[Also published as Submission 2 (of 74) in the Initial Submissions of the Productivity Commission ‘5-Year Productivity Inquiry: Advancing Prosperity’ (released March 17, 2023): https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/337312/sub002-productivity.pdf]
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2022: “Australia’s Year of Governmental System Optimisation”
With Ukraine invaded, tyrants emboldened, the U.S. still imploding, Europe stunned, Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania & Taiwan/South Korea/Japan imperilled,
‘troublesome’ location-territory-and-resource-rich Australia/Antarctica as high as Number 2 on Xi’s list and a Federal Election due, in order to maximise our chance of prospering, 2022 must be the year Australia completes its journey to full-Coopetitionism.
[Coopetitionism: Cooperation first & foremost and Competition the treasured second, which exists as rules-based sport and democracy and may be imagined as an efficient non-exploitative free-market economy.]
‘Coopetitionist Infrastructure not anti-Coopetitionist Band-Aids.’
Specifically, we must abolish Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS) via implementing ‘The USI-Reform’ (please see below).
We must set ourselves this task because only it maximises the chance of saving ourselves, saving our sovereignty, saving our descendants’ future and also projecting a reincarnation of the West, which will both light the way for our allies (including the U.S.) and undermine anti-Coopetitionist Authoritarian-Illegitimates via inspiring their citizens to Coopetitionism.
No major (or minor) Australian political party has a definitive, let alone optimising, plan.
Given the imminent election (assuming no punctuating ‘State of Emergency’), all Australian citizens can contribute.
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February 26, 2022
Hi
First, the Liberal/National Party Government, the Minister for Families and Social Services and Minister for Women’s Safety, Senator the Honourable Anne Ruston and the Department of Social Services are to be admired for this historic reply and, in-general, their preparedness to respond to citizen concerns.
Nevertheless, that the above letter’s author has requested anonymity implies even the current system’s most vested are shy of its logic.
Regarding the Department of Social Services:
‘Our mission is to improve the wellbeing of individuals and families in Australian communities.’
However, wouldn’t Australian’s wellbeing best be improved via abolishing Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS)?
[Note: Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS) arose out of the Industrial Revolution when subsistence-farmers transitioned away from self-sufficiency to become income-earning factory-machinists, which meant they lost direct control over their survival needs. Hence, The Universal Survival Income (USI/UBI), which differentiates Survival-Income from Luxury-Income, is justifiable as an Industrial Revolution inheritance.]
Doesn’t SIS dominate modern Australia? After all, aren’t citizens forced to prioritise obtaining their personal and familial Survival-Income first?
And, regarding this particularly insidious form of Slavery, isn’t The Universal Survival Income (USI) abolitionist?
Yet, while the best way ‘to improve the wellbeing of [Australian] individuals and families’ is for The USI to be implemented, with the Department overseer to the current income-Welfare system, perhaps they acknowledge a vested-interest in the status-quo.
Nevertheless, on a positive note, the Department’s letter avoids the main misconceived ‘lay’ arguments of:
- ‘Something-for-nothing’ – i.e. any and all inheritance is, by definition, ‘something for nothing’ and, if not for inheriting the Industrial Revolution, where would any of us be?
- ‘Encouraging laziness’ – would receiving The USI of, for instance, $20,000 per year (when, unlike our income-Welfare system, without losing it, it can be ‘topped-up’ with Luxury-income) discourage you from contributing to your, your family’s, your community’s and your society’s lifestyle and future?
- ‘Encouraging wasteful expenditure such as on alcohol and other drugs’ – yet, currently, isn’t Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS) the main driver of such escapism?
- ‘It’s Socialist and it will bankrupt the country’ – Socialism is defined as ‘the means of production, distribution, and exchange being owned or regulated by the community as a whole’; yet, with The USI, as shall be shown, government will be smaller, citizens freer, our labour-market significantly deregulated, the private sector even more important, our budget permanently in surplus and, due to prodigious efficiencies, we will become manifoldly wealthier.
