Originally posted by madamswer
"The question remains, is the level of inequality increasing or decreasing?"
Answered in an earlier post: Remaining unchanged.
As the ABS data, which I appended in an earlier post, indicated.
"Oh, and tax cuts for small business would be expected to flow towards those in the upper half of the income distribution."
That's a bemusing assertion, given the vast majority of small business owners in Australia are decidedly not in the upper half of the income distribution curve.
And chance you can any substantive evidence for your claim, other than, "Mate, Ah reckon..."?
"People are finding themselves in economic vulnerability resulting from structural changes, not personal choices or financial illiteracy."
Any substantive evidence to back up that assertion, other than "Mate, Ah reckon...."?
Because surely you aren't saying that people don't get themselves into positions of economic vulnerability because they live beyond their means?
"You need to take a good look at the income tax cuts passed by the Senate last year (extending out to 2026) which is to what my post referred. "
As I requested of you earlier, can you not refer me to where I am able to obtain actual details of those income tax cuts going out to 2026 for high income earners ?
"Showing high income tax rates from 2010-present as support also conveniently ignores the Howard/early-Rudd years where tax cuts where very much in vogue. Its also ignores the toolbag of tricks to legally minimise such as CGT discounting and salary packaging which is effectively allowing higher income earners to divert income directly into capital bypassing a large part of their prior tax responsibility. In keeping with the LNP definition of 'fairness', they're said to be available to everyone but ........... "
I only included those earlier years to demonstrate that there has been no tax cuts for upper income earners,contrary to your assertion.
As for CGT discounting, well , that has been in place and unchanged for almost 20 years (replacing the more complicated CPI indexation methodology for adjusting capital gains), so I'm not sure what CGT discount relevance has, given that it has been a constant factor.
As for salary sacrificing, when the federal government some years back looked at eliminating salary sacrificing, the conclusion was that it was undesirable because it would affect the take-home pay of many lower income workers, such as teachers, nurses and police personnel. So, salary sacrificing is not for the exclusive benefit of the rich.
In fact, for the wealthy, salary sacrificing is in many ways simply not worth the effort because the amounts that are able to be sacrificed are not overly meaningful in terms of the net wealth and income levels of those wealthy individuals (and besides, the fringe benefits tax applies at the marginal tax rate which, for high-income earners, is 47%, as you know).
[At least you now know what a
Gini Coefficient is, and how it is derived. It will help you avoid repeated embarrassment going forward, so happy to have been able to assist you there.]
.
No you haven't disproved the assertion that income inequality is increasing. In fact, you have recognised that wealth inequality has worsened but then cite external factors.
For the record (from
wikipedia)
|
{caption}Gini coefficient, after taxes and transfers[10]{/caption} |
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| 1 |
Country |
mid-70s |
mid-80s |
around 1990 |
mid-90s |
around 2000 |
mid-2000s |
Late 2000s |
| 2 |
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|
|
|
|
|
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| 3 |
 Australia |
|
|
|
0.309 |
0.317 |
0.315 |
0.336 |
That should be pretty clear one would think despite not showing the last decade which has hardly been a golden age of equality since Hockey declared the Age of Entitlement over and soon left Australia for a plum job in Washington. Sure, not Zimbabwean in magnitude but distinct and rising. If you look back to the mid-70's (post Whitlam) we were at the top of the pack. Now we are way down the list - in the bottom half of the OECD - that doesn't sound like "
Remaining unchanged
" as you assert.
Further, blaming the less well-off for the structural barriers they confront and suggesting financial illiteracy as the cure is inane/laughable. You'll need a little more than verbosity to argue that weak premise. Galbraith comes to mind though, "the modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
I could argue the rest of your drivel but there's too many points and life is too short.
