Stop the Recession
Dr Lynne Wrennall, BA (Hons), PhD, FHEA.
Objectives
To: 1. Stimulate socially responsible economic growth. 2. Enhance the quality of life of all citizens. 3. Eliminate all involuntary unemployment. 4. Eliminate all involuntary economic hardship. 5. Stimulate opportunities for work that is economically, psychologically and socially rewarding. 6. Eliminate wasteful and destructive forms of public expenditure. 7. Address the fiscal crisis of the state. |
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Welfare
1. Replace the overly complex, moralistically oriented Social Security system with one simple consumer/ wellbeing subsidy of £100 per week paid to each man, woman and child.
2. Allow all recipients of the consumer/ wellbeing subsidy to work, without financial penalty.
Outcomes
• Removal of the ‘poverty traps’ that are part of the current welfare system. In other words, people will be able to choose to work to improve their wellbeing, without financial penalty. This will facilitate return to work, for people who are unemployed.
• A larger workforce will be available to produce goods and provide services.
• Enormous savings on administration of means testing and other assessments of eligibility, and on enforcement of preventing the fraud of working while on benefits.
• Enhanced multiplier effects. Stimulating consumer spending will build confidence and stimulate employment.
• Significant economic growth. As people spend the subsidy, they are stimulating employment to produce the goods and services that they are consuming.
Rationale
There should be a minimum safety net, below which we should not allow citizens to involuntarily fall.
It makes no sense whatsoever, to punish people on welfare who work, when actually what we want, is for people to work.
Administration and enforcement are ‘dead’ forms of expenditure, that is to say, they lack the ability to be fruitful. They are better to be replaced with more worthwhile forms of expenditure.
Stable, significant consumer spending will stimulate confidence and growth in all other sectors of the economy.
Money given to the wealthy is typically termed a subsidy. Money given to the poor is typically termed welfare. Changing the concepts that structure our views of government expenditure, is essential if we are to leave the old stalemated debates behind and develop the necessary tools to solve the serious problems that we face. Old outmoded debates for, and against, welfare need to be replaced with concepts that more competently rise to the challenges of the contemporary economic crisis.
Employment
1. The national government must establish a ‘Work Bank’. All employees pay a levy that supports the activity of the Work Bank. Work Bank will guarantee to provide paid work to everyone who requests it.
2. Typical services provided by Work Bank employees would be: coaching people with special educational needs, tree planting, medical research, before/ after school clubs, holiday clubs, 24 hour childcare, children’s hotels, children’s holiday resorts, teaching assistants, bodyguards to protect children at risk of abuse, bodyguards for people with disabilities and the elderly, cooking and delivering meals on wheels, landscaping public spaces, building houses, renovating squalid housing, home care for people with disabilities and the elderly, support for new parents, transport services for people with disabilities and the elderly, youth club workers, translation services, teaching of second languages, teaching the arts, support for people in hospital, conservation of lands and buildings, archeological digging, etc.
3. Everyone who wants work services performed by Work Bank employees shall apply to the Work Bank and if unable to pay for the services, may receive the services at a subsidized rate or for free.
4. The ruling body of Work Bank shall be democratically elected by all citizens.
Outcomes
• Work available to all.
• Improved standard of living and quality of life.
• Significant economic growth.
Rationale
Work available to all, is one of the most liberating reforms that any society could introduce. It not only allows people to lift themselves out of poverty, it also provides the skills development that is implicit in work and has spinoff effects in standard of living and quality of life. Additional effects will also be noticed in a reduction in social exclusion and poverty dependent forms of crime. Also, people employed by Work Bank will pay taxes and stimulate further growth in all other sectors of the economy, by spending the income that they earn.
Apprenticeships
1. Colleges of Further Education will be given a statutory duty to provide apprenticeships to all who request them, subject to the applicants meeting national minimum standards set by national government. The fees for the apprenticeships to be governed by the same rules and procedures as university fees.
Outcomes
• The training and work preparation of sufficient tradespeople to fill the current shortage.
• Entry into the skilled workforce of large populations whose lives are currently blighted by unemployment or by work that they find unfulfilling.
• Reduction in unemployment and the associated social problems of social exclusion and crime.
Rationale
There is a longstanding severe shortage of tradespeople. This is unacceptable in the context of high unemployment. Action is obviously needed to tackle this disparity and the recommendation provides a solution that is effective and economical.