Regarding ‘something-for-nothing’, we each inherit all-but-infinity for nothing – i.e. we inherit our conceived existence, our family, our society (including its history, culture, philosophy and institutions), our Human-Organisation, Science & Technology (HOST), our natural-environment (including the air we breathe) and some even inherit extraordinary wealth. As for ‘encouraging laziness and wastefulness’, all the world’s trials show the exact opposite, which is hardly surprising given …
In the current system, a single on Jobseeker has an income of around $16,367 per year, which means, if they obtain a part-time job, they may be financially worse-off and even if they secure a full-time (38 hours p.w.) minimum-wage job, which has an after-tax salary of $36,248, because they lose Jobseeker, they will only receive an extra ($36248 – 16367) $19,881 minus all the extra expenses such as transport. However, with the unconditional USI of $20,000, there is incentive because they will receive $20,000 plus the job-income as a ‘top up’, which totals well in excess of $50,000.
Regarding the Government’s reply’s specifics, there are 5 main objections:
- Competing Priorities – i.e. ‘The Government needs to balance a range of competing priorities when determining the direction of policy.’
- Financing – i.e. ‘The introduction of a UBI would require very heavy taxation and [it] would greatly increase for average working households.’
- Tightly Targeted Welfare System – i.e. ‘Australia has the [world’s] most redistributive system of taxes and transfers … because [the welfare system] is tightly targeted, which is the direct opposite of a UBI system.’
- Full-Employment – i.e. ‘The Government also believes all Australians deserve to be included in the economic and social life of the community. One of the best ways of achieving this is through having a job. Everyone who can work should have the opportunity to do so and those who are unable to work should be adequately supported.’
- Improving Living Standards – i.e. ‘The Government strongly believes job creation is the key to improving people’s living standards and reducing welfare dependency.’
1. Competing Priorities
‘The Government needs to balance a range of competing priorities when determining the direction of policy.’
The government has competing priorities because it hasn’t adopted ‘Coopetitionism’ as its overarching narrative – i.e.
‘Coopetitionism: Cooperation first and foremost and Competition the treasured second.’
In nature, all societies – from bacteria to traditional human tribes – are Coopetition-constructs.
In modern human societies, this exists as rules-based sport and democracy and may be imagined as an efficient non-exploitative (i.e. Survival-Income-Slavery Abolitionist) free-market economy.
However, within a society, if there is long-term unresolved anti-Coopetitionism – i.e. the prioritisation of Competition above Cooperation (for example, the extreme of Civil War) – then, eventually, the society will split or collapse.
Thus, incorporating Maslow’s ‘self-actualisation’, government’s mission should be to, via its systems:
“Maximise citizens’ Coopetition-contributive self-actualisation.”
Regarding the society/citizen interface, this mission’s ‘Coopetition-contributive’ component strengthens the society, which foundationally assists citizens, and its ‘self-actualisation’ component optimises the individual citizen’s wellbeing.
“Maximising citizens’ Coopetition-contributive self-actualisation” requires Citizen Empowerment Infrastructure’s (CEI) 5 ‘guaranteed and unconditional’ cornerstones:
- Universal Rule of Coopetition-maximising Law
- Universal Liberal Democracy
- Universal Education
- Universal Healthcare
- The Universal Survival Income (USI).
While, in Australia, we have robust (and, predominantly, bipartisan) versions of the first 4, The USI’s absence results in the pervasive anti-Coopetitionism of Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS).
The existence of SIS has, among other things, created the modern Left/Right division, which is variously also referred to as ‘class-warfare’, ‘perpetual struggle’ and the ‘us and them’ ‘worker versus boss’ concept.
In turn, ‘class-warfare’ – far from being static – is fragmenting into ‘identity-warfare’.
