The economy of the AEM's Egalitarian society is completely different to
the capitalist economy. It is also much simpler and easy for everybody to understand. It also costs the society tens of
billions of dollars less (annually) to manage. The major reasons for this
are because there will be....
- No stratified wage structure.
- Everybody works for the one employer
(i.e. the state).
- No income tax.
- No GST (goods and services tax).
- No private ownership of companies or
shares.
- No inflation associated with domestic
renewable products and services.
- No banks (other than the state bank).
- No credit.
- No interest on saving or investment
schemes.
- No inheritance.
See below for
an explanation about the main features of the AEM's Egalitarian economy.
As you will discover, the savings created
by the AEM's Egalitarian economy represent only the beginning of the
savings that are created by becoming an Egalitarian society. This alone
makes the change to Egalitarianism an economically rational choice, but becoming an
Egalitarian society also serves to rid our society of almost all social
problems. The resulting culture will be something that you will be happy
and proud to pass on to your children (unlike our contemporary
capitalist rat race which only going to become more and more severe).
Overview - No Income Tax
The profits from all businesses (and not
taxes) are used to finance social services, industry, research and
development, national and international projects, national security, wages
and even children's pocket money, and all other expenses that are
incurred in the process of managing the society.
This one policy immediately stops
billions of Australian dollars being wasted annually upon determining
how much tax needs to be paid, collecting tax, checking income tax
statements, and catching tax cheats.
State Ownership of All
Businesses / Everybody Works for the State
In the AEM's society, the state will own all Australian
businesses, and the profits derived from these businesses go back
to the state. The combined profits from all businesses provide the nation's
income.
Because the state owns all businesses,
everyone works for the state. The AEM's Egalitarian society also allows
people to undertake personal projects or to pursue various quests, which
can't be classified as jobs. See our 'Going
Off the Rails' web page for more details.
Wages
All full-time workers receive the same pay.
This wage will always be enough to live upon comfortably, because all
people who administer the AEM's Egalitarian state, and their family
members, receive the same wage as everyone else.
One can also work part-time, which will
usually require one to live at a lesser standard of living.
Wages are not affected by increases or decreases in the funding of various
social services, or by whether or not the nation has had a good year or
a bad year. What does fluctuate in relation to these things is the money
left over after all expenses are paid.
All Goods and Services are
Bought or Rented From the State
This policy is partly derived from the fact
that the Egalitarian state owns all businesses, and therefore one has
little choice but to only buy or rent from the state. However, if you
have read our 'The Prevention of
Corruption, Overcharging, Black-Markets, Stealing Money, Blackmail, Confidence
Artists, Protection Rackets, Organized Crime, Rip-Offs, Illegal
Immigration, and Black Money' web page, you will see that it will
also be impossible to buy or sell goods and services from anybody else
for the reasons expressed in the title of this web page.
Citizens do buy goods and services that can't be re-used
such
as food, entertainment, alcohol, professional services, electricity,
clothes, toiletries, and personal items such as photographs or the
materials for home-made items.
Homes can be rented or bought from the
state, but buying a home costs the same as renting that home until
retirement. Rents will be quite cheep and in time we believe that most
people will come to realise that they don't need to buy their homes. Those citizens who already own their own
homes can keep them, unless they choose to sell to the state. Those
citizens that are currently paying off their homes may be required to continue
paying them off because they have already committed that money to
international lenders.
Other re-usable products, such as cars, televisions, furniture, jet-skies, and
many children
toys, are generally rented from the state as we need them. Because
these items are rented from the state, it is the state's responsibility
to repair or replace them when they break.
Generally, in most product lines, older goods are cheaper
to rent than newer goods, although not always (e.g. art, antiques,
higher quality products). See the next section to see why renting
common items (e.g. houses, cars) will be
almost unnoticed in your daily lives.
No Indirect or Goods and
Services Tax (GST)
Currently, you pay a GST on the goods and
services you purchase because democratic-capitalist governments need
to extract taxes from each good or service that is sold by thousands of
different companies. In the AEM's Egalitarian society, all goods and
services are bought or rented from the state, and therefore the whole profit
is like tax because it goes to the state. Therefore, adding a tax, which
costs a fortune to administer, becomes unnecessary.
No Inflation
Associated with Renewable Domestic Products and Services
Domestically, two main things drive
inflation. First, wage rises drive inflation because they
increase the costs of production and services. In
the AEM's Egalitarian society, wages don't rise, and therefore neither
does the cost of production and services.
Second, inflation is driven by the desire of
the owners and shareholders of privately owned businesses to have more
wealth, and by the desire of governments to acquire more revenue from
government run business and the taxes derived from increased company
profits. In the AEM's Egalitarian society however, increasing profits
hurts the people who run the country just as much as it hurts you, and
therefore profits do not increase unless it is absolutely necessary,
which should be a very rare occurrence once prices have settled (i.e.
within the first 5 years of Egalitarianism). Further, no individual can
be economically advantaged by increasing profits.
