Photo by Amber Weir on Unsplash
Abstract:
“The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread social and economic policy experimentation as governments sought to protect household finances while locking down economies. Cash transfers emerged as one of the most popular policy measures, leading many to reflect on new possibilities for enacting universal basic income through temporary or emergency interventions. We take Australia’s pandemic response, and particularly its Coronavirus Supplement, as an example of this broader experimentation. We analyse the Supplement through the lens of an emergency basic income, arguing the measure reflected existing institutional structures and norms, forms of national and international policy learning, and vulnerabilities in Australia’s liberalized housing and labour markets. While temporary, we consider how its apparent success might suggest ongoing policy relevance, either as a form of capitalist “crisis management” or as an alternative pathway for implementing forms of basic income.”
To read the. full article, click here.
Wow… I can’t wait to finish reading this whole “study”. Maybe I should that way my comment breaks down the BS written inside it, no, for the moment I will rant a little….
The short story….
I hope this piece of “research” mentions the countless of people that scammed the system for thousands of dollars for free payouts, personally spoke to people who laughed as they claimed over $15,000 in benefits during covid to sit on their arses and do nothing, businesses shut down because someone sneezed, and everyone got a paid holiday for a month or more, even though they all got covid in the end and didn’t die, a few didn’t even get “sick”.
Because of this “basic income experiment during covid”, some states of Australia, like Victoria, are now over $200 billion in debt which will not be paid off by its constituents as taxes until the year 2080. But that’s okay the big-players and their buddies got their shares of the people’s profits, like Pfizer et al. I know of some that boasted of multi-million dollar profits with shares in Pfizer.
-Thousands of businesses have left Victoria, thousands of people have left to other states (including some that I know personally),
-new taxes have been places on people by the state governments putting pressure on people,
-patients of public healthcare are in dismay because state debt is forcing people to wait years for surgery,
The solution…..
-the collaboration globally to destroy the supply chain alongside other economic decisions has pushed inflation higher due to Covid mismanagement, but this is part of the wrecking ball or slow moving train-wreck that began with the financial crisis of 2008, which leads to the next point,
-immigration is being used as a solution to the economic woes, a few of those wealthy immigrant imports can afford to push local market prices higher, increasing the housing and rental crisis, placing housing out of the hands of local long-term citizens, but hey, public housing wait lists are at 30 years wait, but remember people it is all okay, these immigrants are here to fuel the economy by buying more goods and services and paying taxes, the classic labor government “fix”.
How do we fix all these wonderful problems that were outcomes of “basic income”… I know…. let’s just print more money or borrow it from world banks under the control of CBDCs and call it basic-income, and let the masses pay it back with interest and taxes.
Yes, I am being facetious and as a rant I am not being overly accurate and specific (I don’t have time to type up a referenced article).
But I have to say…. in all honesty this type of basic income solution reminds me of the economic hell-hole and corruption that was socialism/communism that I came from last century.
If this is the sort of Basic Income that is being proposed as a solution to the world then I can only imagine the socialist ideology that is the focus here, freedom will be lost for a slice of bread in order to eat at the end of the day, under the banner of “we all need to be honest and share the burden to build a better future for the next generation” (so Karl Marx a statement that it’s not funny), meanwhile underneath it all there are “paper bags” floating around to make sure that some get more benefits than others reminding us of the truth of Animal Farm, but you can’t say a word about it, lest you disappear in the middle of the night. Don’t worry people, apparently everything is under the watchful eye of a surveillance state reminiscent of the Stasi of East Germany and we are protected with the potent power of virtue-signalling.
Yes… I would like the idea of Basic Income to work, but economically if it is played out how it was during covid then it’s a farce, and this study which I can’t wait to finish reading later, is likely to be a contrived piece of shite built on the ludicrous decisions of the governments of the day in tune with their socialist fantasies, or maybe the catering to the whim of the masses basal desires for money so as to garnish more votes, and we know how Australia stands today politically after the last few elections, the moronic masses, as ever, know nothing about economics and politics, nor history, nor about government-corporate global interests that take precedence over the good of the nation and its citizenry.