This regular feature is back again. The idea is that, over the weekend, you should post your thoughts in a more leisurely fashion than in ordinary comments or the Monday Message Board.
76 thoughts on “Weekend reflections”
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John Quiggin 
Green tea has been used over the centuries as a relaxitive and has many other beneficial properties. Has been known to kill spam and is particulaly good for weekend respite. Any other clues from bloggers as to it’s importance in social interaction?
Once again the much to be admired United States has shown us the way. I am writing of course about the 25 year jail sentence given to the corporate crook Bernie Ebbers after his conviction for fraud. (The prosecution asked for 80 years.)
Compare to the spineless handling of the Vizard case by the Commonwealth DPP.
It’s a pity the US Australia free trade agrement didn’t also include harmonisation of penalties for white collar crime (up to their standard, not down to ours).
Test
Watching John Howard almost skip aboard that plane at Canberra Airport tonight,I was ponderiing the absolute passion Australian leaders have to get away and give the world the benefit of their wisdon. Usually it’s London and Washington that get the full treatment,though Bob Hawke made many visit to Israel to fix the problems of the Middle east. Where are you now Bob,when we really need you ? The Chinese are on the list of beneficiaries too.Hughes was very big at the I919
Peace Conference at Versailles,though his writings never mentioned doing anything in Paris but lobby and play politics. I seem to recall that after being criticised by the Liberals for going to Beijing,Gough’s visit was later followed by Fraser who got the same oschestrated reception by the Chinese( I wonder if either asked their hosts if Harold Holt was there?) The very first Australian P.M, Barton was of to Europe in only his second year of office,and amusingly took the only code book in the P.M.’s office with him. He was them embroiled in a controiverfsy from Protestantswhen on an visit to Rome,he had an audience with the Pope..and started a great sectarian argument . He also overspent his rather slender allocation of funds,and was forced to make a large payback on his return home…I bet that wont happen with John Howard !
Here’s another meme for you lot to try.
In the unproductive thread on the London bombings, which John rightly found depressing (the thread, as well as the bombings) the commentator known as Elizabeth commented more than once about the Australian Greens’ alleged failure to condemn the bombings evan after more than 24 hours had elapsed since the event.
I draw Elizabeth’s attention, and that of others who elaborated on her comment, to the statement, dated 8 July 2005, on the Greens’ web site at this url:
http://www.greens.org.au/mediacentre/mediareleases/senatorbrown/080705b
On this matter, one of Ken Livingstone’s comments at the Thursday memorial service in London is particularly apt. He stated that one of the terrorists’ many aims was to get the people of London to turn on each other, and that in this they failed. We in the blogosphere would do well to emulate the citizens of London.
And whilst I’m on the case, there is also:
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2042
(issued on the day of the bombing) and
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8941.html
(issued on 8 July).
On a lighter note, I wish to announce that I have set “The Jumblies” by Edward Lear to music, and have successfully performed the resultant song with acoustic guitar accompaniment. Now for a recording contract.
While you’re on the green site, you might want to check out some of their policies, eg welfare http://greens.org.au/policies/society/socialcitizenshipandwelfare :
Can’t wait. Fire up the XBox and roll me another doobie man, gotta complete my “voluntary cultural activities” to qualify for this fortnight’s dole.
We shall obviously have to tighten up the policy so that fatuous comments on blogs don’t satisfy the activity requirements.
Indeed Paul, indeed.
Indeed,indeed.
I am surprised that the green site still has an upfront general idea of policy,though,hardly perfect. Given the pathetic snipes they copped from the grime press , similar to the above in last election, why do they bother?
They would have picked up an extra seat in Victoria at the expense of family first. The senate a closer game, if not for ammunition. Better they let people have no idea of next move. Politics works that way,these days.
How is my snipe “pathetic”?
Their policy couldn’t be clearer: under the greens you will be able to collect the dole without trying to look for work. That’s what “voluntary activities requirements” means.
If you think that’s a good policy, fine; vote for the greens. Most Australians would disagree with you – and many of them preference the greens without realizing what they are voting for. It is important that their policies are exposed.
My sister in law is 50, fat, has a heart condition and her only skills, hard won in the 60s after she left school at 14, are no longer useful. Up tp 5 years ago she was in full time permanent employment (with the same company on base rates for 20+ years) but then “they” chose to make her redundant.
