"Public servants" receive each about 10 times as a welfare-recipient - and that also is generational and goes in the family, so why blame the small fish instead of the sharks?

In our day and age, when machines take an ever larger share of the real production and work that needs to be done, desperate humans are pushed onto unethical jobs. A certain portion of people who are willing to forego comfort and luxuries and live frugally only on such meagre income as welfare provides, should therefore be encouraged to stay out of the "workforce" as a way to eliminate junk-jobs and save those others who do want to work, by increasing their bargaining power, from immoral occupations and employer-demands.

But staying home out of the work-force does not mean that people should produce even more welfare-dependent children. I agree that people should not be paid to procreate. If they do, then they should care and pay for their creations out of their own pockets, just like any other hobby.

So children should pay for the mistakes of their parents!

Both the author and the Yuyutsu are out of touch with reality.

The author talks of light regulation. Light and unenforced regulation allowed the bundled junk CDOs, and the no security housing loans, that were the main causes of the USA 2007/8 collapse.

The Australian gang of four, Rudd, Gillard, Swan and Tanner, took prompt action that rescued Australia from following the USA, Iceland, Ireland, the UK and many other countries over the same cliff.

It is obvious that many people who comment on this site do not understand the opportunities and responsibilities of a central, currency issuing, (sovereign) government. Greece, for example, (and every other Euro using state) has no more sovereignty than any state in a federation. In fact they have less because there is no central European Government capable of running a sensible fiscal policy.

Sovereign Governments spend first and then should decide what funds in private hands is causing community problems and tax those funds severely.

Who doesn't understand that with a current account balanced the government deficit equals exactly the increase in private financial wealth? The corollary is that a sovereign government surplus reduces by the exact same amount private financial wealth.

Where does anyone find the money to pay their tax if it isn't out of savings? That is why GST is a nonsensical tax. It reduces the meagre wealth of the poorest in society and reduces their buying power and therefore causes lack of business confidence.

It is all easy enough to understand if you take the trouble to set aside your existing misconceptions.

How right you are John and nowhere more evident than welfare for the rich!

Which has to include negative gearing and subsidized super, which will soon cost the bottom line as much as the entire welfare program!

And let's not talk about tax avoidance and family trusts in the same breath, which I would abolish as part of genuine tax reform.

If we can't afford to look after the least among us, as is our Christian duty, we surely can't be enabling the most well off to lean on everybody else.

Unlike the man born in the log cabin hewn out of the wilderness with his own bare hands; people rarely get wealthy on their own, but have lots of help along the way!

Wealthy parents and or influence; being at the right place at the right time, and with the benefits of a good education.

Some of which for toffee nosed elitists in your age bracket, would have been entirely unearned and therefore undeserved, fee free tertiary education!

Yes Sir John, the age of "entitlement" is well and truly over!
Rhrosty.

Dear Foyle,

Yes, if parents are unable to pay for their own mistakes then their children should pay for them. In any case, why should others pay, especially those who did the right thing all along and abstained from having children?

Don't like to pay for your parents' mistakes? then don't get born or don't get born to these particular parents, then wait patiently till you find others that suit you better, who are perhaps wealthier. If however you do decide to be born and that having the body you currently have is worth the trouble of keeping, then your debt to your parents is much higher than you will ever be able to repay.

'Some of which for toffee nosed elitists in your age bracket, would have been entirely unearned and therefore undeserved, fee free tertiary education!'

nothing like the politics of envy Rhrosty!

"Worse still, the bonus provided an incentive for women to leave the workforce or remain outside it."

Oh, how terrible.
A woman wanting a baby in preference to mindless robot slave work.
What is wrong with her!?

"but it is wrong to persist in socialism, and its handmaiden, welfarism."

Yet I don't see your condemnation of Australians' intergenerational dependency on public schools, public hospitals, public libraries, public roads, public railways, public dams, etc.

It's always just welfare payments, isn't it "libertarians"?
Why is that?

"Granted, many have serious problems and these are addressed through a welter of agencies"

Are they?
Or are they just glossed over with look-busy "programs" like Work For The Dole that accomplish nothing but a further waste of money and more harassment of people already at rock bottom.

"There are no benefits in the welfare state"

Tell me, what are the "benefits" of 900,000 people sleeping in doorways and robbing people out of desperation?
Oops, didn't think if that!

"Save" money on welfare and you just have to spend more on crime, with its additional psychosocial non-monetary "costs".

As Yuyutsu points out, mechanisation is eliminating much human labour.
Rather than badmouth welfare, we need to readjust our expectations.

An economic model based on paid human labour will soon be utterly redundant.