Your note of 01/16/2000, Re: Subsidiarity and the Basic Income
To: John Vandenberg and friends on several mail lists. Many thanks, John, for sending me the executive summary of the article by Lucy Sullivan entitled, "Tax Injustice: Keeping the family cap-in-hand," which can be found at www.cis.org.au in the Issues Analysis section. I found Ms. Sullivan's analysis very compelling and was pleased to see the specific recommendation at the end, where she wrote: "A tax rebate (or payment) of $3,000 to $5,000 per dependent child or student, matching child benefits for the unemployed, is recommended, to replace all current family benefits, including childcare subsidies and Austudy." Ms. Sullivan may have reached too far when she included Austudy. A while back I received a related dialogue concerning the educational side of the tax equation in Australia which you will find below. Both articles are an exercise in measuring-well-being and finding out that we have too little well-being, but not enough political fortitude to do anything about it. The problem is not unique to Australia, Thomas Paine and William Pitt proposed adequate family allowances as an alternative to the Speenhamland System in 1795. Two hundred years later, none of the English speaking people have seen fit to preserve and maintain the family allowances (relative to average earned income) which were established by all industrial nations, except the UK and US, after World War II. Thanks again for the insight into Australian politics. Kind regards, Wesburt XXX Begin dialogue XXX Subj:[auspolitics] Educational Allowances Date: 99-11-02 00:52:42 EST From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rhianwen) + Téa-Louise Smith + Rhianwen Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Rhianwen?= [EMAIL PROTECTED] There are quite a few differences in the educational assistance schemes given to students, Austudy and Abstudy, and I believe it to be unfair. Bear in mind that these additional benefits are in addition to the living allowance granted to students. ABSTUDY (income tests sometimes apply) AUSTUDY (income tests, assets tests, and actual means tests always apply) ABSTUDY School fees allowance (non-taxable) Under 16 * $150 a year * $75 a year if turning 16 before June 30 * $4,204 if homeless or orphaned AUSTUDY School fees allowance Scheme does not exist! * if homeless or orphaned, _may_ get rent assistance. ABSTUDY School term allowance Under 16 * $520 a year * Turning 16 during year, entitlement up to 16th birthday AUSTUDY School Term Allowance Scheme does not exist! ABSTUDY School/Hostel Directed Boarding allowance Under 13 * $988 a term * 13-15 $426 AUSTUDY School/Hostel Directed Boarding Allowance Scheme does not exist! ABSTUDY Fares allowance (no restrictions, includes accommodation and meals) Actual costs paid to cover- * Secondary students eligible for away from home assistance * Full time tertiary students, including Masters and Doctorates * Part time tertiary students required to attend an activity away from base. Type of travel covered- Secondary students * to and from school at the beginning and end of term(unlimited) * travel in connection with successful placement at a new boarding location (unlimited) * for correspondence student to take part in compulsory residential schools (unlimited) Tertiary students * beginning and end of course * for courses of more than one semester (17-23 weeks), a return trip during the year. * Exam travel (for a supplementary exam or one held away from normal base of study) * Graduation travel, if completing equivalent to two year full time course or a post graduate course. AUSTUDY Fares allowance (restrictions apply) Actual costs paid to cover * independent tertiary students only Type of travel covered- Secondary students Scheme does not exist! Tertiary students * beginning and end of course * for courses of more than six months, a return trip during the year * for correspondence students to take part in one only residential school requirement ABSTUDY Other travel * compassionate travel (i.e. critical illness, injury, death or funeral of an immediate family member) AUSTUDY Other travel Scheme does not exist! ABSTUDY Assistance to attend away from base activities Actual costs paid to cover- * testing and assessment programs * residential schools * field trips * placements AUSTUDY Assistance to Attend away from base activities Scheme does not exist! ABSTUDY Incidentals allowance Payable to- * over 18 secondary students * full time and part time tertiary students * Doctorate students Rates * $49 (less than 12 weeks) * $86 (12-16 weeks) * $172 (17-23 weeks) * $341 (24+ weeks) AUSTUDY Incidentals Allowance Scheme does not exist! ABSTUDY Additional incidentals allowance Payable to- * full time tertiary, Masters and Doctorate students who spent more than the above prescibed amounts Rates * $88 (less than 12 weeks) * $175 (12-16 weeks) * $349
