The poorest end up with the most dependents. It's a self perpetuating horror story.

Dan

On what criteria are these 3 million people living in poverty? Previous surveys on poverty have been revealed to have had outlandish ideas of what poverty really is. People have very different ideas on the definition of poverty.

Second question: what does "off ramp" mean? Making claims that there are 3 million poverty-stricken people in Australia - without proof - and using terms never heard of, is no way to engage people's interest or belief.

Before asking "Can we end disadvantage" you need to identify and actually prove the disadvantage. You also have to identify the causes of the disadvantage and whether or not the disadvantaged can be shown how to pull themselves out of their situation, by themselves, before we start handing them other people's money, which they might go through like a dose of salts and remain disadvantaged.

Much disadvantage is self-inflicted, and there will always be people who simply cannot be helped, despite the Ramsay Foundation and naive bleeding hearts

In Australia we could end disadvantage by reducing the excessive benefits to those whose performance makes the benefits excessive !
Start with the top bureaucrats right down to the top welfare cheats ! The drug abusers need to be handled more sanely also !

No, we can't! Our recipe is all wrong! 84 million is as you say, just $30.00 a head for the most disadvantaged. And giving handouts however well-intentioned, just entrenches a handout mentality among the recipients!

There are many thing we can and should do, but are politically unpalatable for those somehow served by huge pockets of poverty!

With the bottom 40% sharing a miserable 3% of our collective wealth!.

The myopically focused hasbeens, will rave on about how much tax they already pay and so on!

The Great Depression was caused by too much of our finite wealth concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.

We came out of it and into a period of widespread universal and unprecedented prosperity via Keynesian economics. Or as those on the right would say, pump priming.

And then all we'd gained progressively dismantled by those on the right who were grievously offended by cooperative capitalism on ideological grounds and set about dismantling all they could, by invoking heir god of individualism and greed is good, philosophy

We can pump prime until the cows come home, increase the debt level until it flattens any possible recovery, any time soon and then get busy, busy, pointing the finger of blame!

As if any of that C.R.A.P. has ever solved anything. And tantamount to conducting a full-blown inquiry aboard the Titanic to find out who we could blame for the sinking and still blathering on as it disappears below the waves! And a most appropriate analogy! TBC.
Alan B.

A flat Tax is the ONLY way to attain social harmony ! No loopholes, no negative gearing, no special company Tax no nothing, just the same rate for all !
The only reason we don't have that is because it'd work & the people in power & those who hang around their backsides would need to become more responsible ! It's as simple as that !
That's why they constantly invent new jargon to fend off anyone who can prove their dreadful tactics !

Cont.

How we could if we wanted to, end endemic generational disadvantage and postcode poverty?

Every western-style economy rests solely on just two support pillars, energy and capital, the latter never cheaper, the former never dearer!

And forced so much of our manufacturing offshore when the energy bill became higher than the wages bill.

I mean some entertainment venues cannot reopen until there is virtually no social distancing given their electricity bill is a $1,000.00 a day! And would e four times that if we start to geosequester the carbon produced by coal-fired power! And as high as a $1.00 PKWH for joe public if this insanity ever gets the official nod!

Understand that it doesn't end there but at the checkout or with an invoice where this amenity cascades up through the supply/service chain to amplify all the way to those who cannot pass anything on, i.e., the aforementioned disadvantaged!

The untold and heavily censored truth is, that just 8 grams of thorium has enough available energy, to power your house and car for 100 years.

That the cost of mining and refining that 8 grams of thorium, costs around $100.00 and that is, just $1.00 a year. Moreover, is the world's safest, cleanest, cheapest power! And is also carbon-free.

Should we wait until mired in another deeper larger great depression and the world starts imposing carbon tariffs before we allow the truth to be told. And the what find ourselves ina economic straight jacket and unable to change anything of any note? Gotta spend big now just to save the economy!

Why not spend a fraction of it transitioning away fro all fossil fuels and onto an energy source that will grow the economic pie and turbocharge it and jobs, jobs jobs.

But in the energy co-ops, we could and should build if we want to resuscitate the, niche market, manufacturing (co-ops) sector and with that change end disadvantage!
Alan B.

Yes Individual, a flat tax that none earning above a much more generous threshold can avoid.

Given the top tax paid in ACTUAL DOLLARS AFTER ALL THE EXCLUSIONS, WAS, FOR THE YEAR ENDED 2017, JUST 13%!

With some paying in actual money transferred, just 4%? Others paying no actual company tax to anyone courtesy of the vagaries of globalised, tax loopholes/sharp practice?

Some send the same sum of money around through various subsidiaries to create outgoings in several ledgers and given the ATO never considers the conglomerate's income, but treats each and every subsidiary as a separate entity for the purpose of collecting tax!

As many as 40% pay no company tax even after they gamed the system, profit gouged and then repatriated all their profits!

And ably assisted by a government too stupid to see that this is happening because of stupid free trade agreements, where all that really happens is, debt-laden foreign investment, we actually pay for at the checkout and through lost revenue streams.

