wealthC
[Canada Are You Paying Attention?]
thaClick Here to Read Our Manifesto! - PDF
“What do we do about unsustainable perpetual growth, increasing inequality, and declining job opportunities due to robots and automation?
The demographers tell us that in rich nations such as Australia, the next generation will live shorter lives than their parents while levels of unhappiness and mental illness will be rising.
Most of us feel something is wrong but we don’t know what to do about it.
Surely our grand-kids should have as good a life as we have had? That is a fundamental belief of our group. The prime aim will be to find ways to stabilise our population and to share the wealth better.”
Dick Smith
The housing affordability crisis is an issue that currently dominates our public debate - a debate weighed down on all sides by misinformation, vested interests, political timidity, and ideological blinkers.
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Our Articles...
The Insanity of Endless Growth
9 August 2017 By Dr Haydn Washington for Dick Smith Fair Go. The world is faced with a predicament of grave enormity – yet one rarely spoken of. The United Nations (UN), almost all governments, business, and media and both the political Left and the Right are busy extolling (even praising) ‘endless growth’. Yet we …
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Policies for a Post-Growth Economy
9 August 2017 By Dr Samuel Alexander for Dick Smith Fair Go. This short article outlines a range of bold policy interventions that would be required to produce a stable and flourishing post-growth economy. I acknowledge that most people do not recognise the need for a post-growth economy yet, and therefore would reject these policy …
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The Legacy of ‘The Limits to Growth’
9 August 2017 By Dr Kerryn Higgs for Dick Smith Fair Go. I came across The Limits to Growth by accident just after it came out in 1972. There were a number of scientists who had already sounded related warnings in the 1960s: Rachel Carson in Silent Spring observed that the expansion of the chemical industry …
READ MOREDick's Videos
The Aussie Housing Affordability Crisis – 4.32mins
Dick talks housing affordability, population growth, and the first research report of his new group.
READ MOREIrresponsible claims by SBS and others link RACISM to the population debate – 2:25min
Dick responds to SBS on his statements on housing affordability, population growth, racism.
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Dick is on at 8:40 with @TimShawTweets on @2CCtalking the launch of the https://t.co/y7lMwXx0mUgroup! Tune in!: https://t.co/RelVi0qtTK
What we are sharing...there. I have lived elsewhere, but have made Melbourne my home for at least part of the year, for more than a decade. Take it from me, Melbourne is in the …
“Our growth-addicted economic system will see our children living in a world of 11 billion people, consuming and polluting more than our finite planet can withstand,” the ad says. “It’s a path to either more and more inequality, or famine, disaster, war and collapse. Are we that stupid?”
Since the early 2000s, Australia’s annual net migration intake has tripled from its long-term average to 210,000 people. Mr Smith wants immigration to return to a more sustainable 70,000 a year, a call echoed by a growing number of commentators.
“It’s still very generous, but it means we would stabilise the population under 30 million people,” Mr Smith told news.com.au. “I have absolutely no doubt we’re going down the same track as America, which has over 30 million people on a minimum wage of $7.10 per hour, less than half ours. The prime reason is too many people trying to share the finite.”
Australia’s population has surged 21.5 per cent since 2003, compared with the OECD average of 8.5 per cent, but Australia’s GDP per capita change has just barely outpaced the OECD — 16 per cent versus 15 per cent.
Mr Smith said it would only get “worse and worse”.
“Our growth rate will take us to 101 million people by the end of this century when our grandkids will be alive,” he said. “That’s possible but with a very large number of poor people, and they will revolt, they’ll bring out the pitchforks and revolt.
“I was in Siberia, I travelled to where the Tsar’s children were gunned down. We’re going to repeat the stupidity of previous generations.”
Mr Smith wants immigration returned to 70,000 a year.Source:Supplied
He says 80 per cent of Australians want a population plan.Source:Supplied
Australia could hit 101 million by the end of the century.Source:Supplied
The result will be “famine, disaster, war and collapse”.Source:Supplied
Mr Smith is spending $1 million to air the commercial.Source:Supplied
He’s hired the original voice actor from the Grim Reaper AIDS ad.Source:Supplied
“Typical Australian city scene 2050?”Source:Supplied
He slammed the common argument that high immigration was needed to replace an ageing population. “It’s ridiculous, it’s a Ponzi scheme,” he said.
“If you bring in more people now, they get older and the problem is worse. You can’t solve an ageing problem by bringing more immigration, it puts it off but gives the impression the government is doing well. The working people are worse off.”
Mr Smith is spending $1 million of his own money to air the commercial, which will launch at a media conference at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney on Tuesday.
He said he was inspired by a recent Oxfam report which found the wealthiest 1 per cent of Australians own more than the bottom 70 per cent — or 17 million people — and by comments from former Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser that the wealth gap was approaching a “danger point”.
“We need to have a population policy, and eight out of 10 Australians agree with me,” he said. “Everyone stops me in the street and says, ‘Dick, you’re so right.’ Every Australian family has a strict population policy, they don’t have 20 children, they have the number they can give a good life to.
“But our politicians are letting us down by spruiking endless growth, which is really endless greed, more people have less.”
Mr Smith said both sides of politics were to blame, with the Labor Party “frightened of their ethnic vote”, and the “wealthy lobbyists” pushing for ever-increasing immigration.
“It’s more customers to buy our goods, it keeps wages down, it’s the greedy 1 per cent who will get more and more wealthy as they completely destroy our country,” he said.
To coincide with the TV ad, Mr Smith has launched a “Fair Go Manifesto”, which calls for higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations — 45 per cent for companies compared with 30 per cent, and 65 per cent for individuals compared with 49 per cent.
The manifesto also calls for inheritance taxes for the wealthiest 1 per cent, and the removal of capital gains tax concessions and negative gearing for property investors to improve housing affordability.
Upcoming advertisements for the Dick Smith Fair Go group!
What do you think about the ads I’m about to run in the paper to help promote the Dick Smith Fair Go group? Your donations to the group help to pay for them. Any suggestions? Note: the TV ads referred to in the second ad will be run from August 15th.
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