This is called communism and it failed, because there is always greed

If everyone get the same income, no one will work, greed provides progress and advancement and it is not a bad thing

In communism, bribery is rive as it is the only way to get ahead. it did not work and will never work

I remember “Thatcherism” it was the application of real world fiscal necessities, required to reverse and overturn the result of Keynesian sponsored incompetence.

And Thatchers response to greed was simple…

“Economics are the method, the objective is to change the soul”

In other words, those who focus solely on the economic issues of life, in the way socialists obsess and fixate on the equal distribution of wealth and resources, miss the point completely.

Regarding “they don’t get government assistance to help raise their children or cope with a disability”

Margaret Thatcher in Statecraft observed

“People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

Regarding vague notions of equality again, dearest Margaret

“On one thing, nature and nurture agree: we are all different. If this is unjust, then life is unjust. But, though one hears this expression - usually in the form of the complaint that 'life is unfair' - it really means nothing. In the same vein, someone once said to Voltaire, 'Life is hard.' To which is replied: 'Compared with what?”

Dovif2 “This is called communism and it failed”

Yes

Margaret said of that form of industrial organization

“A country that produces what no one wants to buy, and whose workers receive wages that they cannot use to buy goods they want, is hardly in the best of economic health."

the loons of the left will always be with us… suggesting black is white and individualism dangerous… its just ignorance, envy and incompetence and the socialists pander to it..

"(Gorbachev's) remarks in Prague seemed to me, to say the least, of doubtful validity. Yet nor should they be lightly dismissed. They represent the articulation of a strategy, common to the left in many countries, of seeking to escape all blame for communism and then going on to take credit for being more pragmatic, modern, and insightful about the world which those who actually fought communism have created. It is a pressing necessity to expose and defeat both distortions."

Has nothing to do with communism. I knew the idea years ago as guartantee minimium income. It is a very efficent rconomical system that does away with all pensions and benefits. It is set at the minimium that people need to survive. Everyone including the rich are entitled. As long as it is classed as taxable income, a percentage automatically returns to the government.

Oh Col, I think we would all love to hear more about Margaret Thatcher.

A guaranteed income would destroy many people's incentive to work and improve themselves.

What you are talking about is passive welfare. Look at the disaster that has been for Aborigines.

I feel certain this would not happen in places like here or the US, for this reason.

Many employers want to hire and fire at will, and offer unreasonable wages and conditions. Note in this, the legal minimum may not be reasonable depending on local living costs. Under a punitive welfare system such as ours, predatory employers are supplied forced labor, where centrelink recipients are denied a right to a basic minimum income should they decline jobs which are hazardous or fail to provide a liveable, decent wages and conditions. The bosses' wet dream would be to have no minimum wage at all, or a situation like the US where minimum wage has fallen rapidly in real terms, and they can hire or fire at will.

Ah! the inevitable "but communism failed" straw-man has come already.

A minimum wage and basic health care are *not* communism: it is civilisation! Looking after the less fortunate is part of what makes Australia so desirable to live in. I cannot believe that these folks are so against helping poor people, but don't bat an eyelid at the billion dollars the RBA has been giving to our Banks.
It seems that it isn't charity they object to, just charity to those that actually need and deserve it!

Look at your history folks: Countries that allow the rich to walk all over everyone else go into decline. It is bad economics! Communities and nations grow by working together in synergy while exploiting their natural advantages. The hard working are rewarded, the slack/incompetant are kept in a state fit for humanity. A few government sponsored dole bludgers are *far* more desirable than hungry muggers and an ever more distanced elite.

I think the author got it spot on: these people think that because *they* don't get a benefit then no-one else should. The far Right is nothing but selfish people with no solutions except what has just been tried and failed.

Please, please, please do some travel and see what it's like in countries without such things! It is not nearly as much fun being rich when the poor have nothing to lose by killing you. If you play "law of the jungle" too hard, you *will* suffer the claws of someone who needs your resources to feed their kids.

The power elites will hold this attitude so long as they are allowed to by the general populace. Howard made it acceptable to be a short sighted, culturally bigoted, regressive, selfish idiot. Rudd, alas will not reverse this so it is up to everyone else with some sense to shout down the remnants of "economic rationalism".

touche OzAndy

OzAndy - touche

Ozandy writes

'It is not nearly as much fun being rich when the poor have nothing to lose by killing you. '

Of course many that would kill you for a mobile phone have been indoctrinated that if you are white then you deserve to die. The killer may also have a number of wives (maybe a touch greedy).

The inference that it only the rich in material things that are greedy is a fallacy. Men whether rich or poor need to deal with greed. Rewarding those who want to bludge has always been a failure. Thankfully we have a safety net in this country for those in need. Unfortunately this generosity is seen by to many as a right rather than a privilege. No wonder their is so much abuse of the system.

Assuming that we could find sane definitions to "above the poverty line" my gut feel is that a guaranteed basic income might be far more effective than the complex web of payments the government currently takes from taxpayers uses up a portion of it administering programs then hands out the remenants through all sorts of different scheme's.

We have had years of trying to weed out those who use the existing scheme's to avoid meeting their obligations and they appear to still be with us. We have the silly situation where some people find that they make less working than not working.

