By Keith Davis
Why are some Capitalists looking at the concept of replacing our Welfare System with a Universal Basic Income?
Well, it is not because they are natural allies of the poor, or altruistic benefactors of those citizens who have to rely on welfare benefits to try and survive. It is because they want to know where their own next dollar is going to come from.
As the divide between rich and poor widens, as more and more people are thrown out of work, and as automation takes over from humans in many workplaces, there is no longer a guaranteed ever-growing pool of happy consumers out there with the capacity to … spend, spend, spend.
In other words, the people who manufacture and sell consumer products are starting to look ahead, and they are worried because the number of people with the spare cash to spend on products and services is starting to decline. Peoples’ pockets are starting to feel the grand pinch and household debt is flying higher than Virgin Galactic.
Capitalists believe in economic growth. For that economic growth to roll around and reach ever higher levels the people who manufacture things or supply services require other people to buy those things. Things like televisions, fridges, cars, houses, mobile phones, computers, online media access, holiday units, and airline tickets.
The Capitalists and Economists want people to not only buy all of those things, they want people to throw out many of those things after only a year or so of use and buy a whole new bigger and better range of those same old things.
But what has all of this got to do with the Universal Basic Income? As it happens it has an awful lot to do with it. There are many figures bandied about internationally and locally for how much the Universal Basic Income should be. I’m proposing an average figure of $30,000 to $40,000 per citizen per year.
Now let’s think about how much the welfare system costs Australia each year.
Remember that this Welfare System covers the whole range of benefits and tax breaks that are out there – Negative Gearing Benefits, Business Subsidies, Rich Peoples’ Tax Dodges, Government Protection for Non-Tax-Paying Corporations, Family Tax Benefits, Unemployment Benefits and other pensions, and we might as well throw in the extent to which Politicians’ Perks are subsidised by the populace. All of those things add up to Welfare.
To that incredible National Welfare System Bill now add the cost of Government funding to all those organisations who are connected to the National Welfare System. As an example the Unemployment Industry of JobActive Providers costs over 5 billion dollars alone.
But think past that and add on all the costs of all the Community Groups beavering away to pick up and support every human and every business that falls through the cracks. We’re getting up to Himalayan heights of expended dosh here and I’d love to see a gifted economist, which I’m not, dive in and come up with a real-world figure for our Welfare system expenditure – and then compare that figure to the annual spend of a Universal Basic Income.
Under the Universal Basic Income scheme I am proposing that each and every Australian citizen 18 years old or higher receives a flat out yearly payment of $30,000 to $40,000. No other Government payment or subsidy is given to anyone, and I mean anyone, for any other reason. You get your Universal Income Grant and that’s it. Period.
The scheme is modified to the extent that the more you earn over that level then you will be subject to a sliding scale that diminishes your amount of dollars received. It might mean that a millionaire, subject to the sliding scale, still gets $50 per week but so what, they are citizens too.
And here is what would then happen …
There would no longer be a welfare system in Australia – though there would need to be a support network in place for youth, and for any citizens in the unfortunate situation of not being able to look after themselves.
Poverty, as a blight on our social landscape, would be eradicated. And as an added bonus – the Government would have to cease demonising the disadvantaged people in our society.
The ludicrous government-funded unemployment Industry of JobActive Providers would disappear.
A Universal Basic Income is an egalitarian scheme. Every Australian would have access to it and there would be no ‘us’ and ‘them’.
But would there be people around who would abuse the scheme?
Yes, of course there would be. We currently have many highly paid corporate CEOs running around doing little else but demolishing their companies and their shareholders’ expectations – and I imagine that these bludgers on the system would continue to do that while pulling in their own share of Universal Basic Income dollars. But … apart from getting ACA to door-stop them, what can you do?
So I can well understand why some capitalists and economists are starting to support the value of a Universal Basic Income, because the implementation of such a scheme would allow even the poor to buy the things that the capitalists want to sell – the fridges, televisions, etc.
The poor, the unemployed, and the disadvantaged would also, and this one is far more important than any silly unending economic growth mantra, would be able to live their lives above the poverty line and with a modicum of dignity. How good would that be?
[interaction id=”5947843cf03c53313d6ecd5c”]
