Tag: Welfare

I INVITE YOU TO SIGN THIS PETITION TO PARLIAMENT ASKING THAT THEY RESEARCH THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BENEFITS OF UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME.

On By Everald ComptonIn Community and Values, Funding and Finance, Government

You and I have the democratic right to place a Petition before Parliament asking them to consider and act upon any matter of public interest that concerns us.

All that is required is that we go to the website of the Australian Parliament, click on PETITIONS, and follow the guidelines on how to submit a request in not more than 250 words.

Our document goes to the Petitions Committee of Parliament for consideration. If they agree that it is a suitable petition, they invite us to submit evidence of community support for our request. This means that we invite supporters to log on to the Parliament website and follow the prompts to register as a supporter.

The Petitions Committee will then study our supporter base and, if they believe it is sufficient, they forward our Petition to the relevant Minister whose portfolio of responsibilities cover the domain of our request.

We are then free to contact the Minister to advocate our cause before, as required by law, he or she replies to us.

Because of this democratic privilege we have here in Australia, I decided to submit a Petition asking Parliament to set up a Committee to investigate the establishment of UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME in Australia.

As I want to achieve the best possible result, I invited my friend, Dr Karen Stenner, an eminent political scientist, to draft the petition and submit it to Parliament. She has done this splendidly and successfully as the Petitions Committee has now asked us submit evidence of community support.

So we need your help right now and invite you to click on the link below to register your support.

Please do it TODAY as our deadline set by the Committee is 31 August.

Ignore the survey on the website. Just click ‘Continue’.

I will not bore you here with a detailed description of the huge benefits of Universal Basic Income. Just type it into Google and you will find many descriptions of where and how it has been trialed around the world.

I will just give you these few dot points as an indication of key elements of its value.

*Replaces all welfare, and there is no Centrelink, as all over 18 are eligible to receive UBI.

*Removes the stigma of welfare.

*Financed by the removal of a huge bureaucracy & the imposition of a levy on all of the many tax evaders in Australia.

*Gives people the financial backing to survive while they start up a small business or undergo skills training to change occupations.

*Unlike the age pension, it enables everyone to earn as much as they want to without penalty other than normal income tax.

*Significantly increases participation in the work force.

*Reduces mental stress from daily life.

Just be reminded that we are not asking Parliament to implement Universal Basic Income. We are just inviting them to investigate it. Hopefully, we live in a world of open minds where we constantly seek to find better ways of doing everything.

Here is the link for you to use to sign up as a supporter of UBI. You will note that the Petition has been submitted by Dr Karen Stenner.

Please do it TODAY and also send it on to your friends inviting them to do likewise.

http://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN5308

You are helping to create a better Australia.

Many thanks.

Everald

OUT WITH CENTRELINK. IN WITH UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME.

On By Everald ComptonIn Community and Values, Government, Justice

Most governments around the world have welfare programs that attempt to provide for the basic needs of its citizens who are old, ill, poor, unemployed, disabled etc.

Those programs are far from ideal and are as narrowly targeted as is possible. A huge amount of paperwork is needed to apply for welfare and if you qualify you are constantly required to prove that you remain eligible.

If you are fortunate enough to qualify for it, usually after a long waiting period, you find that it places you on or below the poverty line and this means you live under constant financial and emotional pressure.

There is also a stigma attached to anyone who applies for welfare. You are regarded as a lesser being when you receive it. Indeed, many in your community will regard you as lazy, an undeserving burden for your fellow citizens to carry.

In addition, taxpayers pay excessively for their government to employ many thousands of public servants to manage a huge bureaucratic welfare system. In Australia, we call it Centrelink and it can justly be proclaimed as the most hated, inefficient and ineffective institution in the nation.

Far too many nations, especially Australia, have far too often had governments whose ideology has led them to want to punish welfare recipients, regarding them as sinners in need of repentance. The criminal application of ROBODEBT in Australia is a prime example of welfare persecution that caused people to suicide.

There just has to be a better way to create a just and decent society.

Indeed there is and it is called UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME (UBI), an enlightened alternative that a few nations have experimented with regionally and the results show noteworthy promise. The Province of Manitoba in Canada is a good example.

The basic plan is this.

*Every registered voter, who actually votes so as to prove their identity, will receive an unconditional monthly payment from government without applying for it. It should be at least the size of the current age pension and you will receive it until the day you die.