The difficult bit is deciding what level the payment should be at. It costs more to live in a capital city than it does to live in a regional area but there are all sorts of reasons why people live in cities (including access to employment opportunities). Should the scheme pay more or less depending on where someone choose's to live. If it does not then how do we define the poverty line that we need to be above? Does the scheme expect those solely reliant on it for income to be able to afford a car? Is that a car per recipient or a car per household? Does the size of the payment vary depending on how many people share a home and therefore share the costs of that home?

The issue of what is the poverty line gets even worse when we think of a world wide scheme.

R0bert

Runner. No implication that only the rich are greedy, nor that the rich are rich because they are greedy.

My point is that looking after the poor is not only ethical, it is a good cost/benefit decision too. Similarly stopping the wealthy from abuse of their power is necessary: as history has so recently demonstrated.

Politicians used to talk about "regressive" or "progressive" policy. We need to recognise that the last decade was very regressive in policy, and now we need some balance.

It is the rich asking and receiving handouts that is truly corrupting and wrong. For every "dole bludger" I support with my taxes, I am also supporting 10 middle class babies, 2 wealthy private schools and the negative gearing on several beach properties...

I don't object helping the needy, but I object greatly to helping the well-to-do.

Ozandy

When you talk about the recent example, I am assuming that you are referring to the sub-prime crisis.

The subprime crisis started from the lending to people who are "sub prime" ie people who might not be able to repay, people who might have borrowed too much and did not have enough collateral.

But greedy people are greedy by nature, why would they lend to people who cannot repay?

The answer is that the US congress asks the bank to lend to minorities, and sub-prime individual. This is done to enable the poor, who does not have a mean to repay to own their own borrowing. This crisis was actually caused by the US government helping the poor, in the utopia you wanted.

The easiest thing is to blame the “rich people” but these people are not in the business of losing money. The subprime crisis was caused by the US democrate “do gooders” Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton. And through lack of regulation, greedy people found a way to make lots of money by lending out the money of the Rich. The US Government will now be left to foot the bill.

Yes helping the poor to have the minimal is beneficial in society. However, incentive must be given for them to aspire. Just giving them accomodation like what they did in America, will destroy a country. Which is what you are advocating.

Communism failed because since everyone earn a similar wage, there is no incentive to work harder. Since there is significant redistribution of income, the highest paid became the tax collectors, who can make a good living through bribery etc. Therefore the system stagnate and the wrong thing get rewarded. Any system that does not reward hard work/innovation... greed if you want to call that will always fail

A basic wage to assure that no one starves and a top wage to assure that no one wastes are the only conditions under which mother Earth can afford humanity

Dr Tomlinson completely skips over the reasons for the rise of economic rationalism - Keynesianism failed. It failed in the Great Depression in the US, it failed in the 1970s throughout the First World, and it spectacularly failed in Japan in the 1990s.

Amusingly, for all those interested in a guaranteed minimum income for everyone, the only party in Australia advocating such a thing are the Liberal Democrats (LDP), a moderate libertarian party who stand opposed to basically everything else Dr Tomlinson proposes. The LDP suggests a negative income tax to replace our current tax-and-welfare system, where everyone is guaranteed $9,000 a year if they earn nothing. And that's without mutual obligation, Centrelink hoops to jump through, etc. It's achieved by having a tax-free threshold of $30,000, and a flat tax of 30% above that and negative tax of 30% below.

I guess the old commie should vote LDP next time ;-)

Milton Friedman, the market economist, whose economics inspired the fiscal policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan advocated a negative income tax so people could be assured a basic income. This was consistent with his market economics since government would not be intrusive in any way to determine how the money was spent or who got it. The only determining factor was the person's income. I think it's a great idea. Apparently, some are so afraid of seeing that poor people are helped out that they yell 'communist' at any attempt to see that the poor don't live in misery. The most successful capitalist countries which have the highest standard of living and are the most productive of goods and services are the Scandinavian countries. They maintain a basic standard of living for all. Marxists are against those countries because they are capitalist. Some rich people are against those countries because they would pay more taxes. They would rather their taxes pay for jails and law enforcement bodies. There is a direct relation between poverty and crime. Some rich people such as Warren Buffett, possibly the second richest man in the world, advocate the maintenance of a basic standard of living. He is no more a communist than Milton Friedman.

I agree with the sentiments of this article but I disagree that the problems are caused by attitudes of the power elites or of the general population. Human kind is genetically tuned to cooperate and when we find situations where we do not get cooperation of which "greed is good" or "punish the poor" are examples, then the solution is to change the system that causes these attitudes to emerge.

Market places that work well are great examples of cooperation not greed or competition. Market places can be viewed as extensions of grooming where literally if you scratch my back I will scratch yours. Our brain pleasure centres light up when we give but not when we receive. As a species we have succeeded because we are great cooperators (and great communicators). When we find systems that do not reflect these fundamental attributes then we should look at modifying the systems for the solutions.

To illustrate let us look at two market based solutions proposed to reduce ghg emissions. The solution being advocated by the government is emissions permits trading where we punish people by charging them more for using polluting energy. Another solution is outlined in "Rewarding the frugal and charge the profligate" http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7085&page=0 The second market is based on the idea of cooperation not conflict and of doing a trade where both parties benefit. The first is unlikely to significantly reduce ghg emissions while the second will.