"Any party running on this set of policies would be voted out in a nano second."
that's the problem in Australia -- basically any radical changes will be voted down one way or another --
'radical' meaning large changes
I would have thought that it made sense to have a fairly high GST and dump income tax altogether -
ideally probably having something like a transaction tax more accurately.
along with that - having some sort of universal income for all and no lowering of that as people earn money
from what I see almost every way now the system encourages people to either not work or to minimise work -- eg. rates that gallop up, not creep up and people on social security that lose benefits as they earn money - it's all incentive to not work so hard
people respond far more to carrots than sticks.
if we had things like transaction taxes - then, the incentive to get more tax is to get people to spend - well, there's a way to get people to spend -- and, that is - to give them more money - the more money they have - the more they spend - and, if you capture your taxes there - then, the more they spend the more taxes you reap
which means you can give more money to people -and, then - again, a merry go round - the more they have, the more they spend
the whole idea is an economy - and, an economy does one thing - it goes round
no money - no go round. It's not a difficult concept
