March 8, 2020
The Universal Basic Income (UBI) is an automatic stabiliser, which automatically and efficiently provides everyone with their Personal Survival Income (PSI) including those thumped by drought, bushfires and disease (Socio-Econo-Enviro-Disease (SEED)) including coronavirus quarantining.
International Women’s Day:
No single policy reform will assist women more — particularly those who are
Aboriginal, migrant, domestic violence victims, homeless and with mothering or other caring duties – than a Universal Basic Income (UBI).
Hence, with the number of women in economics as few as in STEM, perhaps, if there were more, we would already have a UBI; however, in my experience, women economists (and women in the social-services industry) are not disproportionately championing it.
Empower Women:
No matter women’s other circumstances, guarantee them a Personal Survival Income (PSI) going into their personal bank account each fortnight in perpetuity.
Hi
I hope you are well.
This is a copy of a speech given by The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) at Melbourne’s Unitarian Church on Sunday February 23, 2020.
A digital copy, which was replayed on Community Radio 3CR, will be made available on the CDO website …
Catastrophe
Currently, aren’t we facing a perfect-storm of social, economic and environmental (SEE) calamities?
Can it be a coincidence they are culminating all at once?
And, if not a coincidence mustn’t these catastrophes be due to humanity systemically violating nature?
That is, mustn’t we have at least one core societal system that is either superfluous, missing or seriously misaligned? …
Nature
I’m going to start with the following hypothesis, …
‘Nature is characterised by survival/reproduction competition, which is actually an interspecies and intraspecies war.’
And, in this war, lifeforms battle both directly — i.e. to the survival/reproduction death — and indirectly, through competing for food, territory and mates.
In addition, at the intersection of top-down nature and bottom-up individuals is ‘evolution’.
And, out of evolution, there evolved Cooperation.
Cooperation
Cooperation is purely a phenomenon for improving an individual’s chance of survival/reproduction competing.
That is, there is cooperation solely in order to compete.
Hence, many lifeforms may be, what can be termed, ‘cooperatively-competitive’.
Cooperative-Competition
The Cooperative-Competition model involves individuals subordinating their individual survival/reproduction behaviour to cooperating with the group so that the group’s combined survival/reproduction behaviour is increased — preferably maximised.
And, one of the ways in which the group’s survival/reproduction behaviour is maximised is via limited internal competition that doesn’t result in the death of its individuals.
Thus, beneath nature’s overarching competition and within cooperation, there is a sub-level of competition.
Sub-Level Competition
Internal-to-the-group sub-level competition potentially consists of:
1. Positive-Competition or Cooperative-Competition, which should be maximised; and,
2. Negative-Competition or Uncooperative-Competition, which should be minimised.
In most cases, evolution does this by default.
And, out of this Cooperative-Competition, there also derives specialisation.
Specialisation
In bacteria, an example of internal-competition leading to specialisation is gene-expression.
In other more complex animals — such as bees — skill specialisation can be honed through repetition or ‘practise’.
In sentient-animals, practise can be in the form of mock competition either against nature — for example, a monkey swinging from the tree for fun — or against others, within the group, through play.
And, regarding, non-practise internal-competition, while an individual may, for example, be beaten to the particular food it prefers, it will usually get something.
However, regarding specialisation, in sentient-animals, it requires trust.
That is, if one is going to specialise, one must trust that others will fulfil their role.
Trust
An individual may develop trust toward:
1. Another individual; and/or,
2. A system.
Trust is developed via the repetition of a consistently positive interaction.
Meanwhile, internal-competition improves the capacity of the group to compete within their greater environment — i.e. within nature.
However, within such Cooperative-Competition, there emerges social-status.
Social-Status
Social-status may be high, which delivers survival/reproduction privilege, or low, which delivers survival/reproduction hardship.
And, with increased social-status comes increased competitive power and vice-versa.
So, individuals compete for social-status.
And, in so competing, this assists their skills and, therefore, their capacity to help the group.
So, with the desire for increased social-status ubiquitous, there are four ways to gain it:
1. Beauty or charisma;
2. Earn power via contributing;
3. Manufacture Illusory power via pretence;
4. Take power via force.
However, in most sentient-animal groups, fortunately for its members, there is a decentralisation of power because the group is confined such that everyone is familiar with one another.
Meanwhile, the supreme manifestation of cooperation is …. Society.
Society
From bacteria to coral to bees to sentient-animals — including humans — there are societies.