Imagine: with Coopetitionism inherently encompassing the full-spectrum of human-rights, all the double-negative phrases (and their accompanying legislation) such as ‘don’t be a bully’ can be replaced with the single uplifting moral ambition of ‘be Coopetitionist’.
Hence, regarding the Government’s ‘competing priorities’, Survival-Income-Slavery has created most of them.
Thus, since SIS is solved via The USI, the ‘competing priorities’ problem is optimally rectified via ‘The USI-Reform’, which consists of substituting The USI for both:
- Our current income-Welfare system (inc-Wel) – including abolishing Centrelink, Job Service Provider (JSP) contracts and Jobseeker payments
- The Universal Minimum Hourly Wage (UMHoW) – currently, $20.33 – which will permanently eradicate Unemployment/Underemployment and unleash small/big business.
[‘Kill 2 Band-Aids with 1 Infrastructure’.]
‘The USI-Reform’ solves the ‘competing priorities’ issue because, in both abolishing Survival-Income-Slavery and doing so minimally, it is a Coopetitionism-consistent PUSH-eradicator – i.e. it eradicates Poverty, Unemployment/Underemployment, Stigma (‘the dole-bludger’ narrative including its racist and disablist variants) & Harassment (‘mutual obligations’).
2. Financing
‘The introduction of a UBI would require very heavy taxation and [it] would greatly increase for average working households.’
The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) pitches The Universal Survival Income (USI) at:
- $20,000 per year for every non-jailed in-country adult citizen
- $5,000 per year for each child (to their guardian/s)
- Pensioners over 661/2 years-old and the disabled receive a no-disadvantage ‘top-up’.
The USI-Reform may be financed via:
- Eradicating the income-Welfare system (around 45% of the total revenue required)
- Abolishing the income-tax-free-threshold
- Extending the GST (currently, 10% partial-breadth) to 20% full-breadth, which is an effective GST increase of around 14%
- The resultant massive efficiencies [Discussed below in section 5].
So, rather than requiring ‘very heavy taxation’, on the contrary, for the bottom 95% of the population, the tax increases due to abolishing the income-tax-free-threshold and raising the GST are outweighed by receiving The USI.
That is, even a person earning $165,000 (before income-tax) who spends all their after-tax income (thereby maximising the GST they pay) will be directly better-off.
The Maths:
Currently, a person on $165,000 receives a net-income of $115,583 (i.e. after income-tax).
With The USI-Reform, this person will also pay the extras of:
- Due to the income-tax-free-threshold abolition, $3,458 (i.e. 19% of 18,200), which means their net-income will decrease to $112,125
- If they spend all their net-income, they will pay around $15,698 extra in GST (i.e. $112,125 x 14%).
Thus, they will lose $3,458 + $15,698 = $19,156; however, they are receiving The USI of $20,000 so they are still directly $844 better-off.
Moreover, there are all the indirect advantages – i.e. their partners and adult children also receive The USI, which means they are assured of never being obliged to subsidise family/friends. Guardians of children also receive the relevant proportion of the child’s $5,000.
Furthermore, with the wider society also all receiving it, there are colossal whole-of-society spin-off benefits and efficiencies, which, in turn, leads to plummeting non-GST taxes. [As mentioned, these are detailed below in section 5.]
Therefore, the Government’s and Department’s assertion The USI ‘would require very heavy taxation and [it] would greatly increase for average working households’ is demonstrably false.
And, given such trusted-source misinformation is harming millions of Disempowered Australians and Australian society per se, on behalf of the Australian public, we demand the Department formally (and, particularly given the imminent Federal election, in a reasonable timeframe – preferably, by March 15, 2022) acknowledge and correct its error. A simple statement of correction will suffice. [Perhaps Treasury and/or the Tax Office can assist with the pre-statement analysis.]
3. Tightly Targeted Welfare System
‘Australia has the [world’s] most redistributive system of taxes and transfers … because [the welfare system] is tightly targeted, which is the direct opposite of a UBI system.’
