Life in The Piss And Vinegar State – A Case Study
How do slack-arsed dole-bludgers make out financially? Let’s take a look at the case of a single dole-bludger, living in cheap rented accomodation in Melbourne. The cheap, rented accomodation is a barely adequate one-bedroom flat, or unit into which our hypothetical dole-bludger has squeezed most of the furniture and posessions collected over a lifetime. We’ll start with income, rent and bills:
| Fortnightly Income | Whole Dollars | Per Cent (Total Income) |
| NewStart plus Full Rent Assistance | $511.00 | 100% |
| Rent & Bills | ||
| Rent | $270.00 | 53% |
| Telephone | $14.00 | 3% |
| Electricity & Gas | $21.00 | 4% |
| Water | $1.00 | 0% |
| Total: | $306.00 | 60% |
| Disposable Income After Rent and Bills: | $205.00 | 40% |
One note is important here – the telephone bill only covers line rental; outgoing calls are a luxury our bludger cannot afford except in emergencies. Now let’s move on to recurrent expenses – the costs of keeping yourself and your environment clean and presentable and feeding yourself:
| Recurrent Expenses | Whole Dollars | Per Cent (Disposable) |
| Laundromat | $16.00 | 8% |
| Groceries | $80.00 | 39% |
| Total: | $96.00 | 47% |
| Disposable Income After Recurrent Expenses: | $109.00 |
The laundromat figure assumes two loads of washing – clothing, bed linen and towels – washed and dried. It’s based on what I pay at the local laundromat.
But you can’t yet rush out and blow all that money on beer, cigarettes and picking up loose members of your preferred gender. With only a one year lease on our flat, it’s a good idea to have some money saved, in case the rent goes up next year. Unless the place is in such poor condition that a building inspector would condemn it at first sight, in which case you might have a little leverage with the landlord if a rent increase is mooted.
If you’re going to be sensible about your situation, you’ll have savings target for end of current lease to meet moving expenses and rent in advance for a new place, in case the rent rises. Of course we shouldn’t assume that things will turn out this way – you need to be highly motivated and determined to change your situation. But, equally, you’re going to be in deep trouble if the rent goes up and you have neither leverage with the landlord nor the $585 month’s rent in advance you’ll need to put down on a new place, plus enough money to cover the cost of a van to move your stuff. So a savings plan is required:
| Savings | Whole Dollars | Per Cent (Disposable) |
| For Rent in Advance | $23.00 | 11% |
| Cost of Van | $6.00 | 3% |
| Total: | $29.00 | 14% |
| Disposable Income After Savings: | $80.00 |
That $80.00 per fortnight is actually supposed to be spent on job-hunting, that is, daily travel to and from a job network provider to check your G-Mail account, or to your Work for The Dole gig to satisfy your Mutual Obligation requirements or whatever. So take out another $32 per fortnight for a daily ticket on public transport. Leaving just $48.00 for fun and frivolity.
Now that looks pretty dire, so maybe we should look for some economies. Is public transport to your Job Network provider and other Mutual Obligations really necessary? Maybe the walking would do you some good. Maybe clothes could be hand-washed and hung in front of the heater to dry. You could learn to live with clothes that smelt of mildew, couldn’t you? Renting a phone you can’t make calls on when you can use the free phones at CentreLink or Job Network looks a bit silly, too.
The killer item in your expenditure is the rent: maybe you could cut that, either by moving into a shared house or moving to an area where rents are lower. Well, here’s an interesting thing – the rate of rent assistance depends on how much rent you pay.
A single person with no dependent children qualifies for rent assistance if they are paying rent of more than $89.60 per fortnight. Maximum rent assistance ($100.60) kicks in if you pay rent of $223.73 or more. So, if you knocked $46.73 off your rent, you’d be that much better off in terms of disposable income. A shared house with $90 a fortnight to pay in rent would be even better. Tough shit if for some reason you prefer to live alone – that’s one of those lifestyle choices you’re no longer entitled to make.
Another lifestyle choice you’ll have a lot of trouble with, is moving to a new area where the rents are lower. Here’s the CentreLink approved way for dole bludgers to move to a new area:
If you’re thinking about relocating to meet your Mutual Obligation requirement, you need to show CentreLink that moving will improve your job prospects …
If not:
Talk to us [CentreLink] before you decide to move
CentreLink will decide whether you might improve your job prospects by moving. You might already be thinking about moving and if you move you could still choose a different activity to meet your Mutual Obligation requirement.
And here’s a friendly hint, in case you’re in any doubts about whether it’s OK for you to move to a new area, merely because the rents are more affordable:
TIP
Check with CentreLink first. If you move to an area of lower employment prospects your payments may be stopped for 26 weeks.
In other words, forget it. Forget too, any idea that you can somehow manage your budget to achieve a life of quiet desperation – that dignified state is reserved for the working poor and other worthies.
NB: All the quotations used above are from the CentreLink booklet Options for your future – Mutual Obligation (PDF).
Why doesn’t the dole-bludger just get a job?
$270 is cheap rent in a barely adequate one br in Melbourne? Jeezbus, and here I was feeling sorry for myself about Sydney prices.
And, washing all your linen every week? Thats just weird.
GT—thanks for doing the sums, here. This is valuable stuff.
Why do you assume that she isn’t trying to?
I have been told that people are applying for PhDs simply because the scholarship funding is better than the dole not only money wise but becuase of three years of relative security. So to put it into perspective, an APA PhD-scholarship for 2007 is $19,231 a year, which is just under $740 a fortnight. That is the full time rate for PhDs, which means the university expects a PhD dissertation after three years (and all other associated responsibilities, such as attending seminars, etc). When I started in 2003 the base rate was $18,009 per year. Depending on where you are the institution may or may not pay for things like conference attendance and travel, and other research expenses (everything except a computer!). I am not sure how the government expects people to produce quality work on these sorts of stipends, particularly if one attends a sandstone university that more often than not does not pay for anything. On yes, but it depends on how much you want it… and also if your home institution gives you a ‘top-up’ for your stipend.
Who doesn’t wash their bedding at least TWICE a week? Ewwwwwww, once a week would be a bare minimum.
Unemployment in Australia is so low that if this person were trying to get a job, she’d have one.
Um… that last question of mine was addressed to civitas.
Amanda – if you only have one set of bed-linen you wash it once a week, if you can. And collapse into something close to despair when you discover that one of the sheets has a hole worn in it.
civitas – if you thought that adopting a latin cognomen was going to give your snarks a bit of gravitas, you could have done better than pick the latin word for “city”. It makes you sound like some sort of hive mind.
On Melbourne rents – that’s inner Melbourne suburbs, within about 4 km of the CBD. Assume an unemployed white collar worker, living close to publlic transport, CBD admin vacancies etc. A move to a cheaper, outer suburban area under such circumstances would definitely place her NewStart allowance at risk.
And on rent assistance – moving to a shared house might leave you financially worse off. On Newstart rent assistance is cut by a third if you’re living in shared accomodation.
If public housing was even half as available as it was pre-1980s, then not only would Gummo’s sums be quite different, even Civitas’ “dole bludger” put-down might be a reasonable position.
A good example of public housing once being a widely-available (and used) safety net (even in an era of full employment!) is Mark Latham’s childhood circumstances:
http://paulwatson.blogspot.com/2004/03/did-mark-lathams-family-commit-welfare.html
Now if public housing was once abundant enough to even go to families with at least one full-time employed breadwinner, I kind of reckon that my generation is owed an equivalent deal. If not public housing directly, then private-rental subsidies that would bring down our rent to no more than 30% (a widely-accepted benchmark) of our income. That is (unless our income goes up), real rent for someone on the dole (etc) should top out at $80 p.w.
(Of course: (i) someone lucky enough (Xer men have got Buckley’s here) to currently be in actual public housing while on the dole doesn’t pay anything as high as $80 p.w, (ii) there are *no* single-occupant rental dwellings in any capital city available for this figure (unsubsidised), and precious few share places, to boot.)
My bottom line to Civitas and his ilk is this. Take your pick: job-rationing OR housing-rationing. (The post-war dream featured neither, but I’m prepared to concede one).
If Civitas expects me, say, to move from Melbourne to Perth (where current affairs TV shows say there are STOP/SLOW road-sign holder jobs at $15/hour going unfilled (they sure ain’t in Melbourne; if there were, I’d sign up in a heartbeat)), then a housing guarantee would clinch the move. That is, I move to Perth, and get a long-term place to live that costs no more than 30% of my income, no matter what.
As things stand, people like me get nada credit or allowance for juggling employment risk alongside homelessness risk. If the next person who tells me “Get a job!� would buy me a house instead, or at least allow me a Latham–era housing arrangement, I would be a much-less encumbered, eager-beaver job-seeker.
