Ignorance is bliss to both the preacher and the flock.
Blame is now the aussie game and all we need is a name.
And a final question, Are we the only ones to slack to get a revolution
that goes further than a shredded petition? Oh that's right we are !

Poverty is primarily a product of low intelligence.

You want to know about poverty? Take my own family.

My cousin gains a sizeable inheritance (enough to buy half a house in the small country town she lives in). She sells her Housing Commission home (which her and her husband own) to her daughter.

She then buys a Mercedes Benz, and since she is now convinced that her ship has come in, she and her husband proceed to put the rest of the money down the pokies.

Kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk.

When the bad times come, they don't have the money to make repayments for the loan on hubbies backhoe, which is vital to hubbys profitable earthmoving business, so they lose everything. Now I pay their bills.

Smart huh?

Their daughter marries a part time labourer, and true to the maxim that "dumb people breed,while smart people don't", have no less than four kids to add to their poverty.

Hubby disapears with the girl next door (who is half his age), while his wife sets up house with her husbands son from a different liason. (getting complicated now, huh?) She loses the house, and while living in emergency accomodation provided by the taxpayer, she has two more kids to her husbands son. The husbands son is a heroin addict/car thief and bashes her, and he is now back in jail because he was caught driving again when he was damned near banned from driving for life. The taxpayer is now totally funding this woman and her six fatherless kids.

One can only assume that the authors of this article which blames uncaring Australian society on poverty, have never left the cloistered world of middle class acedemia to have a look around the real world. Even they can't blame Howard for my families woes.

One begins to see why poor old redneck's such a bitter and twisted individual.

However, given the crap he's written lately elsewhere, one has to make the point - if 'intelligence' is inherited, as he's claimed, and these dropkicks are his relatives, whence does our redneck's superior intelligence derive? Is he a spontaneous mutation that has allowed him to rise above the pond life from which he was spawned?

Also, one assumes that redneck and his impoverished cousins are 'white'. What hope then for those of darker hue, who according to redneck's novel ideas about 'race' and intelligence, are even dumber than him and his relatives?

Redneck,why on earth are you paying their bills?Just because you are poor does not mean you have an inferior intelligence.Haven't you heard the stories of people from impoverished backgrounds becoming millionaires through hard work and perseverance.What about all the kids from poor families who get scholarships.My family has always been poor and my daughter earned on OP score of one and is now doing biomedicine at uni.My granddaughter is at uni also.I have family members very similar to what you described and it's not lack of intelligence in those cases.Buggered if i can understand why people put their money through pokies but my sister and her hubby went through 350k that way and are now in govt housing.Stupidity does not mean lack of intelligence and while others enable their behaviour by paying the bills,they will never learn.

It is extremely naive to think that the rich, who have pursued their wealth deliberately, have sought to do so without meaning to increase their RELATIVE wealth over others, but to arbitrarily decide at some point that they are rich without reference to the wealth of others.

The thing to do then is to draw a distinction between the relatively poor, and the absolutely poor.

As long as there exists at least one person in society who has at least one dollar less in his bank account than all others, the relatively poor shall exist. That is poor reason to implement a transfer of wealth through the tax system.

As long as there exists at least one person who cannot put food in his mouth and who does not at the same time spend his money on cigarettes or any other dubious commodity, and who at the same time tries his very best to improve his position, the absolutely poor shall exist.
When you find such a fellow, let me know.

Blimey Redneck, that's a good story. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I have a sister who works in disabilities. Many of her intellectually disabled clients have what she describes as "poor impulse control". They know that certain behaviours will get them in trouble, but they won't (or can't) resist their impulses. Allied to impulse control is delayed gratification. You don't have to be all that smart to know that saving for something you want will cost less (and be more satisfying) than buying on credit. But buying on credit or taking drugs, playing the pokies, binge drinking, promiscuous sex, stealing etc etc are instantly gratifying (if you don't think about tomorrow's hangover/consequences).

A few years ago a friend moved from Sydney's west to the northern beaches. He moved to a flash house with a pool in a good suburb, drove a Ford LTD, had the kids in private schools and had a high-paying sales job. He told me he felt like he'd "made it". But the house was rented and everything else was on hire-purchase. His marriage failed, he stacked the LTD and he discovered that his net worth was about $0. He's rebuilding his life, but he no longer sneers at the falling-down dump I live in (and own).