Regarding sentient-animals, the mantra is:
‘If there is no trust then there is no society’
However, while in most sentient-animal societies (including traditional human ones), everyone knows each other, eventually humans became settlers.
And, with settlement, human societies grew such that they became ‘societies of strangers’.
Societies of Strangers
In the case where one does not know someone, how can one trust that person?
The answer is, ….. systems.
And, while the bottom-up systems relating to customs, culture and religion go a long way to achieving trust, an overarching top-down societal-wide trust-invoking system is also required.
Such a construct, we term, ‘government’.
Government
Originally, government came about for security reasons both:
1. Internal, especially thievery; and,
2. External — i.e. clashes with other societies.
However, more broadly, governments should be exclusively focused on a whole-of-society foundation, which, devoted to maximising Net Cooperative-Competition, may be termed, ‘infrastructure’.
Infrastructure
While government should be confined to infrastructure, due to the, until now, absence of a holistic narrative regarding nature, governance has both included many non-infrastructure distortions and excluded many infrastructure necessities.
Regarding infrastructure, it can be physical, managerial or regulatory.
Specifically, it includes:
1. Security — i.e. courts, police, prisons and military;
2. Natural monopolies — such as ports, roads and rail;
3. Merit-based regulation — which promotes merit-based reward and eradicates corruption;
4. Market competition regulation — such as corporate law, which promotes transparency, accountability and the flow of information; and,
5. Universal Opportunity Infrastructure (UOI).
Universal Opportunity Infrastructure (UOI)
Universal Opportunity Infrastructure (UOI) consists of 4 cornerstones:
1. Universal Liberal Democracy;
2. Universal Education;
3. Universal Healthcare; and,
4. Universal Basic Income (UBI), which is a certain amount of money (say, $1,500 per month) paid unconditionally and universally to all citizens provided one is not in jail and not overseas.
Individuals need all four cornerstones in order to maximise their human-capital, which is synonymous to maximising both their sense of self-worth and their societal contribution.
And, since the Industrial Revolution, the first three have naturally evolved through struggle, which has sometimes even included war.
However, regarding the UBI, instead, there evolved a second-best substitute, which may be termed the Safety Net Income (SNI) system.
Safety Net Income (SNI)
With a UBI not implemented at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in retrospect, Safety Net Income (SNI) began with the implementation of minimum wages.
However, since minimum wages only applied to those in paid-employment — i.e. they weren’t universal — this kick-started pressure for additional Band-Aiding — i.e. what we term, ‘Income Welfare’.
Hence, over generations, there was added Aged Pensions, Disability Pensions, Unemployment Benefits, Student Allowances and a plethora of ever-changing child, family and other payments/subsidies.
However, in comparison to the UBI, Safety Net Income has institutionalised immeasurable wastage and inefficiency.
The Jobs for Jobs’ Sake Economy
Ideally, the economy should be confined to: ‘the efficient production of the goods and services we desire’.
However, currently, because we need to give people jobs in order for them to achieve their Personal Survival Income (PSI), the economy has increasingly become a ‘Jobs for Jobs’ sake’ phenomenon.
The consequential distortions are mind-boggling.
Distortions
First, it is well to remember that paid-work is the major cause of environmental degradation.
[Fancy causing environmental degradation for no ‘efficient production of goods and services we desire’ reason — a lose-lose.]
Second, regarding the Safety Net Income system, it creates:
1. Stigma, which leads to mental health problems, which may culminate in such horrors as domestic violence and suicide;
2. Gaps, which leads to crime;
3. A loss of Unpaid-Carers, which, whether raising children or looking after the infirm, is the most important job in our society; and,
4. Escapism — whether alcohol, nicotine, other drugs, gambling, violence — which leads to incalculable Unnecessary Suffering.
Third, there is the waste of the monstrous administering and means-testing bureaucracy of Centrelink (not to mention the private Job-Search Network), which, despite its incredibly talented people, makes too many stress-causing mistakes.
Fourth, we have a public service, which is partially used to soak up people who, under the current Safety Net Income system, would otherwise be unemployed.
Fifth, libertarians take note, without the default freedom to say ‘no’ — for example, to one’s employer — freedom is illusory.
Hence, rather than our workplaces being full of happy productive volunteers, they are full of unhappy complaining conscripts yet everyone knows, ‘just one bad apple spoils the barrel’.
Sixth, it even creates a welfare-to-work distortion wherein welfare-recipients are incentivised to shy away from paid-work because it will result in them losing their welfare.