Subsidiarity and the Basic Income
To: A few friends, a few lurking innocents, many devious defenders of the status quo (DDotSQ), and assorted classic academics on several mail lists. Dear friends, Please accept my sincere apologies for wasting your time, and for putting your interest in my subject at risk, with my wholly unnecessary response to the Australian DDotSQ. He was only doing his job, and all too well, but my job went begging while I foolishly responded to his ad hominem attack. An attack which was "distinct from any legitimate sort of pertinent argument or refutation, and disallowed in debate," according to Aaron Agassi on list [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Now, back to promoting the general welfare, which is the special common denominator of several mail list owners who continue to distribute my posts. A previous post identified one of my favorite Christmas presents as the term: "noosphere" by way of Teilhard DE Chardin, Robert Theobald, and Paul Swann owner and moderator of list [EMAIL PROTECTED]. The term "noospheres" was not as helpful as I had hoped. It is a little flaky, and prone to be ridiculed by rednecks and libertarians. So I was doubly blessed to get, as a New Year's present, a more down-to-earth term: "thinking envelope of the Earth," also from Teilhard DE Chardin, but by way of Robert Wright, and Billy Grassie owner and moderator of list [EMAIL PROTECTED] where my posts have been proscribed since 98-12-02. Author Robert Wright, a contributing editor at The New Republic, Time magazine, and Slate, has posted his new book, NONZERO: THE LOGIC OF HUMAN DESTINY, at URL http://www.nonzero.org/app1.htm. His theme is, that social development follows a "nonzero" path, rather than a "zerosum" path, and thereby assures a slow but ever upward trend for the complexity and quality of human society. This theme confirms again Spinoza's 1670 universal law of human nature: that people, when free to choose, will choose the lessor of the evils and the greatest of the goods which confront them, thereby slowly but continuously improving their general welfare. I don't remember what, if anything, DE Chardin said about Spinoza, but it is certain that Robert Theobald and Robert Wilson shared DE Chardin's vision of a "noosphere" or "thinking envelope of the Earth," a network which guides or regulates the activities of all actors, capital or human, in the society covered by the particular "noosphere" or "thinking envelope of the Earth." My own narrow experience of 75 years on this planet has provided insight into only two such regulating mechanisms. The first one is the hardwired time-error system for dispatching the production of electric power on the international power grid which is bounded on the West by Texas, on the North by Hudson's Bay, on the East by Cape Cod, and on the South by Key west, FL. On average, about half of the connected capacity will be unemployed, but 90%, or more, of connected capacity will be fully loaded when consumers present their peak demand. In real time, of course, demand is always at the discretion of the consumers of electric power and the function of the dispatching equipment is first to preserve the stability of the whole system and then to preserve the energy balance between demand and supply with a minimum fuel input to the power system at every level of production. Here is Adam Smith's "invisible hand" hard at work. From an airliner at 30,000 feet, the power grid, containing both the regulating intelligence and the product, is invisible. The plants are only barely visible on a clear day, and the consumers are spread over the earth like a coat of paint. Here is a real "noosphere," indeed. The second such regulating mechanism, of course, is the market price mechanism of every free society. This "noosphere" is a soft network of linkages between the actors, capital or human, in the society regulated by the applicable "noosphere" or "thinking envelope of the Earth" We should think of this "noosphere" or "thinking envelope of the Earth" as historically restricted in extent by local or national boundaries, but presently overflowing those geographical restrictions as globalization evolves under the influence of the Internet and other advanced methods of communication and transportation. This vision of a regulating influence gives a more hopeful meaning to the term "world governance," as meaning self-regulation by Divine Law, by the Twelve Moral Commandments, or by the Rule of Law. This is a more acceptable vision by far than the coercive meaning of World Government according to the New World Order. We should also think of this soft "noosphere" or "thinking envelope of the Earth" as a multitude of nested envelopes, with each envelope defining the price of a particular commodity in dollars per unit of value, just as the single hardwired "noosphere" above defines the price of one particular commodity, electric power, in
