October 11, 2019
Hi
For the sake of humanity’s quest to successfully navigate our culminating socio-econo-environment perfect storm of ills, please, in good-faith and open-mindedly, read this correspondence …
First, because humanity is facing a full-spectrum of socio-econo-environment problems, the solutions must be socio-econo-environment expansive – i.e. currently, we employ ‘solutions’, which, while improving one aspect, exacerbates others such that, resulting in a net societal loss, though more and more resources are invested, the crises worsen.
Thus, we need an ‘Institute of Socio-Econo-Environment Affairs’, which will focus on coherent (i.e. non-contradictory) policy consolidation that systemically eliminates waste including the current plague of counter-productivity.
[Note: ‘The Reform of the Century’ is so-coined because it is a nature-consistent source-of-the-issue solution, which positively impacts the full-range of socio-econo-environment problems without worsening any of them.]
Second, The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation has just received the following letter from the Australian Senate’s Community Affairs Committee inquiry into:
‘The Adequacy of Newstart and related payments and alternative mechanisms to determine the level of income support payments in Australia.’
From: Community Affairs, Committee (SEN) <Community.Affairs.Sen@aph.gov.au>
Date: Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 2:58 PM
Subject: Submission acknowledgement
AUSTRALIAN SENATE
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS REFERENCES COMMITTEE
PARLIAMENT HOUSE
CANBERRA ACT 2600
Tel: (02) 6277 3515
Fax: (02) 6277 5829
Email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Mr Paul Ross, Founder, The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation
Dear Mr Ross
Inquiry into the adequacy of Newstart and related payments and alternative mechanisms to determine the level of income support payments in Australia
Thank you for your submission to this inquiry. The committee has accepted your submission and allocated it submission number 10.
The committee has decided to accept and publish your organisation’s submission as public. This means that your submission, your name (if on the submission) and the name of your organisation will be made publicly available on the committee’s website, with signatures and contact details removed.
Your public submission is accessible from the committee’s website:
The version of your submission that will be published by the committee will be protected by parliamentary privilege. This means that what you say in the submission cannot be used in court against you or anyone else. It is an offence for anyone to harass or discriminate against you because you have made a submission. Further information about parliamentary privilege is available from Senate Brief No. 11 – Parliamentary Privilege on the Australian Parliament website.
The committee is required to report by 27 March 2020. A copy of the report will be loaded onto the committee’s website and may be accessed at www.aph.gov.au/senate_ca
Further information on the inquiry process is available on the Senate website at: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Getting_Involved_in_Parliamentary_Committees.
Please feel welcome to contact us if you have any questions about this inquiry or the committee process.
Yours sincerely
Jeanette Radcliffe
Committee Secretary
——-
So, please take a good-faith open-minded look at ‘The Reform of the Century’ as lodged at the address:
Number 10, Down…,
Thank you.
Best regards
Paul Ross, Founder, The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (Australia)
https://citizens-dividend.org/
https://www.facebook.com/paul.ross.798
https://twitter.com/paulross2
Humanity is being confronted by a perfect storm of Socio-Econo-Environment Catastrophes including:
1. Social:
a. Internal: mental illness, domestic violence, drug & alcohol abuse etc.
b. External: our weaknesses boost Democracy’s enemies, which is currently enhancing international rivalry such as with China, Russia, North Korea and Iran;
2. Econo: absolute poverty, relative income inequality, unemployment, homelessness etc.; and,
3. Environmental: ecosystem destruction, species extinction, human population explosion, plastic islands, climate change etc.
Hypothesis: This is due to a single foundational ‘Society-Individual Interface’ contradiction whose deleterious effects are cascading through every facet of society.
The relevant contradiction is the partial absence of the natural-morality-derived ‘Universal Opportunity Infrastructure’ (UOI), which consists of the four cornerstones:
1. Universal Liberal Democracy – [In Australia] Yes;
2. Universal Healthcare – Yes;
3. Universal Education – Yes;
4. Universal Basic Income – No, not yet.
The Socio-Econo-Environment-Harmonising Universal Basic Income (UBI):It’s not that it is the solution;
It’s that its absence is the problem.
The Taxpayer-to-Citizen-Transfer [Note: Unlike the Current System, this is not a ‘cost’ but a ‘transfer’.]Around $18,000 per year x 18 million (non-incarcerated in-country adult Australian citizens) + $5,000 x 4.5 million (children) = $350 billion (2018 figures).
