Criminality
Stopping Exploitation with a Living Income Guaranteed
by Fidelis Spies
![imagesgr_thumb[1]](https://livingincomeguaranteed.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/imagesgr_thumb1.jpg "imagesgr_thumb[1]")
When you hear about drivers that got their licenses suspended you probably think it was because of reckless driving, but it is not the case.
In Florida 88% of suspensions were due to failure to comply with summons or fines.
Now here is things get extremely problematic and nonsensical – Most people drive to work so losing your car affects everything in your life. In New Jersey a Survey was done that found that 63% of low income drives that lost their car also lost their jobs.
How are they supposed to pay their fine if you take away their means of paying it?
It gets worse:
There are private probation companies that supervise people that have minor offenses and collect their outstanding fines at no costs to the courts, instead they get their money from the probationers in exchange for their services.
Here is an example of how that works based on an actual event:
One Woman was fined $25 for not wearing a seat belt as well as $16 for the court costs – a total fine of $41. She was unable to pay the fine at that stage and thus was handed over to one of these private probation Companies. Now here is where things get really messed up:
She was then put on a monthly payment plan in order to pay the fine, but the costs of this payment plan was $35 per month. All moneys that the woman sent in was applied to the service fees first before going to the actual fine, meaning she first has to pay the $35 before she is able to pay the actual $41 fine. Now, she I not able to afford that $35 monthly fee, so this is starting to accumulate – eventually she sat with a $299 bill PLUS the $41 fine. Eventually if you cannot afford the bill you can be sent to jail because you cannot afford the bill.
Here is another terrifying example of this Ruined Hariet Cleveland’s Life:
“Cleveland’s $140 monthly payment – $40 of which went to fees – was a terrifying burden. She lost her day care job during the recession and was barely scraping by. She paid what she could, even when it meant her money was only going toward the company’s fees.
Finally, Cleveland didn’t have any more money to give. She received a notice in the mail: Pay $2,714 or go to jail. Not long after, a police officer arrived and arrested her while she was babysitting her grandson. A judge sentenced her to 31 days in jail because she was too poor to pay.” – https://www.splcenter.org/news/2014/08/26/splc-lawsuit-closes-debtors%E2%80%99-prison-alabama-capital
These Companies are making money out of people who have none. Why are we punishing people for being poor? This is an Impossible situation for low income people where they really have no way out. This kind of exploitation is something that must be stopped.
This is something that we can change with a better system, one that considers the individual needs of people in different situations. Not only would these people above live far better lives with the Living Income Guaranteed, but we can implement solutions to stops the obvious exploitation of people in these situations so that no person’s life get ruined just because they are poor.
Investigate the Living Income Guaranteed Proposal
- The Living Income Blog
- Living Income Discussions on Google Hangout (Done Weekly)
- The Living Income Discussion Board
- Equal Life Foundation – Site
Living On Stolen Money – Decision or Consequence?
A life of crime is two-part documentary (I’ve posted embeds of the videos in the bottom of the post), where a filmmaker follows some criminals during two periods in their lifetime. The first time he meets them they are in their late twenties and still quite strong and vigorous, and they are sustaining themselves through shoplifting. In part two he meets them when they are in their middle thirties and life has begun to take a toll on them.
What is so interesting about this documentary is that it reveals the mindset of the criminals, the WHY of their decision to become criminals. Several times throughout the documentary they exclaim that they are able to make much more money through stealing than through having a regular job. Working one day as a shoplifter makes them around 3000 dollars, while working one day at McDonald’s makes them about 80 dollars. Thus, what is clear is that these people are not driven by some form of bad moral, or psychopathic desire to cause harm to others. No – in-fact these shoplifters are economist’s showing to us what kind of consequences our current economic system create.
