Disempowered Lives Matter (DLM)
Black Lives Matter (BLM)
Women’s Lives Matter (WLM)
Veterans’ Lives Matter (VLM)
LGBTIQ+ Lives Matter (LLM)
Physically-Challenged Lives Matter (PCLM)
Intellectually-Challenged Lives Matter (MCLM)
Emotionally-Challenged Lives Matter (ECLM)
Children’s Lives Matter (CLM)
Infirm Lives Matter (ILM)
Aged Lives Matter (ALM)
Asylum-Seeker Lives Matter (ASLM)
Foreigner Lives Matter (FLM)
Poverty-Stricken Lives Matter (PSLM)
Stigmatised Lives Matter (SLM)
Unemployed Lives Matter (ULM)
Persecuted Lives Matter (PLM)
Etc …
=
Disempowered Lives Matter (DLM)
…
‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’
Albert Einstein
…
The Golden Rule: Societal-wide problems, rather than being best addressed by Artificial Ad hoc Add-on (Triple-A) Band-Aids, require societal-wide solutions – i.e. they require infrastructure.
And, the best way to demonstrate Disempowered Lives Matter (DLM) is for Society to infrastructurally lead-by-example via fully implementing Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI).
…
Civilisationism Noticeboard
- While GetUp, unfortunately (because it could do enormous good), is still hopelessly trapped in the Leftist version of the 18th century’s Class-Warfarist paradigm [The CDO is of the Universalist paradigm (Univisionist 2.1)], which today manifests as advocation for ‘Raise the Rate 4 Eternity’ & the Job Guarantee, the following video has some valuable points: How People are Getting Rich from your Unemployment.
- Short video from Green European Foundation: How would Universal Basic Income help build a fair Europe?
- Humanity Forward: BREAKING FROM REUTERS (April 7, 2021): President Biden wants to make the expanded Child Tax Credit – essentially UBI for parents – permanent! And, it’s bipartisan.
- The Rainbow’s End …
HG: ‘The Universal Survival Income (USI) – an unconditional $20,000 a year for every non-incarcerated in-country adult citizen and $5,000 to every child’s guardian – one has got to be the Joker of Jokers – it’s akin to the Tooth-Fairy paying everything in advance or Santa Klaus driving a Lotus Evija down your chimney or chasing the rainbow’s end and Eureka-ing its pot of gold – Roy, isn’t The USI the most head-shakingly-outrageous scull-scratchingly-madhouse utopianly-unrealistic grass-is-always-greener over-the-moon-expensive something-for-nothing balderdash ever concocted in the deepest darkest recesses of the homo sapiens’ mind?’
Rampaging Roy: ‘Yes, definitely HG, I couldn’t agree more – let’s be like the media and talk-about-anything-else – after all, with that pot of gold, not a single soul will ever get out of bed – the lice will be happier than Larry – or do paid-work – the sky will fall in – toilet-rolls won’t get manufactured let alone delivered or sold – even online. Frankly, for those sorts of ‘she’ll be right shenanigans’, The USI’s proponents deserve a good-old-fashioned kit-and-caboodle shellacking. After all, it’s as catastrophic as the daylight-saving sun on the (and I kid you not) millions of disproportionately fading window-cloths – and, not only that, it’s also the common key for universally empowering individuals into collectively maximising societally-contributive self-actualisation, which is the only possible way we can make all our culminating exponentiating perfect storm of Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) catastrophes manageable.’
HG: ‘Yes, too true Roy – when it comes right down to it, isn’t it infinitely better to dream the rainbow then sleep-tiptoe the well-worn floorboarded trail to one’s bed-end’s potty of gold?’
…
April 25, 2021
Hi
Regarding our Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) challenges, The Univisionist 2.4 demonstrated that infrastructurally prioritising the Socio- is optimal because, with the Econo- a subset of the Socio- and the Enviro- dependent on the Socio-, the current non-optimal national vision of ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ (Triple J) can then be superseded by that of ‘universal sustainable stability-prosperity maximisation’.
But, why is Triple-J non-optimal or, put another way, why is it mind-numbingly ridiculous?
Because, the economic definition for full-employment is: ‘anyone who wants paid-work at the going rate can get paid-work’, which means full-employment can be automatically perpetually set-and-forget achieved via simply replacing the Universal Minimum-Wage (UMW), which is currently the Orwellian $19.84 per hour, with The Universal Survival Income (USI).