Since then she has only had fitful periods or casual employment. With limited intellectual resources she is not really retrainable.
Had she been made redundant a little bit earlier Centrelink would have put her on disability allowance but the “new” thinking is that she should really be employed. So now she drags her sorry ass across the city several times a month to go through the degredation of meaningless interviews she is sent to by the well paid fat cats at MissionImpossible. Often she is told to her her face that they would not employ anyone with her age/weight/skills or that there really is no job available. Once the government bankrolled job agency (or whatever the bludgers who took over from the CES are called) sent to a job interview in a record management centre that involved lifting large records boxes and climbing ladders with them.
Sometimes she has to travel for hours to go for interviews for casual jobs that will only last few days anyway – she gets a few of these and in one case the job lasted for the best part of a year – but get this – we found out that the agency who sent her to that job made more on their commissions than she was paid!
So “the commenter formerly known as anon” *** you haven’t got a bloody clue what it is like to be unemployed.
I don’t know if the Greens have the right answers – but at least implementing their policies would spare many members of our society much indignity.
Edited for coarse language; JQ
It is probably better than persecuting people to provide fake evidence of a hunt for work which doesn’t exist.
Or allowing people to move onto some form of disability benefit to reduce the unemployment stats, and then trying to tighten the disability criteria – make up your minds, ladies and gentlemen..
Perhaps we should unlock the nation’s potential by forcing pensioners to work for their ‘government handout’. Idle old ratbags that they are.
I guess it is true that ‘most Australians’ in the hurly-burly of political opinion formation can be induced to think that working for the dole is a good idea, or that people thrown out of the economy have some sort of ‘obligation’ to the rest of us. But I am not so sure they would agree if they had endured it.
Paul Norton, can you tell us more about your musical work?
“The Jumblies”, by Edward Lear.
Maybe you should not worry about a contract.
Let it rip on the internet.
Maybe j.q needs audio and a theme?
Albatross, if being fat is preventing her from getting work, why doesn’t your sister-in-law lose some weight? And if her only requirement in order to receive the dole is to “drag her sorry ass across the city several times a month” then I hardly feel sorry for her. There are millions of Australians taxpayers who drag their sorry asses across the city 5 times a week in jobs they don’t enjoy. No doubt the current system could be improved, but not by removing all activities requirements; I sincerely doubt that not having to drag her “sorry ass” anywhere at all would be better for your sister.
And you’re right, I don’t know what it is like to be unemployed, but no-one has ever handed me anything either. However, I sure as hell know how people are able to rort the system, having witnessed two former friends who were long-term unemployed (because they couldn’t be stuffed working) move onto disability pensions for their “depression” and hence avoid any kind of activity requirements. Now, depression is a real illness, but theirs is not (well, at least no more a real illness than the fact that I’d be depressed if my only raison d’etre in life was how to keep from doing an honest day’s work).
BTW, jquiggin, if you’re reading, I believe I now have a free insult up my sleeve, since you let Albatross’ language pass without edit, no?
I’ve edited you both now, but I’m knocking off for the night, and hoping for a miracle turnaround at the footy: JQ
“I don’t know what it is like to be unemployed, but no-one has ever handed me anything either. ”
So you’ve never been treated in a public hospital, were never vaccinated at government expense as an infant, never attended pa ublic school; have never driven on a public road or used public transport and can say the same for your children and any other dependants?
Former Anon, I’m sure that you’d attract more support if you simply said that people who can work, should work. Instead you throw around all sorts of lame stereotypes and gross generalizations.
I don’t know what you do for a living mate, but there are plenty of people out there who find it hard to get a job. It is my belief that society should support people who either are unable to work or are unable to find work.
“So you’ve never been treated in a public hospital, were never vaccinated at government expense as an infant, never attended pa ublic school; have never driven on a public road or used public transport and can say the same for your children and any other dependants?”
Of course I have. And as I have stated elsewhere on this blog, I am not against public funding for certain things, education and health among them (and genuine welfare for those whoare unable to work too). But I am against handing out money for able people to do nothing, which is where this thread started with the greens policy of exactly that.
