The Opportunities Party (TOP) is calling on the Reserve Bank to divert its Quantitative Easing programme into wiping out personal and household debt through the introduction of a universal basic income (UBI), following the shocking Reserve Bank figures released this afternoon. TOP leader Geoff Simmons says the figures reveal the deep economic pain caused by Covid-19 is still unfolding, and with Reserve Bank interest rate at close to rock bottom, the Government needs to give the Bank new levers to stimulate the economy back to life.
“Today’s figures by the Reserve Bank show that their loan loss provisions are five times higher than pre-Covid levels, which tells us that the economic pain caused by the virus is far from over. The only lever that the Reserve Bank has in toolkit is to drop the official rate of interest, and it’s pretty darn close to zero right now, with plenty of economic pain to come. Also, dropping interest rates just encourages individuals and households to take on more debt at a time when we need to avoid increasing personal debt if at all possible.”
“Desperate times call for new ways of thinking and we are calling on a fundamentally new approach to Quantitative Easing. The Reserve Bank should continue to pump cash into our economic system, but in a way that doesn’t push up asset prices and debt for households. TOP proposes providing a universal basic income (UBI) of $250 per week to every adult in the county. As a way to push down individual debt levels, TOP would institute a ‘Debt Jubilee’ policy where by individuals and households with any form of personal debt – overdue mortgage payments, rent in arrears, credit card debt, hire purchase agreements in arrears – would have to divert the UBI to this first, until out of debt. Those individuals without any debt would receive the UBI as per TOP policy and because of their low debt levels could use the additional income to spend and stimulate the economy.”
“The RBNZ has committed to buying up to $100 billion of Government bonds in the form of Quantitative Easing, and we’re still relying on the old ‘trickle down’ effect to see that stimulus passed down to Kiwi individuals. Instead of the RBNZ following failed overseas approaches that benefit a few, why don’t they pass on that money to Kiwis in the form of debt resets and a universal basic income? This would see real economic stimulus as Kiwis pay off debts and spend their UBI however they’d like to.”
Hear hear.
The wont because ‘the powers that be’ don’t want them to and won’t let them do so.
‘They’ only have to look like they care, not actually care.
RIP NZ Democracy.
If you want to de-risk and get out of your mortgage you can either sell it to a broker or another buyer. Another buyer allows you to seek a better sale price a little easier and maybe has better fees. With a UBI there is no begging others for fucken money. That’s just begging for your fucken money from people that invariably get paid a dollar an hour less than the previous smock. Please, please allow me to get out of my own shithole!
Disgusting, horrible, the opposite of everything money was invented for.
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has that, of which a UBI is just a small part of MMT and MMT has all of the stable financial houses on it because that’s where the volume is and The Reserve Bank has none of the stable financial houses. Want to get out of the crucifix of debt then you’ve got to go through a stable centralized counterparty and hope which is terrible. If you want choice then you can do all that stuff with a UBI which is why it keeps coming up.
In order to execute all of these transactions they’re very expensive on gas and The Reserve Bank only has a limited capacity and so people are paying, if you want to sell your mortgage you have to pay banks extra on top of the mortgage policy. If you want to unwind a set of mortgages it will cost nzd$8000 for an initial consultation. Well, that sucks and people are willing to pay that because they see opportunity where it does not exist thanks to the corporate media debt narrative. Y’know how much property porn do you need to see before people realize they are the ones being screwed.
So, the gasoline price scales with perceived opportunity. As long as people are prepared to pay insane prices for gasoline and gas is energy which is a quantifiable unit and The Reserve Bank accounts for it (Reserve Bank doesn’t actually account for selling properties) and now we just have to abbreviate all that into a UBI and that’s that.
This proposal is not really a “jubilee” since the latter involves the cancellation of debt rather than the paying off of debt out of income. A UBI and a jubilee are both good ideas, and many would use the former to pay off debt, but I don’t think it should be mandated.
The world bank would not let countries go rouge with this because they wouldn’t make any money from loaning their cash, remember when Greece tried? Goldman Sachs fucked Greece over firstly and then Greece was so loaded with debt they were effectively blackmailed for keeping the loans in place as now the ECB loans to the Greece Gov’t money at high interest rates,- poor Greece.
I am happy with asset prices being pushed up thanks TOP as I am an asset holder.
It is hard to see how TOP’s policy of introducing what it calls a “comprehensive capital tax”, which would involve levying a tax on family homes, would push up asset prices.
There has probably never been a more opportune time in close to a century to try out the UBI concept.
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