Yes, unfortunately, there is a proliferation of pseudo-economists who reckon we can only get unemployment down to somewhere between 2% and 4%, which will happen if we just keep doing what we are doing just a little bit better – i.e. ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’.
However: ‘unemployment can be zero, it should be zero and, if not for the UWM’s interference, it would be zero’.
More on this in The Univisionist 2.6, which will be an open shellacking letter to all economists, all Australian economic faculties, all federal & state government economic institutions, The Economic Society of Australia (ESA) and Australian Business Economists (ABE).
Regarding the Socio-, currently, in Australia, in the news, there are numerous groups of those Unnecessarily Suffering including:
- Black Lives Matter (BLM)
- Women’s Lives Matter (WLM)
- Veterans’ Lives Matter (VLM)
- Physically-Challenged Lives Matter (PCLM)
- Intellectually-Challenged Lives Matter (MCLM)
- Emotionally-Challenged Lives Matter (ECLM)
- Children’s Lives Matter (CLM)
- Infirm Lives Matter (ILM)
- Aged Lives Matter (ALM)
- Asylum-Seeker Lives Matter (ASLM)
- Foreigner Lives Matter (FLM)
- Poverty-Stricken Lives Matter (PSLM)
- Stigmatised Lives Matter (SLM)
- Unemployed Lives Matter (ULM)
- Persecuted Lives Matter (PLM)
Yet, isn’t their relevant common link crystallized in Disempowered Lives Matter (DLM)?
After all, relative to most of the rest of us, do the exceptional disproportionately-empowered talents of, for example, the Aboriginal Stan Grant or the woman Marise Payne require additional empowerment?
Yet, on the other hand, shouldn’t, for example, a white, middle-aged, born-in-Oz male who, for whatever reason, is unnecessarily suffering also be, reinforcingly, included in those whose life matters?
Thus, Disempowered Lives Matter (DLM) is optimally appropriate because it both:
- Includes all those who should be included
- Excludes those who need not be included.
That is, DLM includes all those and only those who are Unnecessarily Suffering.
And, if DLM be accepted as the goal, rather than clamping-down on overt discrimination and disrespect, isn’t Universal Empowerment, by definition, the solution?
Imagine, with the absence of Unnecessary Suffering plus our economy made vastly more efficient, what else we could turn out minds and efforts to achieving.
Imagine the alternate issues the Drum, the 7:30 Report, Q&A and our other current affairs programs could tackle.
Politicians, institutions and, as shown later, even our Foreign Policy could all go to the next level.
Also, Universal Empowerment is a Royal Commission killer – most of them are no longer needed.
So, how do we achieve Universal Empowerment?
The Eternal Choice
Regarding our social problems, as always there is the eternal choice:
Are we content to just treat symptoms with yet more Artificial Ad hoc Add-on (Triple-A) Band-Aids (such as more ‘don’t do that’ legislation, which doesn’t, of itself, empower and may, on the contrary, just drive Disempowering attitudes into festering underground such that it becomes fodder for a backlash) or are we intent on addressing the problem holistically via pre-emptive ‘civilisation optimising infrastructure’ or, what is here coined, Civilisationism?
Civilisationism represents ‘human societal optimisation’, which, adhering to the vision of ‘universal sustainable-stability prosperity maximisation’, requires Universal Empowerment, which encompasses, among other things, universal respect and trust via ‘valuing humans for being human’ rather than only valuing their offerings – such as paid-work, unpaid-work and intimacies such as companionship, sex, child-bearing and child-raising.
Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) consists of the 5 cornerstones:
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) – No, not yet, which, detracting from each of the other 4, makes them far less effective.
If a society doesn’t have this then it’s not a ‘3 Musketeers’ society – i.e. it’s not ‘all for one and one for all’ – which, given no modern society has it, is why the world is facing a perfect storm of culminating exponentiating Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) catastrophes.
However, in Australia’s case, with just The USI absent, effectively, this 5th cornerstone is the generic solution to all our multifarious institutionalised Disempowerment.
[Please note: Western women, for example, have far more power than their non-Western counterparts precisely because of the West’s UEI cornerstones.]
Regarding The USI’s direct benefits, it is a Poverty, Unemployment & Stigma (PUS) eradicator (and ‘hope-instigator’).