*If you also earn wages for work, or income from enterprise or investment, the UBI you receive will be counted as taxable income but you are not punished for working as currently happens with the age pension in Australia.

*If you choose not to receive UBI, you instruct government to pay it into a sovereign fund that is established for this purpose and is used for nation building projects.

*The cost to government of providing funds to pay for UBI is partially offset by the savings generated from closing Centrelink. The remainder is covered by ensuring that all tax evaders pay a minimum tax on revenue no matter how much they claim as losses.

*A prime benefit of UBI in social terms is that there is no such person as a welfare recipient. All stigma is removed as no one can tell what your personal position actually is.

*The existence of UBI means that there is never any need for governments to make relief payments to people when crises occur such as floods fires droughts etc. Everyone is receiving their UBI payment every month no matter what tragedies hit them.

*Mental health improves dramatically and its economic cost is reduced as UBI removes financial tension from millions of lives.

*More people will become self employed as they start small businesses knowing that if they fail they have their UBI to sustain the basics of life while they have another try.

As always, with every social initiative, special attention will need to be given to people who are in very special situations where they usually fall through the cracks.

The first step in introducing UBI into Australia will be for the Prime Minister to establish a Committee of Parliament to study it in depth and determine whether or not it can be designed to work effectively in Australia. If it reports positively, then legislation can be introduced to implement it.

If you agree in principle with UBI, please send this article to your local Federal MP asking him or her to advocate the establishment of a Committee of Parliament right now. It will take a courageous government to implement UBI but I think that our current Prime Minister and Treasurer may be the leaders to pioneer it.

UBI is not an idea that I have thought up. Far from it. I have simply been following its slow but purposeful introduction overseas, especially in Scandinavia and Canada.

The prime advocate here in Australia is a long standing friend of mine, Dr Karen Stenner, who is a highly experienced political scientist of excellent international repute. I am an enthusiastic volunteer on her team who, in my twilight years, wants to be part of the huge social and financial revolution that UBI will create.

You can follow Karen on Twitter @karen_stenner.

Join us in a journey to a safer and better future for all Australians.

Everald

TAX CUTS ARE A WELFARE HANDOUT TO THE NEEDY WEALTHY.

On By Everald ComptonIn Business and Enterprise, Community and Values, Government, History, Law

I have never become a member of a political party and never will as this could have the capacity to lead me to life as a one eyed citizen locked in to an ideology that requires a closed mind.

This confirms that I have been a swinging voter all my life during which I have voted for the best leader or candidate, but never the ‘best’ Party.

So it is that I have at times voted for Robert Menzies, John McEwan and John Howard while on other occasions I cast my vote for Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Julia Gillard. On one occasion, I voted for Greens leader, Bob Brown, as he helped me with legislation regarding needs of pensioners. Now I make it my business to back quality independents as we need many more of them to raise the stature of our Parliaments.

My purpose in relating my background is to set the scene for this article.

As I am neither a capitalist nor a socialist and believe that both are equally decadent ideologies, I want to add that I especially vote against anyone who advocates tax cuts and believes in the very false theory of trickle down economics. I fight them both with a burning passion as never in my life have I ever seen either of them do anything meaningful for humanity.

It has been proven over and over again that tax cuts make a few favoured people more wealthy than they already are or need to be and enormously blow out the national budget deficit while in no way doing anything to stimulate the economy.

Most importantly, none of their newly created wealth has ever trickled down to the poor. Not ever. Not even remotely. And it never will.

The lie on which ‘trickle down’ is based and promoted is because the wealthy recipients of tax cuts need to have a moral excuse to justify their greed. They want everyone to understand that only seek wealth so they can pass it on to the poor. Unless they can help the needy, they really don’t want to have one cent of their wealth.

From an early age in my 90 years, I regularly have been making speeches spelling out the sheer hypocrisy of tax cuts and trickle down economics. My critics always declare with venom that I have not got a clue about either economics or good government and should therefore shut up permanently.

So I ask them to give me just one instance where it has been proved that tax cuts have worked, but no one has ever given me a single one that is valid.

They trot out the high profile ones like those legislated in USA by Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Donald Trump or the recent one here in Australia by Scott Morrison, yet none have ever proved that they actually worked for the common good. They are unable to deny that budget deficits blew out and have never been repaid. The poor remained poor and often became poorer. The entire theory is a blatant lie of huge proportions.