Criminal Justice
1. All prisoners [adult and juvenile] who have never been convicted of a violent offense, shall be released from prison as soon as Work Bank has been established, with the remainder of their sentences being converted to sentences to perform unpaid work for Work Bank.
2. Prison sentences for non- violent offenses shall be replaced with sentences to provide unpaid work for Work Bank.
3. Judges and magistrates shall be prohibited from imposing prison sentences for non- violent offenses, [other than for people who refuse Work Bank penalties.]
4. Persons charged with non- violent offenses can elect to provide unpaid work to Work Bank, rather than being processed through the criminal justice system.
5. The number of hours of work owed to Work Bank will be calculated by converting the value of harm caused by the offense into hours, using the minimum wage as the unit for calculating the value of each hour.
6. Violent offenders shall be offered psychotherapy in exchange for a reduced prison sentence.
Outcomes
• A significant reduction in the size of the prison estate.
• A very significant reduction in costs to taxpayers.
• Genuine reform to replace the ‘revolving door’ of imprisonment.
• A very significant reduction in crime.
• Lawbreakers will genuinely be able to ‘repay their debt to society’, rather than continuing to be a cost to society.
Rationale
The current prison regime is extravagant and in terms of rehabilitation, it is ineffective. Big bucks are buying little. Moreover, the current system operates in a manner that produces more criminal behaviour, by brutalizing inmates, stimulating a desire for revenge and teaching the skills of crime. Sending fewer people to prison will reduce the extent to which young people are socialized into lives of crime.
Victimless crimes
1. All victimless crimes shall be decriminalized.
Outcomes
• Harmless dissenting behaviour will be accepted rather than being criminalized.
Rationale
The secondary harmful effects of criminalizing citizens will be avoided. In other words, the psychological and social damage that results from involvement in the Criminal Justice System, and their consequences in further deviant behaviour, will be reduced.
Health and Medical Care
1. Patients will be permitted to attend the primary care physician of their choice, as long as the physician is willing to treat them.
2. Basic self care for minor ailments and repeat treatments, including provision of prescriptions, will be available through NHS Direct online. Prescriptions will be emailed to the pharmacy of choice.
3. NHS Direct will develop a Telemedicine service that will offer consultation and treatment, reducing the number of referrals to other services.
4. New degrees will be introduced to train up health care professionals such as nurses, to become doctors.
5. Wherever appropriate, care in the home will replace hospital treatment.
6. People with infectious diseases will be encouraged to remain home, during the incubation period.
Outcomes
• A health service that offers more choice to service users.
• A more economical health service.
• A health service that provides a more timely service.
Rationale
Service users will gravitate to the their preferred practitioners or service delivery modality, increasing the likelihood of early intervention, thereby reducing the long term cost of treatment, especially in the case of infectious diseases. Service users who are treated early, will infect fewer people. In turn, this reduces the number of days lost to sickness.
These measures reduce costs while increasing the choices available to service users. This is likely to increase overall levels of satisfaction with the service.
Family Justice
1. Divorce in contested cases shall only be granted after a period of compulsory mediation provided by qualified Clinical Psychologists.
Outcomes
• Reduced costs in resolving contested divorce.
• Better outcomes for the parties and their children, in terms of physical, psychological and social safety.
• Reduced costs in policing and criminal justice.
Rationale
Unresolved tensions between parties to contested divorce currently produce excessive costs to the Justice system, excessive risk to the parties and their children and costly enforcement measures. Mediation by fully qualified psychologists can significantly reduce these costs and risks.
Social Services
1. All existing social services to be replaced by services from Work Bank.
Outcomes
• Services to be placed under the directly democratic management of Work Bank.
• Savings through the economies of scale encouraging the commissioning of appropriate services.
Rationale
The current location of service brokerage in Local Authorities is failing to appropriately meet citizens’ needs. The current system of Social Service provision is severely strained and the services for children and the elderly are bitterly inadequate. In the current institutional setting, decisions serve the interests of Local Authorities and their vested interests, rather than serving the interests of service users and taxpayers. Dramatic, innovative change is required to ensure that service provision is more democratically accountable and therefore is better tailored to meet citizens’ needs.
Governance
1. All public services shall be headed by a team of democratically elected officials.
Outcomes
• More accountable public administration.
• Bureaucracy to be replaced by democracy.
