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Wealth and poverty; ...new definitions required?
Topic Started: May 15 2008, 12:29 AM (80 Views)
Eral
Kopi Luwak
Our new government has brought down it's first Budget.

They have decided that the baby bonus, a one-off payment of x-hundreds of dollars to people who have babies should now be means tested, and have declared that anyone earning over $150 000 will not be entitled to receive it. They are going to increase tax on luxury cars, too.

The media is full of stories like this:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/wea...0764953630.html
...and outraged speeches from people who like their Beamers brand new, saying they are being discriminated against.
There was a family on the news last night who feel it's really unfair. Yes, they earn over $150 000, but they have a $750 000 mortgage: and they need all the help they can get.

"We earned it," is surely the point? They have it. They don't need welfare payments. Why this sense of outraged entitlement? Why this reluctance to acknowledge wealth?

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Inky
Member Avatar
Thai
"Too much is never enough."
"You can never be too rich or too thin."
"Mo' money, mo' problems."

Pick one.
_____________
Jobbar du naken?
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Bex
puppet dictator
Also, "you don't get to be a millionaire by writing a lot of cheques."
I belong to one of those families that does not speak to or see its members as often as we should,
but if someone needed anyone to fall on a sword for her, there would be a queue waiting to commit the deed.
-Min Jin Lee
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Krazy
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I haz powah!
Eral
May 15 2008, 01:29 AM

The media is full of stories like this:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/wea...0764953630.html
...and outraged speeches from people who like their Beamers brand new, saying they are being discriminated against.

er...because they technically are?

This isn't about need, it's about someone making an arbitrary cut-off as to who qualifies. (edit: why $150,000 not $50,000 or $250,000 or a $1m per year?)

Needless to say I have little sympathy for them, and these people are usually the ones with the means to ensure they give as little back to the government as they possibly can so let them whinge all they want.
"Well, ‘course dis one’s betta! It’s lotz ‘eavier, and gots dem spikey bitz on de ends. "
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
$150 000 is a pretty generous cut-off. The Treasurer talked about how he arrived at the figure, but as it involved number crunching I am unable to recall it. It seemed pretty realistic to me.

We're now having complaints about the rebate given for installing solar panels and water tanks. The cut-off has been reduced to a mere $100 000, so if you earn more than that, you don't get the rebate. It adds an extra $3000 to the cost, which is kind of stiff.
The people complaining about it are saying stuff like "we want to reduce our energy consumption" and "save the world" which are a bit more palatable than "how dare you not give me a hand out just because I am comfortably off?"
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