By Ric Testori
How often do we hear how taxpayers are funding something or other? In most cases, when it´s put like this, we can assume that our money is being wasted on something, like politician’s travel rorts. And we hate our money to be wasted, don´t we! So statements like these can usually be taken as an appeal to our emotions rather than our intellect, and most are probably fact-free.
Apart from the the fact that the target of some government spending may be either good or bad depending on our views and opinions, it is ALWAYS false that it is being paid with taxpayers’ money. In most cases, it´s being paid for with non-taxpayers’ money!
As an example, let’s take the money the federal government is going to give to Adani for it´s enormous coal mine – a billion dollars! Firstly, we are told that this is only a loan, not a gift. But if many experts are correct then that mine is likely to go bust, which means the loan will never be repaid. So it is, actually, a gift. Now here’s the question: Who pays for it?
Both the LNP and ALP are proud of their economic management abilities and encourage us to cheer when they tell us they aim to “balance the budget”. Put simply, they proudly tell us that their spending (expenses) will be limited to their tax revenues (income), just like your household or small business budget. Like you, they will be responsible and stay within their means. We should ask if you would be considered responsible if you failed to pay for your kid’s education or your family’s health requirements, but let’s not go there just now.
So, to balance their budget our government would need to limit expenses by cutting welfare spending to cover the loss of Adani’s billion dollar gift/loan. And now we get to the point – the people who are having their incomes cut, the ones on welfare, are rarely taxpayers. They are the involuntary unemployed workers who don’t have a job because there are not enough jobs to go around. Or part-time workers who’ve just had their penalty rates cut. Or those on the minimum wage who’s real income has fallen but the government firmly refuses to increase that miserly wage. These are the poor bastards who will pay that billion dollars – the non-taxpayers.
So please stop accepting the bullshit that your taxes are paying for something – they aren’t. In fact the only time your taxes are paying for something is when the government’s budget is in surplus. Think about it – they are in surplus because they are taxing you MORE than they are spending. You are being overcharged! And you need to understand that the government has absolutely no need for your taxes to cover their spending because they create the money that you and they spend. The whole balanced budget story is a lie, it is not based on reality.
Here is a video which explains it better than I ever can:
