural purpose is to ‘maximally efficiently empoweringly produce and distribute the goods & services citizens need/desire’, government has added a partial jobs-for-jobs’-sake purpose.
Amongst other things, governments create Public Service compensatory-streamliner jobs and, inefficiently, seek to save companies and, even, industries.
Also, the covert-and-overt-Squandonomy disproportionately disaffects our country-areas leading to an exodus and, even in cities, leads to comparatively anaemic lifestyles – i.e. Australian cities lack vitality with most facilities closed by 5pm.
And, as governments have ‘adapted’ the economy, they’ve also adapted to this by forever promising ‘Jobs, Jobs, Jobs’.
All this wastage and distortion manifests as government-budget-pressure – i.e.:
- Tax-revenue per tax-rates are clipped
- Government-expenditure is too high.
Meanwhile, governments have earned a reputation for wastage and distortion.
Wasters & Distorters: Government’s Corrupted Reputation
While government-bureaucracy is often scorned as inefficient because it’s not usually subject to profit-incentives and market-competition, on the contrary, it’s the most efficient means of providing most infrastructure including the Citizen Empowerment cornerstones.
For instance, in Australia, the government Technical and Further Education (TAFE) system compares well against its private competition.
However, while governments’ national top-down monopoly structure is the most efficient producer and distributor of infrastructure, due to its failure to eradicate Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS), it and wastage have become synonymous.
The consequences are diabolical.
First, the disrespect undermines Coopetivity per se, which leads to everything from distrust of politicians, government-bureaucrats & their pronouncements to encouraging tax-avoidance.
Second, ‘government = wastage’ has become an ideology, which, in some cases, has spurred infrastructure privatisation.
Yet, the solution to eradicating Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS) is the painless (actually, blissful) self-funding ‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform’.
The Self-Funding‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform’
The self-funding ‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform’ in which:
- ‘The USI’ is ‘The Universal Subsistence Income’
- ‘UMHoW’ is ‘Universal Minimum Hourly Wages’
- Also, implicit to the reform, most ‘income-Welfare’ is eradicated.
In the process of eradicating SIS, ‘The USI-4-UMHoW Reform’ also solves our SEE-in catastrophes via, respectively, flipping:
- Socio- Disempowerment to Empowerment
- Econo- Inefficiency to Efficiency
- International-Enviro- Authoritarianism to Democracy
- Natural-Enviro- Obliteration to Sustainability.
That is, it delivers a virtuous cycle of Empowerment, Efficiency, Sovereignty & Sustainability (EESS) such that ‘universal sustainable SEE-in stability-prosperity optimisation’ is achieved.
Regarding the joint Socio-Econo-, in mathematics, the extreme is often used to test the rule – for example, substituting zero or infinity into a variable and observing the effect on the equation’s outcome – and Covid and its lockdowns were an extreme, which, with no country’s infrastructure able to handle, led to various stopgaps.
In Australia, part of the response was ‘Jobkeeper’, which was a wage-subsidisation scheme delivered to employers to retain their employees so as to restrict the rise in unemployment.
While as Band-Aiding goes it worked reasonably well, nevertheless, there was still wastage (including increased unemployment), it slowed business/employee adaptation and it led to increased national debt.
In comparison, with the self-funding ‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform’, with the lockdown, people would still have had a Subsistence-Income, there’s no unemployment and employer/employee adaptation is immediate, which means, so far as income is concerned, no Band-Aiding would have been required.
Holistically, the reform is a PUSCHER-eradicator – i.e. it eradicates:
- [P] Poverty
- [U] Unemployment/underemployment
- [S] Stigma – i.e. ‘the dole-bludger’ narrative
- [C] Corruption (for example, in Gaza, it would have bypassed Hamas)
- [H] Harassment (‘mutual obligations’)
- [E] Paid-worker-Exploitation (i.e. citizens can say, ‘no’)
- [R] Excessive paid-workplace-Regulation.
Thus, across society, the reform is infrastructurally Socio-Econo- empowering, which includes citizens being free to join or not the economy’s labour market, which means, at last, all the economy’s markets are potentially free.
Moreover, with the self-funding SIS-eradicating ‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform’, rather than having a covert-and-overt-Squandonomy, whose partial purpose is to provide jobs whether those jobs are productive or not, we will have a ‘Coopetonomy’, which ‘exclusively efficiently empoweringly produces and distributes the goods & services citizens need/desire’.
Accordingly, without compensatory-streamliners, the economy will consist only of producers, distributors and streamliners who are proportionally balanced and optimally allocated.
Regarding compensatory-streamlining paid-workers, some:
- If already in producer/distributer organisations, will be needed there as genuine streamliners
- Will transfer into streamlining new producer/distributor organisations
- Will transfer out of streamlining into being producers/distributors.
Meanwhile, harnessing the social-harmony dividend of citizen-goodwill will, amongst other things, allow tax-reform, which will unleash further potential.
The eventual tax-system may naturally converge (i.e. without tussling) to something like:
- 20% flat-rate income and profit tax (no tax-free threshold)
- 20% GST (full-breadth)
- 2% Land tax.
Regarding the international-Enviro-, Authoritarians will be under siege – i.e.:
- With the West’s social difficulties converging to insignificance, they will no longer be able to point and say, “Look, our system’s better”
- With the West’s economic advantage eclipsing its current level, their capacity to influence will be made obsolete and their standing crushed
- They will be confronted by a rejuvenated homegrown resistance demanding ‘The Optimal Western Model’, which will be like a rug pulled from under their shattered feet.
Thus, Authoritarians will be unable to survive let alone compete, which means their countries will adopt the West’s 5 Citizen Empowerment Infrastructure cornerstones including Universal Liberal Democracy.
Regarding the natural-Enviro-, the indirect prioritisation of the economy over the natural-environment stops – i.e. individuals no longer need a job for a Subsistence-Income and governments no longer prioritise jobs-for-jobs’-sake paid-work.
Regarding The USI’s financing, simultaneously, tax-revenue (per tax-rate) surges as businesses boom from increasing competitiveness yet government-expenses decline – i.e. there’s no poverty, no unemployment, next-to-no wasteful employment, no inefficient bureaucracy (such as Centrelink) and no gain-paid-work-lose-income-Welfare distortion, which means there’s huge declines in crime, mental-illness, escapism etc.
Thus, there’s government-budget-depressurisation.
And, with this depressurisation, respect for government returns.
Regarding the replacement of the SIS-stopgaps (including social-housing-for-the-able, subsidised-childcare & most income-Welfare) with The Universal Subsistence Income (USI), due to its efficiencies, almost all the from-taxpayer-to-citizen money continues circulating within the optimally productive national economy with the only leakage being imports.
However, with international-competitiveness skyrocketing, net-exports (i.e. exports – imports) disproportionately surges as both exporting and import-replacement industries boom.
Thus, unlike income-Welfare, which is a prosperity- detractor, this reform is a prosperity- maker, which will generate a ‘catch-up’ boom to eclipse even historical East Asian ‘catch-ups’ such that there’s no limit on what Australia could be, including becoming a manufacturing powerhouse to rival China.
Conclusion
‘Work smarter not harder’ – i.e. systemic efficiency not individualised brute effort.
Subsistence-Income-Servitude (SIS) is an abyss, which drives The Industrial Relations tussle’s Socio-Econo- quadrangulation of:
- Poverty & paid-worker exploitation
- Unemployment/underemployment and ‘the dole-bludger’ narrative
- Other business-enfeebling and national-prosperity-inhibiting (including environment-trashing) regulation
- Government-wastage, which culminates as government-budget-pressure and disrespect for government.
SIS is also responsible for increasingly wasting our S&T potential-productivity innovations – i.e. due to SIS, ‘individual-productivity’ is suboptimally correlated with ‘universal sustainable SEE-in stability-prosperity optimisation’, which is the reason, over the last 24 years, our actual productivity is 37% instead of at least 400%.
Yet, rectifying this only requires implementing the self-funding SIS-eradicating ‘USI-4-UMHoW Reform’, which, as well as vanquishing the Industrial Relations tussle, will eradicate infrastructural unnecessary-suffering & most social-division, return respect for government plus transition our economy from a Squandonomy to a Coopetonomy.
To our knowledge, no politician, let alone political party, in the world is yet advocating this reform.
Thank you.
Best regards
Paul Ross
The Citizens’ Dividend Organisation (CDO)
P.S.: [Next article] Coopetism 5.3 – A ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ Letter to Universal Liberal Democracies (incl. Israel): Nature’s Religious-Extremism Covenant