It’s obvious that thieves, shoplifters and burglars are not an incident or mishap, they are consequence, they are not an anomaly, they are a predictable outcome – the result of an equation. For those of us that have led a life of money, it’s hard to relate to and understand what goes through a person’s mind when he or she decides to become professional shoplifter, because most of us born in economically stable environments would perceive it as immoral, wrong and barbarian. However, for someone born at the very low end of the hierarchy theft and a criminal life is a way of escaping a permanent sentence to a life poverty, and hard work.
Economists would probably agree with me, because it’s simple mathematics, when there is no support for those at the bottom, no hope for a better life, no ability to rise and build a life for oneself, then crime is a way out = supply and demand = cause and effect = problem and consequence.
Thus, realize, when crime rise, it’s not something bad, it’s actually an indication that something is very, very wrong with society, and that there are some drastic changes required. Realize that when prisons are filled to the brim with people, then we have a sick society, and that sickness can be traced back to the unequal distribution of money and resources.
This is where we require embracing a paradigm shift, because in order to make our lives better, our society more safe, our life experiences more rewarding, we must learn to give – we must learn to give, as we’d like to receive. Most of us have extremely difficult to grasp this concept, and when confronted with it, we shiver and turn inside, immediately out of our mouths comes the statements that “it’s unfair!” – “they should work for their money!” – “we can’t change that!” – “there will always be crime!” – but see, this is not common sense, this is assumptions, ideas, projections, and in actuality useless opinions that have no significance in terms of how reality actually works.
The fact is that, when we make the decision to give all an equal opportunity to make something worthwhile of themselves in this world, we are doing ourselves a significant favor. We will in doing that release so much pressure, fear, and society will become a completely different place, where crime will be significantly less.
One of the solutions we’re able to implement is a minimum wage, and not just any minimum wage, but a big minimum wage with which one can buy luxurious items, start a family and make one’s life comfortable and enjoyable. Manual labor such as working for McDonald’s, or similar, shouldn’t be awarded with a salary that merely puts one on the breadline. Instead dedicating oneself to contributing to society should be awarded amply; it should be more profitable to live honestly than to make living as a criminal.
So, the key to designing a successful society is to ask us the question WHY? Because everything that happens in this world does so for a reason – our physical reality is filled with equations and these in turn produce various results, and through changing the variables, we’ll change the result.
Investigate the Living Income Guaranteed and allow yourself to step up and become a social engineer, question the movement of your daily life, what happens, why it happens, and how it could be changed in such a way that all are included. Because it’s clear that – there are SOLUTIONS – we must simply be brave enough to see and apply them.
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Sedition and Media under Living Income Guaranteed
There seems to be a misunderstanding about the word sedition. Sedition is to cause harm or to undermine a government. A government is the citizens representing themselves, no matter what system is utilized at the end of the day, which is what the government represents: the citizens. Therefore, any action that is taken to undermine the wellbeing of the citizens in a country – for instance causing poverty or diminishing resources, causing harm to the citizens of a country = that would be sedition and that is how it should be approached.
Sedition certainly is not when one exposes abuse by your government representatives that they should be held accountable and what they do should be transparent and therefore, one needs to re-look at the word ‘sedition’ carefully.
The media as a medium with which the citizens communicate and educate themselves to be effective in supporting each other to have a country that is economically and financially effective. The media should thus be owned by the people of the country and never only by certain individuals. No policy should ever be allowed that damages the country because to do that, is to in fact act in a way that is detrimental to the wellbeing of the country and by definition would be – if we have lawyers with some common sense – the premise for treason. And that is why the police force will exist, that’s why the commercial units will exist is to investigate those that do damage the Economy and to the Human Rights of the people. That’s what police’s purpose actually is, the purpose of the police is not to protect the rights of the wealthy, is to protect the rights of the citizen, to ensure that there is nothing that is happening that will cause unemployment that will cause people to live on the streets – that’s a crime!
We have a very strange criminology, justice, economic, political and an education system. Now teachers cannot even work out the basic common sense of what it is that they are supposed to teach the children, because our curricula are not designed to support Human Rights.