[Note: Whether or not ‘Australia has the [world’s] most redistributive system of taxes and transfers’ is not debated here as our concern is not an international comparative one but whether Australia’s system is optimal and, if not, whether The USI-Reform contributes to Coopetition-maximisation.]
First, due to Australia’s income-Welfare system’s ‘targeting’, its tax and transfer system is bureaucratic and inefficient – for instance, the monolithic Centrelink.
Targeting also generates Poverty, Unemployment, Stigma & Harassment (PUSH) ripple-effects:
- Poverty – i.e. via mistakes, delays and when citizens aren’t sufficiently equipped to navigate the targeting system including when they are socially ill-at-ease, mentally-ill, disabled, lack technology (such as an internet connection, a computer and/or a mobile-phone), have a comparatively low IQ and/or a comparatively low education (including regarding technology)
- Unemployment – i.e. paradoxically, the gain-paid-work-lose-income-welfare disincentive, especially for those living precariously, discourages the uptake of paid-work
- Stigma – i.e. ‘the dole-bludger’ narrative
- Harassment – i.e. ‘mutual obligations’.
In these ways, targeting also causes mental-illness.
The Productivity Commission Report on Mental Health (released June 2020):
‘In total, mental illness, on a conservative basis, is costing Australia about $200-220 billion per year. To put that in context, this is just over one-tenth of the size of Australia’s entire economic production in 2019. The cost is between $550 million and $600 million per day. Not all of this cost is avoidable, but there is considerable scope for Australia to do better.’
The key to both individual citizen mental-health and societal-health is: ‘maximising Coopetition-contributive self-actualisation’, which, as detailed, is assisted by The USI-Reform.
Moreover, targeting spawns crime as a way of:
- Avoiding poverty
- Avoiding income-Welfare’s ‘mutual obligations’
- Escapism – i.e. via illegal drugs, some citizens ‘escape’ from the Disempowerment associated with such anti-Coopetitionism as being alienated from mainstream society, ‘the dole-bludger’ narrative, being indoctrinated as ‘useless’ and/or a general lack of opportunity/choice.
Thus, targeting spawns a ‘mental-illness-crime’ cycle.
Furthermore, denying citizens a Survival-Income for any reason, which is what targeting’s conditionalization does, is uncivilised – i.e. even those in jail automatically receive an ‘in-kind’ Survival-Income of food, water and shelter. And, with Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW) guaranteeing some Unemployment, targeting’s Stigma & Harassment cannot be ‘cruel to be kind’ justified but is, on the contrary, also uncivilised.
Uncivilised societal systems will necessarily manufacture uncivilised behaviour from its citizens – for instance, we cannot minimise domestic-violence without implementing The USI-Reform.
Regarding targeting’s ‘logic’, we may also ask, why isn’t it used for the other 4 (i.e. non-income) Citizen Empowerment Infrastructure (CEI) cornerstones such as for child-Education or Democracy?
The answer is, in comparison to being ‘guaranteed and unconditional’, ‘targeting’ is, at best (such as with Healthcare), inefficient and, at worst (such as with Rule of Coopetition-maximising Law), ridiculous.
4. Full-Employment
‘The Government also believes all Australians deserve to be included in the economic and social life of the community. One of the best ways of achieving this is through having a job. Everyone who can work should have the opportunity to do so and those who are unable to work should be adequately supported.’
Without alteration, we totally agree; however, The USI-Reform clearly does this infinitely better than the ‘Frankenstein’ UMHoW and inc-Wel system because only The USI-Reform naturally, automatically, efficiently and permanently eradicates Unemployment/Underemployment.
5. Improving Living Standards
‘The Government strongly believes job creation is the key to improving people’s living standards and reducing [income-] welfare dependency.’
With respect, this is an inefficient conflation of 3 concepts:
- Income-Welfare dependency
- Job-creation
- Improving living-standards.