June, I’d be a fool if I came here looking for support. My original comment on the greens position was a deliberate caricature. But like bad language and insults, it seems that here such devices are only permitted for use by those on the left. And my observations on people deliberately avoiding work and moving to disability to avoid activity tests are from direct experience. They are neither “lame stereotypes” nor “gross generalizations”.
If everyone is a victim then no-one is responsible for their own circumstances. In Australia, that has been the primary driver of social welfare policy for too long. We’re long overdue for a change.
What exactly is wrong with paying a portion of your population a pittance so they can sit on their arses rather than do work? The proportion of the population who is content to live like that is not too large (much smaller than the proportion who are involuntarily unemployed). And frankly I rather have them lazing their squalid flats then lackadaisacally performing a job that needs to be done better
I get the feeling that F.Anon’s response is based on an outraged moral sense rather than any logic.
Puritans were reputed to have a gnawing worry that somebody. somewhere was having fun.. Conservatives obviously have the a similar worry that people are getting something for doing nothing (oddly though, they’re still happy to associate with real estate agents)
Green tea has many advantages.
How come no one want’s to talk about it?
I once had a problem with a invalid boot sector on a under-performing hard disk drive. I poured green tea on it and it never worked again, so I figured if it’s not good enough for solid-state circuitry, then it’s not good enough for my insides.
Sort of like Coke dissolving teeth…
To be fair to the green tea, it’s not like anything was going to fix the invalid boot sector anyway. I poured green tea on Windows XP and got about the same performance as before.
IG, the point about receiving government benefits doesn’t compromise one’s integrity any more than being raped does. These government services represent a faulty stop gap solution to real problems, an approach which has becone indefinite and so forces more people into needing it. Remember our dialogue about promoting people out of poverty, engineering out the need rather than sustaining people in poverty?
But the point just here is that being forced into dependency does not mean a personal compromise that justifies those individuals, organisations or impersonal events that do all that.
A personal note: I myself am recovering from “reactive depression”, which is a bit like saying I’m not paranoid, they really were out to get me. It came from outside stresses and was a natural reaction, but takes over a year to clear. At this point I have enough energy/focus back for part time work, except I don’t know when I will be able to focus enough in any one week so I could meet commitments.
Hopefully I’ll be enough together again early next year to start a serious search, but for now – well, “you ought to see me when I’m alone”, i.e. not together enough to interact. I basically missed the last fortnight of February. At least, with my current prognosis I am not down as disabled – but would I be wiser to give up now and get a disabled classification, in case I fall off the ladder later and can’t get it then? But for now, I’m focussing on not getting worse and getting hold of energy, stamina and other resources again.
BTW, is there any way I can break into something I can do from home without fitting a timetable or overwork like my manic depressive neighbour? (He’s out of hospital again now, thanks). It’s just that that sort of thing, article writing or whatever, takes contacts and prior experience making a catch 22 to break in. Also, I’m not yet quite up to the real workload, which is why JQ still hasn’t got an ethics guest piece I promised back in January.
Hate to bring up this subject again, but a few of the commenters in this thread really, really, need to read their Orwell.
Read Down and Out in Paris and London from chapter 24 onwards at least.
Then come back and tell us all how it’s a good thing that people have to survive on a pittance, plus jump through hoops imposed by a bunch of right wing sadists.
The hoops don’t help anyone. Their only purpose is to degrade the jumper, and to feed the sickness of the smug sadist.
“Down and Out” is pretty irrelevant today. Modern western social democracies are not nearly so cruel nor lacking in opportunities as in Orwell’s day.
So, SJ, I am a “smug sadist”. How many people have you known who have become dependent on welfare? And for how many of them was it a good idea?
If you treat people as victims they become victims. Welfare dependency begets more welfare dependency. It is not unlike drug addiction. Allowing people unfettered access to welfare (as the greens advocate) is no more a solution than allowing nicotine addicts unfettered access to cigarettes or supplying heroin addicts with all the heroin they want.
The specific individual who you criticised, work and paid taxes for around 30-35 years.
Now she goes through a humiliating sham looking for jobs – for someone with her educational background and health – apparently aren’t there even in the current buoyant job market.
Maybe we should make her sew a scarlet B (for Bludger) to her clothing to spare her the humiliation and disempowerment of being dependant on the government.
