Ross Gittins has a great piece in the Sydney Morning Herald today, making the obvious point that:
… households earning $150,000 or more - starting at almost twice the median - are in the top 15 per cent of households.
The top 15 per cent aren’t rich, but they’re certainly not battlers. They’re not even anywhere near the middle; they’re up near the top.
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.
But how can people living on two or three times the average income genuinely believe they’re middle-income strugglers?
He goes on to answer his own question, and in doing so, makes the point that people usually have a poor perception of what others’ incomes actually are, and that they tend to compare up rather than down. There are oodles of studies that make that point.
Hence we get quite skewed views of political strategy as well. For instance, while I generally like his work, Andrew Elder at Politically Homeless is just completely off base when he lists a range of federal electorates held by Labor and claims that:
All of those electorates are, or should be, on the Liberals’ list of seats to win back next time. All of them regard $150k as a bare minimum for entry to those communities, let alone sustainability.
Gittens makes the point about higher housing prices in Sydney, so let me just focus on what I know - Brisbane (while noting as an aside, that Elder includes two Adelaide sites, and the cost of housing in Adders is significantly lower than it is here). There’s no way that “$150k [is] a bare minimum for entry to” Brisbane, Bonner, Longman and Petrie. I can assure Elder that very few people in Strathpine or Redcliffe are making 150k. But let’s take Brisbane.
You might find it very hard to buy into Ashgrove let alone New Farm on a household income of 80k (the median), but then, they’re the sorts of places where many people have owned property for ages and around New Farm, Kelvin Grove or the Valley, there are tons of renters and tons of apartments. But go west to Enoggera, Mitchelton and that neck of the woods. A quick search of a real estate site found house prices broadly ranging between 400k and 600k. If you had one income earner on 55k and another on 25k, you’d find banks would have no difficulty whatsoever lending you 400k, and you could probably get 600k, though it might be a bit of a stretch to pay back comfortably. All sorts of calculations go into people’s decisions - including other spending priorities, expectations of future income and capital growth, and so on, but it would simply be flat out wrong to assume that there are Labor held seats in Brisbane where the majority of people are either in the top 15% of households, or incapable of entring the housing market without an income in the top 15% of households.
A bit of perspective is needed in these discussions!
“Fourth, a lot of people on high incomes keep themselves in a perpetual state of feeling they’re having trouble making ends meet by increasing their spending commitments in line with every increase in their income.”
This point in Gittins’ column is a really good one, and is consistent with my own experience. When costs go up, or income shrinks, its very easy to experience that as a struggle because most people habitually increase spending in line with income. Even if you’ve been there for a few years in the past it’s also very easy to forget what life was like living on a pittance, and to develop a sense of entitlement with respect to certain luxuries.
Also, I think there is a widespread perception that those on low incomes are undisciplined, unmotivated, poor financial managers etc - ie ‘undeserving’ - and thus in some way don’t count in the calculation of who is ’struggling’.
Yikes! Just cos the banks will lend you the money doesn’t mean you should! What happened to the old rule of not borrowing more than 3-4 times your gross income? What happens if one of you gets retrenched or you want to start a family?
Maybe people are just much bigger risk takers than me - but it explains how people end up on the 7:30 report saying they have an income for $120,000 and a mortgage of $600,000 (I thought they were crazy for getting themselves into that situation).
…which is something I think Gittins turns around when he makes the point that if you’re on 150k and are “struggling” you must be a poor financial manager yourself (which would include borrowing more than you can reasonably pay back without difficulty)!
Yes I loved that bit too Klaus.
Good post, Kim.
Somewhat OT, why oh why can’t smh.com.au provide a print only html link. I really can’t stand this sort of thing:
Culture??!?!
*Bangs head against wall*
Although, it does strengthen Gittins’ argument somewhat.
I’ve long held to the idea that there is a big difference between being able to pay for something and actually being able to afford it. Conceptually, anyway: my actions probably haven’t been in line with that
Bravo to Ross for writing that piece and putting a bit of perspective on the issue.
Crossed with Chris - my comment at 3 was a response to Klaus at 1.
The fact that houses now cost between 6 and 8 times gross income for one year!
Enoggera and Mitchelton aren’t plush suburbs btw. They’re close-ish to the city, and well served by public transport, schools, etc. but traditionally were seen as downmarket due to the army barracks and the presence of Housing Commission homes. It would be interesting to look at the capital growth there over, say, the last five years - I think people have cottoned onto the fact that they’re pleasant areas nesting below Mt Cootha with high quality (if somewhat degraded) housing stock. It might be more realistic for people on 80k to buy much further out (in the seats Andrew thinks are also ones impossible to buy into!) but lots of factors have contributed to people’s perceptions of their own financial position and the realities - in general (leaving aside government policy), I suspect easy access to credit has had a lot to do with it.
There was a post on another blog (sorry, I’m a blogslut) which put it something like this: You’re struggling on $150 000, living it easy as a pensioner and rolling round the floor covered with money on the dole.
And as for those lucky, lucky, lucky bastards, disabled pensioners…ah, we can all only just aspire to such a life of luxury and decadence!
You’re a hard woman, Kim.
On the front cover of, in Lleyton Hewett’s words, “a certain kind of magazine”, we are today alerted that Bec Hewett nee Cartwright is facing a heartbreaking decision about whether or not to have another baby.
The decision has become even more heartbreaking with Bec and Lleyton facing the prospect of having to do without the baby bonus, Family Tax Benefit B and the dependent spouse rebate, as a result of budget measures which cruel people like Ross Gittins and yourself approve of.
These budget measures - reflecting the socialist callousness of Rudd, Swan and Tanner and the feminist malevolence of Gillard, Plibersek, Macklin, etc. - will, if combined with the continued southward trajectory of Lleyton’s tennis career, eventually lead to a situation where poor Bec will no longer be seen in the grandstands of major tennis stadiums and might even have to be engaged in some combination of study and paid work - what cruel, unusual and degrading punishment for a 24 year old woman in contemporary Australia!
A real perspective-building exercise is to think about where being in the top 15% of Australian households puts you in world terms.
There are reasons to encourage solar PV and solar hotwater, which have little to do with household incomes. Strange that the Swann budget uses a ’sudden death’ cutoff for the solar PV subsidy. Most tax rebates etc ‘phase out’ over a range of incomes. “Sudden death” looks like a policy implemented suddenly (without Treasury modelling? without time to think of a phase-out equation?).
I’m not talking about baby bonus or Medicare rebates etc, just solar PV. I think most people who were contemplating installing rooftop solar PV, [pre-Swann] were amazed that the Federal subsidy was as high as $8000 on a unit retaling at $12,000 or $13,000. Ratty & $weetie loved solar PV, did they?
OK, so well-off folk don’t need a big subsidy, poor folk do. Why not announce that henceforth everyone on or below AWE gets the full $8,000 subsidy, but this tapers off down to zero $ at (say) 3 times AWE, or 2 times AWE? Then you’ll probably get extra take-up. Then the manufacturers and retailers start to gain some economies of scale, and the price may reduce.
I’m not arguing that a family on $100,000 or $150,000 is battling. I just think policy should go beyond the question of “battler” vs “rich” (but not ignore that aspect). A bit more nuance, Swannie.
I reckon Marn Ferguson had a hand in this. Just a hunch.
cheerio
Well I think that just reinforces the point that housing is unaffordable for many. At risk of repeating myself too many times - just because the banks will lend you the money doesn’t mean you should - and certainly doesn’t make it affordable. Many people are taking quite high risks and we’re seeing the consequences of that as interest rates rise.
Its hard to be sympathetic to someone who borrows beyond their means (and a family on a combined income of 80k who borrows 400k is certainly doing that).
Yep, but the goalposts moved some time in the last decade, Chris. People don’t think they’re borrowing beyond their means. It would be interesting to examine the whole culture of entitlement/handouts that crept into budgetary politics with Howard in this context.
Lets not get into solar PV again here, there’s perfectly good thread devoted to it.
I’m just going to smirk a lot, because as one of those rich folks (my wife’s fault not mine), I got my solar rebate application in with one week to spare, and we’re getting the full $5k baby bonus because it doesn’t kick in till 1 January. This is all a joke and we don’t want it, but we reckon we’ll spend it better than the government so are buying green shares (or a plasma, I’m arguing for the plasma).
Seriously though, if you’re a parent trying to negotiate the FTB parts A and B, and all the other rubbish concessions and whatnot for having kids, without an accountant, it’s just a disaster (the less said about that module of e-Tax the better). I would forgo all of our bollocks lurks for a clean simple income tax system where most people don’t even have to put in a return, and the savings go towards welfare for tax accountants and lawyers (who can get real jobs) and a 0.5% reduction in income tax.
