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The Forum > Article Comments > Profiting from disadvantage > Comments

Profiting from disadvantage : Comments

By Gary Johns, published 24/10/2012

Disadvantage will never disappear while there is a quid to be made from it.

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What a refreshing read! I did not realise that we are allowed to say those things in public.
Thank you, Mr Jones
Posted by Alfred, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 8:11:28 AM
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Great article. Very well said.
Posted by DavidL, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 8:59:07 AM
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a refreshingly honest article, a delight to read. In the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, the father usually managed to get a roof over his head and for his son, too, but technically he'd be considered 'homeless.' But I'll bet you London to a brick he wasn't 'hopeless.'
Posted by SHRODE, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 10:16:36 AM
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Just so true.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 10:21:11 AM
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It's all too easy to pontificate from the wilds of Queenstown, where rents and power bills are almost the lowest in Oz!?
Try living on just 50% of median income in Sydney, then write the same head in the sand article!
Both the conformation bias and the Sergeant Schulz Syndrome seem alive and well in tiny Tassie's western wilds?
Profiting from disadvantageousness, would be a lot more fruitful if we but eliminated disadvantageousness. This single and easily achieved outcome would quite massively boost discretionary spending and with it the badly under-performing domestic economy!
The article is fundamentally flawed, inasmuch as, it essentially argues for further reductions in the discretionary spend?
It's also like saying, we don't have enough money in Australia, to buy all Australian land?
If the better off took a haircut from over-leveraged overvalued assets, rather than artificially prop up land prices, with mostly borrowed foreign capital, more of us could afford homes and or farmland?
Instead of bleating about possibly a couple of hundred people allegedly rorting the welfare system? Name and shame just one?
Perhaps we could improve the welfare budget, and the economy boosting improved discretionary spend that would follow; just by entirely eliminating all of the welfare for the rich programs?
Negative gearing, as just one glaring example, costs the taxpayer in excess of five billion per?
And the now common practise of setting up subsidiaries in offshore tax havens; and then outsourcing massively overpriced service provision to them, costs the taxpayer, as much as 100 billion per?
Yet we seem to ,with our tiny minds and selective myopia, focus only on how we can rip away a few more miserable cents, from our most disadvantaged?
That said, we really do need to lift the tax burden of the backs of a diminishing pool of taxpayers!
To see how that might be done; read some of my earlier posts; given, I'm likely right up against word limits here?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 4:27:29 PM
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The only people that actually profit from disadvantage, are the money hungry money grubbing landlords, that pack people ten to a room, in run-down ruins? Individualism writ large and loud!
Or the pay day loan sharks, with their one hundred percent plus interest rates. More me first and foremost individualism writ even larger and louder!
Or those middle men profit takers, who contract out piece work, to single mums or non English speaking recent arrivals, working dawn to dark in home garages; and helping themselves to most of the money, just for running a middle man shuttle service? [Ain't individualism and free enterprise just the most?
Why some of these self made men, were even born in the very log cabins they created, with their own bare hands!]
Or the second hand car shonks, selling often rebadged and or, unsafe rust bucket death traps to the unwary, or those that simply cannot get credit anywhere else. Yet still need their own wheels to actually get and keep a job!
All of which simply entrenches; and or, worsens real disadvantage!
There's so much more I could add, but I suspect it would be less fruitful, than casting biblical pearls, before biblical swine?
[By their fruits ye shall know them!]
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 5:05:25 PM
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Very valid comments and points Rhrosty, and as for those previous posters who have obviously never experienced the need for welfare, who do you think is contributing to your private health (welfare) payments; the same people you denigrate.
Posted by Kipp, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 5:46:16 PM
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Unfortunately issues like this tend to polarise.

I think that there is a lot of truth to the core of the article but that not mean that no one needs help.

The advocacy groups often do harm in a number of fronts
- The expand the meaning of the causes they support seemingly to make the problem appear bigger than it is (and possibly get more attention). That dilutes the real message when people are confronted with the injustice arising from the expanded definitions.
- At times they will willingly cause harm to be done to real people to give unfair advantage those who were never actually disadvantaged in the first place. Seemingly as some sort of trade off for not being able to solve the real problem in the first place.
- They will sometimes fight hard to undermine acknowledgement of problems faced by those outside their focus to avoid sharing resources or blunting the simple message they wish to portray.

It should not be an either/or scenario. A lot of the causes have a very genuine core which has been lost for many due to the efforts of the advocates to expand their turf.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 6:14:09 PM
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Robert, who are these advocates?
Posted by Kipp, Wednesday, 24 October 2012 6:40:57 PM
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Kipp I have my doubt that the question is asked in good faith but I'll give it a go anyway.

Most of my experience with the output of those advocates has been in the family law/DV field. I've seen the output from some in the welfare and civil liberties fields often enough to have a strong conviction that the tricks are similar. The examples I'll use are gendered, I think that's a result of the current power balance in that area rather than any fundamental difference in ethics of the genders. Some in the mens groups try similar but they are too lacking in power at the moment to get away with it.

Best summed up on OLO by ChazP who after having been caught out posting a highly gendered claim from a report which when checked showed a very distinct lack of gender difference http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12255#212833 " The selective use/misuse of information is part and parcel of any debate. It is not a crime"

It's the anti-dv campaigners who delight in telling us how often women are assaulted by male domestic partners but don't tell how often the reverse is true (or pretend it's almost never true).

It's those who use claims of abuse which sound like physical assaults but when queried mix very serious physical violence in with the harsh words or a raised voice during an argument (and deny women doing any of that).

It's those trying to ramp up fear of levels of sexual assault who mix feeling uncomfortable into the definitions (I don't have a link available but have seen that one in the past).

It's those who try to use protecting children as an excuse for maternal bias who won't talk about actual rates of substantiated abuse and neglect of children.

It's those leading the attack on Abbott and Jones "hatred of women" who don't care less about the incessant attacks on men by gnder studies groups in Australian universities.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Friday, 26 October 2012 5:41:31 PM
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My favourite is the drug council.

They don't even approve of any action to get rid of drugs. No way, their thrust is harm minimisation. Keep the poor buggers on drugs, but keep them alive.

If there are no druggies, there is no need for a drug council, with all those lovely, well paying jobs.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 26 October 2012 5:59:10 PM
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