As a quick maxim, I fidn that most people advocating cuts in “unnecessary” government spending meaning “government spending from which I don’t personally benefit”.
The 2003 tax rate cuts in the USA continue to delivery stonger tax revenues.
Albatross Says:
July 16th, 2005 at 5:14 pm
My sister in law is 50, fat, has a heart condition and her only skills, hard won in the 60s after she left school at 14, are no longer useful. Up tp 5 years ago she was in full time permanent employment (with the same company on base rates for 20+ years) but then “they� chose to make her redundant.
Since then she has only had fitful periods or casual employment. With limited intellectual resources she is not really retrainable.
Had she been made redundant a little bit earlier Centrelink would have put her on disability allowance but the “new� thinking is that she should really be employed. So now she drags her sorry ass across the city several times a month to go through the degredation of meaningless interviews she is sent to by the well paid fat cats at MissionImpossible. Often she is told to her her face that they would not employ anyone with her age/weight/skills or that there really is no job available. Once the government bankrolled job agency (or whatever the bludgers who took over from the CES are called) sent to a job interview in a record management centre that involved lifting large records boxes and climbing ladders with them.
Sometimes she has to travel for hours to go for interviews for casual jobs that will only last few days anyway – she gets a few of these and in one case the job lasted for the best part of a year – but get this – we found out that the agency who sent her to that job made more on their commissions than she was paid!
So “the commenter formerly known as anon� *** you haven’t got a bloody clue what it is like to be unemployed.
I don’t know if the Greens have the right answers – but at least implementing their policies would spare many members of our society much indignity.
————————————————————————————
As one of the doctors who examines applicants for DSP for Centrelink, let me endorse the comments made above. We so-called “Medical Advisers” were told earlier this year to make it much tougher for DSP applicants. I see on a daily basis people whose noses are rubbed in their unemployability by this heartless government.
Ian Gould, reread my comments – I never criticized that individual.
Doug, maybe you were the one that diagnosed my former friends’ depression? They only became unemployable because of too-liberal welfare policy. And they are certainly beyond hope now they draw disability with no work test requirements. In fact, given that the only requirement for them to stay on disability is to continue to be depressed, what do you think the chances of a cure are?
Actually, it is counter to my own aims arguing this one. Instead, I would encourage everyone who believes in the greens’ policy of unfettered access to welfare to campaign actively on that issue. All labor party commenters here, I implore you (for the health of the nation) to get the greens policy adopted by the labor party. Please do your best to make it a central platform of the next federal election campaign.
TCFKAA
You suggest the S-I-L loses weight. Like a lot of obese people the problem seems to be genetic or glandular. She doesn’t like being overweight. She has, when earning a wage, attended Weight Watchers and gyms. Now however she has circulatory problems and high blood pressure.
When she left school she went to tech and learned shorthand and typing and she was employed as a stenographer. Shorthand skills have not been sought after since the 70s, but as offices automated she learned WP. Lotus123 and how to use programs like Powerpoint. She became efficient at data entry. But as admin staff and even managers leaned to use PCs and data entry was outsourced overseas these skills were no longer wanted.
One of my clients, an insurance company, used to have floors full of people like the S-I-L. Now there are none. Any letters that cannot be created by staff at any level from innumerable Word templates are dictated on to an MP3 file, emailed and processed by a data centre in India at $AUD0.12 per page and this includes, if required, adding the letter to the queue on the author’s network printer.
What is my S-I-L meant to do TCFKAA? Set up a SOHO business and type leters for 11c per page?
Last month the workers at the wool processing plant in Parkes (opened with much fanfare some ten years ago) were told the place was closing down and the wool totally processed in China. This means that 100 workers, largely unskilled, will be on the scrapheap. (No doubt even paying Australian shearers a decent wage will soon be considered uneconomic and they will bring the gangs in from China or somewhere.)
So TCFKAA can you give us the benefit of your wisdom as to what is to happen to these people and indeed the town of Parkes which as somone of your economic prescience will be able to give them a clue.
“As a quick maxim, I find that most people advocating cuts in “unnecessaryâ€? government spending meaning “government spending from which I don’t personally benefitâ€?.
Ian Gould what sort of communist propaganda is that?