Thus, the jobs for jobs’ sake economy is also, in soccer parlance, an ‘own-goal economy’.
The Own-Goal Economy
Around one-half of our economy (GDP) consists of:
1. Non-productive jobs;
2. Creating inefficiencies; or,
3. Attempting to fix or manage those same inefficiencies.
This own-goal economy means instead of sharing the fruits of a 4 goal win, since the 4 goals actually represent a ‘3 to 1’ score, we only share the two goal difference.
Yes, with a UBI, we would conservatively be twice as prosperous — hence, as well as the poor being better-off, even the rich and middle-class can be better-off.
However, most overarchingly, the Safety Net Income system does nothing for what modern society most needs — i.e. it does nothing to engender foundational individual empowerment and trust — on the contrary, doubly damagingly, it detracts from them.
Thus, with distrust and disharmony promoted, we have class-warfare and, increasingly, identity-warfare.
Class-Warfare & Identity-Warfare
Regarding Class-warfare and Identity-warfare, for those individuals who aren’t provided with an opportunity foundation and are instead effectively outcast (especially when it’s intergenerational), why attempt to be part of society?
And, if one can’t altogether leave society, why contribute to it?
Why not let escapism take over? Why not let one’s anger take-over?
Only the UBI will produce the whole-of-society efficiency and trust that will extinguish class and identity warfare.
However, unlike our progression to the other 3 cornerstones, we can’t, at least without our society first collapsing, evolve out of the Safety Net Income system…
The Manual Requirement for UBI Implementation
The Safety Net Income System doesn’t represent a mere wandering off the Universal Basic Income path.
That is, it’s not like the other 3 Universal Opportunity Infrastructure cornerstones.
For instance, it’s not like Democracy where we could start off with wealthy white male landowners, which we did, and then gradually add everyone else.
No — rather than just wandering off the Universal Basic Income path such that we only need to detour back again, our Safety Net Income system has driven us off a cliff.
Thus, preferring to just build-on what we already have by either increasing benefits — for example, ‘The Raise the Rate’ campaign — or adding yet more layers — for example, the Job Guarantee — if we want the UBI, akin to an up-cliff battle, we must consciously implement it
That is, because implementing the UBI requires scrapping most of the Safety Net Income systems we currently possess, it requires a deliberate holistic decision.
So, how could we pay for a UBI?
UBI: A Transfer Not A Cost
Providing $18,000 per year to our 18 million (non-incarcerated in-country adult Australian citizens) plus $5,000 to the guardians of our 4.5 million children equals $350 billion.
Using 2018 figures, this may be achieved via 3 means:
1. Reallocating $150 billion of our $175 billion Social Services budget (yes, we are already spending half of what we need), which still leaves $25 billion to top up pensions and disability payments);
2. Abolish the Tax-Free Threshold ($35 billion); and,
3. Insert a 20% full-breadth GST (no — it’s not regressive when the disempowered are net beneficiaries; also, the wealthy and multinationals’ capacity to avoid a GST is particularly limited), which results in $200 billion minus $60 billion (from the current 10% gap-ridden GST) equalling an additional $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, as stated, we will be, at least, twice as prosperous, which amounts to a win-win-win in which all community segments — the wealthy, middle-class and, currently, disempowered — are winners.
In the process, the economy will also be transformed from an ‘environment-destroying jobs-for-jobs’-sake own-goal’ one to ‘an efficient production of goods and services we desire’ one.
Then, there is the massive permeating benefit of achieving full-employment.
Full-Employment
With everyone both taken care of and possessing the freedom to say ‘no’, there can be significant labour market deregulation, which will allow full-employment such that Australia’s volunteers (currently 5.7 million), disabled and carers (with irregular available hours) can, if they wish, also obtain paid-work.
With whole-of-society minimum wages relaxed, anyone whose labour, for whatever reason, is currently not worth (to an employer) the minimum wage of $19.49 an hour will then be able, if they wish, to obtain paid-work and then, through that work, increase their skills and, therefore, their labour’s value.
[Note: it is no longer exploitation when, with a UBI, they have the freedom to say ‘no’.]
In turn, full-employment results in a massive flow of power to employees who can now quit and, if they like, easily find another job (or create their own business) thereby taking their skills and knowledge elsewhere, which doubles as an immediate punishment to a rogue employer.
Hence, discrimination, harassment and bullying will be virtually vanquished without relying on cumbersome inefficient resource-wasting workplace laws, regulations and legal proceedings.