The direct benefits to each of the Disempowered are so extreme as to be, well, Universally Empowering – i.e. it takes pressure off men, women and children such that, mentally, everyone is middle-class.
Imagine a, currently, income-poor person with mental-health issues no longer being harassed by Centrelink/Employment-Services-Providers plus being automatically able to find paid-work and thereby be able to embark on ‘pulling themselves up by their bootstraps’. Imagine a physically-challenged or intellectually-challenged person being able to, without bureaucracy, easily get paid-work. Imagine children being raised in homes that aren’t PUS-afflicted. Imagine, the cared for having loved ones as carers because their loved ones now automatically receive a survival income – was that potential revolution mentioned in the Aged-Care and/or Disability Royal Commissions? …
Regarding domestic violence and family-breakdown, the author is the child of an abusive marriage, which culminated with escape, name-changing, being hunted by private detectives (who broke into car and flat), law cases, fear and massive personal, social (including social-stigma) and financial sacrifice for his mother who had the capacity and the tenacity and the family-support (including her father’s signature so, in those days, she could get a bank-loan) and the ‘luck’ and the … to be able to work full-time (plus teach piano part-time plus play the organ for church services) and study full-time and bring up a child without relying on the boy’s GP father or the government for a dime and send her boy to an expensive school where he couldn’t be tracked through the education department; so, while Raise the Rate and the Job Guarantee wouldn’t have been much chop, who would say The USI wouldn’t have helped?
Among other things, The USI allows a woman under attack to escape in the knowledge she and her children will have a survival income.
As well as preventing the immediate trauma, it will likely lessen intergenerational domestic violence as little Johnny is less likely to be exposed to that atrociousness and so is less likely to grow up to repeat it.
But, far more than even all this, The USI is a clear unambiguous unmistakable ‘money where your mouth is’ societal statement that ‘you matter because you are a human’.
That is, the universal empowerment of women (and other Disempowered) starts with universally unconditionally financially empowering them.
Also, regarding women in politics, with women disproportionally freed-up financially, they would be infrastructurally better placed to enter parliament.
The rest of this article takes a deeper look at 3 particularly topical types of Disempowerment:
- Women’s Lives Matter (WLM)
- Black Lives Matter (BLM)
- Veteran’s Lives Matter (VLM)
Women’s Lives Matter (WLM)
‘If there’s war between the sexes then there’ll be no people left’
Real Men, Joe Jackson
In order to minimise sexual-harassment, we need to understand it.
Sexual-harassment, rather than being a nature-construct is a human-concept.
Sexual-harassment evolved in 3 predominant stages:
- Sexual-reproduction
- Sexual-dimorphism
- Civilisation.
Sexual-reproduction evolved separately numerous times including in Red Algae, Plants and Animals.
Regarding the animal evolutional stream, chronologically, sexual-reproduction predates not only homo sapiens and not only mammals but also invertebrates, which means sexual-reproduction is more hard-wired within us than not only our humanity and not only our sentience but also our centralised nervous systems.
This should give us a ‘heads-up’ that sustainably solving sexual-harassment is unlikely to be achieved by the superficial – i.e. it needs Civilisational infrastructure not Triple-A Band-Aids.
While sexual-reproduction requires 2 parents each providing half a single organism’s DNA, what is not needed is 2 cell structures – i.e. only 1 egg is needed.
Hence, sexual-reproduction evolved gender:
- Female – in addition to providing half the required DNA, also provides the greater cell nurturing and nourishing structure
- Male – only provides half the required DNA – but often also provides a disproportionate share of the sexual-reproductive proactivity.
Regarding sexual-proactivity (whether by a fe/male), if unrequited, this is the source of the pejorative sexual-harassment.
And, due to these cell-provider/proactivity differences, pre-mammal vertebrates evolved ‘sexual dimorphism’, which is the condition where the 2 genders exhibit different characteristics beyond the differences in their sexual organs, which, in the case of homo sapiens, includes males, on average, being bigger, weightier, stronger and, bash-me-over-the-head for ‘being sexist’ if you like, more sexually and polygamously proactive than females.
Regarding generalised proactivity, perhaps, females are more likely to be cumulatively methodically relationally proactive, whereas males are more likely to be risk-taking direction-rupturing proactive.
