Re: There is something very wrong with a system that taxes billionaires at half the rate of his/her employees!

That is the system! The employee gets paid in cash so there is no escape from income taxation. The Feds raise most of their cash by taxing the middle. The rich ( if they have any brains) will take their payment in kind and use it to generate even more wealth. The initial payment may be taxed but after that ? Who knows.

Re:
You see, 70% of the economy is domestic, and relies therefore almost exclusively on discretionary spending!

Right on !

Raise levies, taxes and charges enough and even the rich will be worse off. Its only a matter of proportion. Interest rate control is the RBA's blunt instrument to do just that ; remove discretionary spending.

Re: Rest of the post.

Yes, one cannot help but agree as the evidence is all around ut to see.

Do get some balance in this Kilmouski.

PAYE tax barely covers the welfare bill.

Most of the money to run the country has to be found elsewhere.

Cut the welfare bill in half, & a lot less money is required. WE might actually have some discretionary spending of our own money, rather than have the likes of our author giving it to some bludger to spend.

Hello Hasbeen,

What, Get some balance? Me? Lol!

I get a very modest income and am resigned to paying taxes until the grave. And find the way the tax dollar is spent is somewhat erratic.

Kilmouski ( my Russian Blue cat ).

Hasbeen "Cut the welfare bill in half, & a lot less money is required."

You do realise that welfare payments are *spent*, the money doesn't just vanish into the ether.

If you cut welfare, you increase crime, as more desperate people take desperate measures to survive.

Any "savings" must then be spent on more police, legal aid, courts and prisons.

As mentioned by others, simplifying the tax system and removing loopholes is a better plan than raising rates.

And instead of cutting needed services, cut all the fluff.
All that public funding, donations, awards, etc given to NGOs.

Public money for public services.
Private entities should fund themselves.

Hay Shockadelic, I reckon there are more than a few entrepreneurs who could make convicted criminals pay for their own incarceration running chain gangs, if we had enough sense to sentence the criminals to hard labour, & issue them to road work gangs.

We have failed with all the academic mumbo jumbo & rehabilitation, time now to see how much the fear of real hard labour could lower the crime rate.

People are Australia's greatest asset.
Lin,
I gather you mean the ones who work to pay taxes rather than the ones who use up our tax dollars.