We have no lawyers standing-up and doing something about it, we have no economists standing-up. Instead we have all kinds of presentations and proposals to bring about a better world without any clear understanding of how the system really functions, which must even place into question all our activists.
The propaganda of the media and all the systems that now manage the ideologies of the mind, are deliberately diving the human into the idea of ‘free choice’ and into the idea that apparently ‘you must have your own opinion.’ Opinion is never fact, study facts – don’t ever allow yourself to form an opinion, an opinion is never real: it is an illusion – facts are real.
We are currently existing under a form of a very strange capitalist democracy where we don’t have majority rule, we have minority rule. And this is done through propaganda where the actual scientific research, the actual considerations and common sense necessary to manage a country and ensure that its citizens are well cared for, are deliberately misdirected. This is why for instance, the media should belong to the citizens, because the media is the medium through which the education of the citizens of a country happens, to ensure that they act responsibly. As an example, to vote for minority rights that are going to cause starvation and poverty is not going to solve the problem. One should vote for Human Rights that ensure that there is an equitable distribution of value that ensures that everyone has a decent life.
We have to really question the quality of our leadership, the quality of our academics and our researchers, the quality of our media and the quality of our economists – they all seem to be deliberately creating a world of poverty, identifying ‘autonomous forces’ to be what determines prices, which is what creates a lack of understanding so that the majority of the population keeps on missing what’s really going on. The reality is that only a few are making and being protected by all the money, while the majority is lost in translation when it comes to understanding economic theories that lack practical and tangible common sense.
Within a Living Income Guaranteed System we suggest that this word sedition is what it truly means: anyone that undermines the wellbeing of the citizens to bring harm to people in general, causing them financial distress, causing the economy to not be balanced and effective to support the people, purely for the purpose of making profit = that is sedition and treason, and must be treated as such.
Equal Life Foundation
Living Income Guaranteed and Public Relations
It is suggested to read the view of Noam Chomsky which is quite to the point and calls the public relations officers the ‘experts of producing lies.’ Now, if you have ever been in a business where you planned it and you have to work out the advertising and the marketing of it, you will know you’re looking for words to describe the product emotionally and you stay away from the facts. Because the facts are the few things you have put together within the product to produce something unique that can compete with other products and there is obviously always something ‘missing.’ That’s why for instance a product’s warranty is only for one year now because, in one year’s time – that’s what the warranty implies – the product will break. Everyone is kept in the illusion that apparently there is some improvement in the product and that’s why there will be a ‘new version’. But if you have to take away the outside picture and you look at the inside – take a car, for instance – it is essentially the same that it has been before. It maybe got a new name, a new color and here and there a new feature – but you’re paying a lot more and it’s not going to last you and you’re made to believe that this car is a ‘new model’ or this cellphone is a ‘better model.’
If you look at the timeframe you’ll notice that nowadays they are releasing a new cellphone basically every few months. You must understand that in the design stage, when they release the previous cellphone you paid a fortune for, they already have designed and planned another five models! They were ready with ‘the new stuff’ – they could’ve just as well not wasted so many resources and give you the best cellphone, but no! They need you to buy because there is a problem in the capitalistic system where it is said that ‘there is not enough consumption’, ‘there’s not enough spending’ but that’s not the real problem.
The real problem is: there’s not enough money because the more and more products are outsourced for instance moving it – let’s take America as an example – to China producing it cheaper. Leaving whole cities in America devastated with people without jobs, then importing the product and selling it cheaper under the justification that ‘now the product will be cheaper, so you should be able to afford it’. This is done without calculating the loss of money due to the loss of jobs that happened. This creates a situation where less people end up being able to buy the product, there’s thus less money and the corporations have to go to the point where they become a monopoly and destroy the competition. Because if they don’t = they simply can’t survive because there are simply not enough costumers with money with the low profit margins that they’re working on. If we look at this same aspect within the food industry, we have exactly the same problem. That is why labeling for instance is never really specific, you never get real detailed instructions and you never get the truth about how the products are manufactured and/or produced.