Am I really that out of touch with my linen habits? Apparently so, I shall embarrass myself no further. I hope my mum isn’t reading this.
GT – btw Tesltra have a Home Line Budget plan which is much cheaper than their standard plan ($18/month). Have been thinking about it myself, though primarily because nearly all the calls I make these days are done using VOIP.
Am I really that out of touch with my linen habits?
No, Amanda, I’m right there with you!
Amanda wrote:
“$270 is cheap rent in a barely adequate one br in Melbourne? Jeezbus, and here I was feeling sorry for myself about Sydney prices.”
That’s $270 a *fortnight*, Amanda.
I see. D’oh. I take it all back — I’m moving to Melbourne.
Anyway, I do not mean to be (entirely) flippant on the subject. I’ve spent various periods in just this position (minus the obsessive cleaning bills but the obsessive CD expediture more than balances), the last in 2003 for about eight months and am intimately familiar with the “centrelink arithmatic” which rules your life. The freedom to be able to buy a bloody newspaper without calculating whether you’ll need that $1.20 in six days time is a very real, great joy.
I’m with Amanda. Who the hell washes their linen once a week? John Nash during his schizo period?
Isn’t there a thing called Rental Assistance? And go and do your laundry at a family or friends’ house. You can pick up a mobile on a plan that is much cheaper than the fixed line rental.
Long-term strategy suggestion – move to WA, in particular the NW. Can’t get enough employees.
What sort of dirty person would NOT wash their linen at the minimum of once a week
what about the guy who pays him his $511 per fortnight?
ffs in addition to the family or 4 who I support house, feed, educate I also carry 4 of these $511 p/f/n clowns!!!
what a joke
It’s been a long time since I got centrelink money but isn’t the rule about not moving somewhere that job prospects are worse actually about not moving a small coastal town or something? It surely can’t be about moving to the outer suburbs as when they send you for job interviews I understand they will send you jobs that you have to travel up to an hour from home to go to.
Not a lot of sympathy from me about the poxy income as I only earn $239 a fortnight more than the unemployed person and work up to 100 hours a week. Drying washing on the rack, buying generic groceries and not much meat, making my own clothes or buying them from op shops etc, living in a house where the kitchen ceiling leaks when it rains, none of this is anything to get upset about, certainly not an affront to human dignity or necessarily a life of quiet desperation.
Apollo, you don’t carry four of these buggers. Your tax gets paid into several billion dollars of consolidated revenue which goes to Budget surpluses, defence spending, health, education, etc.
If you want to think of your all taxes being spent on particular purposes, maybe you should think of them as contributions to refuelling an F-whatever fighter bomber and leave supporting the dole-bludgers to someone else, who’s less inclined to make piss & vinegar complaints about it.
The bare minimum to survive is all the State should provide someone who can’t currently provide for themselves.
Hey cooool Gummo
mind if I use the same logic to justify driving around in my leaded petrol F 100 ?
“ffs in addition to the family or 4 who I support house, feed, educate I also carry 4 of these $511 p/f/n clowns!!!”
I’m partly with you on that, Apollo. I get really pissed off with my taxes being wasted on advertising campaigns trying to convince us that black is white (Workchoices – cost $55 million). Could feed quite a few dolebludgers on that for a while. I lost count of the Pacific Solution cost (at one early reading it was $650 million), which was also pretty dear for a political election stunt.
Civitas is right. Someone in good health and this articulate should be supporting those less fortunate through their taxes, not taking money away from them. And don’t tell me you can’t – inner Melbourne is full of restaurants in need of kitchen hands, shops in need of casual workers, a bit of this, a bit of that. It’s hard not to believe that this is abou not being willing to make the necessary compromises.
Laura is also right about the moving to lower job areas – it won’t stop a move to some boring suburb. But again I suspect you’re not willing to forgo the inner city lifestyle.
If you can’t afford a 1 bedder or a studio then flatshare or move out to the sticks. That’s all there is to it.
It’s quite easy to halve your rent or more from the figure listed above. Since when is it a right to have your own place.
“Since when is it a right to have your own place.”
Maybe it’s the same right that we all have to a mortgage – there’s no choice involved in having a mortgage and the subsequent “unaffordability” of interest rate rises, is there?
Sacha – you’re a bright person but I don’t understand. A mortgage is all about choice – don’t get one if you can’t afford one and if you can’t keep up the payments, sell.
OOOPS. Missed the bit about full rent assistance. Bugger!!
Rent is generally cheaper in WA.
Just saying.
Sorry Bismarck, I didn’t make myself clear – think I had a spell of unclarity (or whatever the word is!). I agree with you.
What I meant to say was that we all have a choice about whether to have a mortgage, but given the way that some people complain about interest rate increases, you could be forgiven for thinking that they felt they had a right to their mortgage. But if you can’t afford it, do something about it.
I was just saying that maybe this idea of having a right to a certain sort of house might be similar to thinking that one shouldn’t have to share a house if you’re on the dole. Not much of a point, I know. If you’re earning X dollars per fortnight, then you have to live within your means. If you’re not, adjust your expectations.
About 10-11 years ago a good friend of mine, who was on the dole and lived in inner brisbane on the sth side near Vulture St station, refused point blank to apply for work at Indooroopilly shoppingtown, as it was “too far” – it would take about an hour to get there in the morning and an hour to get back. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it would have been paid work, something she had had trouble getting.
Ah. Exactly.
Apollo,
My estimate of the tax you pay, based on your assertion that you support 4 dole bludgers is $53,144 (511 X 26 X 4). What that means in terms of before tax income PA, I have no idea. I suspect that with the aid of an accountant you could work out a leasing deal on a new ute that would allow you to get rid of that F100 if you wanted to.
DD
1. Whatever my personal circumstances or talents etc, the numbers, as I’ve calculated them, stay the same – in that situation, you wouldn’t have much more than $80 pf left after obligatory budget items. If by the “inner city life-style” is all about sitting around drinking lattes and going out clubbing at night – whatever – how much of that do you think is seriously affordable on $40 a week.
2. CentreLink’s guidelines on moving say nothing about “Thou shalt not move to a coastal town or a known industrial rust-belt” – they can’t be phrased that way. So, whether you get away with moving for the lower rent is entirely up to first the CentreLink employee who reviews your NewStart after you move and second the AAT when you appeal an adverse decision. You’re reliant on the goodwill of CentreLink.
3. Well yes, you could go looking for a cash in hand dishwashing job to alleviate your financial distress, were you this hypothetical dole-bludger. Or you could move to the sticks and isolate yourself from whatever social network you might have built up in the inner city. That, I suppose is one of the necessary compromises.
(Makes it clear right now that I’m not on NewStart – with the assistance of an understandig GP I got out of the participation rate for a while).
Oh – and if talent and articulacy implies an obligation to help others less fortunate throughpaying taxes, does this mean we should exempt the patently stupid from all taxation?
Laura – those 100 hour weeks sound a killer. 14.3 hours a day for seven days a week can’t be easy. Your employer is exploiting you.
Yes Gummo, I know. I’m actually employed on a .5 basis which makes it even stupider.
I get the feeling you don’t believe me, but I’ve worked it out.
As for moving to an outer suburb potentially damaging a person’s chances of getting work, you have to come up with a better argument. I live on the outer edge of zone 2 and my partner works a two hours public transport journey away
Notwithstanding what I’ve said above, a few times I’ve lived on the dole and it isn’t very much – I wouldn’t like to do it for a long time. You don’t have much disposable income – even $50 a fortnight more would possibly help a lot of people. I don’t know what all the implications would be of doing this (eg effective marginal income tax rates/encouragement to find a job etc).
“My estimate of the tax you pay, based on your assertion that you support 4 dole bludgers is $53,144″
You’d have to earn a pretty high salary to pay that much income tax! My guess is at least $120,000 gross.
The simple reality is that, in times of low unemployment, an able-bodied young man is most unlikely to get any sympathy about the level of the dole.
No one is undermining the reality of Gummo’s figures. They are brutal and are only really supportable for a short time.
Unfortunately, we have a heap of people who are chronically out of work for much longer than that, mostly older.
One of the problems with the system is that people are forced to run down their accumulated life wealth pretty quickly, which creates a cohort of older people with few resources to deal with old age.
I suspect that the effect of this has not really been felt yet because the first layer of people whacked by retrenchment got payouts. Now everyone is on contracts, and we are much more disposable.
Yes, it is possible to get rid of a mortgage if things get too hard, but this drops you into the rental market, which goes up as the market value of houses climb.
Paul is right about public housing. But while he is noticing that he has buckley’s of getting into public housing, so am I, at a generation older.