• A significant reduction in cronyism and nepotism.
Rationale
Making public administration democratically accountable to citizens is the only mechanism that is likely to be effective in making public administration meet the needs of citizens.
Taxation
1. Anyone who hires a full- time employee will receive a tax credit of £5000 [pro rata for part- time employees].
2. Anyone who fires a full- time employee will be taxed £5000 [pro rata for part- time employees].
3. All organisations will be required to conduct independent psychometric and MRI testing of their senior managers. Those who employ psychopaths or those with Borderline Personality Disorders in senior management positions will pay a taxation levy of 0.5% of their normal taxation for that year, per instance. Those who employ empaths in senior management positions will receive a taxation credit of 0.5% of their normal taxation for that year, per instance. [Senior managers being defined as the highest two tiers of management].
4. A tax of £200 shall apply to the felling of each tree that is not part of a tree restoration programme.
5. A tax of £5000 per annum shall apply to empty houses.
6. Local Authorities that demolish, or permit the demolition, of buildings of significant architectural and/or historic interest shall pay a fine of £2 million.
7. All products that negatively impact on health will pay a VAT rate that is 5% higher than healthier products.
Outcomes
• Increased employment.
• Increased economic growth.
• Reduce homelessness and sub-standard housing.
• Aesthetically improve the environment together with increasing the health impacts that result from this.
• Improved health of the population, together with the consequent reduction in costs to the National Heath Service and to social care.
• More responsible management of the organisations that impact on the lives of citizens.
Rationale
The Taxation system is not currently contributing to the achievement of employment to the extent that it is capable of doing and thus is failing to fully stimulate economic growth. These proposed measures allow the Taxation system to meet that brief.
The taxation system is also able to participate more fully than is currently the case in improving the health of the population and in reducing health costs.
Other measures improve the housing stock of the nation, reduce the cost of social housing and aim to prevent housing stock going into decline.
Organisations have significant impacts on the lives of citizens and hence we need organisations to behave in a manner that is not overly harmful. Changing the nature of senior management is one way to encourage organisations to behave in ways that are more socially responsible.
Subsidies for Industry
1. Tax credits of £50 million to be paid for each genuinely new discovery of products that significantly extend life or enhance the quality of life.
Outcomes
• Better stimulation of inventions and discoveries.
• Better and more socially responsible resourcing of the Research & Development that is necessary to stimulate economic growth.
• Savings on other costly services in health and social care.
Rationale
This amount of money is large enough to overcome many of the perverse financial incentives that currently hold back developments in science.
Higher Education and Further Education
1. The Student Loan Corporation shall be abolished. Student fees shall be paid out of tax revenue. Students will repay the taxpayer in installments when they hit the income threshold. No interest will be charged on the amount owed.
2. The scheme will be extended to cover Further Education.
Outcomes
• A viable and defensible system to finance Higher Education and Further Education.
Rationale
This process provides a fairer and more legitimate way of financing Higher Education and Further Education.
Schooling
1. Children will be allowed to attend the state school of their choice- the funding will follow the child.
2. All state schools will offer boarding facilities [temporary and permanent] to children who require the service. Boarding will be paid for, by the child’s family, or by the state if the child has no appropriate family.
3. All state schools will have specialist behaviour units to tackle difficult behaviour in students and to replace exclusions from school.
4. Payments to schools for Special Educational Needs [SEN] will be replaced with financial rewards for skills development.
Outcomes
• More children will receive the benefits of attending the more effective schools.
• Ineffective schools will die a natural death.
• The enormous social and financial costs that result from school exclusions will be avoided.
• Parents will be able to undertake shift work, knowing that their children are receiving appropriate care.
• Greater educational achievement by all students.
Rationale
Forcing children to attend under- performing schools, when an alternative is available, is wholly unacceptable. The long term social consequences of the current approach are too costly to countenance.
Boarding facilities will allow many parents to return to the workforce, and to their chosen profession. This is especially the case in professions that are experiencing shortages of staff, such as in nursing.
The social and financial costs of school exclusions are catastrophically high. These costs can be avoided by establishing specialist behaviour units.
SEN payments reward schools for not teaching necessary skills to their students, whereas financial rewards for skills development would appropriately reward schools for enhancing their students’ skills. The long term social and financial benefits of this change would be considerable. For example, teaching a child to read at KS1, saves years of damage to the child’s development and saves years of financial costs for scribes and other support.