Now with Living Income Guaranteed, the total scene will change. Public Relations will be what it should have always been: explaining to the public the relationship they will have with the product and how the product will benefit them, how and why the product was made in a better way to last longer and to be of greater service, why the product is real value for money. Public Relations will be like the person that stands and ensures that the public knows everything, that there are no secrets and is thus the face of the corporation – that is how capitalism is supposed to function, no more lies and deceit.
Public Relations as it exists now, should be banned from politics because politics is and should be where the actual policy of the political party is explained in simple language that every voter can understand and that public policy should be the first thing on the agenda for implementation; and if the political party does not implement it, immediately a referendum should be held on whether they should remain in power under new public policy or not – that is democracy. One cannot change one’s word or go back on your word and get away with it, but the public has accepted this as ‘normal’ – politicians lie, they never keep their word and that’s ‘okay.’
In many cases the corporations are so desperate to keep going that they spend lots of money to ensure that the politicians realize one simple thing “The corporations are supplying a lot of jobs and therefore the laws must protect the corporations to protect jobs” – that’s the justification used. Therefore it’s not so much only the amount of money that goes to the political party, it is about the voters that are able to vote, because those with money = they’re able to vote; those on the streets = they can’t vote because there’s normally a problem: they don’t have a fixed vote, they don’t have the necessary documents or they don’t have the money to go and vote – very simple.
Public Relations must ensure that those that are on the fringe and not necessarily controlled by a corporate or a governmental job, are convinced by promises and hope that the political party is going to produce something, for example that they will ensure there are enough jobs available; if that is achieved, the political party will win. Unfortunately all of this is done under the disguise of competition, under the premise of monopoly, the game we were taught as children, absolutely brutal. And then the human factor is taken out and is called ‘market forces,’ ‘supply and demand,’ the ‘invisible hand’ that determines the flow of the economy, which are deliberate and made up excuses. Bause if you start studying the Living Income Guaranteed proposal as we are putting it together, place what we are sharing on paper and start to assess how one places this together: you’re going to notice that a workable model with enough money that ensures that the corporation makes money is possible, where everybody has got an income and as such, there will be sufficient consumption; this means we can have better products, the environment can be protected, we can produce more effective products, people are not forced to go into all kinds of forced and slave labor situations.
When everything is produced to last longer at a price that is sufficient to ensure the survival of the corporation and to ensure the Living Income Guaranteed of each person, we have a sound and healthy economic system. It’ll also make a massive difference to our food, because a lot of the foods that are allowed to be on the shelves are purely there, placed by people looking at ways to make money to entice the consumer. The fact that the food overall and in many cases is not really healthy, is covered up by ‘bright pictures’ ‘shiny words’ and that’s backed up by the spirituality of the person that is developed and particularly designed by Public Relations. Creating a consumption industry based on ‘like’ and ‘love,’ getting you emotionally involved, ensuring that psychology claims that emotion is important and valid without any information or research into how the mind actually functions, because if the mind is understood = brainwashing cannot happen and the current system cannot continue – this is known! Just not by the people that’s been brainwashed, they don’t understand even why they buy stuff, they feel like ‘they like it,’ they like how it looks, they like what it does, they don’t care that there is engineered redundancy within products just like there is engineered redundancy within the employment sector and everything is driven by a simple thing called profit, and that there’s no real competition in the markets because: “Those with more money will always win.” Go back to your monopoly game, that’s how it works! You’re in this game now.
Our economic system should not be called ‘Capitalism,’ it should be called ‘Monopoly’. And you may have no chance in the system, but you have a chance to become part of a political party that champions the Living Income Guaranteed. If there is no such party established in your country: you start one and you become politically active visiting the voters door to door, selling to them a new economic system, showing that their vote counts, understanding that democracy means 1+1+1 = every vote counts only once, so we need a majority vote, a majority of people that must understand how Living Income Guaranteed functions and why the current economy isn’t functioning for everyone. You also want to explain to them why there are big problems in the future with for instance pensions. One must act now and not wait once the whole system starts collapsing and new laws are made and people are marginalized and you don’t see the suffering and poverty, because we may be one of those suddenly without any support, having nowhere to go.
