In 2095, You Won’t Be Able To Pay Your Rent Unless You Get A Pay Rise Before Then!!
Now, I’d like to be able to concentrate on the actual government. I’d like to be inspired enough to make mention of all the things they’ve done that don’t go quite far enough. However, most of what they’re doing seems like a step in the right direction and – after the years of the Liberals saying “Hold my beer,” when somebody says that it can’t be worse than this – Labor seems like a small step in the right direction.
And every time I think I should write something about how they should be taking big bold steps, along come the Liberals with something that I just can’t ignore.
I want to be very clear here. I’m making a comment on the politics of this and not whether it’s right or wrong.
The politics of the Liberals on the proposed changes to superannuation make me wonder if they are actually enjoying being the Opposition because they can just complain and nobody blames them for anything.
I just can’t believe that they were jumping up and down and saying, “See, while the proposed super changes only affect 0.5% of people now, in thirty years time they’ll affect ten percent!”
Let me just repeat that in case you weren’t paying attention.
“See, while the proposed super changes only affect 0.5% of people now, in thirty years time they’ll affect ten per cent!“
Now the first point I’d make is that most people don’t think that they’ll be in that ten per cent so it’s hardly likely to cause them to join a protest where they demand that the three million is raised to four million so that they won’t be affected. I doubt that few would be moved to even write to their MP demanding action.
The second point is that nobody in their thirties is thinking thirty years ahead…
Actually, I don’t think anybody thinks thirty years ahead because it’s generally just too depressing. I mean, getting there is a great triumph and we all feel pleased and we don’t go, “I’m 43 and I’ve had a long and fruitful life but I’m too old now and I hope that I’m given a merciful release before I turn 44.” Of course, if you’d asked the same person as a 13-year-old what life would be like for them in thirty years, they’d have said: “All over!”
When it comes to superannuation, I remember organising a guest speaker for the staff once. I’d heard the man speak and, as well as being informative, he was entertaining and managed to actually make people laugh. Do you think I could convince anyone under forty to give up their lunchtime to hear him speak?
Nah, they said that they didn’t believe that super would still be around by then or that they’d worry about when they were older or what’s superannuation…
So the idea that in thirty years’ time, the number will have increased so that it’s more but probably still not them, do you think that anyone… I mean, anyone, is going to feel so deeply concerned that they actually take action. It was hard enough to convince people to do something about climate change and that has the potential to wipe out humanity as well as several other more usual species. “Climate change? Look, ok, we’ll agree to net zero providing we can wait until somebody invents something that means that we can get there by starting in 2045. There, you can’t accuse us of not taking it seriously just because we don’t agree with The Greens who seem to think that action is urgent and we need to actually do something now and not just promise to act long after we’re no longer the government…”
Yes, while the media chatters away and complains – particularly those who actually have super balances of $3 million plus – the rest of us are more concerned about interest rates and the future prospects for our children.
Still, I guess it takes the media’s attention away from Robodebt and the slim chance that they’d report the obfuscation, the inability of people to recall basic information and the obvious fact that it wasn’t incompetence that led to legal advice not being attached or passed on: it was a design feature of the standover merchant tactics that were employed by almost everyone involved.
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15 comments
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Terence Mills -
New England Cocky -
Gangey1959 -
pierre wilkinson -
Michael Taylor 
-
Blayon -
GL -
Canguro -
GL -
andy56 -
Michael Taylor -
leefe -
Michael Taylor -
leefe -
wam
Return to home pagePeter Dutton makes a policy statement :
I don’t know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I’m against it
No matter what it is or who commenced it
I’m against it
Your proposition may be good
But let’s have one thing understood:
Whatever it is, I’m against it
And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it
I’m against it
Rossleigh ….. in 30 years hopefully all the alleged criminals who condoned the Robodebt crimes will have passed and be thankfully irrelevant to the world.
@Terence Mills: Excellent poem and pics comment
I am just hanging out for the day my super account has so much in it I need to pay 30% on what I earn, withdraw or am living on as a result.
Climate change will have been reversed so fucking far people will be ice- skating on the Murray River first though.
Life must be tough as a 0.5% er.
but just ask any billionaire and they will tell you that $3 million is not that much money, but an increase in tax of $7,500 is crippling
No biggy, but just another example of greedy banks.
Carol and I have a joint account; there’s not much in it, it’s always in credit, and it has no overdraft facility. Yet out of the blue this month we see we’ve been charged interest and an account fee.
Can someone explain why we’d be charged interest on our own money?
How many more ways will the Lib-Labs find to twerk their unaffordable rentals program over the next 72 years?
Groucho Marxs song ‘I’m against it’ could be the theme of the Opposition, forever. Dull political theatre and on-going complaints wrapped up in a nice short succinct sentence. Not sure why the backing chorus of professors were dressed up like Russian Orthodox priests. And the reference to Darwin & Huxley? 100 years ago, meh.
Good old LNP, they do so like using the now tired and hoary things that will occur in the future routine. They’ll almost all be dead so who gives a shit about now.
Michael, I can’t but I’ll offer the following purely subjective observations…
Banks are not in the business they’re in for their customers’ benefit.
If banks can find a way to increase their revenue, they will, even if, sometimes, what they do is illegal.
For a bank, a business in the business of money management and maximising profits, having a ‘whatever it takes’ approach to growing the revenue flow is best practice, from their perspective.
If turning a blind eye towards the use of their facilities by criminal enterprises and cartels means a growth in revenue, and if they believe they can get away with it, then that’s an acceptable cost of business; profits first, ethics second.
For banks, their customers are not individuals with needs & concerns and everyday worries about the costs of living; they are merely a name and number on a database and an unknown entity to be mined for whatever benefit the bank can extract dollar-wise.
But I’m sure you knew all that already…
[these observations from a correspondent who one day had a modest but useful balance and the next day a zero balance because the bank gave it all to the federal government without even notifying the said correspondent.]
DoPe is getting really desperate now.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/perrottet-promises-major-future-fund-for-children-at-liberal-launch-20230312-p5crds.html
This crap from the party that while in power would have made how many times Scummo, The Spud and the rest of the gang farted on any given day a national secret.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/12/coalition-demands-government-release-indigenous-voice-legal-advice
Canguro, your dead right. What i find really annoying is that banks are supposedly facilitators. They lend money so you can do something productive with it, like start a business. What we have in reality is that the banks make so much money, they are now THE BUSINESS. Surely this is one of capitalism’s major flaws. Banks will lend for housing, credit cards at 21% but woe is you if you have no job.
My only guess, and it’s a crazy one, is that because the account doesn’t have a lot of money in it the bank is missing out on income from the interest they would have received if they lent out my money.
Like I said, it was a crazy guess.
But why else would they charge me interest on my own money. 🤷🏻♂️
Btw, it’s not just me. Since I put that on Twitter someone else said it happened to them too.
It puts a new meaning to the term “bank robbers”.
Michael:
This is rather odd, because I’ve just had the bank “refund” me the princely sum $0.98 for undercalculated interest on my savings account. (How that can be considered to a refund, I don’t know.) Maybe they’re robbing you to pay me? Can’t have the funds for a slip like that come out of their meagre little profits after all, can they?
leefe, I received $0.51 this morning but it was a different account.
Redistribution of wealth. Who wooda thunk it from a bank?
gangey 1959
cannot follow your post?
my take is if you salary sacrifice, you reduce your taxable income and pay 15% on the money sacrificed. For the maroty of earners that little perk is not available because you need the money to live so you pay tax. For the rich they would be paying 37/45%. So 15% is bloody good for those who don’t need all their cash to live.