quackademic1d ago

I have been on both sides of this story.

Graduating in the 1970s as an undx autistic woman I completely lacked the skills required to identify & apply for any kind of suitable work. I spent 8 years on dole. None of the help I received was useful & the constant rejection was soul destroying. After a while I decided to see the payments as an arts grant, & pursued deep dives into special interests, meeting likeminded people & having adventures. Eventually I joined the APS via the clerical entrance exam & that environment, with its clear hierarchies & explicit rules, suited me well. I worked across a lifespan of social policy areas & by the time privatisation of government services became a thing was in a role whose job was to make our part of the organisation look as if it was delivering the services we were funded to do while also providing services to commercial clients & running a surplus - all the while keeping our unionised professional staff happy by ensuring minimal change to their work. In practice this meant providing people on benefits with minimal services while recording them as greater than they were, providing lucrative services to our commercial clients & showing most of their payments as profit. This situation was intolerable to me & as I was unable not to name it my time there was colourful. When I returned to policy work it became increasingly clear that our job was to tell the minister what they wanted to hear, bc if the minister didn’t like what they heard from us they’d buy their research & policy advice elsewhere. We would routinely assess tenders for projects that were transparently designed to deliver the desired results. Escaping into a career in research saved my life.

I was completely unsurprised by #RoboDebt. Colleen Taylor is a hero.

In such environments the price of a career is collusion. No wonder autistic folx burn out & leave.

#PublicAdministration #AusPol #unemployment #ActuallyAutistic #ethics

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/23/job-that-changed-me-dole-office-people-desperately-wanted-work?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A job that changed me: At the dole office, I met very few ‘bludgers’. Most people desperately wanted work

Graduating into a recession, my role at Australia’s government employment agency was sobering. I felt how easily my place could have been reversed

The Guardian
Show threadMoz1d ago

@26pglt yep.

The system as a whole is designed to produce 5% unemployment (NAIRU), with more as required to stop wage growth matching inflation. Other benefits must be restricted to force people onto the dole where they can be counted, and the dole itself limited to encourage people to take whatever job is offered no matter how terrible.

No wonder people with a sense of justice can't work there.

Show threadOwl Eyes1d ago
@moz @26pglt by their logic, why must wage growth be held in check, so it doesn't exceed inflation?
Show threadMoz17h ago

@d1 @26pglt because the goal is to restrain spending. "excess purchasing power" in the jargon.

The naive version is taxing rich people, because they have a lot of money and spend some of it. But that's inefficient, because they have enough money to avoid reducing spending until tax gets very high indeed.

People who spend every dollar they get, OTOH, will spend less by exactly the amount taken from them. What they spend it on is irrelevant to this amoral analysis.

Show threadOwl Eyes11h ago
@moz @26pglt further dumb question - what bad thing happens - according to their logic - when there's "excess purchasing power"? Does the Ferrari dealership run out of Ferraris or something?
Show threadquackademic11h ago
@d1 @moz the theory is that when people have more money to spend, prices rise.
Show threadOwl Eyes10h ago
@26pglt @moz well, prices are rising a lot here ( #Canada ) and times are tight, so I think the thoery is kind of rubbish.
Show threadMoz

@d1 @26pglt the theory kind of works, people who have limited discretionary income *and* mortgages can have that taken away by interest rate rises.

What's bleakly amusing is that we also know that increasing tax on rich people/companies does the same. But 10,000 poor kids with no shoes is less newsworthy than one banker having to keep their old Ferrari for another year, so our government do the former. Poor kids don't have PR firms or friends in the bought media.

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