Dick Smith an influential businessman in Australia has released an updated manifesto. Which part do you think you agree or disagree with? Does he share any policies with ppau?
Summary:
Reduce Australia’s world record population growth – actually have a population plan – more people means less resources and wealth per capita
Change our perpetual growth Ponzi-type economic system
Fix the tax system so the wealthy multinationals and the 1% of wealthiest
Australians pay what they can easily afford
Full openness of the tax paid by the 1% of our wealthiest Australians
Tackle big business tax dodging by legislating full tax transparency
Lowering corporate tax will create more inequality
Reward tax avoidance whistle-blowers
Encourage wealthy Australians to sign the Gates/Buffett “Giving Pledge”
Reintroduce inheritance taxes for the wealthiest 1%
Increase the tax on the wealthiest 15% by 15%
Political donations
He thinks there should be a new method for funding elections as an alternative to political donations.
Overseas aid to concentrate on assisting population stabilisation
Facilitate union membership for the lowest paid workers
Move away from GDP as a measure of success
Measure and publicise the inequality index
Consider the introduction of a living wage – or a shorter working week
References “basic universal income” (Universial Basic Income) as one possible approach, or alternatively to shorten the work week without a reduction in remuneration.
CEO wages to be limited by the average salary paid by that company
I don’t really have the time to trawl through the latest iteration of Dick Smith’s Current Pet Project, but what the unutterable fuck does this refer to:
Or, more to the point, how does he propose to achieve this without going to war against the USA? Because their foreign aid is predicated on destabilising global population in the name of their god and at the behest of the religious right (e.g. the gag rule, anti-abortion requirements on foreign aid medical services, etc.).
Being against those moral crusaders I understand, but does he have a practical way of achieving it that doesn’t mean initiating a holy war or is he just talking shit again?
He’s an advocate for population control, so I believe this would be that overseas aid should be used to identify and deal with the core of what causes other country’s citizens to become refugees. Deal with a potential future problem before it happens/becomes one.
Uh-huh … and is his preferred means of achieving this population control (and corresponding resource allocation) by way of enforced lowering of their birth rates, which tends to foster eugenicist approaches (including forced sterilisation in lieu of birth control and all sorts of other human rights abuse); or is he more in favour of a more overt re-engineering of those places, such as a drastic reduction in population and suppression of cultural institutions to prevent what he views as a problem(i.e. a war of genocide)?
At what point does Australia have to consider that the old fruitcake is a clear and present danger to everybody and just sanction his removal from the species?
At least the only person to ever fund his periodic political urges is just himself; every other potential financial contributor in the country already knows he’s a deluded nut and keeps their distance. Hopefully he’ll be about as successful with this effort as his previous ones and we won’t need to read any more of his drivel for another few years.