Benjamin Haslem
Further to my piece on Saturday about the Rudd Government's battle to sell its family payments changes, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Ross Gittins has an excellent piece this morning on the whinging well-off who have this bizarre sense of entitlement to government benefits.
The average earnings of adult full-time employees are now $60,000. So someone on $150,000 is pulling in 2½ times average. And you're asking the rest of us to feel sorry for you? You reckon the bottom 97 per cent of taxpayers should be paying you special benefits?
The carry-on we've seen from people pulling down a paltry $150,000 a year borders on the obscene when put beside the troubles of the people who really do have cause for complaint, single pensioners living it up on $270 a week. That's a bit over $14,000 a year - less than a 10th of what the well-off whingers are getting.
Wasn't welfare once for the poor?
Wayne Swan has been trying to make the point that households on $150,000-plus are doing alright thanks Jack but still the post-Baby Boomer generation (mainly Gen-X, to which I belong) stick out their greedy paws.
And not only am I a Gen Xer but my household income fits snuggly into the bracket Gittins writes about and I have a Sydney mortgage. Woe poor me!
The Liberal Party once held the notion of self-reliance as an article of faith. After 11 years in Government it's produced a bunch of well-off parents fighting for the teat. Labor is trying to ween them off.
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