The Universal Survival Income (USI)
No gaps.
No poverty.
No harassment.
No friction.
No ‘dole-bludger’ stigma.
No societal sub-group banished from the mainstream.
No class-warfare division.
No means-testing wastage.
No mental-illness manufacturing (MIM).
Yet, The USI will achieve:
- At least a doubling of our prosperity to an effective-GDP of $4+ trillion;
- Guaranteed natural full-employment;
- A workers’ paradise – i.e. they can say ‘no’ to employers;
- An employers’ paradise – i.e. they can focus exclusively on their enterprise and all their employees, rather than being forced, will be working willingly;
- The vanquishment of the colossal welfare-to-work distortion;
- A slashing of charity Band-Aiding with vastly better results – currently, the charity industry is a non-taxpaying whopping 10% of the economy yet still disempowerment and unnecessary suffering are increasing;
- The obliteration of the jobs-for-jobs’-sake burden;
- The streamlining of producing only the ‘goods and services’ we desire such that ‘bads’ – example, mental-illness and pollution – are minimised and, therefore, the ‘production’ required to fix and/or manage those ‘bads’ is minimised;
- A manufacturing renaissance;
- The easing of congestion in our cities and booming rural, north and western regions;
- A sustainable natural environment – without The USI, it is impossible to save our planet, which means the clock is ticking;
- A sovereignty able to be defended;
- A deep undercutting of the Authoritarian model;
- An overthrow of the perception of societal-contribution being confined to paid-work;
- Disempowerment eradication – i.e. there will be universal empowerment; and,
- + + +.
(which is why neither Raise the Rate (RtR) – which can also be called various other names such as ‘Raise the Dole-Bludger Stigma’, ‘Raise the Hoops’, ‘Raise the Harassment’, ‘Raise the Mental-Illness’, ‘Raise (Burn) Australia’ etc. – nor the Job Guarantee (JG) – which is, via taxing the productive to pay for the unproductive, a transition mechanism to Government-ownership-of-industry Communism – let alone both, is the answer.
Is it a coincidence the RtR and the JG are the darlings of the feel-good yet failed charity sector?)
Yet, ‘self before society’ has become so ingrained and twisted, it even masquerades as ‘society before self’.
For example, it is widely believed, if you are not either an employer or employee then you are not a societal-contributor; never mind, that a household is society’s most important ‘small business’, the unpaid-carer is society’s most important job and children are, literally, society’s future.
Also, our thinking has been fundamentally confused such that, as if on a ‘Quest for Ad-Hoc Add-On Complexity’, we shy further and further away from The USI’s elegant simplicity.
But people shouldn’t get ‘something for nothing’.
[The naivety … we all get almost everything ‘for nothing’ – as individuals we get our life, our society, our culture, our history, our natural resources, our science, our technology, our collective-understanding, our infrastructure etc. ‘for nothing’.]
But what about the lazy?
[What about those, currently, who want paid-work but are denied it because of all the ad-hoc rules?
Besides, while social-status is, currently, predominantly a function of materialistic income and possessions, with The USI, it will arise out of societal-contribution, which will encourage even ‘the lazy’ to do good (as well as taxpayers to stop avoiding payments). And, if there are some who ‘won’t get out of bed’ or ‘want to surf all day’, at least, such neutrality, unlike the current mass-production of ‘bads’, is environmentally-friendly.]
But, the rich shouldn’t get it.
[It’s in all our interests for perpetual class-warfare to end.
We’re all citizens so – like democracy, healthcare and education – we all should receive The USI.
And, it will ‘systemically maximise our sustainable stability-prosperity’.
Plus, put up the GST and the very wealthy will pay it back and then some.
Plus plus, if government expenditure is perceived as legitimately achieving worthwhile outcomes, tax-avoidance will plummet.]
August 8, 2020
Hi
Instead of The Universal Survival Income (USI), we have a ‘you-name-it’ list of bureaucracy-requiring mental-illness-manufacturing means-testing schemes including:
Abstudy
Age Pension
Austudy
Carer Allowance
Carer Payment
Carer Supplement
Child Care Subsidy
Covid-19 paid pandemic leave
Crisis Payment
Disability Support Pension
Family Tax Benefit
JobSeeker
JobKeeper
JobMaker
Mobility Allowance
Parental Leave Pay
Parenting Payment
Partner Allowance
Pension Bonus Scheme
Pensioner Education Supplement
Sickness Allowance
Youth Allowance.
[A misfiring rocket better-off dismantled.]
All these schemes are artificially ad-hoc yet there’s nothing artificial about everyone receiving their Personal Survival Income (PSI).
If a society can’t or won’t do that then it is failing.
Regarding the JobSeeker system, this multi-billion-dollar industry manufactures two types of ‘bads’:
- Direct massive means-testing wastage; and,
- Indirect – via ‘dole-bludger’-labelling, mistakes, friction etc. – mental- and physical illness, which leads to crime, escapism, domestic violence, the ruination of children etc. all of which creates unnecessary fix-it/manage-it paid-work (i.e. more police, prison-guards, lawyers, health-staff, charity-workers etc.).
Regarding the means-testing, it involves Centrelink and ‘employment services providers’.
And, if the carrot is the payment then most of the stick comes from ‘the employment services providers’ who receive payment when one of their ‘clients’ finds paid-work irrespective of whether or not they assisted.
Hence, with one set of empowered citizens financed by the Australian Government to institutionally wield harassing-power against a set of disempowered citizens, the employment services providers are the ones who can – and do – say, “If you don’t do as I say then I’m going to have your survival income cancelled.”
How can it be moral to have a business model based on such immorality?
With this industry awash with dishonesty, harassment and standover tactics, it’s an indictment on all those involved.