Laura of course is living out a grotesque joke called “employment in the tertiary education sector”. I don’t know anything about her personal plans, but I do generally think that a system which cannot pay a dedicated academic a living wage is in disarray. Aside from anything else, there is something badly wrong about the liberal arts cohort not being able to afford children.
Behind Gummo’s figures is an open secret – people don’t report their real incomes because they would starve on the government’s idea of survival money. Some of that extra comes from cash in hand work, and a lot more comes from families.
This person spends a measly $40 per week on food and ‘groceries’ which presumably includes things like loo paper, etc etc. Is that possible? I suppose if you eat baked beans every night.
Link,
The $40 figure is based on the assumption of some improbably stringent shopping habits and equally stringent home management. For example, a heavy reliance on dried legumes (peas and lentils) for a lot of sustenance and a habit of freezing and refrigerating food. If the fridge craps out, she’s cactus.
Laura,
I take your point and the implied rebuke re the 100 hours. Re moving out to the sticks – one reason you might cling to the “inner city lifestyle” is the greater accessibility of jobs, and job interviews, by public transport. Not just CBD jobs – any job on the public transport system is going to be easier to get to from the centre out than from the outer in and out again. Unless you have a car.
Sacha,
With the help of the July ‘05 marginal tax rates I worked Mr Creed’s income out at $133,760. That’s dropping $1.90 to round it out.
Nobody in particular,
Let’s remember the double think contradiction in this situation – you’re not supposed to think of the unemployment as permanent, your income support is basd on the premise that it isn’t going to be permanent, but prudent income management demands that you do assume that it might take a while.
Oh and on the laundry – my usual habit when I do it is to fill a big green garbage bag and walk fifteen minutes to the laundromat, two machine loads all up, washed and dried for $16.00. I could forego the drying but then the time to walk back is doubled at least by the need to stop frequently to rest my arms, which get a bit strained by the additional weight of water in the wet washing. It’s way above accepted industrial safe lifting limits.
“The simple reality is that, in times of low unemployment, an able-bodied young man is most unlikely to get any sympathy about the level of the dole.”
To all you unsympathetic types: lets at least reduce EMTRs so that Gummo here can keep most of what he earns in a part-time job. The current welfare system seems almost purpose-designed to keep the unemployed in that condition. EMTRs should be cut to a max of 30-40% in the next budget (fat chance though!).
Razor: are jobs really that easy to get in NW W.A.? Do you know this as a fact, or is this just pub talk? What if you don’t have mining/trade skills? Say Gummo here, who is clearly a pasty latte-drinking scholarly type, whose only callouses are from turning the pages of Das Kapital, turns up at a WA mine site in his beret and black skivy? Will he get a job just like that? (Apologies to GT if I have misconstrued him!)
Gummo, you need to ‘liberate’ a shopping trolley for your washing and enjoy one of life’s pleasures–hanging out the washing and having it dry au naturale and for free! Mmm on second thoughts, that involves one of life’s greater aggravations of steering an unwieldy shopping trolley. A wheelbarrow perhaps?
Paulus, that made me laugh, but it’s unfair.
Trotsky I appreciate all this, but have you been in a supermarket lately? I spend thirty dollars, and when I get home and take it out of the bag I wonder where my dough went. Food is enormously expensive. You get bugger all for forty dollars; I’d spend more than the eighty you allow for a fortnight in one week, and I’m a very plain eater. Meanwhile the Markus would consider a restaurant meal costing $40.00 a cheap feed.
Jobs are always competed for. A mate of mine suggested that people actually interested in working should be happy with those who are not, and are thus content to live at subsistence level while the others can go out and buy plasma TV – the dole being a sort of necessary expense, just to keep them alive. Not a bad idea. Because not everyone is in thrall of Harvey Norman, who wants us all at each others throats, and who wants double income families just so they can afford what were unheard of luxuries a few years ago but which are now considered basics. No Family man without a wife working can ever afford these sorts of things. And so kids get farmed out to daycare centres, just in the interests of Commerce.
The point is, there are no cheap digs around inner Melbourne anymore. In the eighties for instance, there were dozens of huge and cheap rooming houses in St Kilda (full of unemployables on welfare). Now there are none. Market values got pushed up as the better classes moved in. Rents skyrocketed. The bums lost all their cheap shops too: eateries, pubs and so on, an entire community destroyed. The point is, if you really want to help the lower orders you must sacrifice some of your own standards. Because it’s no use just talking about what the government should do, you have to do something yourselves. Be willing to lower your standards a bit, cut down on mobiles phones and all the other props that adorn your “lifestyle”. Because if I was unemployed and copping that PhD allowance in place of the dole I’d consider myself enormously well off. You just seem to cry over nothing.
But anyway this is a good posting. I like it. It’s far better than the usual stuff; all blah blah and theory.
And Laura is right. Places where you can live are restricted – to stop you retiring to a bush shack.
And golly, wouldn’t that be awful – for commerce.
And for doodle-brained economists. All of them. Hearts full of finance.
RH,
Yes, I have been in a supermarket recently – grabbed some clearance chicken, onions and mushrooms (total cost $10.00) for two days worth of risotto for two people. As I said in response to Link, that grocery bill involves assuming some arbitrary stringencies, including perhaps a bit of malnutrition. Anything more you spend at the supermarket comes out of the $80 you have left over after meeting other expenses.
Here’s another assumption – hypothetical unemployed person is ware of the Victorian Ministry of Housing Bond Loans Scheme. Otherwise the savings figure has to go up.
Did I mention that the $80 per fortnight also has to cover things like dental emergencies? Oops – forgot that. But you can get those treated free at the Dental Hospital if you’re willing to go under the pliers with a student.
The waiting list for dental care is years and years and … besides, on your budget, you have to shoot the dog.
Unfortunately, I think our powerful friends in politics don’t accept the idea that the unemployed or underemployed are the necessary casualties of their sweetly turning economy.
They have another role for us in the public drama. Hideous Object Lesson to Inspire Fear and Abject Compliance.
If you don’t work hard, centrelink’ll getcha.
Hate to see what would happen if you had to see a medical specialist in a state of unemployment. The last appointment with a specialist was $170 for a fifteen minute appointment. I know some of the diagnostic tests would be around $500, and surgery, ouch.
This is a very good point: as a dole bludger you can scrape by if you’re frugal, but if something major goes wrong health, family, car and a myriad other-wise; you’re fucked.
While the overall uynemployment rate might be relatively low- though nothing like the 1%-2% figures we enjoyed in the post war period up to the early 1970s- it still isn’t easy for everyone to get a job. For example, if you are in a rural area with high unemployment it can be very difficult to save the money you need to move to another area, especially a big city. It can also be very hard to find work if you are older, unskilled, have literacy problems or health issues, including mental health issues.
I think its sad that so many people still hold on to the dolke bludger myth. Most individuals who have been on the dole for any length of time have legitaimate reasons for their unemployment status and deserve assistnce, not ridicule. Very few people genuinely want to live in poverty.
Good post, Gummo.
“civitas – if you thought that adopting a latin cognomen was going to give your snarks a bit of gravitas, you could have done better than pick the latin word for “cityâ€?.”
civitas is the Latin word for community.
“While the overall uynemployment rate might be relatively low- though nothing like the 1%-2% figures we enjoyed in the post war period up to the early 1970s- it still isn’t easy for everyone to get a job.”
In Sydney?
“Very few people genuinely want to live in poverty.”
Actually some people are willing to do just that if it means they don’t have to work.
Oh, the example was Melbourne, not Sydney. Still…..in Melbourne?
Tovarishch Gummo Trotsky said (up at the top):
==”TIP…Check with CentreLink first. If you move to an area of lower employment prospects your payments may be stopped for 26 weeks”.
There is a lunatic assumption by the graduates of the Leonid Brezhn’ev Institute of Economic Excellence who decide these things …. that moving to a rural area for many, but not all, “clients” means moving to “an area of lower employment prospects” because these guardians of our revenue look at the whole year and not just the season of very high demand – such as a picking season.
Farmers lose. The unemployed lose. The whole country loses. For rural communities desperate to attract younger people to help them survive, it is a disasterous loss. So just who the hell is winning …. and why?????
Gee civitas, for someone sharing the same name as a New Labour think tank, your thinking is neither new or thoughtful. It is laboured though.
“Actually some people are willing to do just that if it means they don’t have to work.”
Actually there is a skerrick of truth in that. But there are also a hell of lot of people living in poverty who would love to make more money honestly but who are trapped by circumstances beyond their control.
Personally I don’t mind some of my taxes going to welfare if it keeps my streets cleaner and safer from beggars, drabs, footpads and cutpurses. It’s awfully bloody embarrassing to bailed up by a panhandler when yer in the middle of extolling the virtues of your fair city to some visiting honchos.