Testosterone is a risk-taking direction-rupturing proactivity chemical.
Given these fe/male differences occur across races from Pygmies to Polynesians and the animals traditionally hunted in Central Africa aren’t smaller than those in Taiwan, this difference must be related to sex – including:
- Female choice
- Male-to-male combat
- The facilitation of male sexual-proactivity irrespective of female agreement – i.e. what we term, ‘rape’.
Regarding sexual-proactivity and rape, even if a female is desirous and stronger, it is, of course, mechanically challenging for a female to rape a male.
In sum, all this has naturally evolved and is contained within our species’ genes – i.e. notwithstanding the Y-chromosome is exclusive to father and son, within the genes of both female and male.
So, there is nothing, in general, wrong with men per se – they are simply the male version of the homo sapiens animal.
Moreover, for nature, which is a survival-reproduction prioritiser, sexual-harassment isn’t necessarily problematic; however, as homo sapiens have sought to transform themselves from the animal kingdom to domestication or Civilisation, sexual-harassment has become increasingly problematic.
So, what is the solution?
Blame all men? Blame male culture? Become, on the basis of gender, either self-righteous or guilt-ridden? Create ‘a war between the sexes’?
[War is a sexual-harassment apocalypse – the more civilised our society, the less sexual-harassment and vice-versa – we need an infrastructural solution because, otherwise, we will be pressurizing, which is a recipe for explode-back disaster, which is, perhaps, what is already happening.]
Taking a step back …
Do you agree that sexual-harassment is a form of bullying?
If so then if we solve bullying per se then we will also have solved sexual-harassment – agreed?
And, who or what is our biggest bully?
Males?
The CDO believes our biggest bully is society – i.e. currently, our society is institutionally infrastructurally sending the categorically uncivilised message that humanity is not of itself valuable.
This is the ultimate in mixed-messaging – on the one hand, “don’t bully, show respect, love thy neighbour and don’t harass” and, on the other, “you stinking drug-addict dole-bludger intergenerational scum, you deserve to be hungry and homeless.”
That is, in denying many of our citizens a survival-income, our society has violence embedded at its heart, which encourages stigmatisation, marginalisation and, in general, harassment.
So, society is an uncivilised bully, which manifests as its bullying societal-systems, which, given we are inescapably subject to them, moulds us into thinking and behaving as bullies.
In this sense, it’s not our fault.
However, given we are a Universal Liberal Democracy, which means we can change these systems, if we choose not to then the source-bullies are I, you and all Australian citizens.
If we civilise our societal-systems, akin to blood-thirsty Vikings becoming peace-loving Scandinavians, we will be transformed from me-first ‘Make Number 1 Great Again’ Me-ism, which manifests as materialist culture – i.e. the material above the human – which, in turn, often manifests as bullying (including sexism), into a Universally Empowering society projecting respect, dignity and consideration in the form of societally-contributive self-actualisation.
Thus, in order to minimise bullying (and, therefore, minimise sexual-harassment), society’s systems should lead-by-example via the presence of Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI), particularly, The USI.
Yet, currently, we don’t have even a minor political party with The USI as its signature policy.
…
Regarding educating our young, the CDO suggests differentiating between:
- Cooperative-competition, which is moral and civilised
- Uncooperative-competition, which, irrespective of whether it is criminal, is immoral and uncivilised.
Examples of the former vis-à-vis the latter include the entrepreneur vis-à-vis the thief; the sportsperson vis-à-vis the street-brawler; the flirter vis-à-vis the harasser; the lover vis-à-vis the rapist.
And, within this context, consent is seamlessly taught.
In addition, we also need to be forthright about puberty and sex – young people’s most important subjects.
First, neither puberty or sex is particularly civilised.
Regarding sex, rather than being in the same category as sitting down to morning tea, it is gloriously messy and, particularly, animalistic – i.e. if one ate or drank in a restaurant similarly then, even with clothes on, arrests would likely follow.
Actually, there’s nothing civilised about puberty or sex, which, in fear of humiliation, is probably precisely the reason most prefer privacy.
The paradox is – notwithstanding the rise of the test-tube – sex is necessary, otherwise, for instance, there would be no restaurants or any other kind of buildings.
