The Univis 2.10 – The Lockdown Silver-Lining: The Joint Lockdown & Locked-Out Solution

Australian Council of Social Service CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie (August 9, 2021) said:

“With Parliament sitting this week, the government can fix our social security system for good to reduce the huge degree of uncertainty and distress people face when lockdowns hit.

“We have lockdowns continuing in our two most populated states – it’s never been clearer that we need stable and adequate income support in place so that people and businesses can get through this long-running crisis.

“The fastest and safest way for people to stay safe is to get access to adequate income support and stay home, not be out trying to get food relief or paid work because they can’t cover the basics in lockdown. 

“If we had an adequate social security system in place that ensured nobody was left to struggle on just $44 a day, we could blunt the severe shocks that sudden, albeit necessary, lockdowns inflict on lives and the economy.”

…

Universal Empowerment Infrastructure’s (USI) 5 Cornerstones:

1. Universal Legal Equality (including merit-based reward)
2. Universal Liberal Democracy (including compulsory-voting)
3. Universal Education
4. Universal Healthcare
5. The Universal Survival Income (USI) substituted for Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW).

In Australia, we already have 4 out of 5.

The USI substituted for UMHoW is the signature policy prerequisite for patriots of nature, humanity, country and fellow-citizens alike.

Yet, while The USI – analogous with the other 4 cornerstones – should be universally-accepted, not a single Australian political party is advocating it.

…

CC:     

• Jon Owen, Pastor & CEO, Wayside Chapel
• Bill Gye (OAM), CEO, Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA)

Notable Women (x3)

[Open invitation to notable women whether from business, social-services, economics, politics, the rural sector, indigenous/minority affairs or other field to please contact us if you are supportive of Civilisationism principles such as infrastructuralised respect and, in particular, The Universal Survival Income (USI), which will disproportionately assist the Disempowered especially unpaid-workers (including carers), which, of course, are disproportionately women.  Your support is required in order to help open minds because aren’t we all fed-up with yet more Band-Aids?  Don’t we all crave a Big Picture infrastructuralised solution?]

August 10, 2021

Hi

Pre-Covid, many Empowered believed it appropriate to dish-out cruel-to-be-kind tough-love to the Disempowered (‘let ’em pull themselves up by their bootstraps’) – many still believe such …

So, the lockdown has a silver-lining.

That is, to some limited extent, the current temporary lockdown – via the loss of control, the pressure, the restrictions on ‘being productive’ (or, ‘worthwhile’) and the unfairness – mimics some of the circumstances our Disempowered citizens permanently face as they are locked-out of mainstream society.

[That said, the lockdown doesn’t mimic the locked-out Stigma & Harassment, which means it doesn’t offer insights into, for instance, what it’s like to be branded a ‘dole-bludger’ and, the subsequent, social-isolationism from, for example, fear of going to a party because then when someone asks, “what do you do?”, you’ll have to fumble around with some justifying explanation as to why, given no one reckons ‘they can make a buck out of paying you a buck’, society should tolerate your existence … ]

At last, mainstream Australia now has a reference point for beginning to contextualise the tragedy of those permanently locked-out, usually, despite the conspiracy theories, through no fault of their own.

Is it your fault there is a lockdown?

Is it their fault there is unemployment, which is solely caused by the national decision to have Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW); is it their fault they are domestic-violence victims; is it their fault, their country has given up on them and, worse still, seeks to harass them; etc?

How you feel now is how some citizens perpetually feel, which creates a vicious spiral because, already Disempowered, this Disempowerment (with no end in sight – i.e. no hope) becomes fertilised with increasing mental-ill-health.

Yet, not coincidentally, the policy solution for our current ‘lockdown’ problem is identical to that for solving our ‘locked-out’ problem – i.e. The Universal Survival Income (USI).

The USI, as well as abolishing Indirect-Slavery – ‘the conditionalization of access to one’s survival-income’ – and eradicating Poverty, Unemployment, Stigma & Harassment (PUSH), also eradicates the phenomenon of being permanently locked-out of mainstream society.

