Your editorial ( Politics of envy threatens our economy and ethos , 2 May) claims that “Research by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling has shown that all income levels prospered in the Howard years and that under the Rudd-Gillard governments the gap between...
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In 2007 Greece spent 9.9% of GDP on age pensions. This was the fourth highest level of spending on pensions in the OECD (after Austria, Spain and Italy). Australia spent 3.2% of GDP, the fifth lowest level of spending in the OECD (ahead of Iceland, Ireland, Korea and Mexico)....
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As a regular reader of Brad DeLong I was slightly alarmed at a recent post reporting an outbreak of unpleasantness about which OECD country has the most progressive tax system. Brad DeLong linked to an article by Jonathan Chait which rather sharply criticised Veronique de Rugy...
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Cross posted from Inside Story Australians like to think of themselves as egalitarian, and in the past Australians also liked to believe that we had a relatively equal distribution of income and wealth. As early as the 1880s, visitors to Australia apparently remarked on the gr...
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A major component of the government’s clean energy plan is a package of assistance measures to compensate households for higher prices. The government will provide assistance through increases in pensions, allowances and family payments, as well as through income tax cuts. Fro...
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Cross posted from Australian Policy Online http://inside.org.au/how-fair-is-australia%e2%80%99s-welfare-state/ IN ITS 28 May edition the Economist carried a long feature about Australia, praising our resilient economy, criticising the quality of our political discourse, and hi...
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In the Sydney Morning Herald of 1 June, Julie Novak of the Institute of Public Affairs criticised an article by Gavin Mooney and Alex Wodak, writing in the previous day’s Herald, which argued for higher taxes , in part based on arguments developed by Richard Wilkinson and Kate...
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Originally posted at The Conversation by Gerry Redmond and Peter Whiteford (Disclosure: Gerry Redmond and Peter whiteford receive funding from the Australian Research Council for a project on "Supporting Families: Horizontal and Vertical Equity in the Australian Tax and Transf...
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Originally posted at APO (Australian Policy Online) Last week's Budget Speech by the Treasurer announced a package of reforms designed to help people receiving a Disability Support Pension to get into work. The package includes a range of measures : • New participation require...
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One of the more surprising newspaper stories of recent times was Peter Martin’s article of November 15 on OECD takes aim at Labor policies which quoted the OECD Economic Survey of Australia as saying that Australia’s unemployment benefits are too low. Along with a number of ot...
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The Australian fiscal stimulus package has been controversial, with some Australian economists and visiting UK historian Niall Ferguson arguing that it was unnecessarily large or wasteful, and other Australian economists and visiting US economist Joseph Stiglitz arguing that i...
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Recently, Jeremy Sammut of the Centre for Independent Studies has had a number of opinion pieces published in the Australian Welfare saps the will to save on March 5 and "Welfare killed saving" (December 18) and a longer paper published by CIS - A Streak of Hypocrisy: Reaction...
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