And, while sex is special partly because it’s fun – though, watching TV, the author once heard a female skydiver, following a jump, exclaim, ‘It’s better than sex’ – it’s predominantly special because:
- It’s the most intimate activity one can have with another human-being
- It’s the traditional precursor of life – the greatest empowerment of all.
So, once again, ideally, we return to the aim of Universal Empowerment – in this case, of all parties involved.
Regarding puberty, its manifestations as newfound raging biology, emotions and thoughts can be a source of shame, which boils down to the paradox of it being perceived as being uncivilised juxtaposed with the desire and society’s expectation of one to be civilised.
This conundrum should be broached with the acknowledgements:
- We are evolved animals
- The extent we are civilised is something we each and our society collectively must perpetually build and cooperatively battle to achieve.
This will give context to pubescents as they struggle to control the tornados within.
Otherwise, a force that powerful, pushed into the dark, becomes dangerous and ugly.
Rather than being shunned, puberty – both male and female versions – should be embraced and glorified as representing both a personal reformation and the potential for continuation of our society and species.
Males – due to their aggression and strength – must be especially carefully managed.
The Maasai’s passage to manhood used to depend on killing a lion.
Black Lives Matter (BLM)
Regarding Black Lives Matter, the CDO believes the problem is not as much about past Disempowerment – i.e. about what happened previously, though, that needs to be fully acknowledged (please see below) – as it is about present Disempowerment.
[The CDO believes there should be a ‘Genocide Museum’ – perhaps, based in Alice Springs – that details, from indigenous perspectives, Australia’s post-colonisation history, which, hopefully, as well as fully detailing the horror of the English invasion and occupation, is also sympathetic to the benefits and, over the generations, the goodwill and the attempts – failed and successful – to address some of the indigenous Disempowerment.]
That is, in many cases, indigenous Australia is still disconnected from mainstream Australia, which is reflected in their disproportionate suffering from societal PUS – Poverty, Unemployment & Stigma.
Regarding racism, it is often conflated with ‘dole-bludger’ stigma.
That is, because unemployment is communally concentrated among our indigenous, it ferments racism, which, in turn, ferments Poverty, Unemployment & Stigma, which ferments racism and so on.
After all, notwithstanding Covid and Xi-na associated racism, East Asian Australians, for example, because they are generally perceived as contributing to the economy, don’t suffer racism in the same way as our indigenous Australians.
Hence, with The USI obliterating this vicious Disempowerment-Racism-Dole-bludger cycle, it will be more helpful to indigenous Australia than all other mooted policies put together.
Meanwhile, with The USI implemented and the Universal Minimum-Wage (UMW) abolished, Australia’s indigenous stronghold of the north, west and outback will boom.
In addition to USI money flowing through it, with Australia’s competitiveness unleashed, instead of being too far away from Australia’s East Coast cities, business can finally make the most of our ‘front door to Asia’, which means local indigenous Australians will share in it such that, suddenly, instead of only ‘escapism’ in the face of hopelessness, they will have opportunities galore.
And, this hope and inclusion will all but ‘Slam the Gap Shut’, which, in turn, amongst other things, will all but solve our vast Aboriginal incarceration problem and, therefore, Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
The USI will, within a generation, ‘Slam the Gap Shut’.
Veterans’ Lives Matter (VLM)
Soldiers – especially in foreign lands and especially when civilians are involved and especially in counter-insurgency – ride a fine-line between assistor and perpetrator.
That alone is enough to play with your head.
Why did I react that way that time?
And, while everyone makes mistakes, in war, the stakes are often higher.
So, then there’s ‘The what if’.
What if we had done that or gone there instead or shot quicker or waited or ….
There’s the injured and/or dead buddies, civilians and enemy.
There’s the fear and the world-away parallel universe of a foreign culture and a different life-and-death culture amongst your colleagues.
Then there’s the coming back to the ‘how was it over there?’ 1-minute rule – i.e. you can only talk about it for 1-minute before family and friends, because it’s outside their experience and they have next to nothing to contextualise it with, turn-off.
Yet, notwithstanding all that and all its infinite permutations and combinations, the author reckons the biggest and certainly most controllable variable is the answer to the questions:
- What were you fighting for?
- Was it worth fighting for?
- Was what you were fighting for achieved?
- Did I achieve something lastingly positive? And, are those I tried to help prospering?
