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The Forum > Article Comments > Yes - we will feel better if we are taxed more. It's true! > Comments

Yes - we will feel better if we are taxed more. It's true! : Comments

By Owen McShane, published 30/12/2005

Owen McShane argues higher taxes will not engineer greater societal happiness.

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Linda, I have always believed in training people, & promoting them to the highest position they can achieve.
For this reason I have started a number of young people in their first job.
In one recent 10 year period I had 12 young women start their first jobs with a company I was running.
Of these, 5 chose to become pregnant, & go on a supporting parent benifit, rather than continue to earn their own living. This occurred in the first 3 to 8 months of employment.
They made no bones about it, they told their fellow workers that it was a knowing choice. They did not get pregnant by accident. They did not have boy friends they became pregnant with.
They set out to become supporting parents as a chosen lifestyle.
I do not know if they knew who the father was, & planned to claim support from them. I do know that there are doctors who have a system to get them onto a benifit as soon as they became pregnant. They did not stay at work once they were pregnant.
In my retirement I play with old cars. We all drive them, except my eldest daughter, who thinks we are mad. A local small business man paints them for me. His main business is buying cheep cars, doing them up, & selling them to the local kids, as first cars. A lot of his business is with single mothers, not deserted mothers, who have 2 or more kids. They have the second or third, as they know that welfare workers, will get them into public housing once they have 2 or more.
This is a life style choice, a misguided one, but still a choice, & I believe, we will see even more of it, with the new baby bonus.
I can not know, if you are too naive, or just too nice, to see this is happening, but it is happening in large numbers.
We should support them, but we must push them, very hard, to do better than sit on welfare, becomming unemployable.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 4 January 2006 4:19:23 AM
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Linda, OOOo no, of all the worst things to say: Karl Marx sympathizer: That is Blasphemy of reality.
I pray that if you read this link O L O has provided you may take the time to read some entries and links. You are a very reasonable person, I trust you may reconsider your sympathy and apply it to a more fitting entity worthy of such thoughts when you read and comprehend the falsehood of Marxism. From His mind and publications not anyone else’s.
About Half way down the page you might find interesting: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3963
Posted by All-, Wednesday, 4 January 2006 2:08:53 PM
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This piece really is one of the more fascile ones I have read.

It is worth noting with the passing Mr K Packer that he asserted any one who does not try to minimise taxes was stupid - and one of the resaons they should do so accordsing to Mr P was that they, Tax Dollars, are so poorly administered by government why give them any more than we have to.

The arguement these days should less about tax rates as it should be about governrnment accountability. The 11 bill plus surplus suggests there is plenty of money out there.

Strategically the feds will use it to offset any wage down turns when the the IR changes start to bite and or pork barrel.

The truth is there is scope for tax breaks together with improved infrastructure spending as well as recurrent spending insome portfolios.

We are tragically over governed with waste at every level - I know I will be pilloried for this but the ALP web site has identified in excess of a billion dollar of wasted public money last year alone by the Howard government - In my defence I would contend the same could be said of ALP governments both state and federally.

We let all parties off far to lightly when it comes to accounting for expenditure - the condemnation from the auditors general flows from them like water off a ducks back.

There is money in the system. We need to see it spent appropriately before we call for more tax - or even reform the tax system - as any reformation is predicatd on the assumption they are managing what we give them now.
Posted by sneekeepete, Wednesday, 4 January 2006 3:36:07 PM
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Hasbeen's little anecdote about 5 appalling single mothers on welfare ignores one of the new truths about Australian society - MIDDLE CLASS WELFARE is on the march. Why pick on the single mums getting their pittance? The implicit assumption is that someone who, according to Hasbeen, does nothing deserves nothing.

Truth is that we used to have in our midst the so called 'deserving poor'. Today, it's the middle class who believe they are the 'deserving', even if they have well paid jobs, 4wd monstrosities that are not subject to the same tax as humble cars, grandiose macmansions, plasma TVs, boats, swimming pools and so on. What they deserve, they believe, is the numerous tax concessions/rebates for families, the 30% rebate for private health coverage, the private school education for their children subsidised through tax revenue, toll-exempted freeways, first home buyers' rebates that can't be obtained by those with no capital etc. etc.

These are what the pollies have identified as the 'aspirationals' (euphemism for greed?). THEY 'deserve' whatever they can get (remember Latham's ghastly 'ladder of opportunity'?); those on social security aren't deserving because they are getting something for apparently doing nothing. It's a kind of 'downward envy' isn't it!

So perhaps those who feel the need to rant - even against the pathetic people who do become single mothers 'by design' - might consider that most middle-income people are getting just as much if not more from the taxpayer at the same time as they are leading the charge against taxation.

Many people today undoubtedly subscribe, tacitly, to the Packer maxim that it is your DUTY to mimimise or evade tax, at the same time as maximise largesse from tax revenue. Apparently this is legitimate, certainly 'legal'. It is hard to see the difference between doing that and thinking that you can legitimately subsist on the single mother's benefit.

In saying this I am not endorsing the state of mind that Hasbeen believes he/she has identified, just pointing out that it is pervasive in our society with its credit-driven economy.
Posted by Rapscallion, Wednesday, 4 January 2006 8:29:18 PM
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Rapscallion, if you read my earlier post, you would have seen, my main "RANT" was about having far too many Inefficient services, & entitlements, & thats mostly middle class welfare.
I am with you completely. Any welfare should be, one size fits all, & should only be for the realy needy. The unemployed, with a mortgage, requires just as much help, as the unemployed renter. But it must encourage all to move towards independence.
The present system, which has the unemployed effectively paying 75% tax, as they try to move back into the workforce, must be corrected.
However it is a problem which is hard to fix. We must not precipitate a position where 3 days work, with welfare is better than a real job.
I have seen sugar mills desperate for workers, while dole reciepents would not take the job, & I could not blame them. You see, when the mill closed again, in 6 or 7 months, the worker had to wait 6 weeks to be eligible for benefits, & he could not save enough, while working, to support his family for that 6 weeks.
I'm sure a couple of good accountants, with a couple of computers, could fix all the inequities, in a month or two, but while we have both Centrelink, & ACOSS, with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, there is little chance of improvement.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 4 January 2006 10:12:42 PM
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… and that is the point of the article Rapscallion.

Middle class welfare and Happy-Taxing go hand in hand (or more aptly perhaps, giving with one while taking with the other). I understand the author to be against Happy-Taxing; Hasbeen’s arguments are consistent with those views.

Most of us would prefer proper tax reform instead, but apparently our government is unwilling to deliver that much happiness within any one given parliamentary term. This is unfortunate because most of us did not vote in this government for its nanny state credentials.

Perhaps the current levels of middle class welfare help disguise our true levels of unhappiness.

By implication within recent government policy, we all want “something for nothing” and prefer to spend someone else’s money, especially when only lightly mixed with our own. State bureaucracy is best suited to determine our circumstances and needs. We are willing to pay insurance premiums to cover risk against relationship failure. We want independence from immediate and extended family. We want to be taxed as individuals, because we don’t want the sole responsibility of supporting any family structures, while the family home must remain sacrosanct. We must be allowed tax deductions.

The ad hoc implementation of above policies in apparently unrelated, knee-jerk and nonsensical combinations tends to dull the nausea one may feel as a biological private person on PAYE when comparing one’s overall tax rate with that of a company actual rates (even headline rate!). An arbitrarily imperfect market foisted on a captured and gullible populace.

Then I remember … we can vote, and we CAN leave.
Posted by Seeker, Thursday, 5 January 2006 12:03:55 AM
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