Trotsky so now you’re a shopping genius. Congratulations. But you keep changing your tune. Modifying it. And even admitting a but of malnutrition into the forty a week.
A dog couldn’t live on that. And if I had to live on it I’d be malnourished alright because I’ve got three dogs, and I’d go hungry myself to feed them.
Living cheap isn’t as easy as you make out. You overlook all sorts of things. Laundry items for example, and stuff for the kitchen and bathroom. “Toilet items.”
And hell, If it ever got that bad for me I’d wash everything by hand, no kidding, But dirty bedding doesn’t bother me, I can sleep in the same sheets for months. And I do, and with three dogs on the bed as well. And you can believe that or don’t, I couldn’t care less, but I don’t waste hours from my life washing and folding and cleaning. Because as Quentin Crisp said, “After seven years the dust doesn’t get any worse.” So bugger hygiene, because I’ll tell you, it’s all a bloody myth, I wear the same jocks for months at a time, true, and with no bother at all. You’ll find this impossible to believe, but that’s the way you were brought up. You were brought up with a phobia about hygiene. And so you have to shower once a day, or you start scratching. Well I’ll tell you, I can’t remember the last time I had a shower, or a bath, but it was months ago. Believe me or don’t believe me, it’s true, that’s all. But here’s your reaction. “Pooh!”
Oh yes? Well I’ve never heard it about me, not from anyone. And guess what, I’ve always gone to the dental hospital. So have my kids. No way would I ever dish out the sort of dough private dentists want. They’re even worse than Vets.
“Actually there is a skerrick of truth in that.”
ya think?
“But there are also a hell of lot of people living in poverty who would love to make more money honestly but who are trapped by circumstances beyond their control.”
Who cannot get a job? Or just don’t want to get a job?
“Personally I don’t mind some of my taxes going to welfare if it keeps my streets cleaner and safer from beggars, drabs, footpads and cutpurses.”
awfully 18th century of you, isn’t it?
“It’s awfully bloody embarrassing to bailed up by a panhandler when yer in the middle of extolling the virtues of your fair city to some visiting honchos.”
But why, if these poor people “would love to make more money honestly but who are trapped by circumstances beyond their control.”
Why not just explain those circumstances beyond their control to your visiting honchos?
I’m not quite sure how to comment here without sounding pathetic which I’m not but my ex walked out on me with no notice taking his money with him.
He’d done his homework though, telling me exactly where to go and what to say to Centrelink. According to him, with my lousy health I’d have no trouble getting a disability pension except he’d forgotten to mention the humiliation part of it.
I managed to keep the house and he kept all his money and as it’s the only asset I have, I won’t sell it. As for being a welfare bludger, I consider I’m using his taxes and I do pay tax everytime I pay for an item that has GST on it.
Miss Jahteh, take in a lodger. I hear Comrade Graeme’s looking for a place
“awfully 18th century of you, isn’t it?”
I’m a pretty 18th century guy in many ways.
“Why not just explain those circumstances beyond their control to your visiting honchos?”
Or I could point to your last comment and explain to them how far Australia has to go in the field of irony transplants.
Of course if Ms Jah Teh took in a lodger, and told Centrelink, then the money she made would be income, wouldn’t it?
Indeed, if this person was a he, assumptions could be made that this person could be supporting her?
Would Centrelink class Comrade Graeme as a sui generis exception to all rules, perhaps?
You’re quite right, David. I was approached to take in a university student but I’d be worse off financially. I do remember the bad old days when officials could come to the house and go through cupboards and wardrobes to make sure no man was living with a woman.
“I’m a pretty 18th century guy in many ways.”
I guess so.
“Or I could point to your last comment and explain to them how far Australia has to go in the field of irony transplants.”
You mean you don’t think you would sound very smart explaining that these poor people must molest people in the street for money due to circumstances beyond their control? Surely your visiting honchos would understand.
Can a husband legally walk out on a wife in Australia and take all the money?
If the man inherits money, it’s a gift and it’s his. I could only go for half of his superannuation and he would get half the house. I signed away rights to any money for a roof over my head. No kids involved either.
“If the man inherits money, it’s a gift and it’s his.”
It’ not marital property?
“I could only go for half of his superannuation and he would get half the house. I signed away rights to any money for a roof over my head.”
oh. then you chose to have this specific roof over your head. and no cash. That means the taxpayers are supporting your living in a house you cannot afford.
“You mean you don’t think you would sound very smart explaining that these poor people must molest people in the street for money due to circumstances beyond their control?”
No.
When it comes to being a smartarse civitas, yer only halfway there. And not the front half either.
That’s right; couples can always reach an agreement.
So well done Miss J. And did you grab him in a headlock to sign?
(Don’t answer if that’s impertinent)
“No.”
we’re in agreement then
Civitas, don’t be tough on this woman, she’s a good soul with a hard life, and deserves any help she can get.
RH, I’m not sure that pointing out that she’s living in a house she cannot afford at taxpayer expense is being hard on her. What if we all decided to use all of our cash to purchase houses we can’t afford and then expect the taxpayers to provide all of our other necessities? Is that reasonable?
Don’t be coy. You know very well that people would never do that. Would you?
“we’re in agreement then”
No.
“You know very well that people would never do that. Would you?”
Well, no I wouldn’t. But this is exactly what Jah Teh has done.
People sell houses they cannot afford to keep all the time. There’s no shame in being unable to afford a specific house. Who among us could live in just any house we wanted? The solutions isn’t to remain in a house that one cannot afford and expect the public to provide your other necessities.
too late nabs. you already agreed with me
People want more than necessities. Or everyone would be on the dole.
And this woman is disabled, can’t work. And you want to take her house off her?
Hell you’re a mean bastard.
You’re full of assumptions Mister.
-And something else as well
“People want more than necessities.”
sure they do.
“And this woman is disabled, can’t work. And you want to take her house off her?”
If she cannot afford it, yes, she should sell it and buy something she can afford, while providing funds for her other necessities. What is so startling about this? People do it every day.
“Hell you’re a mean bastard.”
Not at all. I just do not see an entitlement to live in a house one cannot afford and demand that everyone else pay for your other necessities. If there was such an entitlement, I have my eye on a lovely spread out in East Hampton. Would you like to pny up for food, taxes, clothing, travel, etc, so that I can “afford” to live in it?
You’re kidding, right? I’ve lived on way less than this.
Let’s say you need to live near the city – share a house with someone so you only pay $200 / fortnight. – $70 saved.
I used to do all my washing by hand, including linen. Your unemployed so you have heaps of time. $16 saved.
Telephone?? I suppose you might need one for receiving job offers, get yourself a prepaid mobile and leave $2 credit on it. Use a pay phone/centerlink phone when calling employers. Say $4 / fortnight. $10 saved.
So after sleeping, eating and paying your bills and enjoying a standard of living superior to that of 90% of the world’s population, you have $80 $23 $10 $16 $70 = $199 / fortnight to spend on transport, dentist, beer etc.
$100 / potential savings per week ($5000/yr) for doing absolutely nothing besides writing letters to prospective employers.
What on earth are you whinging about?
“you already agreed with me”
I must introduce you to Jack Strocchi sometime. He’s someone else who can only respond to the points he wants others to make.
With the two of you on the same thread, we could see some real negasphere action here.
Well golly me but I’ve seen people on here who can’t think but you get the big prize! You admit people want more than necessities but also ask what if people decided to use all their cash buying a house and then relied on the public to provide their necessities. You admit you wouldn’t want that yourself, and it’s plain to me that anyone who could do better certainly would.
I’ll tell you something, if the Gestapo ever make a comeback you’ll get what you want, and eventually – what you don’t want. Look what happened to Hitler.
“If Civitas expects me, say, to move from Melbourne to Perth (where current affairs TV shows say there are STOP/SLOW road-sign holder jobs at $15/hour going unfilled (they sure ain’t in Melbourne; if there were, I’d sign up in a heartbeat)), then a housing guarantee would clinch the move.”
Why would anyone give anyone a housing guarantee? Do you think the rest of us have some sort of guarantee that you are without? People move to where work is. And find housing they can afford to live in. If you cannot do that in the location you have selected, then select another location where you can do it. I’d love to live in East Hampton, but I can’t afford it and there are no jobs for me there. Should I just move there anyway and whine that no one is buying me a house?
“That is, I move to Perth, and get a long-term place to live that costs no more than 30% of my income, no matter what.”
Wouldn’t we ALL like to have such a guarantee?
“As things stand, people like me get nada credit or allowance for juggling employment risk alongside homelessness risk.”
Who is it you think ISN’T doing this? Do you believe that when other people lose their jobs they automatically get to keep their homes whether they can afford them any longer or not?
