Oh look, here's a millionaire who understands why poor people are poor;
Instead, he said, “rich people know the function of money is expansion, to use the money that you make to make more money.”
This is from a man who doesn't have to hand over every single dollar he earns every week so that he can avoid living in a tent on the street the following week. But damn he is an idiot, poor people would love to have the money to spare to actually make more money with it.
An assessment that Labor is actually WORSE than Scummo, with tax policies that rob from the poor and give to the rich.
If the decline in real wages wasn’t bad enough, the Albanese government has made matters worse by eliminating the low and middle income earners tax offset (LMITO), introduced in 2018 by then treasurer Scott Morrison as part of a tax reform program designed to culminate in 2024-25 with stage three, massively skewed towards high-income earners.
LMITO was supposed to expire in 2020, but the Morrison government repeatedly shied away from raising taxes on middle-income earners at a time when real wages were failing.
Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese had no such qualms and scrapped LMITO from 2022-23 onwards. Over the government’s remaining term, the resulting increase in taxes will more than cancel out all the cost-of-living relief trumpeted in the last budget. Meanwhile, the stage-three tax cuts will ensure that high-income earners are returned to the lowest average tax rates in recent history, last seen under the Howard government’s final package of tax cuts.
Yeah, I know, subst*ck... but Quiggin makes for compelling reading.
The issue here is that the “cost of living” is an essentially meaningless concept, rather like the sound of one hand clapping. The problem isn’t the cost of buying goods, but whether our income is sufficient to pay for those goods. For most of us, that means the real (inflation-adjusted) value of our wages, after paying tax and (for homebuyers) mortgage interest.
Get thee to Independent Australia (and subscribe or donate if you have any quatloos):
The idea that markets should be free of government regulation, that the rich should not have to pay too much in taxes, if at all, and that everything should be privatised because private companies are better managers, has created an overriding culture where money doesn’t just talk, it is given a golden megaphone, drowning out any voices that dare to speak up for the low-heeled and downtrodden.
Australians are tired of neoliberalism. We are sick of that much talked about and ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.
It is almost a cliché now, but it is this neoliberalism that is behind most of what ails our inequitable society. Neoliberalism is responsible for supermarket price gouging. It is the reason power prices continue to soar. It is why many have to choose between heating their homes and putting food on the table. It explains why rents have skyrocketed, and so many are displaced and dispossessed. And it certainly goes a long way in explaining why the super-rich have become even more obscenely rich in recent years, while everyone else is getting poorer.
At least one old institution breaks with fossil thinking.
From this new year, the Brotherhood of St. Laurence (BSL) will no longer be accepting volunteers from the Government's Work for the Dole program.
Work for the Dole is a work experience program to provide participants the opportunity to show their capabilities, contribute to community and build skills to help find secure work. If participants do not engage in the program, their income support payments and assistance from their Workforce Australia Employment Services provider may be suspended.
As unemployment payments are already well below the poverty line, this practice can drive people to experience even greater hardship. This is contrary to what BSL stands for and does not adequately serve those who are unemployed.
The gist of this article is that mortgage repayments increase the cost of living, but they are not included in the CPI, and that's why things are worse than the main metrics used to assess hardship.
I think it's a bad argument, because home ownership is now a ticket to wealth, and if the figure is skewed to greater reflect the problems affecting poor people, then it's a MORE effective metric.
There are also situations where people suffer and hardship when they lose their house and slip into the poorer category of renters, or even the homeless. But I think that category is not as important as people permanently in the less wealthy stratum.
Heard on the wireless this morning that there are 50,000 short term rentals in Melbourne. That's 50,000 mostly empty homes. 50,000 additions to real rental market would have a significant impact down here.
The investors camp like to argue that many of these homes are located where people don't want to rent, so its not a problem, except that is bullshit of course. So no one wants to move to a desirable location? because that is basically their argument.
I dont know, how radical is just banning short term rentals? Seems pretty simple to me.
'The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.' David Graeber
pipbarber wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 11:39 am
Heard on the wireless this morning that there are 50,000 short term rentals in Melbourne. That's 50,000 mostly empty homes. 50,000 additions to real rental market would have a significant impact down here.
The investors camp like to argue that many of these homes are located where people don't want to rent, so its not a problem, except that is bullshit of course. So no one wants to move to a desirable location? because that is basically their argument.
I dont know, how radical is just banning short term rentals? Seems pretty simple to me.
Yep we have an issue here, big tourist town, right on the Ningaloo Reef, lots of short term rental, yeah of course the unemployed don't want to move here.....except people who work here, or should I say used to work here, have left town because the former long term rental they had has been converted to short term to make a big profit and now there is no accommodation in town for the people who work in the restaurants and supermarkets. Workers, people who have literally lived in town for decades, have to quit jobs and leave town for larger cities because there's nowhere to live and suddenly local business have to shut down because there's no-one to work for them.
The council is looking at bans on Air bnb and stuff like that but how far that will go is hard to say.
