Tus, you did your own gutters! I just finished shovelling 5 metres of gravel for my driveway.

I agree that the poor people who make poor decisions and feel resentful are misguided. But this is NOT Peter’s basic assumption at all.

His solution is to use the ‘stick’ and deprive them of welfare? Fine if your primary motive is resentment of ‘bludgers’, but it hurts the children and those (like schizophrenics and other disorganised people) who need welfare to be ‘easy’ to get.

He certainly doesn’t suggest that poor people should cut back on their consumption or aspiration to be wealthy and would not be in favour of making-do or growing veges. The CIS don’t see this as ‘self-reliance’; they believe that creating more wealth is *the* solution to the problem of poverty.

Pericles, Aramis1 also objects to Peter’s claim that there are only two ways to eliminate poverty. I also see that as a flaw in Peter's arguments.

HarryC There are people on your income who do feel ‘poor’. Peter’s article was not particularly good at all. He makes no attempt to uncover the reason(s) that so many people feel poor when they are not. Clearly it is not just ‘human nature’ since there are so many of us here who do not feel that way.

What is the difference and why does it seem to be getting worse? Peter will blame ‘the left’. I think that the emphasis on economics is also to blame.

Mollyduke,

It seems to me that you want to attack Peters solution whilst side stepping the main thrust of this particular article, which is in seeking to define some objective benchmark for poverty.

The article made the basic assertion that relativisitic measures of poverty lead to flawed policy decisions. I don't know why you want to dress the word "poverty" up to cover all the social ills you are so concerned about. All these issues have adequate names, such as social exclusion, inequity and alienation. Your issue seems to be more with Peter than with his article or its core message.

From what you are saying about poverty (ie that its a state of mind) you yourself reject the prevailing definition which is that poverty means you earn a certain percentage below the average. It would seem that you too are troubled by the prevailing definition.

I think public policy is ultimately better if it is measured by reasonably objective metrics. Do you really think that public policy is best measured and refined in terms of fuzzy anecdotes about peoples shoes?

Regards,
Terje

Yes ,poverty is a relative concept.We have single parents who suck off the public purse increasing taxes and thus increasing working hours for us all.We have too many able people getting disability pensions.15% of the pop of working age is supported full time by the tax payer.The result is that honest and able people must work twice as long and hard to support the bludgers.Hence we have family break down and burn out and fewer babies of real genetic ability.

Our Federal Social security bill is $85 billion pa.For every working person it increases their tax by $8500.00 pa or$163.00 per week.Now add to this all the State and Council expenses on social security and we have monumental waste in the form of Govt bureaucracy.

Our Govt Bureaucracies don't want us to become autonomous since it takes away their power over the masses.It is better to keep us resentful,unemployed,ignorant and beholding to their public service;
Or by a better definition,their Public Priviledged System of Impotence.

New data released by ABS (“Household Income and Income Distribution” Cat.No.6523.0, 4 August 2005) show: “Over the period from 1994-95 there was an estimated 22% increase in the real mean income of both low income people and middle income people and 19% for high income people.” Thus, in less than 10 years, average real living standards of the poorest Australians have risen by almost a quarter.

Daggett, who accuses me of using “cooked up figures,” will presumably dismiss these latest ABS figures too, preferring to rely for evidence on anecdotes about his grandfather’s family holidays in Maroochydore. That got me thinking about my grandfather’s life when he was the age I am now, in England in the mid-1950s.

He left school at 12 and died of heart problems (no by-pass surgery back then) 18 months after retirement. In 1955 he had no TV, no phone, no car, and my grandmother used a mangle to wring out laundry washed by hand in the kitchen sink. They had no bathroom and an outside toilet with ‘potties’ under the beds. Coal was stored in a cupboard under the stairs, and only one room was heated in the winter (you’d scrape frost off the inside of the bedroom windows – no central heating, no double glazing, and of course, no air con). My grandparents never had a foreign holiday or went on a plane, never used a computer or saw the inside of a university, and TB and polio were everyday hazards.

They were not ‘poor’ – this was a respectable working class household, and their lifestyle was the norm. Yet fifty years later, it is difficult to imagine such an impoverished lifestyle existed within my own living memory. The change reflects the way economic growth has raised living standards, and it is the reason I am pro-capitalist.

Daggett believes the income statistics are “cooked” and that "poverty is getting much worse for many workers.” These claims are plainly absurd. How quickly we forget what life used to be like. How easily we take for-granted the benefits that capitalist economic growth has brought us

Peter Saunders
I would agree that living standards have improved over the last 50 yrs in this country and in similar countries (but not all countries, and this may have to do with capitalist exploitation of some poorer countries).

However mean income figures would not give a true picture of the situation, and a bell shaped curve may give a more meaningful picture, particularly if there are spikes on that curve. I have the opinion that the majority of wealth is still with a minority of families, and if there was a bell shaped curve of net family wealth or assets, then this would show up quite clearly on such a curve.

The other concern is with levels of debt, as national debt is increasing (and I understand now equates to about $18,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia). Such national debt would be compounded by the trade deficit, which never seems to decrease much.

Putting the national debt and the trade deficit together, then we may be living beyond our means,and this may come more to the forefront in future years when a younger generation has to establish families with high mortgage costs, paying back HECS fees, paying child support etc, as well as problems with the environment, a possible shortage of oil, high welfare payments, declining infrastructure, shortage of skilled workers, lower commodity prices, possible lower wages etc.

Although we may have a higher standard of living right now, it may be on loan with repayments due in future years.

I have just read over the article again and can’t see at any point Peter Saunders saying we should use absolute poverty as a definition of poverty.

Everyone has different circumstances but some crude measure is needed to help look at planning and delivering for society. The poverty measure espoused by ACOSS et al seems to be half average income as the cut off. This is absurd because it means if I get a big (unlikely) pay rise and double may income this would aggravate or increase poverty. I always thought getting a large pay rise was helping others in hardship. The government would take stacks more money from me via income tax and GST from possible increased consumption. This could be put back into the welfare and health care system.

If the economy has a big down turn the salaries of many higher income earners will drop or they may just get fired. Under the half average income poverty measure a recession is something for which to rejoice as income inequality decreases, don’t bother about the fact that the governments revenue take falls and there will less resources to provide services with.

I am an advocate of half median income as a better measure of hardship. It is far from perfect but a better indicator about the circumstances of a community.

I hope the super wealthy have another fabulous financial year and that all society can share in it from the income tax and GST the such people will be liable for.