Back in 1976, when we applied for a home loan, the bank would not allow us to borrow above a sum that would lead to weekly repayments being above 25% of our after-tax income.
Restrictive, but prudent.
These days you hear of much more risky lending/borrowing. Even the former Treasurer Co$tello, a few years ago when interest rates started rising, said that borrowers “should consider whether they would be able to afford repayments on a home loan, if interest rates were to rise by (say) 2% above the present rate.” Good advice, IMHO.
But the lending officers in banks weren’t telling folk to be cautious and prudent. A friend who wanted a very modest loan recently found the bank chappie saying “borrow an extra few hundred thousand $ !!” The friend was astounded, and had to restrain the bank chappie’s slavering lust to lend.
I don’t think Co$tello/Howard deserve blame (through budgetrary politics). There were “first home buyers’ grants in the past, I believe. If living standards (partly measured by plushness of residence) are rising, why wouldn’t Joe Blow want to participate? In the past, the bank might stop him or offer him a much lower loan than he desired. I’d rather that, than the ridiculous nonsense of “low doc loans” we saw in the US, and its consequences.
cheerio
One of the reasons the goalposts have moved is because people have made use of the lower rates and larger amounts being loaned to buy bigger/better/better located houses. Giving individuals more freedom to borrow has resulted in a kind of housing cult where the ultimate aim is to give your life away to owning your home. It’s a vicious little cycle, especially in places like Sydney where it quickly became the norm to seal yourself into your own McMausoleum with an enormous mortgage. There are few ways in which policy can be shaped against this encroaching zombification.
I open the local paper and I can find pretty nice house and land packages for $220 - $250 000 for very modern 3 br house, a bit far away but on a train line, and I think that some people don’t know how lucky they are, the ‘housing crisis’ is a matter of unreasonable expectations as much as anything.
“McMausoleum”
*splutter*
Go to the pool room. Go directly to the pool room. Do not collect $200.
wilful: I’m guessing Rosewood. Am I correct?
No sorry I’m Melbourne, I’m thinking of Werribee and the SW growth corridor. Also Sunbury and that area.
Look, I wouldn’t want to live there, but the house I bought in the inner city was a run down dump and we lived without a kitchen for several months etc, had an outside dunny, like our parents did, it wasn’t that bloody hard. Excessive expectations is my take on the matter.
wilful: if you’re in the inner-city, any plasma that costs $5000 is going to be way too big for your lounge room.
Spend $2K on the television, and spend the rest on green shares, if you like.
AAARGGHH!! (Bangs head against wall repeatedly).
(seriously, there’s no chance I’m getting a plasma - a trail bike is a much more likely source of green guilt. For one thing, there’s just nothing on the box these days.)
I do wish people (Gittins included) would stop using gross numbers in these comparison. The $150K limit is being applied to couples, with and without children, to remove access to family tax benefit B and the dependent spouse tax offset.
A single income couple on $150K currently has a disposable income that is 3.75 times higher than that of the same couple without any private income at all. Not the enormous multiples being tossed around here, but 3.75. After the budget change this will drop to 3.62 by my calculations.
Now, I’m not saying a person on a 3.x multiple needs assistance, I’d just like people to get a feel for the actual multiples, not some humungous fanciful garbage figure.
sorry, that is a single income couple with a child under 5 - I was thinking about FTB part B but didn’t put the little sprog in the text.
Paul Norton @10 it get’s worser!
Those sports hating interleftuals are suggesting Hecs, for OUR Lleyton, retrospectivelee.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23733349-5013871,00.html
When will this comunis madnes end?
Couldn’t agree more Klaus K. This is a feature of most of the whinging letters to the editor from these “new poor” on $150k+. Mostly they imply it by emphasising how hard they work, with the logical (in their world) conclusion that everyone on a lower income is lazy and unproductive. A couple of published letters stated it outright.
Bouquets to Gittins for bursting their self-satisfied great financial managers bubble.
Ambigulous @12, I think tapering the solar pv subsidy as per your suggestion is a good idea. That way the full subsidy is directed to the people who need it most.
There was a government scheme called the Home Savings Grant Scheme in the 70s. It was paid to eligible applicants to assist in the purchase of their first home.