Hence, a workers’ paradise will result such that both wages and conditions will be ferociously bid-up.
Yet, employers will benefit from:
1. Workplaces populated by enthusiastic volunteers rather than unenthused conscripts;
2. Freedom to say ‘no’ ubiquity, which results in bosses being immediately notified of problems such that, rather than festering, they can be promptly addressed;
3. The streamlining of firing (though, as stated, employees will still have exponentially more market-power than currently), which promotes hiring; and,
4. Being able to exclusively focus on their business rather than also being a social-service instrument.
Hence, business (including manufactures and other tradables) will boom.
With full-employment and business thriving, tax-revenue will also surge, which will allow for greater spending on infrastructure — security, natural monopoly and Universal Opportunity.
Thus, the massive naturally achieved full-employment benefits will be shared between:
1. Employees;
2. Employers; and,
3. Those not in paid-work via, in addition to the UBI, the booming ‘efficient production of goods and services we desire’ economy’s: increased tax revenue; better directed government expenditure; and, more efficient allocation towards consumer goods and services.
And yet, at the risk of sounding like one of those late-night television commercials, there will still be even more socio-econo-environment ripples.
The Rippling Socio-Econo-Environment Benefits
First, poverty will be vanquished.
Second, natural disaster, injury, sickness or relationship breakdown will not also result in a loss of survival-necessary income.
Third, Materialism will have the rug pulled from under it as the social-status premium on paid-work over unpaid-work is removed.
Fourth, no longer distracted by the need to obtain personal survival income, as well as the raising of children and caring of the infirm being resolutely planted as our number one priority, our scientists, artists, writers and entrepreneurs will have their creativity unleashed.
Fifth, our major cities will be relieved of much of their congestion through the UBI’s natural decentralisation effects as those relying solely or predominantly on the UBI for income are incentivised into finding cheaper living conditions.
This will revitalise our towns and regions, which will be in addition to the revitalisation due to its current residents’ spending their UBI in those areas.
Fifth, societal-trust will boom. Societal-unity will boom. Utility or Happiness will be maximised.
Conclusion
Until we adopt the UBI and abolish the Safety Net Income system, we will continue the exponentiating Unnecessary Suffering of our Socio-Econo-Enviro- calamities.
Frankly, while UBI implementation first requires sufficient universal education of its cost/benefits so as to reach the necessary critical-mass for the making of that decision, given The UBI’s systemic holistic benefits, sufficient understanding is all that’s holding back its adoption.
Paul Ross
Founder
The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (Australia)
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/Survival Income (UBI/USI) — No, not yet.
The Socio-Econo-Environment-Harmonising Universal Survival Income (USI):
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 $150 billion of the $175 billion Social Services budget (yes, we are already spending half of what we need), which still leaves $25 billion to top up pensions and disability payments);
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), which results in $200 billion minus $60 billion (from the current 10% gap-ridden GST) equaling an additional $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 USI easily afforded, we will be, at least, twice as prosperous such that it will amount to a win-win-win in which all community segments — the wealthy; the middle-class; and, the currently disempowered — all win.
In the process, the economy will also be transformed from an ‘environment-destroying jobs-for-jobs’-sake’ ‘own-goal’ one to ‘an efficient production of goods and services we desire’ one.
Then, there is the massive permeating benefit of achieving full-employment.
That is, with everyone both taken care of and invested with the freedom to say ‘no’ to an employer plus the rectification of the present social-status premium on paid-work over unpaid-work, which will dissipate the stigma of not having paid-work, this means there will be a massive flow of power to the disempowered and working classes, which will result in a workers’ paradise.
Yet, this workers’ paradise will enable significant labour-market deregulation (i.e. everyone is already being looked after so, while we may continue to feel an emotional attachment to, for instance, economy-wide minimum-wages, in practice, there will no longer be a need for them).
And, this means our 5.7 million volunteers can get paid something and our young, elderly, relatively unskilled, disabled, unpaid-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 addition, the USI will eradicate the current welfare-to-paid-work distortion where there is a disincentive to acquire paid-work because, in doing so, one loses one’s welfare.
Furthermore, full-employment will result in wages and conditions being bid-up.
And yet, business, as well as benefiting from deregulation, 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.
This means our tradables’ sector — especially manufacturing — will roar back to life.
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 USI as its signature policy such that the USI 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 USI, which it then prosecutes.