"This level of benefit equates to the total income tax paid by 2-3 "average income earners" just to support 1 welfare recipient."
No Dave, the example is entirely relevant and accurate.
A succession of governments have "legitimised" welfare in the sense it has morphed from being perceived as a handout that many were embarrassed to acknowledge to "pay"
My sister used to work in a bank and said they'd often get customers on pension day [not just age pensioners] wanting to know if their "pay" had been deposited yet and getting irate if it hadn't.
"Pay". Sounds like a sense of entitlement to me, an entitlement paid for by ordinary workers, many earning little more after tax and many of them Labor supporters themselves.
There's little doubt that streamlining processes with automatic bank deposits encourages this perception. As with co-contributions, welfare needs a circuit breaker to make it less easy to wait for your "pay".
