We need a priority list of steps that the government can and should take immediately to help protect working people from the immediate devastation associated with what seems will be an inevitable deep recession. (I have stolen a few of these ideas from Greenpeace)
I propose that for at least the next six months we should give all unemployed, sickness, invalid and sole parent beneficiaries a tax-free benefit equal to the net national superannuation rate for a single person – $425 a week with a tax on all other income of 39%. I will explain where I got this idea and how it will work a bit later.
How is this possible when the company is already 51% owned by the government?
We will try and use this process to find out the truth behind these corporate thieves to at least expose their criminal behaviour.
The crisis we are facing is a crisis of the system of production and reproduction that has dominated the earth for 150 years.
In 1946, the year after the end of World War Two, New Zealand introduced a minimum wage that was 83% of the average wage and a universal family benefit of 10 shillings a week for every child. This benefit was made universal, tax-free and not means-tested.
For 150 years, capitalism has always been a system that breeds inequality, racism, war, oppression and exploitation. That’s enough for me to want to end this system. Recent decades have revealed the fact that this system is also incapable of coexisting with the needs of the planet itself as a consequence of global warming and climate change.
The crisis engulfing the globe seems to be on a trajectory towards levels of economic decline not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. At that time unemployment surged to levels of 20 or more percent in the capitalist world, including New Zealand.
It is inevitable as a country that we needed to rapidly move to level three and four in our response to be able to suffocate the spread of the virus.
The government’s announcements today are a useful start to combatting the impending crisis. There is an international economic recession unfolding that will cause many businesses to cut spending and slash jobs.