Col: Your description of my letter as a hissing fit- that from you?

You!? will show me up - you must be such a clever, educated chappie though not tolerant of views that differ from your concise and erudite beliefs.

What has the roller coaster have to do with this discussion? You should return to your medication Col and keep to it this time.

The poor are seen by some as fools etc. and not really worthy of help.
According to newspaper reports many of the rich and very rich and even the very, very rich have been availing themselves of child allowance, first home allowance etc. This from the go-getters, this from the clever people who know how to manage their money. numbat

numbat, I'm not one of the wealthy (by Australian standards) but I don't see a problem with the rich availing themselves of any benefit the system does not allow them to opt out of.

I'd prefer the contributions to a lot of the benefits schemes be optional then we could find out how much people really want them.
To many of our current schemes don't seem to take any account of how people came to need them. If we had some means to tell who needed help because they never got a break and could exclude those who need help because they could not be bothered providing for themselves then means testing would make a lot more sense.

R0bert

Numbat “availing themselves of child allowance, first home allowance etc. This from the go-getters, this from the clever people who know how to manage their money.”

To the matter of getting “benefits” – being a self employed, divorced father who bought his first house in Australia in 1983, I receive no benefits of the ones you mention. Theoretically I could have “claimed” in lean periods, but the DHSS / Centrelink reporting expectations of the self employed are too onerous to bother with. I simply sold some shares, did a redraw on my mortgage and held my breath until the lean days were over but I did maintain my life and income protection insurance, some things are worth too much in terms of security to let go – especially when one has a history of heart attacks.

Robert – I agree with you. I am levied medicare charges, I am entitled to benefit from public hospitals. When I need a doctor I see a bulk billing one in my area. If these services were not a government impost I would have more private medical insurance (just as I have income protection insurance presently).
Most important, “monetary wealth” is secondary to emotional / spiritual wealth.
Unfortunately the socialists never developed (and never will) beyond the lower levels of perception and thus can only focus and measure things in base material and monetary terms – they have never heard of Maslow.

Numbat “Col you appear to be a fine liberal, a complete unfeeling ass, (same thing) or a total uncaring ding-a-ling. Numbat”

dingbat – above is an example of your limited vocabulary, you use such words as “unfeeling ass” and “total uncaring ding-a-ling” which qualifies it as a “hissing fit” – having nothing of value to add you simply expel your crass invective like a petulant infant who now needs its nappy changed.

I suggest you take your seething ignorance and pretence at intellect and run back to your mother, you are already outclassed, out smarted and out performed in all arenas to remain would risk you being humiliated further.

Col: One more - the roller coaster you mentioned, you haven't explained its significance. Strange that you seem to 'hiss' at me yet condemn me.Perhaps it's because you are so urbane, so intelligent. Again Col get back to your medication - you will feel better:-) numbat

Philip Mendes hits the nail on the head when he describes the government and neo-liberal solution to poverty as “completely utopian, likely to produce enormous social damage, and based solely on ideological preconceptions rather than any genuine desire to improve the life chances of the poor”.

The hypocrisy of the neo-liberal ideology is illustrated by their refusal to see that there is an obvious power differential between the consumer and the marketer. First the consumer is almost always an individual whereas the marketer is often a large corporation with considerable resources at its disposal. These resources are used very effectively to influence human behaviour and elicit irrational choices.

The example of the adolescent who feels poor if he has to wear Dunlop Volley’s is a classic example of how this power influences people to make poor choices. The issue of shoes is real problem for a poor family trying to do bring up a shy and self-conscious adolescent who feels ashamed and uncool when wearing ‘daggy’ shoes.

The underlying unfairness is that the consuming individual is expected to take all the responsibility for making rational choices but there is no responsibility on the marketer to present their product honestly and rationally; to show that they accept the values of the community, and ensure that consumers can make an informed choice.

Re the issue of Col Rouge - I have a friend who does not believe that Col is a real person. He claims that he must be a plant by the Labor party or the Greens to make right wing people look really really bad.

Tus suggests that people can move to find work. This is true but is one of worst aspects of capitalist theory for the development of functional communities and families.

At all stages of our lives we have a need for social support from community family and friends.

Consider an 18 year old who moves to a big city for work. Of course ‘good kids with the right attitude’ will not be led astray. Unfortunately, we are NOT all as 'good' as Col. Some of us are more prone to depression, anxiety, and to being influenced by advertising and by bad kids with bad attitudes.

The consequences for a single mother, who moves to an area where family cannot help with child care, can be serious.

Moving schools is very disruptive (socially, emotially and academically) for children, but especialy for adolescents in the final years of high school.

For all poor families moving from an area where they have good relationships with people like doctors and mechanics to an area where they do not, is more difficult than it is for wealthy and/or functional family and the consequences are more serious.

These things can not be addressed by market forces. The families/individuals are poor and so do not have any disposable income to buy services.

In the past charities 'helped' but these organisations and individuals tend to discriminate on the basis of their own prejudices, which are often unconscious and unacknowledged. The only acceptable alternative is government.

Although, it is certainly the case that government has erred on the side of too much indiscriminate welfare, the question is HOW governments should provide welfare and in what form, and how people should be moved from welfare into work.