Comments on: Giving Working Families What They Deserve

By: Graham Bell

Graham Bell — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:44:50 +0000

Everyone:

As I write this, I am watching SBS-TV “Insight” [rebroadcast Friday 1:30pm] on whether wages cover the cost of living; discussion also covered credit being used to buy essentials [such as groceries] and, of course, it also covered predatory lending. [That reminded me of an argument I had with a scoffer, Fyodor, on Club Troppo a few months back; hope he/she took my suggestion to get some real world experience of poverty by doing voluntary work for StVincentdePaul Society or Salvation Army].

Poverty now affects more than just the stereotypical drunks and dropkicks or the purchasers of 3-Metre plasma TVs and $500 Christmas toys, it is now hitting Working Families hard. Let’s not forget that impoverished - and in some cases, dispossesed - working families are fertile ground for all sorts of extremists, religious manipulators and political nasties to grow and prosper.

What irony. The “Insight” program on the poverty of working families will be followed by a documentary on Hamas. Someone in Programming at SBS-TV has a grim sense of humour

By: Jules

Jules — Tue, 06 May 2008 06:45:00 +0000

The “working families” tag excludes and marginalises so many of us.

By: wilful

wilful — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:18:58 +0000

Listening to the government last night about the asset testing of the baby bonus, Swannie actually used the term ‘rich people’. Turned to my (pregnant) missus and asked if we were rich. Dunno, don’t feel it. But hopefully above the means test limit for the absurd ‘policy’.

By: the Preacher

the Preacher — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:48:59 +0000

Working families do nor need any Government support however needy families do!

By: observa

observa — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:21:53 +0000

Maybe those big funny money surpluses was what finally killed Johnny and Pete in the end and now it’s all Wayne’s World.

By: observa

observa — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:07:12 +0000

Perhaps these working families know deep down they are now irredeemably indebted families in their twilight, now the McMansion prices have stalled.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JE02Dj05.html
Give us this day our funny money surpluses Wayne!

By: Caroline

Caroline — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:45:27 +0000

I heard Wayne Swan referring to ‘working Australians’ this morning. Some improvement on ‘working families’. However, it is still excludes many people. Why oh why can they not just say ‘all Australians’ and eliminate the risk of excluding large swathes of the population and engendering their ire?

By: JC

JC — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:48:03 +0000

Overall, 62% of Australians believed that they could not afford to buy everything they really needed.

I’m shocked it’s actually this low. I really would have thought this figure would be around 99.5%.

By: Thinking in old ways

Thinking in old ways — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:10:34 +0000

There are two messages that really stand out in the table in the Peter Saunders article.

The first is that most people appear to think that the income distribution is much more extreme than it is. That is most people think they are clustered a little below the middle of the income distribution - and that almost none of them think they are at the extremes (with these extremes presumably being populated in their minds by phantom armies of the rich and poor).

The second is that as a whole everyone thinks there is an enormous group of rich people who really should be able to pay more taxes - so that it is quite easy for the rest of us to expect government to give us more.

It really is incredible that only 5% or so of the population seem to think that they are in the top 30% of income earners.

As published by the ATO the 90th percentile tax payer earned around $78,000 in 2004-05, the 95th percentile earned $97,000 and the 99th $200,000.