Ahh Tristin, but of course you make some classic mistakes, I will just put it down to your youth :)

Happiness is relative. If you are in Tasmania, just emerging from a cage underground, you will be the happiest person on the planet!
The same if you just emerged from a concentration camp. To get a real comparison, you need to compare quality of life surveys, where Australia does really well, in fact right at the top of the world.

You young ones perhaps don't realise how easy you have it, as I said, life is relative.

Fact is that all the countries that you mention are falling over themselves to find ways to reduce taxation, because the high taxation idea was a dismal failure.

Next point, you are comparing apples with oranges. In many countries
healthcare and old age pensions are included as part of Govt taxation. In Australia, the huge 9% of income super pool is not seen as taxation when you calculate your figures. Yet its a compulsory payment for everyone. Add that, plus state and shire taxes, our share is not so different to other countries.

Given rising petrol costs, no doubt Victorians will frequent more public transport. There is no need for it to be free. It just needs to pay its way. Why should people who don't have access to public transport, subsidise those who do?

Life is simple Tristan. Get off your arse and make it happen, don't worry about Govt doing it for you. The world is full of opportunities if you open your eyes and learn to think outside the square.

Yabby, you are certainly crabby today.

What of Tristans youth?

I think you are in danger of becoming a GOF. Geriatric ...

Being young is not a sin, and why shouldn't he have his say. After all he is likely to have to live with any changes for a lot longer than you.

Ps. Aka means grandmother :)

Thanks Tristan, you have restored some of my faith in Australian public decency. If we want to build a compassionate society, taxation to support social infrastructure is needed. The market cannot provide compassion; it is more likely to destroy it. If we want a healthy Australia, decreasing both poverty and income inequality through the tax system is the way to go. Poverty and ill health go together. Inequality adds to the impact of poverty. If we want to reduce the shame so many of us feel at the way we treat Aboriginal people, more tax revenue to support Aboriginal people to support themselves is the way to go (and before anyone argues that we spend a fortune on Aboriginal people please check your facts).

Tristan from all of us - and there are many - who want Australia to be a caring civilised society - thanks mate!

And to those who have used "communist" and "socialist" in their comments could I appeal to you to have a look in the dictionary before using these words again.

I can understand the conservative perspective in favour of tax cuts and their argument that low tax creates incentive for achievements. Certainly in a perfect world where everyone is equal and has the same opportunities in life, the conservative position would be quite reasonable. However, we are not all in the same position.

As tristan has pointed out, unfortunately tax is the downside of good infrastructure and developing oneself as a useful contributing citizen is not something that anyone has ever done completely on their own. Social services and social and pysical infrastructure are vital components of any person's development and taxes are needed to pay for the services which help people develop into worthy citizens and to bring their own families up in ways which encourage their children to have self-respect and confidence in their ability to contribute to society and their own welfare.

A belief in social services is not 'socialist' in the sense that people use this term in Australia. It is essentially liberal in that it recognises that people need to work on a level playing field, that inequalities of opportunity need to be addressed and that extreme financial stratification only causes division rather than national unity.
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A sensible tax system would:
- encourage innovation by developing an infrastructure (including a worthy education system) which sponsors a 'knowledge economy,' invests in research and development and provides opportunities for innovative inventors, entrepreneurs, etc, to develop their ideas while staying in Australia. We can't sell primary resources for ever, someday the mines will run out.
- It would see the prevention of extreme poverty as essential to our vision of Australia as the land of the 'fair go'. And invest seriously in people so they feel the confidence to make something of themselves (current punitive 'mutual obligation' welfare strategies only leach people of all self-confidence and make them feel less than human - just visit a centrelink office if you don't believe me - it might be educational). Australian government spending needs to encourage economic development but this should be the type of development that creates real jobs not nasty low-paid casual jobs.

- It would help families spread the cost of raising families across the life cycle by providing excellent childcare, education and other support services to young families and taxing people in other stages of their lives when money is more readily available (i.e. money is not simply redistributed from 'rich to poor' but across people's own life cycle).

Ideas such as those Tristan brought up in his very interesting article would be the topic of serious debate and not simply dismissed as socialist nonsense. While he may not be right in all details, he is right that comparative studies of other taxation systems may be of use to Australia. Certainly I have more faith in social scientific research than overly simplistic ideological arguments about taxation.

Let's look at where money actually is spent and have an open debate about the merits of this spending and the goals that Australians really think are worth spending taxpayers dollars on. This means finding good ways of spending money not just taxing people more. We need government spending where is really matters, in ways that makes life worth living in Australia.

Tax and Tax,the rich and the not so rich,the worker,the battler,we may argue about this,read about it,nothing will ever change,we are supposed to live in a democratic country,where all is fair,an even distribution of the fruits of our labour,but this is not to be,as under a "Coalition of the RICH "?,it prime purpose is to keep the better part,of our wealth in the hands of,the 5%,that decides how the rest of Australians live,and John Howard AND Peter Costello is making a DAMMED GOOD JOB,TO ENSURE IT STAYS THAT WAY.