In an email from The Guardian, I read the following which struck a chord. I wanted to share it with you. In it Patrick Cummins writes:
"Recently the Labor MP Andrew Leigh told me that, on current trends, our country is one generation away from being as unequal as the United States.
This should be a huge worry for us.
As Jim Chalmers said in a recent speech: “So much of the democratic world is vulnerable because governments are not always meeting the aspirations of working people.”
The treasurer would not ever say it, but we all know who he is talking about. Donald Trump is the cautionary tale of what happens when too much wealth gathers in too few hands.
We might be decades away from that, but we need to start charting a different course now – not least because the high cost of living and unaffordable housing mean that even reasonably good incomes deliver a lower standard of living than we are used to.
We cannot rely on governments of any party to pursue the kind of policies that might address the vulnerability Chalmers referred to – including his own.
Defining and encouraging that new course requires the kind of independent journalism that speaks honestly about power, inequality and the forces shaping our country – journalism like ours at the Guardian. Thank you for supporting it.
Danielle Wood, the head of the Productivity Commission, said after completing a report into economic mobility in Australia that “we shouldn’t take the ‘fair go’ for granted”.
I couldn’t agree more.
Yet we have already seen this year how vested interests are prepared to viciously oppose even small policy changes that would take us in a better direction.
Take Labor’s proposal to make Australians with more than $3m in super pay a bit more tax.
There was a period through May and June when, every day, the Australian and the Australian Financial Review competed with ever more outrageous claims about what would happen were we to trim incredibly generous tax concessions for the richest 0.5% of savers.
It would “make Australia uninvestable”, they said, “destroy entrepreneurship” and “force farmers to sell their land”.
Yet it only took two phone calls – to the lead authors of the last two major inquiries into the retirement system – to expose these claims as hysterical.
Any journalist could have made these calls. So why didn’t they?
It is obvious that this campaign has been driven by a narrow group of powerful vested interests who are outraged they may have to pay 1-2% more in tax each year."
#AusPol #Journalism #VestedInterests #MSM
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