John Linton ......65 years after the Australian version of the "welfare" state was created? This thought entered my mind because over half a weekend I received three very thoughtfully worded emails requesting cut price internet to three different groups of financially disadvantaged people (one from a retirement home, one from an Aboriginal youth group and one from an unmarried mother's support group) - all in Sydney - one of the world's wealthier locations. Obviously bad luck in life can deal one or more severely cruel blows to almost everyone who lives past the age of 18 (before 18 most teens seem to think life is one long cruel blow directed at them personally) but it appears that Australians have more bad luck than most Western societies when I whiled away some time actually looking at various statistics on the web. I just typed in "number of people on pensions in Australia and selected the sixth suggestion Google provided and was treated to a succinct summary of some extraordinary figures here:
http://demographics.treasury.gov.au/content/_download/australias_demographic_challenges/html/adc-01.asp
The first astonishing statement that I found was this one:
"Around 2.7 million working-age Australians are on income support — over
20 per cent, or one in five of all adults of working age (Chart 3). This has
grown by over 17 per cent from 2.3 million in 1996"
There are several other horrific statements in this short summary but I couldn't get over the fact that 20% of adult Australians need Federal Government payments to be able to stay alive.....and that horrific percentage is increasing. If you want to see where these trends may well lead you just need to look at the most 'socialised' nation on the planet, Sweden, to see where 'pensions' can end up. If you have the time look at:
http://ideas.repec.org/h/nbr/nberch/7256.html
....very dry and long but an appalling case study.
So; what does it mean? Part of what it means is that the creation of welfare dependency has no end and only increases year on year for the nicest of 'humanitarian' reasons but at the cost not merely of money to the nation's tax payers but at the far more 'expensive' cost of the destruction of the very basic human ethos of its recipients. In 'humanitarian' terms 'welfare' can only be seen, in the short term, as a 'good' thing - feed the starving, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless and every other inarguable catch phrase applicable to charitable intentions and actions. No-one, no matter how stupid could ever argue against those concepts. But as Sweden has found out for well over three decades now - all social services have a finite end - the ability to pay for them by an ever diminishing amount of tax payer dollars that can only come from people who are not receiving welfare (I refuse to use the stupid cover up phrase "income support").
There are several things that can be used to prop up the welfare budgets in the shorter term. Sweden like Australia has a disproportionately high military budget - despite the fact that Sweden hasn't been involved in an armed conflict since Admiral Horatio Nelson demonstrated the stupidity of making bad alliances almost two hundred years ago and Australia hasn't had any sort of military threat for the past 65 years nor is ever likely to have one. Perhaps both countries should wind down their military expenditures (and let's never forget how that money is spent on total nonsense - Krudd's 12 Australian built submarines spring to mind) to give some taxation breathing space to carefully look at welfare spending. I know it will never happen but there actually is absolutely no reason for either of those countries to waste money on armaments and the people trained to use them just as there is no real reason to expend so much of their GDP (over 25% in Sweden) on an ever growing number of welfare programs.
But my original point is why are there any poor people in a country such as Australia where there is a continuing shortage of labour and there is no barrier to any person who actually wanted to earn their own living being able to do so - bar those unfortunate persons who physically cannot do that? I can only think of one but as I am personally, apparently paying for 20% of another Australian's living expenses already I don't feel that I should have to work even harder to allow Exetel to add to the payments to people I am already giving 40% of my personal income to. Perhaps I am just uncharitable.
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