What’s so bad about inequity? by Gary Johns.
Kevin [Rudd] and Bill [Shorten] know that Australians are paying $1 billion a month interest on the unproductive debt that their Labor government racked up.
Johns, a minister in the Keating Government, lists six Labor (and cuckservative Liberal) “fantasy promises” costed to 2025-26:
- National Disability Insurance Scheme, $111bn.
- “Restoring” hospital funding, $73bn.
- Student loans, $62bn.
- Retaining carbon tax “compensation”, $57bn.
- Pension increases at average weekly earnings, $52bn.
- Gonski school increases, $37bn.
Australia now has more people who vote for their money than who work for it.
Taking benefits from voters is tough politics.
Mind you, interest Bill has been mightily hampered [by] 50 or so “intellectuals” [who signed] an open letter suggesting that “a debate about tax reform should begin with the question of how much tax is required to fund the services we need to build a fair and decent society in Australia”.
These intellectuals are proposing that there is a known fair amount to which each is due and that until that amount has been reached the taxpayer has to keep paying. The letter also contained the new canard, “inequality harms growth”.
A common conceit of “progressives” is that they know such things as what “fair” prices and wages are. They want to elevate their preferences above the market, but most of us would prefer the impersonal market to a political system with the luvvies in charge. Certainly the contrast between the US and Hong Kong on the one hand and the Soviet Union and Venezuela on the other persuades us at the Wentworth Report that letting markets set prices is far better for society as a whole than having bureaucrats set them.
Johns continues:
Equity is an industry designed to take your money.
It starts with the proposition that money belongs to government and, after deducting for the industry’s professional expenses, and the achievement of its great designs, the remainder is yours.
Gary Johns was an MP in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, back when Labor was pragmatic and more broadly based, before it went so PC:
Bill knows a preponderance of public sector workers and beneficiaries butter his bread. I say preponderance because I know many who are aghast at Labor’s propensity to invent a need and spend money fixing it.
No one in the government is suggesting denying access to schools and health services. These services are well funded. However, if public debts climb too high, there may come a time when these services fall into disrepair.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
