The Mound - #15 - Children, Incorporated
Welcome to The Mound, a weekly newsletter in which we at Good One Creative pitch— for free — our solutions to the world’s problems
In the news today, Teal MP Dr. Sophie Scamps believes the Government's proposal for tax reforms are “too timid to make any significant difference,” citing a report suggesting that income tax might soon make up to 60% of the federal tax base.
Putting such weight onto the shoulders of earning Australians would undoubtedly slow the economy and, as our population gets older, that 60% of the national kitty would be coming from an increasingly smaller and smaller percentage of Australians. If we don't do something soon, we might find ourselves living in a dystopian world where the sole point of working is to keep Maureen in the hard-candies. Some sort of nightmare-scape in which the younger generation, due to increasing economic pressures, starts to…*lightning cracks* … resent their elders!
Not on our watch. We at Good One cannot allow for all this intergenerational tension, especially as - at any given moment - your great aunt is just half a shandy away from saying, maybe, the worst thing ever.
Here’s how we fix it:
The Cost of Living Crisis is getting a lot of airtime these days. Rightfully so - but I think it’s poorly named, and the effects of the misnomer are interfering with our ability to get a grip on what’s happening and think up some real, braver, and less-timid solutions. A much better name for what we’re experiencing, I think, is an Opportunity Cost of Living Crisis.
In a previous life, this might’ve been called a Death Tax - but we’d prefer to think of this as the squaring of a life debt, a Governmental gratuity.
Under this new tax regime, when you are born you get the bill for a few years of this Australian life. Like any debt, it grows with annual interest. Come the end of your life, the bill is then paid from your estate. So if you want to leave your kids something, you’ll have to pay off that debt first. Now, you might think this is pretty old hat, we’ve all heard of the death tax before. But here’s the thing: you yourself won’t be able to pay this debt. No, someone else has to.
About once a minute, an Australian child is born. Such tiny feet, such jiggly folds, such outsized earning potential. We propose that every child in Australia, shortly after their birth and the receipt of their Life-Debt, becomes a publicly listed corporation into which an older, Life-Debt-shackled Australian can invest.
Seeking to repay their own Life Debt - so they can leave their own children an inheritance - shareholders will keep a keen eye on their portfolio, reading their report cards and saddling their investments’ parents with the communicative responsibilities of a CEO.
Why has Carol stopped taking piano lessons? And why’s Ms. Galloway giving her so much Drama homework? Our focus for Q4 has to be on the numbers - arithmetic, BODMAS! Something she’ll use for god’s sake!
Suddenly, with so much to gain from their progenic portfolio, we’d get the rich to care about kids other than their own. If we make it law that a certain percentage of one’s holdings must come from public(ly listed) schools, we’d get the rich to care about suburbs they’d never have otherwise visited, about the teaching of phonics in regional schools, about rental costs. And who knows? With the rest of their holdings, people could set out like venture capitalists to the most disaffected areas, buying majority shares in a classful of kids who - in light of these reforms - could now be classed as high-return investment opportunities. Little start-ups who, with just a bit of capital, are headed for the moon.
Incredibly, with such a system we’d realise both the Left and the Right’s wildest dreams of a totally communal and yet existentially competitive nation - where innovation and community abound, where every child has the right and the chance to fulfil every human’s god-given purpose in life: return value to the shareholders.
You’re welcome, Australia.