The prices of food crops will continue to
fluctuate due to a number of factors (e.g. cyclones ruining crops,
droughts), but these fluctuations will not be the norm or long lasting.
Crop prices will also continue fluctuate in relation to on and off
seasons.
Prices also rise
as or when non-renewable resources become scarcer (this in not inflation),
and this will also occur with the AEM's Egalitarian society.
Also, because the Egalitarian state is usually trying to encourage people to consume less of certain
goods and services, particularly those that require non-renewable resources,
prices may often be artificially inflated, particularly for
newer goods (this is not inflation either).
We also have a strategy for limiting the
effects of global inflation, which Australia needs to keep pace with if
it doesn't want to be left behind economically. Our strategy to counter
this is to regulate the Australian dollar so that we raise and lower its value as
global prices rise and fall. By doing this, Australian citizens will continue to
pay similar prices (in Australian dollars) for many imported products.
No
Private Investments
In the AEM's Egalitarian society, the
only way people can acquire money is by working for it (unless one is
receiving social security, is a student on a scholarship, or is on our 'Going
Off the Rails' program). This means that you can't make
money by investing money, which includes interest on your savings
account. There are several reasons why the AEM has this policy. First,
investments are done for the sole purpose
of trying to get ahead of others, and this is exactly what we are trying
to prevent by becoming an Egalitarian state. Second, aside from the fact
that we don't like people earning money by doing nothing, making money by
investing money favours people with more money to invest,
thereby increasing any economic stratification that exists. Third, we
prevent the probability of social problems that arise from
investment schemes. See our 'The Prevention of
Corruption, Overcharging, Black-Markets, Stealing Money, Blackmail, Confidence
Artists, Protection Rackets, Organized Crime, Rip-Offs, Illegal
Immigration, and Black Money' web page for an explanation about
this.
No Need for Credit
Credit is necessary within the capitalist
society because it is the only way people can afford to buy expensive
items such as houses and vehicles, and it is also encouraged because it increases
consumption of goods and services, which makes the capitalist world go
round. In the AEM's Egalitarian society, credit is unnecessary because
people will always be able to afford to rent expensive items such as
their home. For those people who wish to buy their home, you merely
continue to pay rent until the house is paid off, which should be when
you reach retirement age, but you can pay it off quicker if you wish.
Things such as a European
holiday will need to be saved up for in advance, as they once used to
be.
No International Credit
The AEM also doesn't support governments
borrowing money either (from other international lenders) because it lessens the
nation's economic autonomy. We prefer to live within our means (like we
expect you to), and to go without until we have saved
up enough money to pay for whatever it is we need.
After saying this
however, we expect that the Egalitarian government will be far more
able to finance long-term national projects than capitalist governments
currently are. This is because, the state has everybody's money stored in
the state treasury, and the state can borrow from this money to pay for
such projects, just as commercial banks currently use the money that you
deposit in their banks to lend to others or to invest in money-making
schemes. In other words, if it needs to, the state can borrow money from
its citizens rather than from international lenders who require interest, and
therefore we never need to be concerned about being dragged down by
spiraling debt. However, after the Egalitarian society pays off the
initial debt that is created by becoming an Egalitarian society, it is
unlikely that the state will need to borrow money from its citizens
because the state, like it's citizens, is expected to accumulate more money than it
will ever
need.
Economic Autonomy
At the level of the individual, the AEM will eventually create as
society in which all adults and high school age students are
economically autonomous. That is, no one will need to economically
support or be economically supported by anyone else. You will all have
your own accounts and be responsible for your own expenditure. As such,
it won't matter if your spouse or your parents choose to only work 2 days
a week, you will not usually be economically disadvantaged because of
it. We discuss this policy more on our 'Economic
Autonomy' web page.
At the level of the state/nation, the AEM
intends to buy back Australia, so that Australia can be far more
economically autonomous. By doing this, we change Australia from being
similar to a public company that is listed on the stock market to a
company that wholly owned by Australians. This also serves to radically
reduce the profits that are created by Australians leaving Australia.
No Inheritance
Except in the initial phases of Egalitarianism, all assets owned by citizens, except for various sentimental items, go
back to the state (i.e. to all citizens) when we die. Inheritance is in conflict with maintaining
an Egalitarian society, as it allows people to have more than others
without earning it themselves. Inheritance also serves to keep your
children poor in relation to the children of the elite for generations. Further, nobody
needs
inheritance to survive comfortable within the AEM's Egalitarian society. This
is discussed more in our Focusing in on
the Capitalist Scam web page.
Paying Bills & Rents
Within the AEM's Egalitarian economy, expenses such as electricity and
rental prices (for all the things you rent) do not require you to do
anything. These expenses are automatically deducted from your wages
prior to receiving it. Your pay slip will display the details of these
deductions, so that you can ensure that they are correct each week.
