Come and spend a week with me after my next pay day and see for yourself how the other half lives. I live in a crumbling and decaying high-density urban neighborhood, with little to show for my struggle and little hope either.

But then, the CIS are stooges for big business, they are funded by a number of Australian big businesses, either directly or through their "chinese wall" foundations.

He who pays the piper, calls the tune. Business would rather no welfare, no minimum wages or a minimum wage thats so uselessly inadequate that predatory employers could eat us for breakfast. It would then fatten up their bottom lines at our expense, with us as our beasts of burden.

Contrary to the author's implication, unemployment levels today are not at all comparable to those of the seventies. To qualify as being 'employed' today you only have to work one hour a week. Thousands of people are working far less hours than they need to to support themselves. If 'underemployment' was factored in the unemployment level would be closer to ten rather than four percent.

Besides a lot of the work these days is contract work which gives no financial security. For most unskilled and semi-skilled workers, having a job today gives no guarantee of having one tomorrow. As pointed out by another poster, the American trend of the working poor is also taking hold in Australia and will only increase as Workchoices drives down wages. Growing numbers of people will need two or three jobs just to survive.

As a working taxpayer, I am far less concerned at the level of taxes being spent on social welfare payments, than I am at the prices of products and the level of fees I am paying to furnish the million dollar pay packets of the growing ranks of corporate fat cats. They are the real drain on society.

No matter how often rightwing thinktank gurus like Peter Saunders try to convince us otherwise, the constant evidence we all see for ourselves and read of on a daily basis tells us that poverty and wealth disparity are very real and growing problems.

Let them eat cake.

I set the Author to the challenge of living on the poverty line the service groups ( which he seems to think is to high) for 40 days. Let him and his family find a place to stay and set it up. Get the kids off to school and what not. Let's see if he can do it, and still think they are not doing it tuff. We know the answer already he won't do it but he'll continue to open his mouth having never walked in their shoes.

This seems reminiscent of earlier an discussion in response to an article by Peter Saunders. The article was "Defining Poverty" on 8 August 2005 and the forum discussion is at: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3737#12173

Others may find it useful.

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I think George Monbiot recently hit the nail on the head regarding right wing neo-liberal think tanks such as Saunders' Centre for Independent Studies when he wrote in the article "How did we get into this mess?" (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/08/28/how-did-we-get-into-this-mess/) of 28 August 2007 :

"Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme - the restoration of the power of the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.

My big question is what on earth do these people that promote extreme neoliberalism really hope to gain? Do they have no knowledge of history? Did they not study the French and Russian revolutions? Even the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent depression can be quite convincingly be linked to extreme concentrations of wealth and lack of a decent-sized middle class to act as a market for products and services provided by capitalists.

I'm not 100% convinced about Monbiot's theory - Hayek always comes across to me as a genuine believer in liberty above any other consideration - i.e., misguided, but not inherently plutocratical. But I don't doubt that many of the subsequent institutes that promote his ideas do so in the hope of preserving the status of the wealthy.
I also believe that as long as we have working democracy we will never truly see the repeat of the massive wealth disparities of the early 20th century (and before). Once enough voters realised they've been duped, they'll vote accordingly. And as long as the examples of the successful Scandinavian economies are there for all to see, there is an antidote for anyone who declares that "big government" or "socialism" are inherently evil ideas that will ruin us all.

This argument would have more credibility if it also advocated the abolition of business (tax deductibility) welfare and middle class welfare.
What was that? Sorry didn't catch that?
Ooooh that is respectable government subsidy. I see.