Thoughts on Freedom

There’s been a lot of Robin Hood politics of late, with talk of punishing “the rich” and giving more to low income earners. I’m certainly no fan of middle-class welfare, but should higher income earners be paying a higher percentage? The following stats come from this ATO document (excel file) which show the percentage of income tax paid by percentile:

Thoughts?

Tomorrow we will finally discover what the ALP are all about. No more symbolic gestures but concrete action with both winners and losers.

Treasurer, Wayne Swan, is clear who will be the main beneficiaries.

“They are the focus in the budget, low- and middle-income earners who go to work day in day out, cook the tea, go to work again the next day, do a long commute. We’ve got to value those, so we will be providing our increased support in this Budget to those people - which is why we’re so committed to the tax cuts, so committed to the increased child care relief.”

Opposition Treasury spokesperson, Malcolm Turnbull, is determined to maintain middle class welfare in the form of Family Tax Benefits and not means-testing the baby bonus. He also sees no need for spending cuts and is not worried by inflation. Andrew Norton highlights the enormous increase in middle class welfare under Howard that Turnbull wishes to maintain. 

Despite playing the politics of envy over a ‘luxury car tax’ and increasing the Medicare threshold which will further strain health care funding, the ALP is so far making more economic sense.

The increasingly belligerent Turnbull, the useless Nelson and the paternalistic Tony Abbott are a shambles. What is the point of the Liberals?

A guest post by Shem Bennett, of the LDP.

A lot of people seem to have some naïve views about democracy that I would like to dispel. It’s actually not that uncommon- I’ve had people in the past question the LDP’s name saying, “liberty, that’s all well and good, but why democracy? Isn’t that just mob rule and contradictory to freedom?” Well, yes and no, depending on how one views democracy. Taken in isolation democracy can be seen as to put it bluntly “two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for dinner”** but the reality of democracy, particular the tradition of liberal democracy seen in Western nation states is far removed from such a crude analogy. So I’d like to take some time to highlight why democracy is not just a “necessary evil” but rather a good that we should strive for. Read more »