Luke Simpkins has formally launched a spill motion.

Houellebecq:
“Squeers' lazy prejudicial caricature of the rich is just as nasty as the right's caricature of the poor. But at least your general righty doesn't pretend to be above the mire.”

I have to waste a few minutes to refute what amounts here to trolling (not a word I’ve used before I don’t think, but which is apposite given your emotive language, patent untruths and want of counter-argument. It’s just the kind of conceited musing Eugine Onegin indulges in.
Neoliberalism really is as simple an ideology as I’ve painted.
I haven’t offered any caricatures of the rich, much less ‘nasty’, and my arguments, unlike your ‘lazy’ trolling, are well-grounded.
Unlike you I’m not here just for fun, for stirring the possum and venting empty opinions, however witty.
I’m trying to talk sense. Not only are the disparities in the western world obscene, they’re socially unsustainable.
The central point Thomas Piketty makes in his recent “Capital”, is that to the extent there is an ‘invisible hand’, it favours old money; in a low-growth world, and without regulation and tax reform, wealth and poverty will be increasingly polarised between tiny minorities and the rest.
Even if this ‘is’ rationalised by some posters here as acceptable, ‘twas ever thus, Piketty’s contention is that for the vast majority, and internationally, it will breed resentment and strife. Such that western civilisation is directly threatened by the rich and poor divide as it becomes more and more stark.
“Oh why cant we all just get along”?
That’s ok for you to ponder (I picture you in a moderately well-paid sinecure that allows you to post leisurely on OLO till the commute home at 5.00?).
The reality is though that money, or the lack of it, is the difference between want and plenty, between status and a sense of worthlessness.
It’s nothing to do with “envy”, another loaded term—“thou shalt not covet” is a commandment against forbidden desire, not an endorsement of nobility and debasement.
For Labor to have any credibility in the future, it must redress the balance and put ‘democratic’ back into capitalism.

Squeers,

"Unlike you I’m not here just for fun, for stirring the possum and venting empty opinions, however witty...."

yep, that about sums it up...but he wears it as a badge of honour.

How dare you criticise the extreme right-wing stance of govt! - apparently that's "nasty".

Hi Poirot,

yes, Eugene is most amusing, and Squeers is rather a sour-puss I'm afraid : )

The problem for me is that we are so conditioned to how things are, and to believe in the rhetoric blindly. Most of us just accept everything, like the need for austerity--predicated on our profligate indulgence in universal healthcare, education, housing and a welfare safety net--without analysing the argument or the data.
We're perfectly ready to condemn stereotypes like the "lay about single mother, with five kids to four fathers..."--
(a stereotype which allows no concession for circumstances, and catches all single mums in the same net. Thanks to this misogynistic stereotype, or variations on the theme, to be a single mum on welfare is to be despised. We are social animals and to 'be' despised is in some degree to assimilate the perception.)

--yet we're not to quibble about opposite excesses; family money, corporate salaries and bonuses, superannuation fatteners, high interest, cheap credit, and all the other perks for the wealthy. How crushing that wealthy mums are to miss out now on Abbott's maternity leave scheme!
And how dare we ask the wealthy to pay more tax! Heresy!
Yet we're one of the lowest taxed countries in the western world, and another tax tier for the wealthy wouldn't affect their lifestyles an iota!
It's not about envy, it's about common decency, dignity and sustainability.
It's not our aging population that's unsustainable (economically), but the way the pie is distributed.
And just on that; let's stop celebrating the wealthy, as though its members create their wealth in a vacuum. Wealth/surplus is an utterly social phenomenon; the entrepreneur is just opportunistic.

Squeers, of you think I tag all single mothers as lay abouts good for you, knock yourself out. Because I know not all are like that, however, given we have a seveer shortage of public housing, just one such example is taking a house away from a genuine needy single mum.

I would also invite you to take a visit to the local pub, or RSL during the day and see what the make up of patrons is bussily squeezing their pensions into the slot machines, often between vists outside for a smoke. Now if you think that's a rare case, then you need to get out more often.

Quaranteening welfare is one part of the solution, to take this tax payer GIFT and ensure as best as possible it's spent wisely. Because after all, it's a gift, nit an entitlement and one of those very small minorities paid it for them.

Of cause that's not enough for you, you want them to be taxed even more. Unbelievable!

rehctub,

you know as well as I do that single mums are a favourite target of those who love to beat up on welfare collectors; not just neoliberals, but in my experience (male) taxpayers in general.
This points for mine to a deep flaw in all of us, whereby we adopt a popularly jaundiced perspective in knee-jerk fashion once we attain some particular demographic level. It's not merely that we protect our own ideological ground, as if 'it' was above reproach, but that part of that defensive posture lies in kicking those who are now 'demonstrably' inferior, indeed now seen as unwanted dependants and burdens. It's all part of the pecking-order mentality that our system nurtures in all of us, which makes as much sense as it does for a bunch of identical chickens, whose individual merits and superiorities, at our remove, we are unable to appreciate.
Our system has made us no better than a hierarchy of chickens.

When I also said that your caricature, "allows no concession for circumstances", I was alluding to the circumstances which created your particularly despised chicken, which/who perhaps has never summoned the strength or self-belief to rise above her demeaned place (and who knows what life experience!) in the order.

But of course this kind of girlie-talk is easily seen through by my betters, and I am immediately labelled a 'do-gooder'; this woman/chicken should pull herself up by the bootstraps, and be as successful (cruel and ruthless) as her birds of a feather.