Strategic redeployment
1. Industry redeployment to be facilitated through the negotiation of new government contracts:
Armaments companies to be redeployed building spacecraft.
Prison industry to be redeployed building hospitals and schools.
Tobacco industry to be redeployed providing school meals.
Oil industry to be redeployed providing alternative energy sources.
Pesticide industry to be redeployed establishing self sustaining, livable environments on other planets.
Firearms industry to be redeployed making surgical, dental and medical equipment.
Children’s Care Home industry to be redeployed providing children’s hotels, to provide 24 hour child care for the children of shift workers and to meet other similar needs.
Elderly Care Home industry to be redeployed providing care in people’s own homes.
Pharmaceutical industry to given contracts to supply clean water where it is required.
Outcomes
• Socially responsible economic growth will be better resourced.
• Production will be better aligned with the needs of citizens.
Rationale
The major economic currents influencing production decisions do not currently operate in a manner that stimulates socially responsible economic growth. These measures will reorient production decisions to better meet the needs of citizens. Ethically defensible growth, will attract more effort and support, therefore it will be more sustainable.
Local Government
1. A cap shall be placed on Local Government salaries that is 30% less than the salary of backbench members of Parliament.
2. Local Governments shall undergo a process of amalgamation, so that each county shall only have one Local Authority.
Outcomes
• Very significant costs savings in Local Government administration.
• More appropriate, economical and efficient commissioning of services by Local Government.
Rationale
The absurdity that Local Government administrators are paid more than Ministers in national government is a costly and entirely unjustified extravagance.
At the moment, Local Governments are too small to be able to effectively commission appropriate services for citizens. Larger commissioning units will allow for services to be commissioned that are more closely tailored to citizens’ needs.
Travelers
1. A one- off gift of land shall be made to the traveler community who shall establish their own nation state therein.
Outcomes
• Traveler communities that are more enabled to determine their own destiny.
Rationale
The continued disruptions to the Traveler way of life that involve ‘moving on’ traveler communities, are a disgrace to nations that wish to consider themselves civilized. These disruptions are harmful to travelers and wasteful of the taxes of all citizens.
The proposed measure supports the value of Travelers autonomously deciding their own plans for the future, hereby ending the pointless and destructive interference in traveler lifestyles that marks current practice.
Housing
1. The consumer subsidy together with Work Bank will ensure that people are able to pay their mortgages.
Outcomes
• The ability of all, to achieve housing security.
• Abolition of sub-prime mortgages. Virtually all mortgages will be safe.
Rationale
These measures will give stability and growth to the housing market that in turn will help to stabilise and develop other sectors of the economy.
Conservation of Buildings
1. Local Authorities will be given a duty to restore/ renovate buildings that have been left vacant for more than ten years. The building will then be sold on the open market to reimburse the costs of restoration/ renovation. If the owners of the building should subsequently return to claim it, they will receive a sum of money that is equal to the price for which the building sold, plus annual interest at the base rate of interest, minus the costs of restoration/ renovation and minus in costs incurred by the Local Authority in keeping the building safe during the preceding years.
Outcomes
• Buildings of significant historical value will be conserved, rather than declining into a state of dilapidation.
• More buildings will be able to be put to useful purpose.
• The built environment will be more aesthetically pleasing.
• Numerous unsafe buildings will be made safe, preventing them from spreading hazards such as damp and dry rot, to adjacent buildings.
Rationale
The practice of demolishing significant historical buildings is irrational, when a better alternative is available. This proposal provides a solution that meets safety needs, contributes to conservation and improves the housing stock. Also, the move will contribute to stimulating growth in the building sector and this is a sector which typically drives growth in other sectors of the economy.
MP’s’ Expenses
1. Members of Parliament will be granted a set annual allowance for their expenses. All will receive the same allowance, regardless of how they choose to spend the money. Proof of how they spend their allowance will not be required.
Outcomes
• An end to the wrangling over expenses.
• An end to expenses fraud by MP’s.
• A reduction in the administrative and investigative costs associated with MP’s expenses.
• Enhanced reputation of MP’s.
Rationale
The distraction of debates over MP’s expenses needs to be ended, so that MP’s’ valuable time can be devoted to solving the far more serious issues that we face.
The plan may be reproduced in full, or in part, with acknowledgement of authorship.