You may be right Suze, but I would suggest your enemy moving forward will be heavily reduced wages, simply because the way we are headed there are goingmto be so many our of work that the working week as we know it may well be under threat. By that i mean the normal working week may well be more in the ordermof 30 hours over four days, or 25 hours over three nights, and while the rates of pay may not change, the gross wages would.

In fact, the only real answer I can see is a fairer tax system for all.

As for your freind in small business, I hear you loud and clear, as I've been there, done that and I can tell you the fun days in many small businesses, especially in the likes of retail are all but over, with the exception of the lucky few.

I got a hair cut from a hairdresser in a shopping centre yesterday, it cost me $26.50.

I can remember paying that from a similar type of small business ten plus years ago, so how well are they going considering their expenses have most likely doubled.

So how would workers feel if their wages had not risen in ten years, because that's the reality for many in SB today.

But, as I have said before, the amount of taxes paid by the top one percent has to be considered, not just the percentage they are perceived to be paying, because our welfare system, the one that supports 70% of our population, will be decimated if we dive these big players away.

rehctub,

You and Robert Page are absolutely right about the 457 visas. When this is brought up, though, people go on about the "lump of labour fallacy". Migrants do create jobs as well as taking them, but there is good evidence from around the world that mass migration depresses wages (i.e. isn't creating as many jobs as it takes). See e.g. the UK House of Lords 2008 report.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82/82.pdf

In many cases, people are paid too little to be net taxpayers, not because they aren't contributing enough, but because they have such weak bargaining power (partly due to mass migration) that most of the wealth they create is captured as profits by their employer, Some of them even need welfare to supplement their earnings just to survive. Waltons in the US is notorious for paying its workers so little they are eligible for food stamps and other forms of welfare. The minimum wage simply isn't enough to support one adult and one child. Here in Australia, this might be true for underemployed people who can't get enough hours. Many of those on welfare are kept there by the lack of jobs.

There is no evidence that we need to coddle Big Business by not expecting it to pay its fair share of tax. See these graphs for the enormous transfer of wealth and income to Big Business and the people at the very top in the US. See

http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/9/25/6843509/income-distribution-recoveries-pavlina-tcherneva

and

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1#lets-start-with-the-obvious-unemployment-three-years-after-the-financial-crisis-the-unemployment-rate-is-still-at-the-highest-level-since-the-great-depression-except-for-a-brief-blip-in-the-early-1980s-1

Conditions aren't this bad in Australia - yet, but they are getting there. If you think that these sorts of profits and incomes are necessary to motivate Big Business, then why wasn't this true in the past? Why did a CEO in the US in 1965 do a good job for a salary that was 20 times the average wage, but now needs more than 200 times the average wage to do an equivalent job? Remember that the US economy was growing faster in 1965 than it is now. How are successful non-Anglosphere countries getting by without paying someone $4.5 million a year to run their postal service, etc.?

Butch; <<well, less than half our population work>> What do you want to do? get those kiddies out of the kindy's and into the coal mines!
Butch, you astound me with your apologist attitude to big business. They do very very well in Australia, the banks for example, are the most profitable per capita in the western world, $29 billion this year alone. The top 200 public companies do very well in Australia by any measure. How can you believe what you post. the reasons you give for them not to pay tax are nonsense.

Divergence, CEO's wages, like normal wages are a percentage of income/profits. Given profits are now counted in billions, is the reason why CEO's are paid so well. Plus, they have share holders now and compliance issues like reporting to the ASX as an example. Big business is far more com,ex today than it was in 1965. Besides, anyone can be a CEO, the opportunities are there.

Paul, in any business you have income, less expenses, less deductions, then you pay tax on what's left.

Where's the problem?

Normal wage earners do it, and they don't invest billions and create thousands of jobs.

So are you suggesting it's fine for a wage earner to reduce their taxes, but not a mega business?

As for your suggestion I want kids to work, nice try, but you know full well I am simply stating a fact. The fact being that only three people out of every ten pay positive taxes, while the remaining seven rely on those taxes, along with the big ends taxes for their financial survival.

Do you think this three could carry the can without big business and their collective BILLIONS in taxes? No need to answer because it plainly obvious.

Twelve months or so since the Federal election and I am feeling
"embarrassed" as the Hon J W Howard would describe it. After many years voting mainly for the ALP at fed and State elections I ventured to the dark side and voted LNP in the 2013 election.
Yes, I was tempted by the siren call of our current dear leader, an honourable man, it must be said, who assured me that there would be no more backflips on budget decisions by any Government led by him. (unlike the ALP Rudd/Gillard Governments )
What has transpired is woeful and cowardly, at the first sign of falling numbers in the opinion polls the Tories went to water, reversing the 6 months waiting period to access the ( overly generous ) dole for the youth unemployed, code for the leaners of OZ society not to mention the likely backdown re the Medicare co payment imposition on the undeserving poor of this nation. What worries me most is that A Abbott will reverse his pledge not to increase taxes and charges on the heavy lifters of Australia, the put
upon wealthy...

cicero

cicero, not sure what you meant in your last sentence but, did you honestly think you could vote for the libs and have them continue down the same wasteful path as labor did, or, did you expect, as did I, that we were headed for pain. Pain simply because labor wasted so much.