Captain Nemo wrote on Jan 23
rd, 2020 at 9:43pm:
Fair enough, I wasn't aware of those issues.
So, cashless cards are not the answer ... I wonder what would work?
What would work is positive policy based on hope and freedom, not the negative policy of despair and oppression.
What would work is making sure everyone who wants a job can get one. That is the hope. Abolish all compulsory restrictions on how anyone spends their money and the many other restrictions imposed on unemployed and underemployed workers. That is the freedom.
* Abolish all compulsory cashless cards.
* Renounce the falsehoods of pretending that 5% unemployment is "full employment" or that it is a "natural" level. If people cannot find work, that is not "full employment". It is not "natural" if it is manipulated artificially. These lies must be called out.
* Abolish involuntary unemployment.
* Instruct the RBA to rebase its policy settings around maintaining unemployment below 2%. 1.5% should be the target setting.
* Increase compulsory superannuation to 12%.
* The RBA would gain a new mechanism to control inflation, a surcharge on the Superannuation Guarantee rate. It can raise or lower this as required, with the proceeds coming out of workers' pay. It would work more equitably than interest rates because interest rates only affect the spending of people with interest-bearing debts but a superannuation surcharge would affect all workers. Workers get the money taken from them back in retirement instead of handing it over permanently in interest charges.
* Redirect funding from pointless vocational courses towards ones where employers actually need more workers.
* Introduce an employer-funded co-contribution towards vocational and university education.
* Abolish unpaid overtime. 90% of the workforce doing 100% of the work includes up to 10% of that work being coerced from workers for free. That practice must be abolished so more jobs can be created for workers who want them.
* Introduce a Job Guarantee.
* Abolish the privatised job services networks.
* Reinstate the Commonwealth Employment Service as the Commonwealth Employment Commission (CEC). Its mandate would be similar to the old CES, but with the additional task of managing the Job Guarantee.
* All employers advertising vacancies would be required by law to advertise them with the CEC, Seek, or another similar recruitment board. Advertising with the CEC would be free of charge.
* Make it easier to relocate interstate for employment opportunities by providing a $5000 relocation grant for all workers.
* Cut stamp duty on property transfers in all states to 0.2% of the property value with a minimum charge of $500. Property stamp duty is a significant barrier to employment because it's a huge tax on moving house.
* Replace the property stamp duty revenue with a broad-based land tax. Farmland would be exempt but not the farmhouse.
* Abolish payroll taxes in all states and territories. It's a tax on jobs that varies among the states and this makes it complex and costly to administer.
* Replace the payroll taxes with a single national tax on company turnover that raises a similar level of revenue, with the proceeds distributed to the states on a strict per capita basis. Companies would receive savings through lower tax compliance costs.
It should be obvious from this list that addressing poverty and inequity requires a broad sweeping policy agenda that includes industrial relations reforms, taxation reforms, superannuation reforms, changes to the Reserve Bank, the agreement of the states and territories and other broad changes. Such reforms are needed to clean out a lot of policy deadwood that has accumulated over the past 50 years or so, primarily driven by a neoliberal agenda. It's obvious that neoliberalism is not working, and it has to go.