Most honest hardworking taxpayers would advocate that there be NO “unnecessary� government spending period.
This government seems to make the mistaken assumption that the competition between individuals, or at least those in the underclass, will improve overall economic performance, or less charitably legitimate the redistribution of wealth to the deserving.
Reducing services has the effect of forcing individuals back onto resources that they may not have, thereby increasing social isolation with the attendant problems.
The growing marginalized underclass along with the other policies associated with cruelty and viciousness will be Howard’s legacy. Never mind he will always have the undying support of the fundamentalist Christians among others safely ensconced in the remoteness of moral superiority.
TCFKAA has helped expose our current governments agenda on social security and for that we should be thankfull. Anyone who checked liberal or labor sites might find nothing that is in anyway ‘specific’. Rule number one in politics is to speak in generalisations. Detail on many issues,on green site,shows naivety. Honesty on policy is a trap they will have to get over.
Thanks to SJ, on Orwell. I was reminded of him by a quote on thread—
“voluntary activities requirements”.
A classic ,that former anonymoose,used to support his argument! Mind you, and be assured–“Modern western social democracies are not nearly so cruel”. Add, “work for the dole”, an Orwellian wet dream that can be found ,on an established party web site near you.
Not a green, but love green tea that some have been a little bit rude about. Cheers……..
wmmbb
“those in the underclass” The working poor stripped of everything by the ‘revenue lobby’ (comprising the ATO, the Treasury and their allies in politics, academia, the media and the welfare industry). The lobby that shows no respect for an individuals rights or property.
Gosh, Econwit, such subtle prose.
But, what are saying?
I’m saying this Joe:
Through out history it has been the middleclass that have paid the majority of taxes. Progressively over time the rate and administration of taxation by the taxing classes becomes an overburden and change is brought about by revolution, war or some economic calamity.
Australia has excessive welfare and public sectors that need to be culled. By my reckoning we are squirting about 8% of GDP up against the wall .
Not only should we cut welfare by stamping out dole bludgers- we should get stuck into the public sector bludgers as well and get rid of a third of them.
Econwit
What if any criteria to you use to arrive at your estimate of public sector bludgers?
Joe 2 —
The BBC ran a very good, 5- or 6-part TV series several years ago on the causes of the Industrial Revolution, with a prominent multi-disciplinary panel including an anthropologist, an historian, an economist, and an engineer. Each panelist got one episode of the series to present his/her explanation of the causes of the IR and why it happened in Britain. One panelist (and hence one episode) explained the rise of the IR as due to Britain having overcome the major problem of large cities before the 19the century, namely cholera. Only 2 countries allegedly had large cities then without frequent outbreaks of cholera, namely Britain and Japan. Why was this? This panelist explained it as the result of tea-drinking, which led urban dwellers to boil their water before drinking.
Of course, he was not able to explain why England and why not Japan for the IR.
“You suggest the S-I-L loses weight. Like a lot of obese people the problem seems to be genetic or glandular. She doesn’t like being overweight. She has, when earning a wage, attended Weight Watchers and gyms. Now however she has circulatory problems and high blood pressure.”
It’s funny how these so-called glandular problems never come up in third-world countries or in concentration camps where people don’t have enough food.
Every fat person says they have a “glandular problem” surely then, this is the biggest plague that mankind has ever known? Or is the truth that they simply eat too much and don’t do enough exercise?
Unemployment is caused by the minimum wage. Your sister can’t get a job because her skills aren’t worth $400 a week.
Get rid of the minimum wage and you get rid of dole bludgers – its really that simple. Countries like the US don’t need the dole because anyone who doesn’t has a job can get one within a days’ looking.
I was unemployed for 3 years at uni in Australia, but when I went on holiday to the US I found that I had a choice of 4 jobs within a day of arriving – and I didn’t even have a work visa.
Some of the jobs dont pay very well and are hard work, but – as a famous Australian once said – life wasn’t meant to be easy.
Activity requirements don’t create any jobs, all they do is give people the shits. They are totally unnecessary and counter-productive in my opinion, because they actually allay people’s feelings towards giving people money for nothing.
If they cut the activity test, it would reduce the amount of time it would take for Australia to cut back its ridiculously bloated welfare cheque, because people like anon would no longer be able to tolerate it. Get rid of the activity test by all means.
