Lin’s article concludes with the question ”what matters to you”?

One thing that matters to me is truth. And Lyn’s article is based on two whopping untruths – “inequality is on the rise”, and “those who struggle to make ends meet and whose lives are circumscribed by disadvantage, are doing worse and worse” – in other words, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

John J has already pointed out the falsehood of the second statement. The poor are NOT in fact getting poorer – at least according to ABS statistics.

The real income of households at tenth percentile of household incomes (90% of households are better off) increased by 38% in the last 11 years. At the lowest quintile (80% of households are better off), real incomes rose by 42%. Real incomes have risen across the income spectrum in almost every survey since 2000-01.

Inequality is harder to define precisely, but the data do not show a widening chasm of inequality. The income shares of the top and bottom of the income spectrum have been pretty stable in the past 20 years or so, varying within a narrow band of about one percentage point. Inequality did increase marginally in the early and mid 2000s, but the trend in the past four years has been in the opposite direction.The Gini coefficient (another measure of inequality) shows the same thing.

Data from the ABS:
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/6523.02011-12?OpenDocument (Table 1)

or
http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/B0530ECF7A48B909CA257BC80016E4D3/$File/65230_2011-12.pdf

Its noticeable how often arguments that begin will appeals to common knowledge - “we all know that …” - turn out to be based on falsehoods and misrepresentations.

Hasbeen,

"many of those high tax high welfare countries are the ones in most trouble with debt."

That's a generalisation, many high tax countries don't have debt problems and some low tax economies do.The crisis was produced by an imbalance between government expenditure and tax revenues, not necessarily high tax rates, the most notorious example of a low taxation country with massive debt problems is obviously the US.

I'd agree, that we have, to some extent a welfare dependent sub culture, however the labour market is not the smoothly flowing system that some neo-liberal fantasists claim.

"You can hear some of the locals discussing whether to breed or work for a living."

No argument there, my wife was a Maternal and Child Health Nurse, young unemployed/ unemployable(?) women told her that their only option was to get pregnant and get on the welfare rolls.

The real debt crisis in Australia is private debt, not public.

Perhaps if Lin and her compatriots paid tax rather than getting low wage plus high (untaxed) fringe benefits we would have the money for her improvements?
What am I saying, social workers and labour politicians wanting to pay? Never mind their fair share.

G'day Hasbeen,
more significant than Aboriginal employment stats would be women. In most of the sixties, we still had a very high proportion of “single income” families. Stay-at-home mums weren't factored into unemployment stats.
Today, 50.1% of employed are women.
Incidentally, “Since the late 1980s Australia's overall tax to GDP ratio has been relatively stable and is currently around 30 per cent of GDP. The majority of tax revenue, equivalent to 25 per cent of GDP, is raised by the Australian government with around 5 per cent raised by the state governments.” -Treasury.
FACT: no one likes paying taxes.
FACT: democratic governments are elected by POPULAR vote.
FACT: since 1951, the top rate of income tax has dropped from 75% to 47% and will no doubt continue to drop, as the majority are never going to vote for a party that threatens higher taxes (witness recent election).
FACT: To overcome this problem, successive govs have resorted to 'sneaky' (pigovian or 'sin') taxes; organising tax cuts or breaks for the majority (of voters) and taxing minorities (of voters). Such minorities have traditionally included smokers, drinkers and gamblers; taxing these can be claimed as “morally justifiable” (and loses fewer votes).
FACT: wage and salary increases are invariably calculated -and reported- on a percentage basis, eg. A 1% rise for the median worker (about 40k) = $8/week, for the 'average' worker about $13.80, and for a Fed back bencher, about $37.80 a week, or more than 4 times as much as 50% of voters -if they would deign to accept such a measly percentage
http://www.news.com.au/national/australian-mps-now-among-the-highest-paid-in-the-world/story-fncynjr2-1226681596923
In the sixties, the average CEO's income was around 30 times the average wage.
Now it's more like 300 times.
It has always been cheaper to pay more for a supervisor with a bigger whip than pay the workers.

There is something very wrong with a system that taxes billionaires at half the rate of his/her employees!
There's something wrong with a system that concentrates more and more of our finite wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
Naturally, those whose hands are filling will argue for the status quo.
And do so, because they simply don't understand how flawed their thinking is!
You see, 70% of the economy is domestic, and relies therefore almost exclusively on discretionary spending!
And as more and more of our finite wealth finds its way into fewer and fewer hands, that discretionary spending contracts and contracts.
As it does so, the economic pie grows smaller and smaller.
More and more of the so called middle class are then forced to join the ranks of the have nots, taking the discretionary spend further down.
Similarly, when like a dog chasing its tail, wages and prices rise. Many a forced into new tax levels by bracket creep, which has the real effect of reducing their discretionary spending power!
Privatization of energy production, has ramped up prices by as much as 400%!
Again, as we spend more on energy and such, there is less for staples, which also become dearer, with higher costing energy inputs.
In Britain this has resulted in a million and a half homes being disconnected, due to the fact that energy is now a luxury far too many can not now afford.
Unfortunately, most of those homes are not owned by green advocates, who all but created power poverty. And all of the misery and deprivation that then flows from that.
And all so unnecessary, given some of the best and lowest carbon producing options, are far and away the least costly.
The way out, is by creating a bigger economic pie, and then giving everyone larger portions.
And that can only be done with trickle up economics, not the thoroughly disgraced and highly flawed trickle down economic rationalism.
Which has arguably placed us in the precarious position we find ourselves in today!
Rhrosty.

Grim,

"In the sixties, the average CEO's income was around 30 times the average wage.
Now it's more like 300 times.
It has always been cheaper to pay more for a supervisor with a bigger whip than pay the workers."

......Yes, indeed, and it's counterproductive and extremely short sighted, but regrettably, typical of Oz management.

During the early 90s I attended a course comparing the Japanese and Australian economies, one of the areas of study was management. At the time, the salaries of top Japanese executives were single figure multiples of the salaries of the lowest paid employee of the corporations they led. The Japanese idea of "enterprise" was totally different, there was recognition by management that all employees contributed to a company's success.

Now we have a government bought and paid for by big business.