30 years ago, 1 % of US and Australian society was too disabled to work, now it's 5%, is this a failing of modern medicine, or is it hiding the true extent of joblessness, I've worked a manual labour job after having a fingernail ripped out by the roots, and when I've had a leg in plaster, we need to spread the burden of work until all of the unemployed are soaked up.
After being absent while in command during the black Saturday bush fire disaster, ex police chief Christine Nixon was paid 350.G / year for 'bush fire recovery' a job that retired community leaders may have been willing to do for free, when I do a less than satisfactory job, I often work for free to make up for it.
Why was she paid so much? did she have a private file on the political leaders?
Does the government think nothing of public money?
Terror suspect Dr Haneef was paid 'an undisclosed sum' by the government, why undisclosed, it's public money, they should have a right to know where it ends up, and the right to determine how much is doled out in apology money, my vote was to give Dr Haneef some free advice, don't lend your phone to terrorists, tell them to get their own ph.
To prevent from going the way of Greece, every dollar of public money should be accounted for online. Glasnost, actual open and transparent government,
There are about 20,000 families in Melbourne homeless, why are houses in such short supply in the big empty land? there are 50 to 70 thousand house blocks ready to develop in greater Melbourne but only 500 to 700 are actually for sale each week,
The government applies stiff penalties to petrol companies colluding on pricing, but land speculation is unregulated, one of the ways rich people can manipulate circumstances to increase their wealth, is to create artificial shortages, like in primitive societies, putting a fence around the waterhole and charging for water, this sort of behavior harms society, and government should prevent it. High land prices means high taxes for property transfer taxes, great for govt. revenues, but the obvious downside is that if it costs someone 400 / week to rent a house, you can't pay him 400 / week to work in a factory.
Housing costs, living costs dictate wage levels. Germany has low housing costs, and strong manufacturing.
Cheap living costs should be Australia's big advantage, houses should cost 100, 000, rent should be 100 / week, and our industry can bloom again. Instead we've paid the wealthy for being wealthy, at the expense of our working poor. The increased value of suburban land is created by society building the schools businesses and roads, the created wealth should belong to the community, not speculators.
If we reward the rich for constricting the resources of the poor, they don't have to take the risk of opening new business to make money.
There is a popular lie that wealth trickles down from the rich, it doesn't. Money paid to working poor circulates in the community
and another one that taxing the rich is punishing them for being rich, being poor is a punishment, we need to get rid of tax loopholes that the rich can waste accountants time exploiting.
Our increasingly complex tax laws require more and more accountants, counting money doesn't make money, complexity needs to be reversed back to simple and straight, same for all.
Our legal system is convoluted and unwieldy, and needs massive modernizing,
those bright criminal lawyers getting up to 20G per day to keep criminals on the streets could better be employed finding cures for malaria, or solutions to energy problems.
We can be issued a fine for low risk driving behavior that could cost us our jobs, then mortgages, then relationships, why can't police equally issue an on the spot fine, that includes jail time for basic crimes, evidence recorded and uploaded in real time for central monitoring, 'state your name, I've just found you in possession of ..., and sentence you to 2 weeks jail' I know an unusually large number of people who've been bashed by police, they feel powerless to remove criminals from the streets, or see them punished for repeated criminal activity.
Drug addicts run from prison to their dealers, they should be tested every day after release, lose their right of privacy for a time following release, and banned from areas where they practice repeat crimes. From my vantage point, the average citizen would prefer more victim rights, less perpetrator rights, lets let them vote on trialling different systems.
One of the things that has greatly reduced crime rates in the US is increasing jail time for perpetrators, but we can't afford to pay 30G / year for low security, up to 90G/ year for high security, maybe until we can afford better medical care for citizens we should be housing prisoners in rows of water tanks, they can still have books, sunshine thru windows, access to pets, but it would reduce costs associated with keeping larger prisoners from harming smaller , the rampant drug use in prisons, I'd like to vote on options like this.
Our government isn't interested in sweeping reforms, disruption could see them voted out, better to keep sailing the titanic at the ice burg, and feathering their own nests.
Hopefully electronic voting can be initiated in small ways, like for a local council, and then it can mature into a viable option for being a major part in how our government is run.
The 2 systems could run in parallel, to retain the security of our present system, while gaining the advantages of better decision making,
and gradually reducing the weight of government.
Unpopular issues could be debated, like considering investing in clean nuclear, thorium reactors are a much cleaner nuclear power than uranium types, uranium was chosen because governments wanted the plutonium byproduct for nuclear weapons, so thorium lagged behind.
We could debate this online, and then opposing sides could formulate a test with rotating questions, so that would be voters have to prove that they read and understood the arguments before being entitled to vote, like for instance, did you know that the coal burning power plants in the latrobe valley emit 2 tons of uranium / year that has been locked up in the coal, and that natural radioactive gas Radon seeps out of the earth exposing you to harmful alpha particles, maybe equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes / day if you live in a basement where it accumulates before breaking down. That thorium reactors are not only far safer, but can also digest some of the plutonium that the world needs to get rid of.
Another benefit of electronic voting is the ability to quickly reassess the effect of new legislation, and change direction, as our experts track the results of each new direction.
I will be devoting a separate website to this soon, and as costs allow, formulating a program to allow users to debate, then vote with their Ph number and a PIN, that small groups could use instead of public meeting.
Comments, Questions, Updates:
Simon :acbike@gmail.com
Ph :0432 509 303