Of the 3, only ‘improving living-standards’ is relevant.
That is, via the principle of ‘policy minimalism’ – including that optimal-efficiency can only be achieved via Coopetitionism-maximising-Infrastructure not Band-Aiding – targeted ‘income-Welfare’, which is a Band-Aid, must be replaced by the new non-targeted ‘income-Infrastructure’ paradigm of The USI-Reform, which:
- Indirectly eradicates the need for job-creation because it eradicates Unemployment
- Directly eradicates income-Welfare dependency because, effectively, it eradicates income-Welfare per se.
Regarding the latter, Oxford languages defines ‘welfare’ as, ‘statutory procedure or social effort designed to promote the basic physical and material well-being of people in need’.
Hence, because it refers to ‘people in need’, Welfare necessarily involves ‘targeting’.
However, as the Department of Social Services points out, The USI does not involve targeting, which implies it is not Welfare or, at least, not confined to Welfare.
Indeed, the income-Infrastructure USI-Reform not only goes exponentially-beyond income-Welfare, it’s also negative-to-positive transformative – i.e. instead of promoting anti-Coopetitionism, on the contrary, it promotes the core government mission of:
“Maximising citizens’ Coopetition-contributive self-actualisation”.
And, regarding society’s ‘living-standards’, while we usually think of it in terms of material ‘dollars-and-cents’, holistically, doesn’t this same USI-Reform-inclusive core-government-mission also maximise ‘living-standards’?
For instance, doesn’t The USI-Reform accommodate such truisms as:
- A household is society’s most important ‘small business’
- The unpaid-carer is society’s most important ‘job’
- Companionship is becoming increasingly important vis-à-vis goods and services production, which is increasingly mechanised
- Children are, literally, society’s future
- Mental-health can only be maximised via self-actualisation
- Government systems are necessarily suboptimal if some citizens choose crime (or jail) as a way of gaining their Survival-Income (Survival-needs) let-alone as a way to self-actualise
- To be civilised, all non-incarcerated in-country citizens must receive a Survival-Income?
Yet, while these truisms indicate that the Econo- is a subset of the Socio-, currently, due to Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS), in terms of perceptions and social-status, the Econo- has been artificially raised above both the Socio- and the Enviro- (natural and international) such that there is:
- The current national mission of Jobs, Jobs, Jobs (Triple-J) politics
- The job-creation obsession
- Jobs-for-jobs’-sake paid-work.
However, the Econo- should be:
‘A Coopetition system that, without exploitation, exclusively efficiently produces and distributes the goods & services we need/desire, which we cannot or don’t wish to produce as individuals’.
Hence, the Econo’s purpose is being increasingly transmuted toward the anti-Coopetitionism perversion of manufacturing paid-work whether it’s required or not and even whether or not it’s counterproductive –socially, environmentally and/or economically.
Thus, while the Econo- is typically perceived as superior to the Socio-, paradoxically, even in purely material or Econo– terms, it has backfired.
That is, since the Industrial Revolution, while per person potential-productivity has improved perhaps 10,000-fold (including, since 2010, more than doubling), Australia’s per capita income is just 216 times that of Burundians, who, as the poorest in the world, are poorer than the 1760-era British.
In a post-Industrial Revolution society, it’s far easier and more efficient to just give everyone a Survival-Income than it is to artificially create jobs for all of them.
Interestingly, while we intuitively understand the importance of production ‘economies-of-scale’ and ‘specialisation’ – for example, we don’t insist each person manufactures their own car – apparently, we think it’s efficient for each citizen to separately, first and foremost, prioritize obtaining their own Survival-Income.
On the contrary, as Coopetitionism demands, we should be Cooperating first and foremost.
Accordingly, rather than being an inefficient cost, The USI-Reform is an Investment, which, akin to Universal Education, generates a multiple Return on that Investment such that our society will become multifariously wealthier.