In order to be a civilised country, access to one’s survival-income must be non-negotiable – after all, even prisoners (and even those misbehaving in prison) unconditionally receive their survival-needs.

Moreover, The USI will solve all our culminating exponentiating perfect storm of Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) catastrophes to the point of making them manageable – i.e. it will all but solve the following problems:

• Socio-:
  • Financial-Disempowerment – i.e. Poverty of which one subset is homelessness, which means all the focus on social-housing (including, last week’s ‘National Homelessness Week’) is a counterproductive blurring – instead of spending an entire week highlighting one problem, why not highlight the single self-sustaining solution to virtually all the problems?
  • Social-Disempowerment – i.e. Stigmatisation (‘dole-bludgerism’, which, for example, also fuels racism) and, subsequently, Harassment (including, officially, by Centrelink and job-search agencies under the guise of ‘mutual obligations’)

[Both Financial- and Social-Disempowerment catalyse mental-illness, escapism (including suicide and drug and alcohol abuse), domestic-violence etc]

• Econo-:
  • Unemployment/Underemployment – this is entirely UMHoW-created
  • An economy failing to ‘exclusively produce and deliver the goods & services we desire’; on the contrary, it is increasingly skewed towards:
    • Manufacturing jobs-for-jobs’-sake paid-work
    • Compensating for the USI-absence via Manage-the-Manufactured-Mess (Triple-M) paid-work such as increased mental-illness professionals

[Please note: jobs-for-jobs’-sake paid-work and Triple-M paid-work together constitute, at least, a whopping 50% of the economy with charities alone constituting 11% of GDP and 5.7 million volunteers, which means rectifying this wastage will deliver a trillion dollar ($1,000,000,000,000) per year windfall.]

• Enviro-:
  • Natural – including Global Warming, plastics in our waterways, habitat destruction and the Population Plague – with The USI, our current best envisaged environmental case will, without stress, be easily surpassed [For example, via our USI-leadership, the Developed World will have a demonstrated template, which will lead to smaller families (because they will not need cheap-labour and old-age ‘insurance’) and less subsistence-farmers will mean less land-clearing.]
  • International – particularly, Authoritarian-Illegitimates such as Xi Jin Ping and the Taliban [The USI will give each individual citizen a shareholding in their country, which will decisively undermine such regimes.]

This is all achieved because:

The USI is not Welfare – it’s not 1-way (i.e. just to the individual) – and, it’s not a cost.

On the contrary, The USI is Infrastructure – it’s 2-way (i.e. like Universal Education, it assists both country as well as individual) – it’s an investment whose return (like Universal Education and unlike the wasteful Debt-maker Band-Aids of Jobseeker, Jobkeeper, Lockdown-keeper etc) eclipses that investment.

The investment may be obtained by:

1. Abolishing the tax-free threshold, which is no longer needed since every adult receives $20,000 per year
2. Raising the GST to 20% and broadening it so that it is full-breadth, which also delivers non-distortion benefits and captures tax-revenue before profits are whisked out of the country by multinationals, which, in turn, evens the playing field for Australian businesses
3. Eradicating Centrelink, Job Search Agency contracts plus all the jobs-for-jobs’-sake paid-work and the Manage-the-Manufactured-Mess (Triple-M) paid-work, which means vastly lower non-GST taxes, more manufacturing and vastly more prosperity with far less environmental damage.

This means, like a Magic Pudding (or Universal Education), we will be at least twice as prosperous (up to 6 times as prosperous) – imagine, Aussie GDP per person, which is presently $US 55,000, being the equivalent of $US 110,000 to $US 330,000 yet with environmental damage reduced due to:

1. Massive efficiency gains
2. Citizens prioritising the environment rather than being forced to prioritise obtaining their survival-income.

Thus, rather than every political party and independent in Australia’s parliaments being either against it or neutral, The USI should be (and is destined to be) universally supported.

However, given citizens’ are currently Unnecessarily Suffering, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report informs us time is of the essence and our prosperity (and, therefore, our sovereignty) depends on it, if this lack of support continues then a new policy-led rather than personality-led political party is Blind Freddy obviously needed.