Given this very reasonable reform, 15% would increase internal revenue by around 60 billion+ annually.

Which ought to be redistributed as social benefits, increased pensions, free child care and a more humane jobseeker.

And given those measures are the ones we adopt, allow this extra stimulus to ramp up the discretionary spend and boost the economy right where it needs it!

After that, we need to outlaw the paper shuffling profit demanding middlemen/robber barons Undo the disastrous sale and privatisation deals, water power etc. in the knowledge these same parasitical business models, double the cost of living/doing business.

And we need to harmonise all commercial law, which needs less red and green tape!

The driest inhabited continent on earth must have desalination a the vastly more cost-effective, deionisation dialysis desalination and put water where none now flows, to open up new country and new opportunities for many and without draining wetlands, rivers r aquifers

Time we buried the double tax act of 1954 and just asked that all profits earned here, be taxed at the same rate for all! TBC.
Alan B.

There're lots of things that could be done! And those who can see that they've done, held to account by the occasional Journalist? Journalists whose jobs are often threatened along with their freedom, for reporting the facts.

If I nad my druthers all elections would be a taxpayer-funded exercise and have all participants wired to a lie detector as they make their election commitments/reasons for standing/reforms they intend to progress.

Moreover, I'd like to see a federal ICAC with teeth who must have unfettered access to ministerial files and documents, to uncover wrongdoing, sports rorts and patently fabricated emails.

It's the bought and paid for and clearly corrupt officialdom, that must go and without any rewards of office! Otherwise, this unacceptable behaviour will continue along with the power of the puppet masters who fund it.

And stand like unseen colossuses, in the way of essential reform/wealth redistribution/the rollback of disastrous privatisation outcomes!
Alan B.

The only reason we don't have that is because it'd work & the people in power & those who hang around their backsides would need to become more responsible ! It's as simple as that !
That's why they constantly invent new jargon to fend off anyone who can prove their dreadful tactics !

The most significant factor in poverty is low intelligence.

Generally speaking, the people at the top of western societies are the smartest, while those at the bottom are the dumbest. Smart people in the lowest class usually exhibit upwards social mobility and rise into the working class, or even higher. Smart working class people are also upwardly mobile. Dumb people in the upper classes can decline socially, but often they are protected from downward mobility by virtue of their privileged positions, social contacts, and family influence. The character of the totally batty "spoiled rich girl" or the rich male "upper class twit" is a favourite among storytellers.

Now, if we wish to prevent rising poverty in Australia, there are two ways to do it.

First, is to stop importing people from dysfunctional societies who's group behaviour in western societies is already notorious for their collective serious criminal behaviour and endemic welfare dependency. It is reasonable to assume that generally speaking, most of the people in these groups of are just dumb.

Next, encourage smart people to breed, and dumb people not to breed. At the moment in the west, the opposite is happening. Gear welfare payments, especially the Unwed Mother's Pension, to family size. If an unwed mother has one fatherless baby from an irresponsible father, she gets the full pension. Every subsequent child the unwed mother produces has reduces her pension by 10 or 20 %. At the moment, unwed mothers can get relatively well off by having ever more fatherless children. I know that for a fact, because within my own family, one of my nieces deliberately had two fatherless children to get the pension instead of going to work.

The Chinese already appreciate this fact, and during the period of China's "One Child Policy" the smartest Chinese were exempt. The Chinese really appreciate brains, which is why they are so smart. And the Chinese (and Japanese and Koreans) do not allow immigration into their countries from notoriously dysfunctional ethnic groups. Western society must think like the Asians, or the smart Asians will end up being our masters.

I said this to my father many, many years ago. Late 1050's.

He said, If you gave every person in Australia a Million Pounds, (as it was back then) in two weeks you would have very rich people & very poor people.

I do believe that this is still true.

It is not possible to end something which never started, never existed.

The illusion of "disadvantage" is created by looking at single birth-death cycles in isolation. Had we seen the full picture whereby we are constantly reborn then die, we would understand that nobody is disadvantaged.

Can we end disadvantage?

No we can't, don't be ridiculous.

To end disadvantage you'd have to create a system that ensured every single child's physical and emotional wellbeing.
In order to end disadvantage, you'd have to end childhood dysfunction and lives that are tainted because of it.
To end childhood dysfunction you'd have to ensure that kids aren't negatively or detrimentally impacted by divorce, remarriage or one parent moving away, as well as parents that don't care for their kids or don't have their kids best interests.
You'd also have to alleviate all chronic health conditions, so that no child or their parents suffered such a thing - to be disadvantaged by.
You'd also have to pay for plastic surgery to make the ugly kids not so ugly, so they weren't disadvantaged by their ugliness.
It's a known fact that better looking people get things given to them a lot more often and easily.

So before you even begin to entertain this crazy fairytale in any kind of realistic sense you'll have to figure out how you can fix the few issues I've outlined above, to have any kind of a chance of actually achieving 'ending disadvantage'.

Here's another thing you could try doing instead:

- Get Real.