After all, regarding Universal Education, isn’t our society at least 5 times wealthier than those countries without it?
Also, unlike income-Welfare, which has significant administration costs such as Centrelink, The USI-Reform is virtually entirely a transfer such that there is virtually no loss to society.
In addition, it eradicates labour-market Exploitation – i.e.:
- With a Survival-Income, people don’t have to be in paid-work
- If they wish to be in paid-work, given zero Unemployment, they have plenty of choice.
This means workers will be there because they wish to be there, which will be a boon to productivity.
Moreover, it will encourage increased labour-market freedom such as regarding ‘hire and fire’ legislation.
Furthermore, it allows for the incorporation of increased efficiencies such as the full-breadth GST, which is far less distortionary than most other taxes because prices are uniformly affected (i.e. they are all 20% above the non-GST rate). This is politically palatable because the Disempowered are:
- Directly compensated via The USI
- Indirectly compensated by the eradication of ‘the dole-bludger’ narrative, the abolition of ‘mutual obligations’ and infinitely better access to the labour-market.
Meanwhile, as our economy becomes Coopetition-supercharged, which delivers increased tax revenue, additionally, expenditure on mental-health, law-enforcement, charity and even the Environment (both natural and international) will plummet, which means non-GST taxes will free-fall lest we be buried under ever-increasing budget-surplus avalanches. Of course, with taxes falling, our economy will become ever more productive and, we, ever wealthier.
Nevertheless, in stark contrast, in a matter of months, the job-creation obsession may be about to shunt to its natural dystopian conclusion via crystallising as the Job Guarantee (JG).
A blind-sider of the Right, no matter the various ways it’s dressed-up, the JG is a mechanism for transitioning-to-Communism.
Specifically, the JG is a Government guarantee of full-time paid-work (at or above the Universal Minimum Hourly Wage (UMHoW)) for anyone who wants it.
However, in order to pay for the JG’s paid-work and its bureaucracy, Government must tax the private-sector, which makes the private-sector less competitive, which means it will employ less people, which means there is a requirement for more JG jobs, which means more taxation and so on.
Hence, private enterprise will all but be progressively taxed-out of existence such that the economy will, literally, transition to Communism.
Accordingly, before it’s too late, we implore the Government – via Treasury and/or the Productivity Commission – to model The USI-Reform.
Several years ago, Deloitte said they would model it but then decided, amongst other things, they didn’t have the ability – similarly, we call on them to please take another look. Specifically, we call on Cedric Hodges – Director, National Deloitte Access Economics’ Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling team – to urgently revisit this proposal.
We also call on other suitable organisations – such as banks, accounting firms and university economics’ departments – to consider modelling it.
After all, with tens of thousands of Australian economists measuring, analysing, teaching and, generally, obsessing over Unemployment, surely a few can be spared to analyse this Unemployment-eradicating system.
Conclusion
Our society’s core remaining source of anti-Coopetitionism is Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS).
The presence of Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS) has led to the Band-Aids of:
- Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW), which does not eradicate Exploitation yet leads to Unemployment/Underemployment
- Our equally problematic income-Welfare system.
In turn, the presence of SIS, UMHoW and the income-Welfare system has led to our national mission becoming Jobs, Jobs, Jobs (Triple-J) politics, which is accompanied by the job-creation obsession.
This is perverting our society including, paradoxically, our economy.
Certainly, the government’s job-creation strategy cannot abolish Survival-Income-Slavery (SIS).
Given this, we humbly request the Minister for Families and Social Services and Minister for Women’s Safety, Senator the Honourable Anne Ruston and the rest of the Government urgently reconsider their position, their respective Departments position and, ultimately, the Government’s position on the current UMHoW/inc-Wel/job-creation system vis-à-vis The USI-Reform.
Thank you.
Best regards
Paul Ross
Founder
The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO)
The Civilisationism Organisation (TCO)
Prospective 2022 Senate Candidate (Victoria)