Unemployment is caused by the minimum wage.
And also by ban on slavery.
Would you care to explain, or is “no minimum wage=SLAVERY!!11!!” all you are capable of adding to this debate?
It’s unfortunate that so many people seem willing to accept dubious assertions that government support and regulation are the root cause of unemployment and poverty. I’m not sure whether it’s due to an uncritical reading of quotes of Adam Smith or simply the failure to move beyond a narrow set of economic theories. Whatever it is, it’s manifestly incorrect and morally dubious.
Yobbo and Former Anon seem to think that abolishing the minimum wage and abolishing welfare will result in increased employment and well-being for all. Perhaps they’ve grabbed a couple of quotes from Freidman and Hayek. Or, more likely they’ve heard a couple of dubious and half-arsed economic arguments in the press and have latched on to these.
What is apparent is that the world does not function in such a simple and predictable manner. I’d happily place a wager that if the minimum wage were abolished and welfare done away with, we would not end up with zero unemployment and a rich and prosperous society. We would end up with a large number of working poor who have irregular employment and who struggle to get by. There would be others who either would not or could not work. Look at the USA, that neo-liberal utopia oft-cited by Former Anon and Yobbo – unemployment still exists, crime rates are high, people can’t affort healthcare… Yobbo, tell me, why is this something we should emulate?
I’m not sure where the likes of Yobbo and Former Anon get off. Australia is a wealthy, developed and safe country, and we got here with the AIRC, organized labour, a minimum wage and welfare. Sure, there are problems with long-term unemployed and with individuals who cannot find work. But, the solution need not be as hard-hearted as Yobbo and Former Anon want it to be.
Econwit wants to hack in to the public sector as well and weed out the bludgers there. Some plan this is. Cut government services (the inevitable consequence of decreased staff), cut the minimum wage, cut welfare… We’ll end up with working poor who are unable to care for their families and who cannot afford healthcare and education. Yet, somehow we’ll all be better off?! Econowit, Yobbo, Former Anon, are you a bunch of satirists? The average public sector bludger does a hard days work for a wage that is far from excessive. Teachers and nurses are far from wealthy. Bureaucrats aren’t rich. Yet, Econwit, Yobbo and Former Anon have latched onto some glib theory that has little factual basis.
Still, I’m willing to go along with these fools. But I’ll do so subject to conditions – cut government spending on corporate bludgers. Newscorp earns millions running government advertising. ABC Learning Centres earns squillions every day in government subsidies. State and federal governments poor endless amounts into tax breaks for companies and various incentives to attract business. Now, the problem here is not the policies, the problem is that government spending and government subsidies go straight to inflated salaries for a bunch of CEOs and CFOs who don’t do all that much. Attend a monthly meeting of the board, and then have a boozy lunch which can be claimed as a business expense. Yes, I admit, I’m exaggerating a little here…
If Econwit, Yobbo and Former Anon want to be taken seriously then they need to cast their critical eyes over the corporate world and the private sphere as well as over the public sphere. The problem is that this doesn’t fit with the glib quotes they’ve snatched from ECON1001. That, and the logical extension of their theories is some sort of anarchic utopia made up of individualistic rational automatons out to get their slice of the pie.
Ultimately I feel somewhat sorry for these hard-hearted fools. The only explanation I can think of for their callous views is that they need a moral justification for not caring about the well-being of others. It’s easy to blame the poor and less fortunate. But it’s incredibly lazy to do so.
Paul,
I wish to announce that I have set “The Jumblies� by Edward Lear to music, and have successfully performed the resultant song with acoustic guitar accompaniment. Now for a recording contract.
I’m sorry I don’t have a recording contract to wave at you, but I do have an alternative set of lyrics which I once got published on Webdiary.
They went to sea in a SIEV, they did,
In a SIEV they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a SIEV they went to sea!
And when the SIEV turned round and round,
And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’
They called aloud, ‘Our SIEV ain’t great,
But back where we came from we’d meet a worse fate!
In a SIEV we’ll go to sea!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a SIEV.
The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
And each of them said, “We’re going to die!
What’s that helicopter that just passed by?”
And Ruddock and Johnny in Question Time
Said “Stay in that non-existent line!