This may be achieved by:1. Reallocating from the Social Services budget $150 billion (of the $175 billion, which leaves $25 billion to top up pensions etc.);2. Abolishment of the Tax-Free Threshold ($35 billion); and,3. Insertion of a 20% full-breadth GST (no – it’s not regressive if the disempowered are net beneficiaries; also, the wealthy and multinationals’ capacity to avoid a GST is particularly limited) [$200 billion – $60 billion (current 10% gap-ridden GST) = $140 billion]
This may be achieved by:
1. Reallocating from the Social Services budget $150 billion (of the $175 billion, which leaves $25 billion to top up pensions etc.);
2. Abolishment of the Tax-Free Threshold ($35 billion); and,
3. Insertion of a 20% full-breadth GST (no – it’s not regressive if the disempowered are net beneficiaries; also, the wealthy and multinationals’ capacity to avoid a GST is particularly limited) [$200 billion – $60 billion (current 10% gap-ridden GST) = $140 billion]
In addition to this $325 billion total, there will be massive human-capital, efficiency, societal-involvement and trust gains, which means, not only is the UBI easily afforded, we will actually be up to twice as wealthy – a win-win-win in which, with society per se vastly better-off, all segments of community: the wealthy; the middle-class; and, the currently disempowered; are all winners.
In the process, the economy will also be transformed from an ‘environment-destroying jobs-for-jobs-sake’ one to ‘an efficient production of goods and services we desire’ one.
And, since no one must participate in paid-work plus with the present social-status premium on paid-work over unpaid-work rectified, it will be a workers’ paradise, which, enabling labour-market deregulation (i.e. everyone is already being looked after so, while we may continue to feel an emotional attachment to the notion of minimum-wages, in practice, there will no longer be a need for them), means our 5.7 million volunteers can get paid something and our young, elderly, relatively unskilled, disabled, carers, 600,000+ unemployed and 1.1 million+ underemployed can, if they desire, get paid-work (or, more work) and, generally, there is full-employment such that ‘anyone who, at the going rate, wants a job, can get one’.
In turn, full-employment will push-up wages yet business, rather than having to tolerate the current crop of unhappy conscripts, will benefit from an army of volunteer workers, which given, with regard to morale and productivity, ‘one bad apple spoils the barrel’, will deliver massive productivity efficiencies.
The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation’s Commitment:
1. Short-term (interim) – At the 2022 Australian Federal Election (unlike in 2019), at least one registered political party will have the UBI as its signature policy such that the UBI is an election issue; and,
2. Medium-term (end) – At the 2025 Australian Federal Election, the winner has a mandate for the implementation of a UBI, which it then prosecutes.
Adequacy of Newstart and related payments and alternative mechanisms to determine the level of income support payments in Australia (Published Submission 10 - Received September 11, 2019) Newstart Senate Submission The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation’s view of Newstart is that it should be scrapped in favour of a much more holistic system – namely the Universal Basic Income (UBI). In addition to putting an end to parliamentary commissions such as this, a UBI’s socio-econoenvironment benefits are ubiquitous: 1. Eradicate poverty; 2. Abolish means-testing; 3. Eliminate welfare-receiving stigma, harassment and entrapment in the never-ending, even intergenerational, dystopian Newstart/Welfare cycle; 4. Create full-employment; 5. Liberate individuals from a survival mentality; 6. Unleash creativity; 7. Advance human capital; 8. Return the economy to the efficient production of goods-and-services without the secondary focus of ‘creating/protecting jobs’; 9. End the political use of the public sector to soak up the unemployed in soul-destroying environment-degrading jobs; 10. Rectify the overwhelming social-status premium on paid-work vis-a-vis unpaid-work. 11. Radically reduce our environmental problems; 12. Encourage urban decentralization; 13. Demolish the present welfare-to-work disincentive; 14. Decrease tax-avoidance as taxpayers observe their taxes no longer being wasted, which allows lower marginal rates and decreases the black-market; 15. Inside a decade, double national effective-income; 16. Maximise utility/happiness; and, 17. Engender intra-societal trust, respect and love (friendship) – i.e. maximise societal-unity. Regarding each of these issues, doesn’t it feel like we’re constantly swimming against the current? So, why try and address each of these issues separately in an ad-hoc fashion, when the UBI can collectively address them? In a post-Industrial Revolution (i.e. societal-wide rather than community-based) society, the natural foundation needed is the Universal Opportunity Foundation (UOF) whose natural morality-consistent cornerstones are: 1. Universal Liberal Democracy; 2. Universal Healthcare; 3. Universal Education; and, 4. The Universal Basic Income (UBI). Thus, in Australia, The UBI is the last outstanding socio-econo-environment harmonizing cornerstone. Nevertheless, there