There was virtually no economic growth around the world for about 2000 years before the start of the industrial revolution in England in the 18th C. The growth since then, and for most people particularly in the last 70 years, has been phenomenal. Most people today have goods, education, healthcare and longevity which even the richest could not imagine 150 years ago. This has been brought about by capitalism, free trade, free markets and the institutional framework developed in the Anglosphere, including personal freedom, property rights, rule of law etc. It depended on effort, innovation and entrepreneurship, as economic growth still does. If the equality advocates had prevailed over the last 200 years, we would all be at a level of poverty which few today experience. And the world’s population would be far smaller. What’s not to like?

For the record, I grew up in a poor, fatherless family with an uneducated mother. The poverty which some in Australia experience today would be luxury compared to what I experienced in post-war England as a child. The prevailing system allowed me to transcend my origins, as it still does.

From 1972-79, I travelled, did extensive voluntary work and lived frugally. In 1979, my girlfriend and I decided one Friday to travel to London and start work on Tuesday, to raise money to travel to Australia . There were 1.75 million unemployed in the UK, I found a well-paid job for which I had no experience but was the only applicant. We both started work on the Tuesday. Let’s focus on why people lack initiative rather than inequality in other terms.

Are Hasbeen

When you say about yourself:

"In a country town I achieved 3 honors at matriculation, was invited to attend Duntroon, but took up a GMH cadetship, including a fully funded engineering degree instead."

..isn't that a piece of conceited self-promotion?

Admit it. You are only a has-been mate.

Hasbeen:
Here are a couple of facts to cogitate on:
Every one job created in high tech manufacture, creates five others in associated allied service industries, not unlike the car industry, I suspect?
And for every dollar invested by government,(USA figures, Actual)in R+D, thirty dollars flows back as tax!
I also was raised in very poor circumstances, but was raised to believe that common courtesy and civility costs nothing!
I don't mind robust but reasoned debate, and expected better from you, than just to label my piece, BS.
I agree that attitude is a central component of reasonable success, so also is serendipity, and most importantly, a stable upbringing!
Statistically, the children of single parent families just don't do as well, given they just don't have the right sort of discipline and example to emulate, nor do those that come from abusive backgrounds, regardless of IQ levels.
And the final element is interest.
A very wise man once told me, look at what interests you as a hobby, and then look around and see if you can get someone to pay you to do it!
And there are any number of very successful examples of people who would have paid to do their intellectually stimulating and interesting jobs, with dropout Bill Gates coming to the forefront of the mind!
I bet you just loved driving?
For me, it was finding out how things worked!
You have a very nice day now, y'hear.
Rhrosty.

PS: a point I made in The Australian during the Rudd-Gillard debacle is worth repeating. If you believe that resources should be transferred to help the disadvantaged, however defined, then you also need to foster growth of the wealth from which those transfers derive. Marginal income tax rates of 49%, corporation tax of 30% plus carbon tax, "penalty" rates and heavy-handed regulation are not conducive to wealth-creation. Those seeking even higher imposts on "the rich" should be careful of what they wish for. In several countries, punitive taxes and conditions have led to the rich decamping, to investors going elsewhere. "Killing the goose which lays the golden eggs" comes to mind.

I'm not one of the rich, I live in a modest house, on a pension, have a 12-year-old car, my wife earns a modest wage working with disadvantaged children.

Hasbeen

So GMH ‘fully funded' your engineering degree, huh? AND no doubt paid you a salary while you were studying.

There you have it, folks! Hasbeen got his degree for FREE! And was PAID to do it!

And that ‘300 pupil high school’ you attended … Now I’m assuming that was a state high school. So who paid for that, huh, Hazza? Yep, your dear old taxpayer.

Admit it, Hasbeen, you accept handouts and entitlements just like the rest of us.

Faustino

‘I grew up in a poor, fatherless family with an uneducated mother’

Yep. And why was your family poor? It was a single parent household headed by a woman, who was uneducated and had lost her breadwinner.

Standard Poverty Factors 1, 2 and 3. Sure, you got yourself out of poverty, but hundreds of millions of women like your mother are trapped in it through no fault of their own. Many similar scenarios exist for men.

Don

So the rich do the 'heavy lifting' when it comes to tax, do they?

Most people on high six-figure salaries paying on average 30-40 per cent tax (not counting all the tax-breaks they are given) still have six-figure net incomes to finance their lifestyles and to save for the future.

However, people on low five-figure salaries paying on average 20-30 per cent tax have vastly smaller net incomes to finance their much more meagre lifestyles (i.e paying the bills and putting food on the table) and not much left over to save for their futures.

In terms of tax as a proportion to income, it’s the low- to middle-income workers who are doing the 'heavy lifting', not the rich.

And tell me, Don. As an ex-academic and vice chancellor, no doubt earning a salary in the upper six figures over many years, how much do you think the taxpayer contributed to YOUR superannuation?

PPS: Few argue that there should be no government, the arguments tend to be about the size and reach of it. In the 1980s, when I was writing economic policy papers for a body chaired by PM Bob Hawke, I read a lot of economic studies covering many countries about the relationship between economic growth and the size of the government. They all found that growth was optimised with government's share of GDP around 22%, much less than it is now (adding Federal and State governments together). These macroeconomic studies were consistent with microeconomic studies which found that delivering $1 of benefit through a government programme tended to require $1.20-$1.25 of taxpayer funding. That is, the government intervention burned up about 20% of the funds involved. I recall several studies of industry assistance, including R&D schemes, where 45-50% of funds went in administration. For the schemes to have been worthwhile, they would have needed returns to R&D about twice those obtained in commercially-backed schemes.