To be eligible, you had to save (I think) $2000 in a designated account over 2 years to qualify for the maximum grant of $750. The amount of grant was calculated on a sliding scale depending on how much had been saved in the time scale.
The amount of the grant was subsequently increased to $2000, before the scheme was abandoned. However, the underlying purpose of the grant was that the applicants had to work for it by saving roughly the equivalent of a 10% housing deposit at the time. I don’t know if the current grant requires a saving component.
And Ambigulous @16, you’re right. In the 70s and the early 80s, lenders wouldn’t allow borrowers to commit more than 25% of their nett income to mortgage payments and the upper limit of the loan was calculated on that income. Any other commitments eg car loans etc, were deducted to calculate the income free to service mortgage payments and calculate the amount of the loan. Overcommitted couples were routinely denied finance.
Back then, lending institutions also made the decision based only on the husband’s income even if both partners were working, basing their decision on the premise that most married couples would at some time have children and there would only be one income to service the loan.
If you were a single woman, forget it. That’s what gave building societies their big start and significant share of the housing loan market and how I bought my first property.
BTW, great post, Kim.
Now, I’m not saying a person on a 3.x multiple needs assistance, I’d just like people to get a feel for the actual multiples, not some humungous fanciful garbage figure.
The argument is not about whether these people are the equivalent of Kerry Packer or Scrooge McDuck rolling in his piles of wealth, but only whether they should consider themselves entitled to welfare.
Precisely, Helen!
Gittins makes that crystal clear.
I blieve the term is now officially ’struggling Abbotts”
Heh!
Joe2 @ 27,
Aw, Gawd Forbid our sports stars should pay money for their training. Anyway, it can’t be HECS because that stands for Higher EDUCATION Contribution Scheme.
Look, you know, everyone bangs on about how hard it is for pensioners, but I ask you, what would a pensioner know about struggling?
I mean, yeah, we’re pulling down $150 k a year, but gees, we pay tax. And we’ve got a humongous mortgage (the reno alone set us back $200 k, but what are you suggesting? that we watch TV in the same room as the kids?).
And we’re paying school fees, which given that Liam and Tayla couldn’t even read and write at the local primary are a necessity, and anyway they’d look a bit out of it at the ballet if they weren’t going to the same school as the others.
And running the Tarago (which we won’t be able to afford to upgrade now) and the 4WD (which we do need, you try going skiing without one) are majorly expensive, do you know how much petrol they use?
And put private health on top of that, ‘cos I know their teeth look OK now but they’ll probably need braces, just in case, and anyway I’ve just seen a few wrinkles, and well, you know, it’s an investment, looking good.
And it’s not like we’re not doing our bit for the economy, what with employing a cleaner and a gardener and getting someone to wash and iron the clothes and a babysitter ‘cos usually we’re not home until the kids are in bed.
Bloody pensioners. I mean, all they have to do is eat.
Thanks Jane @ 1.41pm, and apologies to all mortgagees and renters and pensioners for raising the dreaded solar PV. It’s just that my family missed out by a couple of weeks!
Jane, I too recall the bank counting “only the male income” (1976). But the second bank we tried had a local manager who saw sense and allowed us to count my wife’s income too.
My guess is that bountiful lending policies have ALLOWED imprudent borrowing (esp where potential borrowers don’t allow for possible interest rate rises in their own calculations and estimates).
Who to blame? Foolish banks? Relaxed and comfortable regulators? Governments? [State Govts reap stamp duty on land & house sales; local govt loves to have more ratepayers and higher house values] Estate agents? Special first home buyer grants? Greed? Affluence?
Back in the ’60’s Australia was known as a land with very high rates of home ownership; many families took out 25-year loans [a big fraction of the average person’s working life - say 40+ years if lucky enough never to be unemployed]. I don’t think these main features have really changed.
I think Howard & Co$tello (specifically) had bugger-all effect on this picture.
- must rush off to put in a “vendor’s bid”!
(strange, strange: am I going to buy the property from myself? is it a tax lurk??]
Hrm - exactly how do you define welfare? If you change the tax system so someone on $150,000 pays less tax if they have a child compared to someone who doesn’t have a dependent child - is that welfare?
Medical care is not means tested - is that welfare? Millionaires can certainly afford to pay for their own medical care. What about government funded maternity leave for women earning $200,000/yr - is that welfare?
Is welfare only cash payments?
