This is a campaign by getup to push for these policies. PPAU is already in support of the basic income, and Job Guarantee is potentially in the pipeline as well. There may be other policies similarities as well. Would be interesting to see where PPAU disagrees with however.
Summary:
Background
For the first time in human history, we have the resources, technology, and skills to build a society where no-one is forced to subsist in poverty. Where a secure, well-paid job is available to all who want one. Where all our energy comes from clean, affordable sources like the sun and wind. A society in which everyone has a place to call home, and the skills to build the life they want to lead.
Rethinking whatâs possible
We have to step beyond the narrow vision of what weâre told is âpolitically possibleâ and fight for the future we want. We need a new charter of economic rights for a new age. Itâs time to be bold again.
The failed neoliberal experiment
Over the past decades, our collective wellbeing has been increasingly entrusted to the whims of corporations and the market. Decades into the privatisation experiment, the results are in: study after study has found little to no evidence of increased efficiency in markets subjected to privatisation.7
Policies Being Pushed By Getup! In this âFuture To Fight Forâ campaign
Job Guarantee: Well-paid work for all who want it
Universal lifelong education and retraining
Universal Access to Early Education and Childhood Learning
Guaranteed Basic Income
A roof over every head
Household Clean Energy Guarantee
A public-interest banking system
How to Pay
We can afford anything, just not everything.
History has shown that the Australian government can comfortably spend more than it takes in from taxes. In fact, Australia has never run meaningful government surpluses, nor has it needed to.
We canât afford not to:
The status quo is expensive. We pay extraordinary amounts to avoid fixing problems. When considering this vision, itâs important to bear in mind all the money it saves as well as the money it requires.
Is PPAU in contact with GetUp by any chance? It might be interesting if there is any way of certifying how much PPAU are in agreement with these policies.
That seems a bit disingenuous.
Money-out in excess of money-in, above the level of any actual expansion of the economy, either produces inflation or some kind of bubble (in places like housing or stock prices).
Iâm not sure what they mean by a âpublic-interest banking systemâ.
Would assume itâs identical to the now common progressive push for a return to government banking infrastructure to sidestep corporate banks as a method to solve various issues of fees/coverage/2big2fail.
No, this is not the case. All government deficits are by definition spending more than the government takes back in tax revenue, yet the Australian Government has run deficits for most of history with little inflationary impact.
The exception being WW2 obviously, when the economy was pushed to its limits for the war effort. The other case being the 70s oil shock, but that was a price-wage spiral (rather than demand pull inflation) caused by a key imported resource price shock (oil). It snowballed due to poor institutional arrangements that were ineffective at enforcing real income cuts that needed to reflect the lower living standards from higher energy costs. The inflation was not a result from too much deficit spending, and the appropriate policy response to reduce inflation is not cutting the deficit but rather create institutional responses to enforce real income cuts via e.g. incomes policies (wage and price controls), or use a policy institution like a JG, centralised wage fixing etc.
Bond issuance does not reduce inflation risk of government net spending. There is literally no difference in inflation impact whether the government issues more bonds or just creates more reserves/money - either way more money/demand is being injected. The only difference is what asset the private sector ends up holding after the spending occurs.
It may be asked where the public will get the money to lend to the government if they do not curtail their investment and consumption. To understand this process it is best, I think, to imagine for a moment that the government pays its suppliers in government securities. The suppliers will, in general, not retain these securities but put them into circulation while buying other goods and services, and so on, until finally these securities will reach persons or firms which retain them as interest-yielding assets. In any period of time the total increase in government securities in the possession (transitory or final) of persons and firms will be equal to the goods and services sold to the government. Thus what the economy lends to the government are goods and services whose production is âfinancedâ by government securities. In reality the government pays for the services, not in securities, but in cash, but it simultaneously issues securities and so drains the cash off; and this is equivalent to the imaginary process described above.
â Michal Kalechi
What actually has an impact on inflation (which indirectly involves government bonds) is interest rates, but the RBA controls that via OMOs (using government bonds as a passive tool). This means government bonds in effect have no impact on reducing inflation from government deficits. The only thing that can reduce the impact of inflation from government deficits is if the RBA chooses to raise interest rates, although arguably interest rates are not very effective as a policy tool for managing inflation.