*Every thing you say can be fixed with one act of parliament.*

Ah, if only life were so simple, 579. You have clearly never
thought this one through. But it would eventually hit you,
when you went to the shops to spend your money. Most things
would cost more, many you could not afford, especially if
you were poor. So you'd want higher wages to compensate.
Prices would go up even more, the inflationary spiral would
be on its way. Your standard of living would go down and
you'd wonder why. All because you don't understand the
claim above, that you are making.

1983 unemployment rate 9.961%

2) 1993 unemployment rate 10.608%

Rudy, I was referring to the late 70's.

These times you refer to were the worst in history for labor. Remember the 21% interest rates!

Just remember who came to the rescue.

As for your questions, I will find the link. I know it came from the Australian about 12 months ago. Give or take and the story was that 42.8% of 'income tax payers' received more in handouts than they paid in tax. I doubt much has changed.

The old, we'll have the children, you pay the bill mentality.

As yabby quite rightly points out, the jobs created today are not labor intensive jobs and, with the introduction of the NBN, many of today's jobs (service, IT) will also be at risk of going off shore.

RM. I here you loud and clear. These people forget they are the recipients of our risk and, if and when we decide the risk is no longer worth while, then what are they going to do.

You see they (labor) link wage rises to living costs, yet they fail to acknowledge that all wage increases must first be made as 'profits' before they can be passed on as 'wage increases'. This is the fundamental flaw in their ways.

After all, if you ask any of them if they would invest a dollar, without making one for themselves, they would say no. Yet they expect us to.

30 years from now, things will be very different, unless of cause we make some changes, like;
Stopping the handouts and waste
Linking wages to profits, not CPI

Now I acnowledge that the cost of living is hard, but is that the fault of small business.

Wage rises are linked to living costs;;
Living costs are linked to the price of sheep on the hoof.
Everybody deserves to get reasonable outcomes to live on.
Cutting CPI would only lead to less to spend, and less to share around.
In free enterprise there will always be winners and losers.
It's a matter of what sort of political system you want to have.
Prices would be controlled under a socialist system, Or a free market system the costs continually rise. So i dont see how you can do away with CPI. Thats my opinion.

Rehctub,
You really are doing a panic. The world won't end anarchy isn't about to over run us and if you want to know why we all get so many freebies out of the gumbyment then look at all the howard bribes. Family tax benefit, family tax bonus, baby bonus, private vehicle conveyance scheme and on and on. The problem is real i give you that, we are ageing and we only have so many workers but the reality is it was only a generation ago that we accepted that we had to work all our lives to pay our way and that retirement at 65 usually ment death at 68.
It is the current and incredibly selfish "ME" generation that want their cake and eat it. You as many others may not have realised but there are alternatives to super. Of course the employer paid portion is locked but if you expect to retire at 55 you will have to put heaps in your self. You could have share portfolios or invest in property just to name two ideas, both with better returns than super.
The reality is that once the greedy baby boomers are gone we will have to clean up the mess they created through there selfish greed and consumption, hopefully we will learn from it and make the required changes so as life returns to a sustainable future we will not be tempted again by the greed we suffer now.

The reality is that once the greedy baby boomers are gone we will have to clean up the mess they created through there selfish greed and consumption, hopefully we will learn from it and make the required changes so as life returns to a sustainable future we will not be tempted again by the greed we suffer now.

nairbe,you make so good points, however, you assumption on the baby boomers may be off track.

You see, successive generations of workers have funded the retirement of the previous gen and this is where the problem lies.

When the BB commenced work, there was no family assistance, etc, yet, the government of the day still could not provide for the retirees at that point from their own taxes. Instead, they relied on the taxes of the BB.

Remember, when the pension commenced there were 27 payees per retiree, 27-1, now I believe that's about 2-1.

So to think the 'current generation' will provide for the BB is a joke. Unless of cause we stop the waste and handouts.

My problem is not today.My problem is more like in ten years from now, esspecially if we continue to throw billions at this war in another country.

How do we sucure the future for retirees to come with a deminishing tax revenue and resourses and the selling off of assetts?

The Department of Human Services has become a self-perpetutaing monster.

At present, total personal income tax collections are approximately $125 billion per annum.

At present, Centrelink handles approximately $87 billion to redistribute, very often to the same people who paid the personal income tax. 27,000 staff are employed, costing nearly $3 billion a year, to do so.

Then there's Medicare, with $14 billion of tax dollars being handled at a relatively efficient cost of nearly $1 billion. Staff numbers are not easily obtainable from Medicare's reports, which are a triumph of obfuscation.

So the DHS's 2 major Agencies have control of over $100 billion out of the total $125 billion in personal tax revenues, costing a total of nearly $4 billion a year.

In contrast, the ATO had only 22,500 employees to handle the nearly $300 billion in total tax collections from business and personal payers. The ATO's reports are a model of clarity and brevity by comparison with the hodge-podge of self-justification from Centrelink and Medicare.

Can anyone suggest why it should require more staff to handle hand-outs than it does to collect it in the first place?

Why do we need to have 2 Agencies dedicated to giving people back money that they already had before it was taken from them by tax? Is it really worth nearly $4 billion to do that double handling? Could a large part of it be replaced by tax deductions administered by what is clearly a more professionally-run organisation in the ATO?

I say resoundingly YES! Does anyone disagree and if so, on what grounds?