“If the next person who tells me “Get a job!â€? would buy me a house instead, or at least allow me a Latham–era housing arrangement, I would be a much-less encumbered, eager-beaver job-seeker.”
Well, we should all have homes purchased for us, not just you. No?
Golly, try to think! Try to see people as individual cases, not as a shapeless mass.
Goodnight.
And boy, you are some sort of weirdo!
“Golly, try to think! Try to see people as individual cases, not as a shapeless mass.”
Even in indiviudal cases, it makes no sense to stay in a house you cannot afford and demand that other people should pay for anything else that you need. This is pretty elementary.
“You admit people want more than necessities but also ask what if people decided to use all their cash buying a house and then relied on the public to provide their necessities.”
Is that not what JahTeh is doing?
“You admit you wouldn’t want that yourself”
to live in a house that I couldn’t afford, while you and the rest of the taxpayers pay for everything else I need? well, sure that sounds like a fine idea to me. Does it sound reasonable to you?
“I must introduce you to Jack Strocchi sometime.”
why, do you agree with him too?
I keep losing interesting in what civitas is saying and skip his points.
* Note to JahTeh, N E V E R take in RH as a logder. (egads)
“What if we all decided to use all of our cash to purchase houses we can’t afford and then expect the taxpayers to provide all of our other necessities? Is that reasonable?”
poifectly. when can I do it?
Jah Teh already IS doing it. How stupid are you for not figuring that out?
I was just going to say that you got the first and the last word on this threat civitas, congratulations.
sorry for the typo “interesting” which should read only “interest”.
fucken’ faux pax typo. runs away yelling that’s T H R E A D NOT T H R E A T. sheesh.
Since Jah Teh has worked out a way to get gullible types to defend her lifestyle of living in a house she cannot afford, while they finance the rest of her life, I’d say she’s had the last word.
Civitas, make whatever points you wish to make, but please stop using JahTeh as an example. It’s rude and mean and unnecessary, and as you don’t know her or know anything about the specific circumstances of her life, I dare say it’s unfounded as well. If you have much experience debating you’ll also appreciate that it does your position no favours if you’re seen to be bullying a noncombatant.
Goddamit civitas, you’re mean and judgemental as well as dopey
In the interests of clearing up a few misconceptions:
1. Although this case study is based on the situation I was in a couple of years ago, it’s not my situation now. A friend and I made necessary adjustments and moved away from the inner city to the nearly inner city where we could economise by sharing accomodation.
2. RH – in particular – will you please stop assuming that I’m a bloody salary earner in academia or some non-existent think tank. I’m slightly more respectably unemployed, thanks to the GP who certified me for DSP payments (also about $100 pfn better off) – got that? And if you’re going to go all “cardboard box in the middle of the road” on me, I’ll see your cardboard box and raise you a cup of sulphuric acid for breakfast.
And to all the moralisers – stop making assumptions about the age & sex of this “dole-bludger” and look at the figures. Particularly if you’re on $133,760 a year – is this the way you’d want to live?
I know, you don’t have to.
Was my post deleted? I could have sworn it was here last night… reposted.
I have lived on far less than $250/wk Gummo. Methinks you need to make a few lifestyle sacrifices.
Rent: Move into a house with someone else. You can definitely get a room somewhere near the city for $200 / fortnight. $70 saved.
Laundry: Just do it by hand, linen included. $16 saved.
Telephone: You don’t need a landline – get a second hand mobile phone for $20 and leave $2 worth of credit on it so that you can receive calls. Make calls from centerlink and payphones. $4 / fortnight, $10 saved.
So after paying for rent, food, bills and a phone so that you can get a job (a living standard better than 90% of the world’s population) you now have $80 $70 $23 $16 $10 = $199 / fortnight leftover, $100 / wk!!
If you do nothing else, you will save $5000 / year. Either way, if you’re careful you’ll have plenty of money leftover for emergencies, moving, buying nice clothes for an interview etc.
What are you whinging about?
“Very few people genuinely want to live in poverty.�
Actually some people are willing to do just that if it means they don’t have to work.
Civitas, if you hadn’t noticed from all the above, living in poverty is work.
For instance, walking to the laundrette with your heavy washing, figuring out how to feed yourself on $40 (would tax the skills of any administrator or restauranteur), satisfying the increasingly surreal hoops Centrelink makes you jump through, getting to places without a means of transport… The stress of thinking about looming dental emergencies or the breaking down of fridges… the list goes on.
and I do pay tax everytime I pay for an item that has GST on it.
Yes! Some of these smug commenters are forgetting the GST, as if their income tax was the only tax. And they probably supported its introduction!
“I could only go for half of his superannuation and he would get half the house. I signed away rights to any money for a roof over my head.�
oh. then you chose to have this specific roof over your head. and no cash. That means the taxpayers are supporting your living in a house you cannot afford.
Sorry, Larva-prodders, I know you do require civility in comments and I’m usually willing to keep to it.
You, Civitas, are a right f#$%intg bastard.
Folks might be happy to know I’m on the track of a script which allows people to ignore the comments of other people they don’t want to read.
If we could go way back up the thread to Glen’s point about PhDs and scholarships, and Laura’s point about job insecurity, workload and employment arrangements in academia, I have great difficulty in enthusiastically advising people to do PhDs.
I enthusiastically denounce such a script forever, Mark. It’s nothing more than an anti-stoush mechanism.
Besides, those of us who want to ignore stuff by people we don’t want to read already have the required skills in reality control (Newspeak: ‘doublethink’).
It’s at the option of the reader, Liam, as to whether they want to use it or read threads in full.
This sounds a bit like the blue pill vs red pill dilemma of the Matrix. I’ll stick with the red pill …
John, my apologies regarding your comments:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/05/08/the-amateur-technocrat/#comment-73691
It seems they were inadvertently caught up in the spam filter.
Derrida Derider wrote:
“Someone in good health and [as] articulate [as GT] should be supporting those less fortunate through their taxes, not taking money away from them. And don’t tell me you can’t – inner Melbourne is full of restaurants in need of kitchen hands, shops in need of casual workers.â€?
I love gratuitous moralising, especially when it’s accompanied by perverted, pretend facts. First, how is a highly-educated, basically-healthy unemployed 41 y.o. (like me) “[more] fortunate� than DD’s archetype of the deserving poor/unemployed? For starters, most unemployed people older than me would have significant real estate equity, and those younger than me who *didn’t* go to university would be more likely to be home-buyers/owners, as well. If welfare rules were changed, so that all home equity had to be released before anyone got a cent from the government, I would have no problems with this – at least all unemployed would then be in the same boat.
And from first-hand experience combined with some cutting-edge research, inner Melbourne is NOT full of restaurants in need of kitchenhands. In fact, cafes/restaurants here are going bust daily, mainly due to the simple fact that the educated cohort of my generation have all emigrated, or if not, are dirt poor. (I imagine that I live in a “latte belt�, but I would buy less than one café coffee a year ($3!)). There are four ads for kitchenhands in the special hospitality recruitment section of today’s Age; while sales jobs are admittedly more plentiful, they are highly “skilled�, in the sense that one either has the personality and/or gender for selling, or one doesn’t. And I don’t (and I would doubt that very many educated males do). Which makes DD’s waffling about people like me being *more* fortunate so ironic that it’s just not funny.
–
David Tiley wrote:
“Yes, it is possible to get rid of a mortgage if things get too hard, but this drops you into the rental market, which goes up as the market value of houses climb. Paul is right about public housing. But while he is noticing that he has Buckley’s of getting into public housing, so am I, at a generation older.�
Um, apart from the indisputable fact that rents haven’t (and couldn’t, unless wages did also) rise in tandem with house prices, what David misses is the difference even a little bit of capital-city home equity would make to say, an educated 41 y.o. unemployed man, who wouldn’t at all mind living in the sticks and generally being left to his own devices.
If he’s got, say, $150k in equity, he can buy a place outright in the sticks (in many places in Australia), *and* have enough to live on while he serves out his six-month, dole-less penalty waiting period. After which period, I imagine he could use his home-ownerhood, and acquired airs of general hickdom, to decline any Centrelink suggestions about relocating to bigger smokes, which may be made, from time to time, over the next 24 years.
If, however, our man has got no home equity, such a move (even to short-term/trial *renter*-hood in the sticks) is financially impossible.
Oh, and David, over-50s do get priority treatment on public housing waiting lists.
–
Re Civitas’s response to my earlier comment: I *don’t* expect my housing needs to be met on a platter, unconditionally. What I was saying is that my moving, say, to Perth to take some insecure (I’m assuming) work would expose me, as things currently stand, to an unacceptable risk of homelessness. Yes, some (but not most; see above re home equity) workers have to deal with the same risk, but they generally do so by choosing “incumbency� – clinging on to what they’ve got. Which is what I’m doing by staying put in Melbourne, which is admittedly ground zero for educated unemployed Xers.
