16 Comments

Love the slides! It seems like a no brainer that income management and mutual obligation have failed - though having objective evidence of that has merit as a nail in the coffin.

That said, I've never understood this fixation on universality in a basic income. It seems to me to be advocating for welfare payments to be extended without excluding the very well-off....

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I've long argued for focusing on Basic before worrying about Universal. That's central to the Livable Income Guarantee I've argued for, which starts with steps like those modelled here.

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Change the tax system away from income to wealth and land, then giving $1k a week to Gina doesn't matter, she'll pay it through her wealth

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Hi John, my subject for my Masters thesis on evaluation, too many years ago, was associated with indigenous wellbeing in remote areas. In a nut shell wellbeing measurements we might use in a western society are not that appropriate for this cohort. How you get around that without an evaluation design argument on ideological grounds will be hard. I concluded that some western measures are completely contradictory and or irrelevant.

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question/proofreading: "failure of problems" seems like a weird phrasing. Did you mean programmes?

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Yes, I'll fix it when I get a round tuit

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"failure of existing problems" sorry.

Even just putting the "mutual" into mutual obligation might be useful. Make the department of immiseration obliged to ensure that everyone is getting the full benefit(s) that they are entitled to, and failure results in a period of extra payments. Repeated failures result in longer periods.

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On the "too long" question: reading in Gmail caused this not unfamiliar message to appear: "[Message clipped] View entire message" where the nonbracketed part is a link that when clicked will open a new window and ... show the entire message. This worked.

FWIW, on all Substacks that I am interested in reading, I always click through on the link that is the headline, so "too long" is somewhat moot from my point of view. But, since you asked, now you know. At least for Gmail users.

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Thanks, that's very helpful and confirms what I understood from Substack. I'll trust Gmail users to click through.

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I like the slides. And there were no issues for me accessing them.

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A reminder to everyone: in Australia it is now considered respectful to capitalise Indigenous.

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Thanks, I'll remember that

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Totally agree that, as per slide 2, policies should be evidence based. If only politics were to be subject to peer review.

Wasn’t peer review attacked during the culture wars? - anti vaxxers have kept that flame alive. Once the Trump govt collapses under the weight of it’s falsities we might be able to put all this behind us.

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If Pete Judo is to be believed, a massive 3 year study in the US found that giving poor families an untaxed $1,000 per month resulted in a **decrease** in net wealth and that the control group who got just $50 did better with wealth accumulation. The families getting $1,000 per month decreased work hours but did not increase education/retraining (unless they were in the youngest cohort).

Does this make UBI a failure? As Judo notes, the study overlapped with covid, which complicates matters. Plus maybe an upfront lump sum may have produced a different result

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyoMgGiWgJQ

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I believe we are a victim of the Ayn Rand driven philosophy of promoting inequality, which through Hayek led to NeoLiberalism. Add to that our Westminster system. Both are binary and confrontational. The evidence is there' When we look at our socio/economic system: inequality has grown exponentially over the last 50 years or so.

We need to look through a different lens at systems that are circular and collaboraive. Systems where 'welfare' (community services) are not a cost, but an investment that reduces inequality and stimulates the economy. A circular system where the community services sector can sit at the same table with the private sector as they have compatible objectives (even if for different reasons)

The Scandinavian socio/economic systems have this circularity: low inequality excellent social services like health and education, and also high taxes and thriving economies!

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the answer to many of those slides is simple

Sarina Russo

why is she wealthy? she doesn't help anyone

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