Harden up working families!

I’m really starting to get sick of the fucking “woe is me” attitude of people who want the government to hold their dick throughout their existence at the urinal of life.

A story in The Age today looked at the magic $150,000 mark which the government nominated as the cut off point for the baby bonus means test and Family Tax Benefit B.

For a start no one is claiming that families on a combined of $150,000 (which is 2 1/2 tims the average salary) are rich, however they are not exactly doing it tough and should be able to go through life, have children and educate them without hand outs from the government.

The Age story looks at the Scibberas Family of Mill Park who bring home $150,000 and “certainly aren’t doing it tough”.

However Mrs Scibberas says the cap should be lifted to $200,000 and complained that her only gain at this week’s Budget was through the tax cuts - what did she want, a fucking yacht?

Mrs Schibberas says, “There doesn’t seem to be any reward for people who have put the hard effort in.”

What reward? Why? Working hard and earning good money to send your kids to good schools and provide a comfortable lifestyle for your family is reward enough. It’s no one’s fault but yours if you’re living beyond your more than reasonable means.

It’s the people who have to decide between paying for their kid’s school camp or the weekly shopping who should be getting all the money we can give them. 

I find it ironic that it was a conservative government, hell bent on keeping its filthy grip on power, that has turned middle-class Australians into welfare whores, who think they are the first generation to have children, buy a house and make a better life for themselves and therefore need all the help they can get.

While I hate the phrase “working families” it’s nowhere as damaging to this country as the term “Howard’s battlers” which has made a generation of well-off middle class people actually believe that battling meant not having a new car or sending your kid to a private school.

Instead of obsessing with the selfishness of people on very good incomes why doesn’t The Age visit a family trying to survive on or below the average wage to put things into perspective.

Harden up you whingeing fucks!

Note: I’ve never been on the dole even when out of work; I gave up Auststudy in favour of working part time (because it was shit) and I managed to change careers, pay off HECS, have two children and build a new home (we’re talking in the past eight years) without the benefit of a fucking baby bonus or first-homebuyers grant, on a fraction of what I earn now - which by the way, when added to Mrs Wah’s income is still well shy of $150,000.

Do I want a medal? No, which is my fucking point.

Fuck the so-called rich

Why is there more discussion and even angst over families earning more than $150,000 missing out on the baby bonus than there is about carers missing out on decent weekly payments again?

And how many people pissed off at the apparent “Robin Hood” Budget actually earn less than the numbers, and refuse to deny that like most of us they are working class scum?

The fact is while the government will save billions the well-off people these Budget measures will affect will be relatively minimal.

I love how some people on larger incomes in the dreaded comments section of the Herald Sun are complaining that their incomes of $180,000 barely pay for the mortgage and household expenses. What they don’t tell you is how big their mortgage is - I’m sorry but if you borrow $600,000 when you could have borrowed $450,000 that’s not the government’s problem.

And (sorry for all the questions) how many of the Rudd haters crying foul at cuts in benefits for the well off, the first to whinge about THEIR tax payer dollars paying for mythical compensation to Aborigines and foreign aid?

Finally no one is a calling people who earn $150,000 rich - apart from sub editors who have limited space for headlines. But you can’t deny that you’re beyond a point where the government should be giving hand outs. Unfortunately the ill-directed tax bribes that the Howard Government turned into the very people who espouse capitalism and decry the welfare state, into welfare whores themselves.

I say fuck ‘em!

Dr Who has lost the plot!

This weekend Brendan Nelson showed he is either fucking nuts, or a Labor plant sent in to finish off his Party’s good work - like storm troopers going in after the Luftwaffe’s Blitzkrieg to mop up any pockets of resistance.

Opposing a means test for the Baby Bonus, Dr Nelson, implied that the allowance was given as an appreciation of little babies, rather than a way to couple to have children to keep the birth rate up to counteract our ageing population - while having the added benefit of a vote-winning bribe to the middle classes.

He said ”It’s very, very important that Mr Rudd understands that every mother loves her baby and this should be an Australia where all babies are equal.”

So how will denying rich people the baby bonus change that?

Anyway, not all babies are equal Dr Nelson, and I haven’t seen you or any politician for that matter come out and say how unacceptable it is whenever a child is found dead because over-worked and underfunded social welfare services failed to read warning signs or simply were unable to do anything when they did.

I never saw you, when you were education minister, stick up for state schools and create a funding model that didn’t favour our most elite private schools. And I never saw you oppose a child care funding models that allows listed companies to make mega profits from early education, resulted in child care centres closing in inner city areas and ignored parents who could not find a child care place.

To say the means testing the baby bonus means the government does not value all babies is without a doubt the most stupid thing you will say during your short and disastrous time as opposition leader.

The baby bonus is an expensive indulgence

 

I don’t understand why, with the need to slash and burn the budget to bring inflation down, the Rudd Government has guaranteed the baby bonus at the bribe levels introduced by the Howard Government.

What started as a $3000 non-means tested bribe is now set to rise to $5000 for every child born, while at the same time charity organisations like Bonnie Babes, carers and pensioners are bracing themselves to see what the razor gang will take away from them.

While Rudd has said carers will be no worse off he hasn’t ruled out taking away the $1600 bonus they receive and channeling that money into their minuscule monthly payments. Yet everyone gets a few grand in their skyrocket just for having a baby.

After describing the baby bonus as an expensive flop in 2004 Labor are thinking politically, ahead of wisely, by retaining it at a cost of $1.16 billion a year and rising.

I think there should be some sort of payment made to new parents to help with out-of-pocket medical expenses and even to help buy baby things. But surely it should be means tested and reduced to $1500. The government could also give the mother a Healthcare Card regardless of her partner’s income and put money into more child care services.

This would see the money going where its needed and save hundreds of millions of dollars, avoiding the need to slash the few real social welfare services that the Howard Government didn’t destroy.

Mr Rudd described the baby bonus today as important in helping nudge the country’s birthrate - which is important in an increasingly ageing population. But why it is given to people who don’t need it, while people are missing out on other important welfare services and benefits, because their shitty part-time job puts them over a tax threshold that was low in 1995, is an absolutely fucked up state of affairs.

Finally, anyone who won’t have children because the government isn’t paying them to doesn’t deserve to be a parent.