Hrm - exactly how do you define welfare? If you change the tax system so someone on $150,000 pays less tax if they have a child compared to someone who doesn’t have a dependent child - is that welfare?
Medical care is not means tested - is that welfare? Millionaires can certainly afford to pay for their own medical care. What about government funded maternity leave for women earning $200,000/yr - is that welfare?
Is welfare only cash payments?
Hang on!
As prominent members of the pseudo-left, shouldn’t LP be standing up for these pseudo-battlers? How else will they get their bourgois-air-fare-discount revolution!
*exits whistling Change in Mood*
Bank just sent me a letter offering me a pre-approved $44,000 credit card . FFS!!! At nearly 20% interest!!! That’s $8800 a year in interest payments alone if it were maxed out. What sort of fool would sign up to that? The offered amount is like over 4 times the limit of current card, which has no debt on it, which is I guess why they want me to sign up to that poverty trap. Maybe they are nervous about paying me interest on my cash savings and are trying to trick what they must suppose is a totally gullible mind into sending them all it’s money.
Still, Kim, I live in Auchenflower and we’re DINKs (actually right now officially we are single income as I quit my job), well-off, always thought of myself in recent years as well off, but I can’t afford to buy round here. Actually, maybe I could, but I think a property crash is around the corner and I guess I’ll be buying low then, instead of paying top-of-the-market now.
BTW it’s my (anecdotal) opinion having currently quit my job and looking for another one that the IT jobs market has considerably slowed, even compared to say January last year. Slowdown sooner than later.
A much repeated quote I’ve seen was someone on $150K (paraphrasing F.Scott Fitzgerald?)complaining that “.. well off people had higher expenses because of their lifestyle”. It just breaks my heart.
Helen and Kim (@ 29 & 30)
I take it from this that you don’t believe in horizontal equity in the tax system? Not that FTB B is a good example!
I also wonder, in the context of welfare, what you think an appropriate rate of withdrawal is? Labor has been critical in the past of EMTRs higher than the top marginal rate being imposed on welfare recipients. That doesn’t seem to have stopped them imposing an average effective tax rate of over 50% on each and every dollar of that $150,001.
Personally, I think high EMTRs on welfare withdrawal can be argued for (and higher than 50%) but I’m wondering what the LP crowd thinks?
mckenzie @ 34, That deserves a LOL!
I’m not so sure why this Gittins piece is being talked about so much in the sense that I just thought it states the bleeding obvious. If you’re on more than $150k and not living comfortably then most would consider a trip to the mirror to be in order. What got me thinking was why these pillocks were popping up in the press just after Budget time. Was it an attempt by the MSM to say “hey check these “struggling” peeps out!” kind of thing or was it to sink the boot into the Rudd Government? Perhaps a bit of both.
The only thing that annoyed me about the Gittins article was his comment that “The top 15 per cent aren’t rich…” Um, they ARE. They are in the top 15% of households in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Of course they are rich! What else would you call it?
(bangs head on breakfast table yet again)
Chris (a different one) and Spog:
This segues into another topic, one too vast for me to write about on this thread- not “welfare” (aka Middle class welfare, the Tax Benefit part B’s and Baby Bonuses and other crappy policies designed to stymie working women) but the “social wage”. How much did we depend on the social wage before? Now, when it’s $50 up front to see your GP and the frighteners have been put on you about the terrible things in store should you send your children to the mere public school system, how much has the income necessary to feel “safe” increased?
As a household, we’re on about half of what the people discussed in this thread earn, and I can tell you, from the point of view of education, health etc - I don’t feel safe. Maybe they don’t either. Because John H and Peter C have been drumming it into them, year after year until 2007-eleven, that we are living in economic nirvana. They don’t want to believe that that’s not so. I think they’re safer than my household is, but the gaping maw of education, health and transport loom ever larger. Large enough to swallow really good incomes.
The other Big Topic is the shrinking “middle class” and the shifting of risk onto the middle and working classes. John Quiggin and Crooked Timber are writing and commenting about these things.
Ross Gittins said:
“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?”
Does anyone spot what’s wrong with that statement? The policy cutoff for the baby bonus is $150,000 a year for the household . In many cases that involves two working people - who’d earn an average of $75,000 a year each. That’s only 1.25 times the average according to Mr Gittins. Talk about quite a misrepresentation of the facts!
I’m not saying that the baby bonus means testing policy is wrong but I think people should try and base their arguments on facts.