It is important that one becomes practical, that we become an activist which is someone that takes action, that’s activism: acting on the information available when you see there’s a problem and help with the education of the public because you’re part of the public, so there is one voice and this one voice presents an answer that works for everyone! It is really simple if you get down to it. And at the very least if you can’t do anything, then at least make sure that your money supports a solution, it’s also an investment in your future.
Research the Living Income Guaranteed by the Equal Life Foundation, we are a non-profit organization that researches and puts together economic solutions and educational solutions. We look at how humanity can coexist in a way where there is real freedom, real individual freedom and real happiness and one thing we all know: happiness depends on money. With the Living Income Guaranteed: everybody will have a little piece of happiness.
Equal Life foundation Research
Living Income Guaranteed and Animal Rights
Animal rights is a very contentious issue because in a world where there are no human rights, animal rights are defined not as a prevention measure but more as an after-effect measure as a direct outflow of the lack of support we provide to each other as individuals.
If we look at the patterns that emerge when you have a society that allows extreme poverty to exist, the animal starts playing the role of ‘love’ in the life of the poor. The poor feel – and this is not a generalization, this is a pattern – that they are ‘un-loved by the system’ and thus they search for some form of recognition, some form of appreciation and this is defined with animals – then, suffering together when there is not enough money for food is seen as benevolent.
Within the Living Income Guaranteed proposal we suggest that pets should not be a commodity, so that pets are not bred for money and that there is a measure and prevention instituted to ensure this is in fact applied. We also suggest that the veterinary profession falls in the same category as the health-care profession and a medical profession, which are professions that do the work they do because it’s a calling and a personal vocation. With the Living Income Guaranteed one of the effects that will happen with for instance circuses where animals are trained to entertain for the purposes of making money, is that people will instead be able to rather easily become an animal/nature conservationist because their basic needs will be met. Thus, if their calling is to work with animals = they can do so! Thus nature conservation and animal rights will receive a far more effective level of support from the human race within the Living Income Guaranteed system.
At this stage the plight of the animals – especially in countries where there is extreme poverty – has become excessive, this causes the explosion of animal populations that causes more hardship and suffering. The animals form packs and start to work together to try and find food, they are then blamed for their behavior, but their behavior is a direct result of the economic conditions that’s allowed to be existent in the world among humans, it is thus a direct effect of the human influence on them. These types of scenarios will be prevented once the human is no longer under threat by the economy and we stop disregarding each other when it comes to human rights.
The conclusion is that animal rights and human rights are intrinsically linked – the two will develop together. This is why we suggest to all animal activists: the way to truly support animals is to support a Living Income Guaranteed that is sufficient to meet every human being’s basic needs – and their basic needs may as well be a pet, therefore that pet will have sufficient support to have a decent and enjoyable life.
Equal Life Foundation Research Team
Living Income Guaranteed and Business Transparency
Within the Living Income Guaranteed with a capitalist approach, profit is one of its cornerstones; therefore it must be ensured. Another point that tends to waste extensive money is the point that new businesses are started which then fail.From that perspective it is a suggested that there – like you have with city planning – you have business planning where it is assessed what type of businesses the community can sustain that is possible within the money supply that exists, and that those businesses are then planned-out and offered to the citizen to take on with full support from the business planning section which should be part as a governmental function, a citizen support function ensuring that businesses do not fail.
This will save massive amounts of money which makes Living Income Guaranteed a very cheap solution to a situation where there is seemingly endless amounts of money ending up in either foreclosure and/or failure and/or abuse and/or maladministration. At this stage there are no actual figures being kept of all of this – we never get to know the real numbers of how much is actually wasted. But there is more wasted through business failure, maladministration, charity and foundation creation abuse due to the influence of the consumer than what is needed to bring about a Living Income Guaranteed.