If we look at Australia’s recent military deployments, while East Timor and Solomon Islands’ veterans may well be pleased, for Iraq (the author was a humanitarian aid worker in the Kurdish region who was involved in a Universal (by household) kerosene distribution) and, particularly, Afghanistan veterans, matters are more complicated.
Regarding Afghanistan, the initial goals of dismantling al-Qaeda and dislodging the Taliban were quickly achieved; however, after a 20-year investment of blood and treasure (another golden rule, regarding any undertaking, full-potential is achievable within 2 decades), the Coalition’s rebuild model still hasn’t taken hold such that the Taliban – hopefully, a more tolerant incarnation – are poised to return.
If I were an Afghanistan War vet, my attention and, perhaps, state of mind would be captured by this last turn of events.
That is, if there is going to be a return to the past then it seems the rebuild model didn’t really hook.
So, what was the rebuild model?
The Coalition attempted to implement Democracy (though not Universal, not compulsory and not Liberal) and respect for human rights especially an attempt at Universal Education notably including girls and there was also significant investments in the Legal, Healthcare and military systems.
Yet, arguably, the country’s biggest problem was and still is corruption and its associated inefficiencies, which has manifestations as tribalism and nepotism.
Note, among many other things, The USI is a corruption-vaccinator.
With The USI, the money doesn’t go to politicians, warlords, tribal-leaders, contractors and charities, it goes transparently straight into the populace’s hands – thus, the super-empowered corrupt hate it as much as the people love it.
The super-empowered corrupt cannot skim it, cannot control it and cannot enhance their power through it.
Hence, having The USI front-and-centre would have automatically both weakened the power of tribal-leaders in favour of the democratically-elected government and earnt tremendous grassroots good-will – plus, in a country like Afghanistan, The USI doesn’t have to be much.
In India, I met women who were involved in a trial where they received just 6 USD a month and yet, in their own words, because of it, they began throwing their scarfs away from their face, lifting their heads high, creating co-ops and even talking about money with their husbands.
Empowerment.
In addition, in Afghanistan, given the banking, internet and biometric technological infrastructure required, The USI would have joined the country together and each individual would have had personal agency in protecting that technology – i.e. if the internet towers or the bank gets blown-up, you, I and everyone else in our town will lose access to their USI.
This personal agency – reminded monthly – would also have extended to protecting the entire 5-cornerstone UEI including Democracy, the Rule of Law and girls’ education.
Somehow, we have forgotten that a survival-income is more important than anything else – after all, the hungry will sell their votes for food.
Get the model right and you will win the war (and veterans will be far happier).
The same would have worked in Iraq and, with their superior infrastructure, been much easier to achieve.
In Iraq, there have recently been riots because, according to the press, they don’t have paid-work; however, with The USI, they wouldn’t riot unless The USI was stopped.
The 5-cornerstone Universal Empowerment Infrastructure (UEI) model should have been the model taken to Afghanistan and Iraq but, until it exists at home, it’s unlikely to be exported.
And, the world – especially those suffering the Authoritarian Illegitimates – need to witness an optimised Civilisational prototype.
Such a Civilisational model will export itself.
To develop and demonstrate such a model is Australia’s calling.
Regarding veterans, if the 5-cornerstone UEI model had been implemented, veterans’ personal sacrifices would have been unequivocally rewarded and Australia’s wider society, in addition to respecting our veterans’ service and sacrifice, would have lavishly feted them for their achievements.
Both these would have been massively cathartic.
…
Thank you.
Best regards
Paul Ross
Founder
Triple-0:
- The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) Australia
- The Universal Empowerment Organisation (UEO)
- 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 Socio-Econo-Enviro- (SEE) 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. Economic: 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 Empowerment Infrastructure’ (UEI), which consists of the 5 cornerstones:
1. Universal Legal Equality (including merit-based reward conditions) – [In Australia] comparatively robust;
2. Universal Liberal Democracy – comparatively robust;
3. Universal Healthcare – comparatively robust;
4. Universal Education – comparatively robust;
5. Universal Basic/Survival Income (UBI/USI) – No, not yet, which, detracting from each of the other 4, makes them far less effective.
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 $20,000 per year x 18 million (non-incarcerated in-country adult Australian citizens) + $5,000 x 4.5 million (children) = $386 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.
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 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 (pre-Covid-19) 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 (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.