These mental-illness-manufacturers (MIMs) include the following.
- AMES Australia
- APM Employment Services
- atWork Australia
- BEST Employment
- Campbell Page
- Centacare Employment
- CoAct
- CVGT Australia
- ETC
- Gforce Staffing Solutions
- Global Skills
- HELP Employment & Training
- Joblink Plus
- Jobfind
- Job Prospects
- Jobs Australia Enterprises
- Jobs Statewide
- MADEC Australia
- MAX Employment
- Matchworks
- MBC Employment Services
- My Pathway
- NEATO Employment Services
- Nirrumbuk Employment Services
- NORTEC
- Olympus Solutions
- PeoplePlus
- Q.I.T.E
- Sarina Russo Job Access
- Status Employment Services
- Sureway Employment and Training
- The Salvation Army Employment Plus
- TURSA
- VERTO
- WISE Employment
- Workskil Australia
- WDEA Works
- Skill Hire WA
- Workskills Incorporated
[Note, it even includes such supremely respected organisations as the Salvation Army.]
Imagine, in the current environment, being harassed every week about one’s JobSearch.
Even in Victoria, on Sunday morning August 2 (with the stage 4 Covid-19 lockdown imminent), people receiving texts that a person will call on Monday about JobSearch.
This is how insidious our current system is, it corrupts the incorruptible into becoming vested-interest self-funding-lobbying MIMs.
No wonder the Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU) is calling for a ‘strike’ against employment services provider harassment…
‘Today we’re going on strike – all of us on Centrelink payments should refuse to engage with our job agency while no penalties are in place. No matter what they say, right now we have the right not to do most activities. #KnowYourRights
We’ve told them to stop lying to, bullying and harassing us and they haven’t listened. Enough is enough. #MOstrike
Join the strike. Support the strikers.
If you’re on a payment: we’ve prepared resources to help you publicise your participation in the strike, and to make sure you won’t be penalised. We will support you if your job agency tries to bully or harass you. Click here to find everything you need to know.
If you’re in waged work: support the #MOstrike by signing our petition calling on the minister to announce a full mutual obligations suspension until at least 31 December.
Our plan for the strike
We’ll be taking a different action every day this week to send a message to the job agencies and politicians. Look out for our emails and join us each day to help us have our voices heard.
We are #StrongerTogether.’
The Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union (AUWU) August 4, 2020.
One interesting article: AUWU ‘strike’ against employment services providers’ harassment.
The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) supports the AUWU’s initiative.
In addition, the CDO implores these employment services providers to withdraw from their contracts with the Government and publicly appeal for The Universal Survival Income (USI).
[How can it be not a single social service industry organisation is overtly calling for The (USI) yet virtually all are bouncing around on the RtR bandwagon?]
As for the Federal Government, isn’t there an ever-increasing resort to complexity and unwieldiness?
Recently, the ad-hoc add-ons have included JobSeeker, JobKeeper, JobMaker, superannuation cans and can’ts, Covid-19 paid pandemic leave, a court case against the WA government for wanting to protect its citizens (just recently dropped), childcare complexity and, regarding attacking the virus, akin to the Americans and Europeans who are muddling with it like ‘a cat with a ball of string’, continuing to use the word ‘suppression’ instead of getting everyone on the same page with the word ‘eradication’ so as to follow New Zealand down their successful path …
Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve …
For a start, health workers and other front-line essential workers (and their families) are not cannon-fodder …
Second, ‘eradication’, which at the end of April was all but achieved, will be far better for the economy than close-open up-down – exactly, how many infections are okay? – ‘suppression’ …
Playing like a cat with a ball of string – isn’t that what governments are prone to do?
Inserting themselves hither and thither, means-testing this and that, targeting them and those and then checking for errors and fraud (as they blame others) in a Luna Park of the ad-hoc …
Currently our stress-tested systems are being found wanting, which has driven the add-on orgy.
Instead, government needs to tie a single bow by sticking with top-down infrastructure, which, in its fullest form, is societal-wide optimally efficient systems.
We need infrastructure that can cope, even prosper, no matter what is thrown at us…
Hence, The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) calls on the Federal Government to implement the following 4 universal systems:
- The USI ($20,000 a year for non-incarcerated in-country adult citizens and $5,000 for a child’s guardian);
- Expand the current gap-ridden 10% GST to a 20% full-breadth GST;
- Deregulate the labour market; and,
- Disband Centrelink and the contracts of employment services providers.
Imagine if these systems had been in place prior to Covid-19, they would now be efficiently doing all the heavy lifting.
Thank you.
Best regards
Paul Ross
Founder
The Universal Empowerment Organisation (UEO) Australia
The Citizen’s Dividend Organisation (CDO) Australia
https://citizens-dividend.org/
https://www.facebook.com/paul.ross.798
https://twitter.com/paulross2
Humanity is being confronted by a perfect storm of Socio-Econo-Environment Catastrophes including:
1. Social:
a. Internal: mental illness, domestic violence, drug & alcohol abuse etc.
b. External: our weaknesses boost Democracy’s enemies, which is currently enhancing international rivalry such as with China, Russia, North Korea and Iran;
2. Econo: absolute poverty, relative income inequality, unemployment, homelessness etc.; and,
3. Environmental: ecosystem destruction, species extinction, human population explosion, plastic islands, climate change etc.
Hypothesis: This is due to a single foundational ‘Society-Individual Interface’ contradiction whose deleterious effects are cascading through every facet of society.
The relevant contradiction is the partial absence of the natural-morality-derived ‘Universal Empowerment Infrastructure’ (UEI), which consists of the four cornerstones:
- Universal Liberal Democracy – [In Australia] Yes;
- Universal Healthcare – Yes;
- Universal Education – Yes;
- 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 $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.
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.