“civitas is the Latin word for community.” So which community do you speak for, O all-knowing and all-seeing hive mind, beyond the community of vacuous little know-nothing twerps who troll the internet in the morning during their school computing classes and then again late at night once they’ve become bored with on-line gaming? City or community, it doesn’t matter much to me – you still have a pretty inflated notion of the importance of your own opinions, particularly if you purport to represent anyone other than yourself. I can count the members of your constituency on the thumb of one hand.
PBB (you know who you are) – save it for your own blog. Your comments are in moderation for the time being (Yellow Card).
JahTeh, DavidTiley, RH, Civitas, ….. oh what the hell, All Of You:
I have been very critical of the dangerously incompetent Bush administration, not of Americans in general.
Now when I was in the U.S. looking at veterans’ programs, I came across a badly wounded veteran and his family. His buddies found this abandoned house, used Veterans’ Administration, other federal, state and city schemes as well as their own labour to do up this derelict house and put the guy and his family into it. He now rents out part of the house and he gets his VA benefits too …. because his government rewards him for his initiative and enterprise (okay, his buddies did most of the hard work and were glad to do it for him).
Contrast that to Australian government stupidity. If Madam JahTeh did use her initiative and take in a university student as a lodger, she would be treated as next-to-criminal. Thanks to knuckle-walker pseudo-economists, she would certainly not be assisted or encouraged. It becomes then, a loss for Frau JahTeh, a loss for the student, a nett loss for the taxpayers and ratepayers. Complex thinking for the policy makers responsible seems to be getting the later letters or the alphabet into correct sequence …..
Civitas, if a small number of people are happy to be bought out of the job market by the pittance that is the unemployment benefit, I say good luck to them. They make it easier for the rest of us to get jobs.
The USA has the toughest welfare regime in the Western World and, partly as a consequence, it has the worst poverty, crime and so on. Rather than kick those at the bottom of the social ladder I would much prefer to focus on the robber barons at the top. Only a pissant delights in kicking the weak.
ps. Are you gluteus maximus under a moniker?
Civitas, I saw on Four Corners last night a thief who’s swindled millions of dollars from the life savings of elderly people and is now living it up in a stylish apartment. So what do you think, should he be thrown out of there and the place sold – along with his expensive car, boat, etc, to repay the people he’s robbed? Because I tell you, I’d strip him to his underpants and throw him onto the street. Then I’d sell up every single thing he owns, including his clothing, to give his victims some of their money back. And I seriously mean this.
-But to be really frank with you, I’d hang him.
Wake up, you meathead, not everyone gets an equal go in this world, some get born into circumstances that set them back for life.
You seem to have been fortunate, in which case you owe a duty to people who could never be that fortunate. And you’d be stupid not to do it. Because the capitalist dogs who rule this society know that if there was no welfare their blood would flow onto the streets. Welfare is a payoff, that’s all. A bone for the rabble to gnaw on. This is a society unequal by design, mugs like shoukd know that. You are amazingly naive, and should shut your trap. Because the people you’re really showing up are the dirty swine you support. And if it all blew up you’d be the first one they’d get rid of.
You should apologise to JanTeh, because what you’ve said about her is despicable. She is a dignified and courageous woman who’s raised a scientist son who in turn is the father of two beautiful little girls.
I tell you, you are a disgusting little germ. And that’s all. A bloodless little creep.
You make me sick.
To tell the truth, I’ve got doubts.
This goose is just too stupid to be genuine.
You’re a fiery old gentleman, RH, and I second your sentiments if not exactly all the details of your arguments.
Civitas, I can afford my house by budgeting carefully and if you had any idea of the property market and the costs involved in buying and selling then you would realize why I hold on to what I have.
Every utility service except state water rates has GST on it so whatever I receive from the government on one hand, the other hand is taking its piece back.
Civitas, and everyone else, following on from R.H.’s and Jason’s comments – people take a calculated risk when talking about their personal circumstances on threads like this. No doubt they do so in part because such discussion humanises abstract discourses about welfare. And that’s a good thing. But I’d like you to respect people and not trash them when they do take that risk.
“Re Civitas’s response to my earlier comment: I *don’t* expect my housing needs to be met on a platter, unconditionally.”
That’s certainly the way this comment could be read:
“That is, I move to Perth, and get a long-term place to live that costs no more than 30% of my income, no matter what.�
“Civitas, if a small number of people are happy to be bought out of the job market by the pittance that is the unemployment benefit, I say good luck to them. They make it easier for the rest of us to get jobs.”
That’s certainly your prerogative. It hasn’t worked out that way in France, of course. I think you’ll find that societies with the greatest number of unemployed also have the highest unemployment.
“The USA has the toughest welfare regime in the Western World and, partly as a consequence, it has the worst poverty, crime and so on.”
It’s quite amazing then that so many people want to come here. Is it for the crime and the poverty do you think?
“Rather than kick those at the bottom of the social ladder I would much prefer to focus on the robber barons at the top.”
You mean the people creating the jobs for the unemployed. Look, it’s crazy to believe that what works in actual practice, which is the US labor market, won’t work in theory, which is what you’re actually doing.
“Wake up, you meathead, not everyone gets an equal go in this world, some get born into circumstances that set them back for life.”
of course not. Nor will everyone do so anytime in the future.
“Welfare is a payoff, that’s all.”
I don’t think so. Welfare has a definite purpose in our society. But it isn’t and shouldn’t be the basis of a lifestyle.
“This is a society unequal by design, mugs like shoukd know that.”
by whose design? God’s? I don’t see this as some grand scheme God designed to have some people born into lesser economic circumstances than others. It’s about what we do AFTER we get here.
“You should apologise to JanTeh, because what you’ve said about her is despicable.”
I certainly meant no disrespect to anyone personally. And I would never speak about anyone the way you have yourself about me. To de-personalize this, I do not think it makes much sense to live a lifestyle one cannot afford and expect the rest of society to pick up the tab. Whether you’re living that lifestyle in a tract house in Perth, a condo in Melbourne, or a palatial villa in Italy. Yes people do it all the time, but does it make economic sense? I don’t think so.
“That’s certainly your prerogative. It hasn’t worked out that way in France, of course. I think you’ll find that societies with the greatest number of unemployed also have the highest unemployment.”
ooops… make that
That’s certainly your prerogative. It hasn’t worked out that way in France, of course. I think you’ll find that societies with the greatest number of people living on welfare also have the highest unemployment.
Thanks for that clarification, civitas. It did seem from some responses that your comments were capable of being taken personally. I’m glad that’s not your intention.
No, it wasn’t. I’d also never say anything even vaguely close to:
“I tell you, you are a disgusting little germ. And that’s all. A bloodless little creep.
You make me sick.”
which clearly IS intended personally.
That’s just the Chairman, civitas. He doesn’t mince words. I’m sure you and he can sort it out mano a mano. If not, let us know.
R.H., be nice.
“That’s just the Chairman, civitas.”
Looks like a double standard to me.
“He doesn’t mince words.”
And he does make it personal. In a way no one could ever accuse me of doing.
I wonder if I had said that another poster “made me sick” if that would have been acceptable?
I haven’t read through the whole thread, but R.H., you should restrain yourself and be civil, even if you feel you’ve been provoked.
I didn’t mean to sound partial, civitas.
R.H. has been around here for quite some time. I’m sure he’ll testify that I’ve pulled him up on occasion. I was just trying to inject a bit of levity into it. It’s well worth remembering not to take all this stuff too seriously, except when it really is personal, as with people who have shared their own circumstances.
“It’s well worth remembering not to take all this stuff too seriously, except when it really is personal, as with people who have shared their own circumstances.”
Perhaps a good reason not to share anything you don’t want mentioned.
Civitas:
This a marketplace, a rubbish-dump, a palace and a forum of ideas and opinions where passion is welcome but personal abuse is not. So far, The Chairman has not abused or insulted me but I’m sure that if I ever upset him/her/them then I would cop a spirited response …. that’s just part of the hurly-burly of being here.
Now, you didn’t say anything about crazy expensive policy that hinders people from escaping urban poverty by moving out bush where they are desperately needed.
Personal abuse is quite evident on this very thread, Graham. I wouldn’t call the words I quoted above a “spirited response”. They clearly cross the line into personal abuse, something I have not and do not engage in.
“Now, you didn’t say anything about crazy expensive policy that hinders people from escaping urban poverty by moving out bush where they are desperately needed.”
