Alrighty, I said I would endeavour to reply to your comments so here is my scrappy attempt! Firstly, guys, it is clear to me that what we are debating here is a matter of opinion rather than facts. There is no clear right or wrong answer.
This i dispute. It may seem unnecessarily contrarian but to argue that there isn't one set of facts out there is a dangerous thing. Lately, in our media and even amongst our politicians, we see a disturbing trend where we can't even establish what is reality anymore. Likewise, especially with this budget, to have disputes over
basic ethics as not factual, like compassion, is a very dangerous thing as well.
RE “our debt is not as big as other countries” points: We should not wait until the budget is in crisis before we start repaying a debt. A national debt, no matter how small in comparison to other countries, is still a debt. It is billions of dollars in interest that can be saved, rather than slowly giving our creditors more power over us.
Economist after economist tells us that the budget of a country
is not like a household budget. Something like this doesn't escape Clive Palmer but it somehow escapes a chunk of the population (watch the palmer videos i posted, he actually goes into it). It's perfectly fine for a country to run a manageable debt. A national debt is not
ipso facto a bad thing. This is the point your friend argues and they are wrong. The idea creditors have great power over any nation, especially one with such a small debt as ours, is silly.
This is a matter of
FACT not opinion.
RE “labourers etc cannot work till 70 due to physical constraints” – no, they certainly can’t. In fact, how many 50-something year olds do you see working in labour-intensive jobs? By this logic, all people involved in laborious jobs should retire by 40. However, what actually happens is that people progress onto more managerial/training roles rather than doing the same heavy lifting as when they started out in their teens/20s. Some people will possibly have to re-train, but given that the average person now undergoes 3 career changes in their lifetime, this is not a new concept. The $10,000 grant to businesses who hire older employees (for a minimum of 2 years) will also help.
This is all based on conjecture, they provide
zero evidence. Using my fathers work and all the workers there, many are over 50 and the job is very labour intensive. (Comparatively or actually) uneducated blue-collar labor doesn't easily slot into a management role unless its the fantasy in the mind of the privileged middle class or someone who has only known office jobs their entire life. Plenty of blokes at his workplace can't use a computer (my father cant either) and plenty have written English skills at something like an 8th grade level. Remember, they were educated 30-40 years ago when things were very, very different. It was a hard time. I know its hard to swallow on the ultra-academic ATARNotes but there really are plenty of people like that out there. Now, i realise thats also anecdotal evidence but its more than they provide. It touches at deeper things than they consider as well. If you've been a bricklayer your entire life, where are you really going to go from that?
Furthermore, it may be true that people change careers 3 times in their lives. That is not separated based on their field of work though. It may be that white collar workers have 6 jobs in their lifetime. Bluecollar have 1 or 2. The office workers distort the average. Average is totally useless if you are talking about a
specific segment of the population. Her third clause/argument also contradicts the first. She acknowledges that age and physical impairment is a reality and a constraint then argues that $10,000 grant will somehow make this better.
This is a matter of medical and sociological
FACT not opinion.
RE “6 months is too long to wait for the Dole” – this proposal will only apply to people under 30, and presumably not to disabled people, as they would be applying for the disability pension, not these benefits. While 6 months is indeed a long time if you have no savings/family, there are many jobs that people could take up (e.g. cleaning, pizza delivery, casual labour work) but under the existing welfare arrangements, sometimes bypass these types of jobs to wait for something better (while on welfare). In my opinion, this is the proposal that will most likely be watered down anyway – if people risk being made homeless, they will probably be given more immediate assistance. BUT this is a big if, so we need to see how the debate plays out. If not, there is always public housing and emergency shelters – in reality though, no government would risk such a huge public backlash by doing nothing for 6 months while a person’s condition becomes worse. I believe that this measure is being proposed to push people to take whatever job they can find, rather than rely on unemployment benefits until they find something better. Also, [name redacted] – I disagree with your statement that welfare is an investment. Education and infrastructure are investments, but not welfare, certainly not on borrowed money.
Again, this is tinged with the assumption there are a hordes of dole bludgers out there just waiting to leech of society. You reject this in your opening Nina. She also assumes its easy to get a job (i know people who have handed out 50 resumes), especially with no skills and no experience (these people often come from the most disadvantaged segments of society as well). Playing an experiment with peoples lives and wellbeing is horrible. I can't believe shes so forthright about a want to simply experiment with what could
possibly result in people starving or going homeless. What happened to being a compassionate society? Down the toilet it seems.
She's dead wrong that welfare isn't an investment either. If people don't have money, they cant eat. If you cant eat, you get sick (hello public hospitals). You cant afford to visit the GP now. You either deal with a life of misery, one that no one in such a rich society like ours should have to endure or you get desperate and turn to crime. Welfare saves money by preventing these scenarios. There's good evidence welfare cuts can be correlated with increases in crime and lower health outcomes. You didn't even really need statistics to tell you that though. It's fairly axiomatic. Again, she just focuses on the money and not the compassion. "Investment"?!? We might be talking about the difference between someone having food or not. Horrible.
This is part opinion but some of these things are definitely facts as well.
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