are two major objections to a UBI: 1. The ‘enormous cost’; and, 2. ‘Rewarding laziness’. Regarding affordability, first, the UBI is not a cost on society in the way the income schemes we currently have are – i.e. there’s virtually zero Dead Weight Loss (DWL) because there is no massive bureaucratic infrastructure, which doesn’t contribute to producing anything we really want like food, fuel, cars, houses, computers etc.. On the contrary, rather than being a cost, the UBI is a transfer from taxpayers to citizens. That is, whereas inefficiency and waste and undue health costs and crime are all ‘costs’, the UBI is a ‘transfer’ – i.e. far from being a loss, it’s still a benefit just to a slightly different group – i.e. from taxpayers to citizens, which, of course, has tremendous overlap. So, counterintuitively, a UBI would actually make us much richer – the ‘magic’ middle-class, for instance, would be far better off. Of course, as well as buying goods and services, wealth can also buy the intangibles of leisure-time and freedom – for example, to spend more time with and/or caring for family. First, the headline cost for $1500 a month for every adult citizen (assume 20 million) and $400 a month for every child (assume 4 million) is about $380 billion AUD – which is, indeed, massive. However, this can be achieved via just three not too invasive changes (on 2018 figures): 1. The social services budget is about $175 billion - so, we can use about 150 of it for the UBI and use the remaining $25 to top up the UBI for those over 65 – there’s no more Centrelink and other wasteful non-productive means-testing, stigma-manufacturing, frustration-generating, mental-health-crucifying and mistake-making bureaucracies; 2. The tax-free threshold is gone - people now pay tax on their first dollar of paid-work – that’s around $35 billion; 3. There is a 20% full-breadth GST ($200 billion) - the current 10% gap-ridden one only gets $60 billion - so, net $140 billion, which as well as minimizing distortion (i.e. if everything rises in price by 20% it doesn’t change people’s decisions much) means the rich cannot avoid it, multinationals cannot avoid it and, with everyone paying some GST, the taxpayer-to-citizen overlap is maximized (i.e. everyone is receiving and everyone is, according to their demonstrated capacity to do so, contributing, which is great for societal-unity). Total is about $325 billion, which, to begin with, leaves around $55 billion outstanding. However, the economy-wide efficiency gains are astronomical: 1. The economy becomes re-focused on the efficient production of goods and services we desire rather than also being focused on creating jobs for the sake of creating jobs; 2. The minimum wage is no longer needed because people are taken care of - this means Australia’s 5.7 million volunteers can get paid a little, the 600,000 unemployed can get jobs, the 1.1 million underemployed can get more work, the disabled and those with irregular hours available (i.e. carers) can get work and they can all pay some income tax; 3. Business is unleashed; 4. Creativity is unleashed; 5. Human capital sky-rockets; 6. Despite no longer having a minimum wage, most wages actually get bidden up; 7. A truly happy society - produces enormous trust pay-offs - goodbye class-warfare and identity-warfare - goodbye poverty and homelessness - crime, mental health, domestic violence etc. are all drastically lowered to the point, rather than being out-of-control, they become manageable; 8. All the extremely talented people from Centrelink et al are unleashed into productive employment; 9. It becomes a workers’ paradise because people don’t have to work, which means business has to get much better at constructing positive-workplaces, which in turn turbo-charges productivity; 10. Tradeables such as the car industry suddenly become competitive (I worked at Ford and some of the foot-shooting stories...); 11. The next generation of children will be cared for much better, which will translate into an intergenerational societal-wide benefit; 12. As stated, a full-breadth GST is non-distortionary - if everything goes up by 20% it doesn’t change decision-making - plus the rich and the multinationals can’t avoid it 13. ... Regarding lazy people, there will be vastly fewer - most so-called lazy people have been so lashed by their situation and are so broken, they escape and rebel into laziness, drug and alcohol abuse and violence. [Virtually everyone wants to contribute and to be valued for that contribution.] With an opportunity foundation and freedom, laziness will be reasonlessly self-destructive behavior. Perhaps, the biggest ‘problem’ with a UBI is that it annihilates traditional class-warfare and soothes identity-warfare. Thus, it takes the rug from under those political organisations, which inter-temporally share power through toggling their wins based on class-warfare and identity-politics issues. Nevertheless, despite this political weakness, the UBI is a fully-fledged societally-unifying economic-efficiency-maximising and environmentally-sustaining cornerstone, which is, therefore, a worthy replacement for the, at-best, second-best Newstart. Paul Ross Founder The Citizen’s Dividend OrganisationCoopetitionism: Optimally Civilisational Governmenthttps://www.facebook.com/paul.ross.798 https://twitter.com/paulross2