Would you like to clarify what you’re asking with this question? I’m happy to politely respond.
locutus,
Given a choice between the mealy-mouthed politesse of:
Since Jah Teh has worked out a way to get gullible types to defend her lifestyle of living in a house she cannot afford, while they finance the rest of her life, I’d say she’s had the last word.
and
I tell you, you are a disgusting little germ. And that’s all. A bloodless little creep.
I’ll take someone who calls a tool a tool anyday. Cut the whining – you got personally insulted, but when you write something so specifically insulting to an individual and combine it with a generalised insult to everyone else, you’d have to be bloody stupid to think a smiley would be enough to cover any damages.
Just joking doesn’t cut it. Sorry that was bloody stupid and insensitive just might. In the meantime you’re fair game for anyone who cares to call you a sanctimonious little shit.
If you want to live your life out as an economic cipher with no ties to home, family or community that can’t be sacrificed to economic circumstances, then by all means, live that way. It’s your choice. Believing that you have right to impose that choice on others through the political system, or demanding in forums like this that they do live according to your robotically rational principles is another matter entirely.
“I’ll take someone who calls a tool a tool anyday.”
Certainly your right. So let’s not have any more righteous complaining, k?
“Cut the whining – you got personally insulted, but when you write something so specifically insulting to an individual and combine it with a generalised insult to everyone else, you’d have to be bloody stupid to think a smiley would be enough to cover any damages.”
I insulted no one, nor did I get insulted. To be insulted I would have to care what the person thought. Get it? I would never care what anyone who could spew that stuff on an anonymous talkboard thought.
And I never whine. I do defend myself.
“If you want to live your life out as an economic cipher with no ties to home, family or community that can’t be sacrificed to economic circumstances, then by all means, live that way.”
That’s a bizarre reading of anything that’s been said.
“Believing that you have right to impose that choice on others through the political system, or demanding in forums like this that they do live according to your robotically rational principles is another matter entirely.”
Yet another bizarre reading. Since I said nothing anywhere even vaguely close to this, I feel no need to address it.
Back to the point, it makes little sense from an economic standpoint (or a personal one) to spend everything you have on your home and leave nothing left for other expenses, thereby forcing society to provide your other necessities.
Graeme Bell wrote:
“Now, you didn’t say anything about crazy expensive policy that hinders people from escaping urban poverty by moving out bush where they are desperately needed.�
To which Civitas parried:
“Would you like to clarify what you’re asking with this question?”.
I’ll let Graeme speak (or not) for himself here, but I’d be interested in discussion on why, per my above comment http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/05/08/the-amateur-technocrat/#comment-73724 , an unemployed person with even a modest amount of real estate equity *can* make a “hermit-change” (or maybe even a fresh start in employment or whatever) move, but someone like me can’t.
Do negatively-geared boomer investors, who specialise in being slumlords to Xers trapped in big cities, really deserve such a massive Centrelink protection/subsidy?
civitas,
Given your complete disinterest in the opinions of others, and your complete indifference, in your use of language, to whether others might construe your utterances as insulting, I’m wondering why:
1. You bother to read the opinions of others at all.
2. You bother to reply to them.
Given what you said in your last comment regarding your behaviour and how others respond to it, I can see no good reason why you should object to leaving this discussion. I’d prefer that your withdrawal be voluntary, but I’m quite prepared to call in the bouncers if necessary. It’s a win-win for everyone – you wouldn’t have to suffer any further insults to your person or opinions – as inconsequential as you may find those insults – and we’d save a hell of a lot of server space, among other things.
This is your yellow card.
Trotsky you’re making a mistake. Let him go on.
Because he hasn’t got it into his skull yet that anywhere he makes stinking low comments about people – here, or in a pub, or in the street – he can expect shit thrown at him.
What a goose. How can it not be personal to attack a women who’s in bad health, has got nothing, and whose mother has just been diagnosed with cancer?
He wants to tip her out of her home?
Well he’s just got no brains. Because if it was me and
I got put off welfare I’d pretty soon gather some dough. I’d burg a joint – maybe his, cart off the value and sell it. I’d take his digital camera off him in the street, and his mobile phone too, and his wallet, then I’d upend him for what’s left.
And I’ll tell you, there’s lots more like me – even squareheads who’ve “never committed a crime in their lives” will turn dirty if things get bad.
What a cheek, to up and tell some ill person they should give up their home, when it’s all they’ve bloody got, and move into a hovel somewhere – and then to a tent on the bloody Yarra, before they can qualify for any assistance.
Civitas your own masters would be horrified at you talking like this, because welfare – and its sweet-talking social worker apologists are what keep this society under their control
You are a dirty low creep. A dork. A fucking abberation. Not a human being at all. And I’m glad there’s only a few of you, just a few of you, you mealy mouthed pus tongued three piece suit fuckhead!
RH,
Sorry old son – just as we were starting to get on, I have to yellow card you too. Nothing personal.
Well if you’re afraid to go tell it, you may as well shut up yourself.
And what’s yellow card mean anyway, I’ve never heard of it.
Civitas:
Good manners are always appreciated …. as are passionately held and defended views … and a sense of humour from time to time.
What I was referring to was my earlier post on this thread questioning the government’s weird inconsistency in sometimes encouraging some seasonal workers move from one job to another and yet sometimes punishing welfare recipients who try to escape urban poverty by going bush. Nobody wants social engineering; common sense will do just fine.
Paul Wilson:
I was thinking of rural communities missing out because of govt. practices ….. I hadn’t thought of it as govt. subsidies to urban slum landlords. Now that really would be a money trail worth following …. Thanks.
R.H. said == “And I’ll tell you, there’s lots more like me – even squareheads who’ve “never committed a crime in their livesâ€? will turn dirty if things get bad”.
How true! Just ask a refugee or anyone who has survived a country’s social and/or economic collapse.
(btw. Yellow Card is a roundball football warning …. sometimes appearing shortly before a Red Card, which is an invitation to reflect upon one’s behavior …. elsewhere!)
I’m entering a bit late, but want to respond to Civitas’s gripe with Jah Teh.
He suggests that she sell her house, and presumably live on the proceeds, or perhaps buy a more modest dwelling and free up some cash from the swap. The trouble is that the Government’s and Centrelink’s ‘downward envy’ then comes into play. If that house brought $500,000 and she invested that money or part of it, her benefit would be reduced by an estimate of the interest earned, or actual earnings from her asset.
While that equity is held in the house she is not penalised. So it can go on increasing in value without affecting her benefit. No financial adviser would urge her to part with the house.
The question of whether she should reduce her assets to save other taxpayers’ funds is hardly fair. It is legal, and it can hardly be called immoral compared with putting your assets in the Bahamas.
As to the Disability Support Pension (DSP), when I knew about these things a few years back she would have to have been deemed medically incapable of working more than 10 hours a week. My superficial understanding of the current situation is that it’s a lot harder to qualify for the DSP today. If she is eligible she is entitled to state support.
I can illuminate Gummo’s original point (that far too much in resources and staff are wasted on administrative compliance) from a personal example.
After trying to survive on a small redundancy pension and partial unemployment benefit for several years (while still actively seeking work) our debts eventually forced a change with my wife getting part-time kitchenhand work and me becoming a taxidriver. My wife got placed a few weeks before I got driving work, meaning that for a few weeks (Nov 2004) we claimed a tiny benefit subject to my wife listing her hours of work. By Dec we were able to consolidate our debts and move completely off benefits.
In May 2005 both of us received a letter from Centrelink. In my naive optimism I imagined it might be a letter of congratulations about becoming independent of benefits. After all, it was no easy achievement with me over 60 and my wife over 50. Nothing of the sort.
It turned out that someone was having trouble reconciling my wife’s stated hours of work with the employer’s listed hours supplied to Taxation. The simple explanation was that she was required to submit them to Centrelink before she received the timesheets from the employer. So there could well have been some variation.
The letter to her asked her to report there and produce her timesheets. The letter to me asked pretty much the same, leading me to suspect they were unwilling to take my wife’s word for it. My wife, being terrified of buraeucracies, immediately complied and that was the end of the matter.
I myself was outraged and drafted a nasty letter which my wife stopped me sending. I mean, WTF is all this? We’re 6 months out of the system and they’re querying a discrepancy which at most was about $10 or $20 and could just as easily been in their favour as ours. I also had a go at their slogan on the logo, ‘Giving you options’.
I’d have thought a more honest one would have been ‘taking away your options’.
“He suggests that she sell her house, and presumably live on the proceeds, or perhaps buy a more modest dwelling and free up some cash from the swap.”
Actually, I simply asked if it was reasonable from an economic standpoint to have everything tied up in a house, leaving nothing to live on. If it is reasonable in your view, would it also be reasonable for me to go to East Hampton and put every dollar I have into it a house and then ask for welfare to cover the rest of my needs. Such a house in East Hampton would also go on increasing in value, with the increase coming at public expense.
