Yesh! That's a sad conversation to be having with a farmer Slasher... and yep, I get the irony.

However, the sad part of it is that government funds could easily "dry up" during the combined economic crisis that is coming. Peak oil is the beginning of the end of the oil age, and here we are debating a few dollars here and a few dollars there on a baby bonus or welfare payments to single mothers.... yet I can see this Great Depression getting so bad that many unemployed end up in Salvo's soup kitchen lines for a bite to eat. Just remember those challenging opening scenes from King Kong!

Welfare shmelfare if we don't handle peak oil right.
If the oil decline is just a meagre 2% per year, Hirsch has stated it would take 20 years to properly adjust to peak oil PRIOR TO THE EVENT with a big government, crash mitigation program.

However, peak oil could be far earlier than that (anywhere from only 10 years from now to maybe this year) and far more severe ... from 4% through to 8% decline. In other words, Hirsch himself has admitted today to being far too optimistic in his report!

The best welfare any government, whether blue, red, or rainbow coloured, could do for this country would be to seriously upgrade public transport, retrofit extra urban accomodation in the CBD's of our cities, and figure out how to do farming without oil. Otherwise buying a farmer's wife a new dress will be the last thing on the minds of farmers, and city folk may be forced to fight over the remaining food as our supermarkets run bare — as depicted in ABC's Catalyst special, "The Real Oil Crisis!"

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1515141.htm

Thise comment is from Professor Peter Newman from ABC's Catalyst...

"Yeah, the next 20 years are an absolute critical point where I don’t know that we can make it. I just feel we haven’t started soon enough."

What good are welfare payments if there is no food to buy?

Eclipse

Thankyou for highlighting the enormous magnitude of the looming peak oil crisis.

With this sort of scenario just ahead of us, we MUST start preparing, big time. One of the essential preparations is to get the hell away from our crazy continuous growth mentality. We have got to aim for population reduction and we are going to have to accept large-scale negative economic growth.

We need to throw the baby bonus out with the bathwater (and ‘have-one-for-the-country’ Costello along with it). And we need to rapidly reduce immigration, reduce per-capita consumption way down, implement alternative energy sources and in short, head directly into sustainability mode.

“Welfare shmelfare if we don't handle peak oil right.”

Eloquently put. If we want to retain ANY sort of system of child or single parent support, then we need to do everything in our power to prepare for the peak oil crisis NOW.

Slasher, using a farmer as a case in point is an unfortunate one. I would suggest you walk a mile in their shoes before you pass judgment. I have never met a ‘bludging’ farmer in my life and, generally, the farming community takes government assistance as a last resort and with great humility. That is a part of the reputation that they have and want to protect regardless of your attempts at disparaging it. They have pride in the self-reliance that comes from the land and hard work. To even suggest that they have no concept of hardship is an absurdity in the extreme.
To take a car, a dress and a pride in themselves to judge them and pass sentence speaks volumes for your knowledge of the matter

Well said Craig.

These systems are perpetuated by people like Slasher and Shonga who can't bring themselves to concede that those who put into the system should get more out of it than those who don't. If a woman decides to work why shouldn't she also retain welfare payments (ie like in a meritocracy)? If somebody receives $400.00 in welfare per week to take care of a small family, and then gains employment making $500.00 a week why should they find themselves only $100.00 better off (childcare excluded!!)? It doesn't make sense and it sure as hell isn't fair! Perhaps the reason Slasher is so against rewarding work is because his arts degree only covered Maoist Thought and he now finds himself qualified solely to practice ideology in cafes and beer gardens?

As for that ignorant farming analogy I feel sorry for the poor girl you undoubtedly humiliated in front of your university class. Farming/ Agriculture may not be commercially viable on a large scale for much longer but the last time I checked it was still the country's second biggest export market. It may well be the industry we need to pull the country through 'peak oil'. Your opposition to rewarding farmers, ideologically parellels your opposition to working mums. You don't like capitalism, you don't want people rewarded on merit- maybe you'd prefer we kicked all our farmers off the land and let Johnny maintain a fleet of seized Mercedes instead? Then all the single Mums would end up in slums that we could bulldoze-sound familiar?

Slasher,
Perhaps we had better re-think our attitudes, obviously the farmer refered to has done it tough, no new dress for his wife in 2 years, hell I know people who haven't had a new dress in their lives. Remember the poor old farmer has a company set up so that he can buy he petrol cheap and claim it and any travel on tax, like ordinary working people can...eh! sorry, we can't. The poor old farmer like every business can claim business expenses depreciation on machinery, even the work clothes the company provides and embroideres for the employees including the farmer himself of course.

Ah yes, it's a hard life for the poor old farmer, livin' it up on drought relief, and to make things even harder if it rains, well of course flood relief. Personally I don't discriminate against Mrs.wre, if she has paid her taxes, [all 48% of them] she should be entitled to a pension, where she lives in Toorak, or Timbucktoo.

I WAS NOT BEING PATRONISING, I leave that to the wealthy. These people have no idea what the poor have to live through, and it seems they are interested in squeezing the life out of them by cutting a miserable pension from already poverty stricken families. However it seems that they themselves are prepared to sacrifice absolutely nothing, they must have a tax cut, well I have one question, you have had YOUR government in for 10 years now, and you are paying the tax rate the ALP left behind, does that tell you anything.

Two comments on wre's post.

If your mum has a major interest in the form of her North Shore house, why should the State (ie the rest of us) contribute to her ongoing maintenance? Shouldn't you and your sibling encourage her to move to a more modest dwelling (or even rent) and use the proceeds from downsizing to support herself. Or is the the old self interest issue involved - we don't want to do anything that might threaten the inheritance? This, of course, is what is behind the outcry whenever there is talk of making the elderly pay for their own upkeep - it is not the elderly who object but their children!

And regarding your observation that if you can get $400 on welfare but only $500 for working, there is something wrong with the pay rates, perhaps it is the other way round. We are providing too generous welfare. And of course when we look at what welfare is spent on, that is clear - but it is politically incorrect to suggest that welfare recipients don't have the same right to spend $10 a packet on smokes, $30 a slab on beer and whatever is left on the pokies. Benefits from the State should provide a subsistence level of support and the strongest possible incentive to set the alarm clock and get up each morning to go to work (any work), not a long term alternative to work.