Alaistair, you might want to consider median personal income alongside median household income. Household income is very rarely a matter of doubling personal income. If you have a personal income of 75k you’re in the top 10%. The mean of personal income is $32,337. The mean household income is $95,542. The conclusion you should draw from this is that there are very few households containing two high income earners.
Note also - means not medians.
Have a look at Andrew Leigh’s stats:
http://andrewleigh.com/?p=1926
So Gittins is unlikely to be misrepresenting anything.
Chris at 37, it seems to me you’re doing some terminological hair-splitting. Take a look at how the Commonwealth Treasury defines transfers - it includes tax concessions (etc) as well as direct benefits. The effect is much the same. The issue of tax that high income earners should pay should be separated from whether or not the government ought to extend concessions to them of whatever nature. That’s the confusion and the mess that set in with the Howard years.
spog at 41, it seems to me that the question of EMTRs differs whether we are talking about the means-testing of benefits at high income levels (where it doesn’t much bother me) or whether we are talking about the creation of labour market disincentives at low and medium income levels (where it should be taken into account imho).
Kim,
I am not saying that a household earning $150,000 is not above average.
Gittins specifically refers to someone earning $150,000 a year, when the policy cutoff is for $150,000 a year for a household . Clearly there is a difference between an individual and a household. I find his statement clearly misleading.
This statement of fact in his article is more to the point:
“Figures updated from the official Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia surveyshow that, for 2008-09, the median income of “households” will be about $80,000 a year before tax. And households earning $150,000 or more - starting at almost twice the median - are in the top 15 per cent of households.”
Oh, ok, Alastair. Sorry - missed that. Perhaps it was a typo? But the error doesn’t seem to me to affect the substance of what he’s arguing, for the reasons I just gave.
Kim - actually I was trying to point out that all of the things I listed - baby bonus, medical care, government funded maternity leave are all essentially welfare - sometimes you get the funds as cash, other times as goods or services. However, we decide to almost randomly means test some but not others.
One other inconsistency (which may be addressed by the tax review) is that whilst we decide how much tax a person pays based on individual income, we decide how much welfare they get on household income. This leads to some very strange distortions in the system and I don’t think you can have a fair system which does that.
Maybe that Holy Grail the Henry report will sort all this out, Chris? I think it’s meant to.
Alastair, that was definitely a mistake on Ross Gittins’ part, but it still doesn’t make households earning over 150,000 eligible for welfare payments in my book. Note that the complainers were trying to argue that they’d lose their welfare payments if they “earned one cent over 75,000″ just in the first half of the financial year. Now if I’m half of a couple who are both earning half of $150,000 and I have a baby, and we earn over 75,000 just in the half of the financial year that we’re in, then we are seriously comfortably off.
We’re just about bang on the median income. Earn over 75,000 in 6 months while having a kid? in my dreams.
These people should be made to make their complaints face to face with people on the disability support pension of $14,216.80 a year (or the Widows’ allowance which is even less.)
A household with income of $150K is in the top 15% of household income.
Whatever happened to the idea that people who should get welfare payments are those who are struggling, at the bottom of the pile, or at least in bottom half?
Alastair, did you read Gittins’ article? He explains why it ends up being just the primary income earner who counts, because of the way and timing of when household income is determined (ie. at a time when mum is usually off work, and for most people, that means without pay).
Alastair.
Cheers for pointing out that the $150,000 can be made up of two income earners- so in effect the grand amount of !50,000 is shared by two income earners. It would be nice for one of us to drop off the income radar and then cry poor as it would appear the majority are doing.”Wake up people - this country needs to grow and work is the only way the family units, households are ever going to do it”
$150,000 devide by two = growth not waelth that should be disadvataged!!!
Gittins said what needed to be said, but going by the ridiculous auction now underway over fuel prices, no-one in Canberra was reading. What is it with Australians that they expect politicians to be able to “do something” about globally driven oil prices? Rudd’s proposal to cut the GST impost on petrol is estimated to cut the retail price by up to 3c a litre, which could be wiped out in a day by another $5 a barrel spike in the price of crude. In the meantime, that government tax largesse cuts into the budget for spending on health and education, just so that all the whingeing, pig ignorant bourgeois “battlers” in their Nissan X-Trails and Toyota Klugers can spend a couple of bucks less filling up their 4WDs. I despair of this country and its economically ignorant media.