For your heads are green, and your hands are blue,
So really don’t want to have people like you,
We’re rich but we’ve nothing to give!”
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a SIEV.
“I am against handing out money for able people to do nothing, which is where this thread started with the greens policy of exactly that.”
Where this thread actually started is with my plea on Saturday for some decency, and respect for truth, in discussion of the London bombings and responses to them. tcfkaa constructively responded to this plea by quoting one line of Australian Greens policy on an unrelated issue out of context. If one reads the full policy one finds that it calls for a change in emphasis in welfare policy from coercion and punishment of recipients to incentives and positive assistance to obtain employment.
It is also telling that in a discussion of this kind virtually nobody has touched on the issue of the poverty trap which the interaction between the Newstart Income Test and marginal PAYG tax rates imposes on Newstart recipients who obtain part-time work. Well-know RWDB Steve Edwards and I managed to agree that unemployed people trying to gain a foothold in the job market can face effective marginal tax rates (on a PAYG basis) of over 80 cents in the dollar, and in some cases over 90 cents in the dollar.
Another point to remember in debates over activity testing is that mandatory Mutual Obligation/Intensive Support/Work For The Dole requirements apply not only to those who haven’t been working at all for a certain period, but also to those who have been working in insecure or variable casual jobs which don’t pay enough, or with sufficient regularity, to enable people to get by without recourse to Centrelink payments.
Further, it is no longer a secret that there is growing tension between private sector and church-based Job Network members on one hand, and Centrelink and the government on the other, about the latter’s insistence that the former waste a great deal of their time and energy (and those of their clients) on enforcement of punitive regimes against clients, and conducting meaningless activities for the clients which the Job Network people, with their expertise in the field, know to be of no practical benefit in improving the clients’ employability. I am anecdotally aware that for some Newstart recipients, most of their interaction with their Job Network provider consists of colluding with the provider to find ways of enabling them to continue with self-initiated educational, training and/or vocational activities which are genuinely beneficial to their employment prospects, and avoiding having those efforts disrupted by a Centrelink activity requirement which is not.
Of course all I’ve just said will simply wash over those who are araldited to the notion that people on below-poverty incomes: (a) will not respond to economic incentives from a well-structured interface between the tax and welfare systems; and (b) must be assumed incapable of voluntarily engaging in self-initiated activity to either improve their employability or to benefit society through unwaged activity, or of being worse judges than the government and Centrelink of what such activities might be.
If the shoe fits…
Yobbo, if people were paid what their jobs were worth, then even with a minimum wage, teachers should be earning six-figure sums and live in mansions. Politicians on the other hand would be earning a lot less than they do.
Also, please forgive me, but I feel that your analogy about glandular problems with respect to concentration camps and the third world is in *very* poor taste.
GoTF, well said!
What is fascinating about discussions of the “unproductive” public sector is not only the notion that public sector nurses, teachers, police officers, etc., are unproductive by definition whereas private sector advertising copywriters, image consultants, tax dodge accountants, bookmakers, etc., are inherently productive. It’s also the notion that a public hospital nurse administering an injection is inherently unproductive whereas a private hospital nurse administering the same injection is inherently productive, or that when I give a lecture at Griffith on the Australian Federal system I am inherently unproductive whereas if I were to give the same lecture with the same PowerPoint slides at Bond I would be inherently productive.
It is interesting how people so willingly and knowingly misrepresent their opponents positions. GoTF: I never advocated abolishing welfare. In fact, if you read back through my comments you’ll see precisely the opposite statement. Norton, I never claimed the entire public sector was unproductive. Again, relative to the alternative (all private), the Australian health care system is clearly more productive than, say, the US one.
It is an lame debating tool: your opponent disagrees with your point of view on one matter, but rather than engaging in constructive debate you paint his entire position as extreme.
It is little wonder you lot are fighting a rearguard action if this is what passes for intellectual debate on the left.
Former Anon, it’s true, I lumped you in with Yobbo and Econwit and in doing so misrepresented your views by implication. Still, you don’t seem to have a problem with this… you frequently shove anyone who doesn’t share your views into a mysterious category called ‘the left’.
Now, if you want a constructive debate, why don’t you grab an issue in my posting and run with it.