THE INDISPUTABLE FACT IS THAT TAX CUTS ARE A BLATANT AND CORRUPT WELFARE HANDOUT TO THE WEALTHY, THE VERY GUYS WHO CONSTANTLY DENIGRATE THE POOR FOR SEEKING WELFARE. THEY ARE ALSO THE SAME GUYS WHO PAY THE LEAST POSSIBLE TAX THAT THEY CAN SO THAT EVERYONE ELSE PAYS THE COSTS OF NATIONAL LIFE.

The proven way to stimulate any economy is for government to create jobs by going into debt to build infrastructure & constantly enhance our essential food, health, education, housing, energy, and transport systems. This generates an army of taxpayers to fund the nation and creates spenders who fire up the market place.

Let me emphatically say in closing that I encourage and hugely admire people who begin life with nothing but work hard and wisely and honestly to gain a position of genuine wealth while paying a responsible amount of tax while they do it. We need many more of them, but no wheelers and dealers and plunderers who are also tax avoiders.

I also work to create a world in which everyone has a fair chance to become financially independent which is the status I have managed to achieve in life and is all that most humans really need to enjoy a good life of positive and creative achievement.

Yours for a good life.

Everald

LET’S KILL WELFARE

On By Everald ComptonIn Ageing, Elections, Environment, Government, History6 Comments

It is unfortunate that the word ‘welfare’, which used to mean well-being, now implies that recipients are unfortunate people who need to be propped up by the rest of society, much to the anger of an increasing majority who resent the sense of entitlement that many welfare beneficiaries seem to have adopted.

It’s time to remove it from our vocabulary and from our economic and social system, replacing it with a NATIONAL DIVIDEND that is paid to every Australian citizen every year.

This is not just another political idea, it is an unavoidable change that will be forced upon us when robots and their artificial intelligence take over the productivity of the nation leaving millions of us without employment while the Federal Treasury absorbs the revenue of a technology driven Australia.

So, it will be smart if we plan for it now instead of having it forced upon us in panic mode. Continue reading “LET’S KILL WELFARE” →

WARPED WELFARE WAILING

On By Everald ComptonIn Ageing, Business and Enterprise, Community and Values, Environment, Government, Seniors13 Comments

Contrary to what we are told by politicians and the media, the cost of welfare is not a major element among the issues that we face in achieving and sustaining the financial viability of Australia.

Currently, the crippling costs to the economy are –

Corporate handouts and concessions.

Tax Avoidance, particularly by multi-national corporations.

Negative Gearing.

The costs of Direct Action on the environment which should be paid by a tax on polluters.

Gross waste and inefficiency with Defence.

Superannuation tax havens.

A hugely bloated Public Service.

Enormous duplication costs between Federal, State and Local Governments.

The totally unnecessary costs of perpetuating racism at Nauru, Manus and Christmas Island

Added to these will be the proposed tax cuts which are based on the blatant lie that the benefits will trickle down from the rich to the poor. It never has and it never will.

Nevertheless, too many politicians have always believed that there are lots of votes to be won by belting citizens who are old, handicapped, unemployed or homeless. So, they commit perjury every day as they blatantly dig deep to reach the darkest elements of the voting public. Continue reading “WARPED WELFARE WAILING” →

PENSION WITHOUT POLITICS

On By Everald ComptonIn Community and Values, Elections, Government, Seniors16 Comments

At Budget time every year, and at every election, Australia’s Age Pensioners take an unwarranted political and social pounding.

They are accused of being an intolerable burden on younger taxpayers who are concerned that most pensioners may be welfare cheats.

The cynical aspect of it all are that their accusers are mostly tax evaders who constantly cry out for more corporate welfare such as tax cuts, subsidies and low interest rates.

Nevertheless, the fact is that the Age Pension today amounts to a payout of 45 billion dollars a year, a figure that will double by 2030 as more Australians grow older and take a lot longer to die.

The question for us all is how we finance it without sending oldies to the gas chambers as some fascists would like to do.

We can start by taking an objective look at the current situation and work out how to turn it into a positive.

The Age Pension is indisputably inadequate, very close to the poverty line, and has been for a long time. Continue reading “PENSION WITHOUT POLITICS” →