There is a difference though, Civitas, in the intent.
The situation as we’ve been told is that she got stuck with the house as her primary asset after her spouse shot through. Her only means of support is Disability Support Pension. There’s hardly any choice attached to it, except whether to sell and diminish her remaining assets, or hang on.
In the example you’ve proposed you buy up a place to reduce your liquid means. Plenty of people might do just that, but it doesn’t equate to her circumstances.
civitas on 9 May 2006 at 1:52 am:
“And this woman is disabled, can’t work. And you want to take her house off her?�
If she cannot afford it, yes, she should sell it and buy something she can afford, while providing funds for her other necessities. What is so startling about this? People do it every day.
civitas today:
“He suggests that she sell her house, and presumably live on the proceeds, or perhaps buy a more modest dwelling and free up some cash from the swap.�
Actually, I simply asked if it was reasonable from an economic standpoint to have everything tied up in a house, leaving nothing to live on.
You’re starting to get tangled in your own web, city boy. Time you got your story straight.
Bullshit aside, it really is callous to put pressure on someone like this, someone who isn’t well, isn’t a bludger, and is probably depressed already.
It’s not as though she’s a crook having a big laugh at society. She really is a a decent person, and the comments made to her by Civitas are just shameful.
I don’t know her personally, but I do know her circumstances, and that she is an intelligent good humoured person who’s had some bad luck, that’s all. She’s an example, highlighted here, of someone who deserves respect, and not the dirty low treatment she’s copped from this fool Civitas.
I’ve lived on Housing Commission estates where women on the single mother’s pension have combined it with their charms to live off a succession of ’suitors’, sometimes several at once. They’re able to work but have no intention of ever doing so.
Others who are ugly and without teeth will spend their entire fortnightly payment on a new TV set or other gadget and live off charity groups for the next two weeks. But mind you, it’s amazing how hard up some blokes are, because even these scrags can manage to attract cash suitors.
But when you throw a net out to catch these shonks you drag in decent people as well. People who are just unlucky, and who hate their situation but have no alternative.
I’m more than content to see someone like JanTeh get assistance, just as I’d want assistance for someone in a road accident, for instance. Or what sort of awful society do you want?
This isn’t her fault, she hasn’t planned it; she’s not sneaking about defrauding anyone. All she’s got is the house she lives in, and to demand that she sells it and starts off on the road downhill to absolute penury is more contemptible than I can say. It disgusts me and makes me hopping mad.
But I know there are rotten people who think that way and would tip her out of her home if they could, the rats. And I know there are people who’d move into it without a thought for her predicament.
I keep going on about the yuppie invasion of Melbourne’s inner suburbs, but it’s a case of moneyed people – and a supposed ‘caring’ crowd too – displacing battlers with their own hip lifestyle, and not really caring a damn.
Civitas talks like a rat estate agent, a cold and ruthless character who can only see profit. He’s a fool. Because as I’ve said, if his low dirty ideas were ever put into practise there’d be guns going off all over the place.
Civitas
What happens if Ms Jah Teh did sell her house, move to something ‘more affordable’ and then in a few years, with rising CPI, GST, etc etc find herself in the same position once again. Do you expect her to keep downsizing her abode until she can’t go any further?
Mindy, cardboard boxes are free at most civic-minded supermarkets.
Seriously, try thinking outside the square!
Don Wigan, I’m not sure that intent is enough to make an idea that doesn’t make sense economically suddenly make sense. I can’t see why if it’s a good idea for someone to remain in a situation that occurs through some set of circumstances, when they do not have to, it wouldn’t also be a good idea to voluntarily create that same situation. From an economic position, there’s no difference.
The larger question remains, does it make sense to have every asset you have in a house and have nothing else left over to buy the other things you have to have? The phenomenon of being “house poor” which is what it’s called in the US is just a variation of the idea, except being “house poor” leaves you with a little left over after you’ve bought the house, rather than nothing. When someone is house poor, it doesn’t usually mean that they’re being supported by the taxpayers, they’ve just made a decision to do without a lot of other things. Some people in the US buy the big house and don’t have a dime left over to furnish it. They don’t take vacations etc.
ha ha ha.
Hey!- pigface! Are you up all night?
Do you know how boring you are? As boring as a pimp saying his rosary!
Just piss off.
Little boy.
But Civitas! Have you found your mother yet?
Well maybe you ain’t been looking in the right brothels!
ha ha ha ha ha!
“I can’t see why if it’s a good idea for someone to remain in a situation that occurs through some set of circumstances, when they do not have to, it wouldn’t also be a good idea to voluntarily create that same situation.”
The examples you have used are from overseas, Civitas. So perhaps you are not familiar with the Australian Social Security system. The residential house, to a value of (I think) about $600,000 plus a car and various personal items are exempt from means testing for a pension. Nothing else is.
The system was designed to assist ageing people in Sydney to claim the old-age pension who might otherwise have to sell their lifelong home. I don’t comment on the merits of it, only that it is a long-established political decision which applies to all pensions and which no political party has any plans to abolish.
The system you proposed differs in the point that the property you are intending to acquire is not the established home. Without a very dodgy accountant and lawyer (and even then you might fail), it is hard to see how you could sneak it into the assets test. Far better in the circumstances for you to stick with off-shore shelf companies.
Donaldo, you’ve slaughtered him. In Australia a person’s home is not just their castle, it is their shrine.
No politician would dare tamper with it.
But Cactus Boy Civitas lives in an Arizona teepee and wouldn’t know this. He is a big tourist attraction for Greyhound buses coming through, they all stop for photos of Cactus Boy. “Hey, get a snap of the weirdo!” That’s what they holler, and chuck quarters at him.
Well he don’t do much for it, but golly, everyone’s gotta make a livin’ somehow.
Waal burn mah britches!- look who’s come ter sit aroun’ de ol’ cracker barrel. Why it’s Cactus Boy Civitis!
Hows yo’ been doin’ pardner? Cos ah hears yo’ bin peekin’ in Miss Kittys winder some! Dat right boy? Waal reckon yo’ should be a-knowing dat saloon gal got right ornery. Plumb loco! Hear she durn packin’ a scattergun ter blow yo’ balls off! Haw! Haw! Haw!
Waal ah never would figure on a milksop like yo’ being a peeker, but ain’t dat allus de way! Haw! Haw! Haw!
“The examples you have used are from overseas, Civitas.”
That doesn’t change the economics of it. It wouldn’t matter where you live, is it a good idea to have every asset in a house and nothing left over to finance your other needs? Whther you live in a $150,000 house or
a 6 million dollar mansion.
“The system you proposed differs in the point that the property you are intending to acquire is not the established home.”
The “established home” was likely purchased too. Again, we’re talking about the viability of the idea from an economic standpoint. If it makes sense to have all your assets tied up in a house and take welfare to supply your other needs then it should make sense for everyone to do so, not just some people.
“Without a very dodgy accountant and lawyer (and even then you might fail), it is hard to see how you could sneak it into the assets test.”
There’s no difference between the situations. From an economic standpoint.
Pure coincidence only! 5 days ago, when I mentioned people being put at disadvantage for wanting to to escape from urban poverty by moving out bush …. I had not heard of the rural employment survey nor had the latest temporary work visa scandal come to light.
It’s pretty obvious that civitas is still trolling with the same old stale bait. If it’s troll-feeding fun you’re looking for, you’ll find a greater variety of baits and burleys on offer here: http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/05/10/pro-choice-pro-sex-whos-afraid-of-sex-for-pleasure/
My thanks to Gummo. And to Mark Bahnisch.
And to Civitas, for his lack of talent.
Fools are necessary.
Call me childish but I find RH’s taunts a damned entertaining chorus backdrop to this blog.
It’s the age-old problem, Jase.
You can have quality entertainment and some slanging (RH, Fedya) but also constant flamebaiting (EP) or moderation, civility and none of the above. LP seems to have both and neither.
Mr Soon, you are childish. ha ha ha.
That’s a joke. And you know it. The truth is our politics aren’t far apart.
Thanks again to Gummo, and to Mark Bahnisch, for giving poor RH such an honest fair go.
This blog is a leader. A champion.
R.H.
Thanks, Chairman.
You’ll be happy to know though I had the option of a brulee tonight I passed, and had a “Chocolate Nemesis” instead:
http://www.watt.net.au/content.asp
Accompanied by an Armagnac.
By the river – very nice.
Then I went to some bands:
http://www.brisbanepowerhouse.org/program/?fuseaction=summary&id=658&sd=13&sm=5&sy=2006&ed=13&em=5&ey=2006&ct_id=0&sort=date&q=&cost=
And winter is coming to Brisvegas. There was mist hovering above New Farm park tonight.