We have all experience it: Endless Reporting and Tracking, and Machine Non-Thinking.
Here is a number which is meaningless: 3.6 millions are on Centrelink payments. Phillips and Narayanan (2021) of the ANU puts it more meaningful:
The Australian social security system spends around $120 billion dollars in cash transfers to Australian households each year. This money provides a safety net for around 5 million Australian’s most of whom have little or no other regular income source due to age, incapacitation, caring responsibilities or unemployment. Payments to these persons do vary substantially as do their financial requirements. This paper considers the latest trends in financial stress and poverty through recent decades but also through the COVID-19 period to better understand the emerging trends and the current state of financial stress and poverty for different types of social security recipients. It contains a particular focus on children and families. We find financial stress has declined through recent decades across the whole population. However, those receiving working age social security payments such as the disability support pension, Carer Payment, Parenting Payment and JobSeeker have been left behind. Their financial stress and poverty levels have worsened through Australia’s long economic boom of the last 30 years. The current planned rate of income support will leave 789,000 children in Australia living in poverty (more than 1 in 6 children). Using the relationship between financial stress and income we estimate where additional funding for social security would best be spent and what impact such spending could have on financial stress and poverty in Australia. The report finds that increasing overall social security spending by up to 20 per cent yields strong benefits in terms of reducing poverty and financial stress when targeted towards working age payments with high rates of poverty and financial stress. These include JobSeeker Payment, Parenting Payment Single, Disability Support Pension and Carer Payment.
Interesting! And demands an answer from government:
The report finds that increasing overall social security spending by up to 20 per cent yields strong benefits in terms of reducing poverty and financial stress when targeted towards working age payments with high rates of poverty and financial stress. These include JobSeeker Payment, Parenting Payment Single, Disability Support Pension and Carer Payment.
I have been on long periods of two of those payments: JobSeeker Payment, and Carer Payment. Recently, I have experienced yet-another-horror from the allegedly “employing industry”, which is made up of private employment agencies, Centrelink, Services Australia, and Workforce Australia. It is a bureaucracy gone made. That 3.6 million Australian understands the reference I am making here. But why should the rest of the Australians care, the 23.6 million? Perhaps, it is this one critical thought, those who are suffering are the professional elite, among the middle ranks of occupations. They are not the elite of executive workers who often exploiting “the sad situation”. Nor are they the drone workers, some paid well, others not. This class is need for education, health, geo-politics, and domestic peace. “We” are also the class which is being silence by government and corporate executives, however, it is getting harder to silence those voices minute-by-minute, but still decision-makers resisted. Reduce the employment or contracting, as niche fields which are foolishly what is seen as not necessary, and you will erode society; indeed, society has been eroded. DO YOU CARE!
The resistance comes in the form of verbal and written “dismissals”: “It has always been that way, always will,” “Rome was not built in a day,” “You’re not being practical,” and “You are speaking too generally, you have not said what you want.” These dismissals are nonsense in this context: decision-makers have made decisions to advance their own narrow agendas, and these decisions have been demonstratively shown not to be in the best interest of the common good. The 3.6 million are persons, human beings. They are the common good, and the 23.6 other Australians are also badly effected in the larger schema of things, when reductive decisions are so made.
There are many practical problems in the “employing industry” which can be addressed: Endless Reporting and Tracking, and Machine Non-Thinking. Governments are introducing A.I. without a clear understanding of philosophy, sociology, history, and education. It is already becoming a disaster, albeit there is value and good outcomes from some types of automation. You do not have believe this author. You can research yourself the millions of authors saying the same basic message, while governments ignore it.
One writer is worth quoting: Dr Neil Peach, an urban sociologist and urban philosopher. Much has been written globally about city politicians and bureaucrats do not listening. Dr Peach responded to one of my recent paper thus:
The system you are dealing with, appears to have the accumulated knowledge of the traffic lights guiding the flow of traffic at any intersection. It is automated with no genuine memory- only a routine. It also appears that it has a red light camera in place. Neither system interacts with the other and the only memory is that of a past event recorded on the film. Such a system has no sympathy and depends on the ‘driver’ for its outcome. Assessment also depends on the driver responding within the limits of the system. You are at the bleeding edge of algorithmic governmentality and it comes with enormous challenges. I hope I can assist at different times with your endeavours.
Featured Image: The Cognition Dynamic of a Person.
Neville Buch
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