Paul L “I know it shouldn’t surprise me that there are people out there who still believe in socialism/communism.”

Oh just hang around, you will have lots of opportunity to shred the regurgitated Marxism and allied drivel which the left around here vomits forth.

The usual emotionalized economics motherhood statements and weasel words based on small-minded envy and hate of anyone who can do better than mediocre.

Agree in general with your post and as you adroitly observe of welfare “It was never meant to be a lifestyle”

Scorpio “A Fair days pay for a fair days work, How much do you think we are worth now?”

I recall some dumb study which reckoned that mothers were worth a heap, one I found is representative of what I mean, a UK study which suggests UK pound 26,000 (A$65,000) for the work they supposedly do.

http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=132384&command=displayContent&sourceNode=242846&contentPK=20058610&folderPk=110183&pNodeId=242845

If mothers are worth that much and carers and others are worth that much, they would be able to command the same from the “market”.

Problem, the “market” is a fluid place in which not all on the “demand” side can afford the pay the sorts of rates prescribed by the “Supply” side.

Pretending a government should step in and underpin a “theoretical economic wage” is the hard end of the Nanny-state, in which everyone ends up better off drawing welfare than working

and when that happens the proverbial brown stuff really does hit the fan and we all end up experiencing the lavish lifestyle experienced by the average Rumanian peasant under Ceausescu

Thanks for the article John. I agree with you Yvonne. Yes Scorpio, carers save society a lot of money by leaving you to care for your relatives, its time for better respite and better carers payments.

Amongst my acquaintances those who are most stridently against "dole bludgers" received sickness benefits from age 50 because there wasn't any suitable employment locally.

A letter in todays Sydney Morning Herald describes the plight of middle class country kids looking for work in Sydney. These kids are not counted as unemployed, as are students, people in training, those on mutual obligation, volunteers - so this calls into question the really low unemployment figures.

I absolutely endorse getting away from the blame shame approach to social security and the need to restore a system which assists people in crsis, those with disablity and chronic health problems, those who are undertaking unpaid work caring for others (including their children)as well as those who cannot get employment due to stigma, location, lack of suitable skills.
Those who think social security claimants needs punishment and control will clearly never get hit by a bus, get cancer, get divorced, have a child with a disability, or if they do, they will enjoy get harassed by Centrelink while recovering from surgery, or attending the 3rd medical specialist appt that week for their child. Those who imagine they need to micro-direct others' lives should be willing to have their own lives controlled by others.

Speaking of a “safe net”, one should clear understand that a system is being run and functioning by and for protecting of keeping most of a national product in pockets of privileged “thoroughbreds”.

In Australia, non-Anglos, non-whites and non-Christians denied employment routinely to keep a pool of less disadvantaged from Anglo-Celtic/Saxon background to think of what should they and their children suffer if even a shadow of dissent against Howard-style IR to be demonstrated as registered in the net need, one could say, “yes” from government-sustain computed system potential employer to take a person on.

As understood, in a case of those from non-Anglo-background this “yes” is very much grounded on “recommendations” from migrant course form completed on graduation of any course established by government again…

The more unemployed-the more work for so-called “job network” and its case-managers paid for simply providing police-style service for being guilty-not-to-be-taken-on for simply socio-political reasons mostly-if any real job places exist in Australia but selling coffee each to other.

Perhaps, being humiliated and discriminated needs in addition “a reciprocal approach” of additionally denigrating in “work for dole” programs designed to keep really looing for work under an individual control of government-paid supervisors to make them even less intelligent than those under-castes supposed to be in Australia by foreign-crown lickers.

Col Rouge, there's lots of drivel vomited on OLO. Not least by the Left. You vomited a bit of drivel of your own: 'If mothers are worth that much and carers and others are worth that much, they would be able to command the same from the “market”'.

Are you seriously so convinced of the objective goodness and benefit of a pure capitalist society? If you hadn't noticed it is humans with all their foibles, prejudices and little morals who create the demand or lack there of.

Funny not many men doing this kind of low paid work either, though the 'market' is demanding many more bodies to fill the vacancies. Now why, if there is such a demand are wages not much higher than say, what a business consultant asks to be paid for information that can be had with a bit of effort and modicum of intelligence by anybody connected to broadband?

There are people who are demanding better wages for carers of children and disabled. There are still too many bleeding hearts who think that thanks and gratitude is enough, much to the delight of resentful taxpayers like yourself and PaulL who think that any money spent on areas such as this reeks of socialism and marxism.

Incidentally, not everybody who you disagree with is necessarily 'marxist/leftist' or anti libertarian principles.

Paul has suggested once to me to go to India to get raped in order to get the point on the necessity of certain laws. I think that both of you would appreciate India's pragmatic approach to tax. It's largely voluntary and virtually nothing is spend on 'socialist' issues.

please explain why paternalism is a such dirty word. I know there are many people who deserve and require on-going help and I do not begrudge any such person this financial assistance.
The one price I ask them to pay is an understanding that there are a lot of scabs that will lie and contort any such system for their own selfish purposes. So please help us sort you from such individuals. It is not a reflection on the genuine recipient, but a fact of life that not everyone is honest.
Anyone who does not understand that there are a lot people that will abuse welfare, does not live in the real world.
As for the original author's "free money for everyone" concept, none the anti-marxist rhetoric that I have read thus far has even come close to labelling what a nonsence that sugestion is. For those that do like the "free money for everyone" concept, please have another choof and go to sleep