As previously mentioned, a possible name is The Civil Party, which reflects Civilisationism roots.

What but mean-heartedness and/or intellectual lethargy is preventing us from ‘infrastructuralising we-are-all-in-this-together’?

Thank you.

Best regards

Paul Ross
Founder
The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) Australia  
The Civilisationism Organisation (TCO)

https://citizens-dividend.org/
https://www.facebook.com/paul.ross.798
https://twitter.com/paulross2

Humanity is being confronted by a perfect storm of culminating exponentiating Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) Catastrophes including:

1. Socio: poverty, stigmatisation, homelessness, mental-illness, excapism (such as drug & alcohol abuse), suicide, domestic-violence etc.
2. Econo: unemployment, the welfare-to-work distortion, Jobs-Jobs-Jobs (Triple-J) politics, which has led to BS jobs-for-jobs’-sake & Manage-the-Manufactured-Mess (Triple-M) paid-work, the massive inefficiency of not ‘exclusively producing and delivering the goods & services we desire’ etc.; and,
3. Enviro: 
   • Natural: ecosystem destruction, species extinction, the explosive human population plague, plastic islands, climate change etc.
   • International: our weaknesses boost Democracy’s enemies, which is currently catalysing international rivalry such as with China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Hypothesis: These catastrophes are 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 minimalist ‘Universal Empowerment Infrastructure’ (UEI), which consists of the 5 interdependent interactively-fortifying cornerstones of:  

1. Universal Legal Equality (including Merit-based Reward) – [In Australia] comparatively robust;
2. Universal Liberal Democracy – comparatively robust;
3. Universal Healthcare – comparatively robust;
4. Universal Education – comparatively robust;
5. Universal Survival Income (USI) substituted in place of Universal Minimum Hourly Wages (UMHoW) – No, not yet.

[This USI-absence detracts from each of the other cornerstones making them all far less effective – for example, The USI-absence means homelife for many children is far less harmonious than it should be, which means, amongst other things, their capacity to concentrate on their education is compromised.]

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 [Please note: Regarding the Society-Individual interface, unlike the current system, this is not a ‘cost’ but a ‘transfer’ and, in addition, it is not 1-way Welfare, which predominantly benefits recipients, but 2-way Infrastructure that, as with the other UEI cornerstones, has a return equivalent to multiples of the investment because it helps maximise societally-contributive self-actualisation.]

Around $20,000 per year x 18 million (non-incarcerated in-country adult Australian citizens) + $5,000 x 4.5 million (children) = $386 billion.

This may be achieved by (2018 figures):

1. Abolishment of the Tax-Free Threshold ($35 billion);
2. Reallocating $150 billion of the $175 billion Social Services budget (yes, federally, we are already spending almost half of what we need), which still leaves $25 billion to top up pensions and disability payments; and,
3. Inserting 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 inefficient, resource-wasting and environment-trashing own-goal one to ‘an efficient production and distribution of goods and services we desire’ one.

That is, currently, around half our 13 million paid-workers have jobs that are either:

1. Jobs-for-jobs-sake B.S. paid-work – such as excess public service jobs and subsidised/protected private enterprise jobs; or,
2. Manage-the-Manufactured-Mess (‘Triple-M’) paid-work – such as Centrelink and excess legal, charity, mental-health etc jobs.

Then, there is the massive permeating benefit of achieving full-employment.

That is, with everyone taken care of and invested with the freedom to say ‘no’ to an employer plus the present social-status premium on paid-work over unpaid-work rectified, there will be a massive flow of power to the disempowered and working classes, which will lead to 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 many of our millions of volunteers can get paid something and our young, elderly, relatively unskilled, disabled, unpaid-carers, 800,000+ unemployed and 1.1 million+ underemployed can, if they desire, get paid-work (or, more work) such that ‘anyone who, at the going rate, wants paid-work, can get it’.  

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. 

The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation’s Commitment (August 1, 2019):

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.

Without The Universal Survival Income (USI),

It’s Impossible to Save the Environment.