You should ask yourself some questions:
- Why are the no clear figures that inform the population of the administration of resources?
- Why are there no figures kept of how much is actually lost through foreclosure?
- How much is actually lost through businesses that are going bankrupt?
- How much is actually lost through people losing their jobs at this stage, unable to participate in the system, unable for instance to pay tax or to buy stuff to increase the revenue streams?
- How much is wasted by corrupt government officials?
- How much is directed toward inappropriate placement of tenders?
These are massive amounts beyond belief; how much is happening because there’s no oversight and everybody participating in the system knows one thing: there are resources being stolen and there is maladministration and corruption, that’s why they don’t want transparency, it’s convenient.
In some countries like South Africa, there’s the prospect of placing in laws to ‘limit transparency,’ which is no different to saying ‘Let’s legalize corruption!’. So the integrity of the human within a Living Income Guaranteed system should be administrated through a system. We have the technology now to have systems in place that can support the human to the extent of creating a system that is trustworthy and that assists everyone effectively in the world. We have the expertise to do this, now we need the will to stop corruption and to stop abuse. This can be done by Guaranteeing a Basic Income, guaranteeing a minimum wage and guaranteeing profit because all these three foundational stones will actually guarantee the existence and expansion of Capitalism and bring about a high functioning and effective society with the use of technology to produce what will ensure proper usage of resources, technology and human creativity. This cannot happen without a sense of freedom and money does give a sense of freedom.
We have come to the conclusion that trying to establish a society without a way within which the human can express their freedom is simply not going to work. Freedom is in money, it translates as the ability to express yourself in a way where you feel empowered as well as having your Basic Human Rights recognized and dignified. Not having enough money is to disempower people and to force them into crime and as you’ve noticed, massive amounts of money are lost to crime. All these things will stop if we have in place a proper technological system which we can establish with great ease at this stage. We have the technology and the managerial mechanisms to do so. In a matter of a few years, the whole world will be an internet grid and we can make use of all these things to prevent crime and corruption.
Living Income Guaranteed is not only an opportunity to support yourself from an economic perspective in terms of ensuring everyone’s survival, but also from the economic perspective to have an equal opportunity to support yourself and your family, which is a Basic Human Right. This is the equal right we give to each other to potentially become wealthy individuals while ensuring all resources are made available for everyone equally.
Equal Life Research Team
Living Income Guaranteed and Labor Unions
In a democratic system where the citizens elect a management as government to look after their well being and their Human Rights, collective bargaining should not be ever necessary, neither should be the existence of labor unions. Labor is one of the capitals, one of the contributions of a citizen to their country to make it a better place for everyone. The fact that labor unions and collective bargaining is necessary to try and enforce the most basic Human Right as the right to dignity and financial economic stability of a citizen indicates that there is something fundamentally wrong with the system that is currently being accepted. A Living Income Guaranteed and a minimum wage are things that should be the basis of study of economics to ensure that the design of the economic system provides for this. Therefore, competition within the creation of products and basic necessities should be based on quality and effective support and not on driving down prices lower to create more unemployment and to destroy Fundamental Human Rights.
Labor unions should study the Living Income proposal and use their collective bargaining power to start working towards an economic solution that is effective for all the citizens in the country. Leaders that do not stand and deliver the basic necessities for all citizens and that do not protect the rights of the citizens as humans should not be elected that – this is the benefit we have with democracy. Democracy should not be a mockery as it is now; it should be the tool with which we ensure that our representation is in fact representing our Living Human Rights, not only yours individually but all the citizens of a country – that’s patriotism. A patriot will look after all people in the country, not their own pocket only.
We expect to have some labor unions that can actually function within the understanding of what is best for all citizens in a country to ensure that they recognize themselves as a political force that brings about change.
Equal Life Foundation Research
