Increasing JobSeeker payments is ‘sustainable’, new study reveals

whiteknight wrote on Jul 5^th, 2020 at 1:03pm:


Why should taxpayers give dole bludgers more sit down money?

The dole was never meant to be a lifestyle choice if you want more money get a job the minimum wage is nearly $20 hour

looks like a closet Greeny has been exposed as only a Greeny posts character assassination stuff like that.

What is hilarious is when the Greeny becomes really riled and uses the last Greeny resort of falsely accusing his tormentor of defaming him/her with veiled threats of court action etc.

But nevertheless Increasing Jobseeker Payments Is UNsustainable as the taxpayers can't afford their money to be stolen like this.

Let the Battlers be on the Dole and the Bludgers/Scammers be in the Australian Foreign Legion. 

I'm sure you can all tell the 'difference' between the two?

Just a small observation.

The money don't grow on trees.

To give money away, someone will have to give money to the grubberment.

Usually, tgat is the people who work for a living.

We already pay excessive taxes to accommodate an expensive grubberment as is.

Now we Will be expected to pay even more tax so that those not working have more.

At some point it will be worth more not to work, than to work.

And then no one will be working, and there will be no tax, no money, everyone loses.

I pat 48 cents in the dollar for every dollar I earn, I find this unfair.

Cut the dole, so that I can have what I have worked for

And those not working can have what they have earned.

It's something to bear in mind when the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) releases its monthly unemployment data on Thursday.

Economists think the official unemployment rate probably rose again last month, from 7.1 per cent to somewhere around 7.6 per cent.

But the official unemployment number won't say what you think it says.

Why? Because the Government's JobKeeper payments have been keeping hundreds of thousands of workers "attached" to their workplaces through the COVID-19 lockdown, and those workers have still been considered employed even if they haven't been working any hours.

It has made interpreting the unemployment data difficult.

The official unemployment rate has risen from 5.2 per cent in March, to 6.4 per cent in April, and to 7.1 per cent in May.

But according to the ABS, if we included the number of people who are still considered officially employed but who have been working zero hours (because they've had no work or they've been "stood down"), the official unemployment rate would be much higher.

Under the expanded definition, the unemployment rate would have been 11.7 per cent in April and 9.5 per cent in May.

That shows why it is so difficult to have a meaningful discussion about economics using official figures.

If someone told you Australia's unemployment rate was only 7.1 per cent, and the economy was just 2 or 3 percentage points away from full employment, they would sound psychedelic.

But that's the definitional game.

We may be in the middle of our worst economic calamity since the Great Depression, but the official unemployment rate is relatively low on paper.

Full employment is not full employment.

The unemployment rate is not what it seems.

Like other economists in the private sector, Citi's Josh Williamson had to put a caveat on his unemployment forecasts last week.

"There's a high degree of uncertainty around the monthly labour force survey data because of idiosyncrasies in the way the ABS classifies those that are employed or unemployed," he said.

At least we know what those words meant.

  You're posting this crap again. You have ignored my questions when I asked you last time, so I will post them again. And I will KEEP POSTING THEM every time you post this weapons-grade nonsense until you answer them.

What's your solution to the tens of thousands of employers who refuse to hire the jobless? Naming and shaming? Lawsuits? $500,000 fines? Jail?

And are you aware that keeping one million workers out of work at all times is OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT POLICY?      

What would work is positive policy based on hope and freedom, not the negative policy of despair and oppression.

What would work is making sure everyone who wants a job can get one. That is the hope. Abolish all compulsory restrictions on how anyone spends their money and the many other restrictions imposed on unemployed and underemployed workers. That is the freedom.

* Abolish all compulsory cashless cards.
* Renounce the falsehoods of pretending that 5% unemployment is "full employment" or that it is a "natural" level. If people cannot find work, that is not "full employment". It is not "natural" if it is manipulated artificially. These lies must be called out.
* Abolish involuntary unemployment.
* Instruct the RBA to rebase its policy settings around maintaining unemployment below 2%. 1.5% should be the target setting.
* Increase compulsory superannuation to 12%.
* The RBA would gain a new mechanism to control inflation, a surcharge on the Superannuation Guarantee rate. It can raise or lower this as required, with the proceeds coming out of workers' pay. It would work more equitably than interest rates because interest rates only affect the spending of people with interest-bearing debts but a superannuation surcharge would affect all workers. Workers get the money taken from them back in retirement instead of handing it over permanently in interest charges.
* Redirect funding from pointless vocational courses towards ones where employers actually need more workers.
* Introduce an employer-funded co-contribution towards vocational and university education.
* Abolish unpaid overtime. 90% of the workforce doing 100% of the work includes up to 10% of that work being coerced from workers for free. That practice must be abolished so more jobs can be created for workers who want them.
* Introduce a Job Guarantee.
* Abolish the privatised job services networks.
* Reinstate the Commonwealth Employment Service as the Commonwealth Employment Commission (CEC). Its mandate would be similar to the old CES, but with the additional task of managing the Job Guarantee.
* All employers advertising vacancies would be required by law to advertise them with the CEC, Seek, or another similar recruitment board. Advertising with the CEC would be free of charge.
* Make it easier to relocate interstate for employment opportunities by providing a $5000 relocation grant for all workers.
* Cut stamp duty on property transfers in all states to 0.2% of the property value with a minimum charge of $500. Property stamp duty is a significant barrier to employment because it's a huge tax on moving house.
* Replace the property stamp duty revenue with a broad-based land tax. Farmland would be exempt but not the farmhouse.
* Abolish payroll taxes in all states and territories. It's a tax on jobs that varies among the states and this makes it complex and costly to administer.
* Replace the payroll taxes with a single national tax on company turnover that raises a similar level of revenue, with the proceeds distributed to the states on a strict per capita basis. Companies would receive savings through lower tax compliance costs.

It should be obvious from this list that addressing poverty and inequity requires a broad sweeping policy agenda that includes industrial relations reforms, taxation reforms, superannuation reforms, changes to the Reserve Bank, the agreement of the states and territories and other broad changes. Such reforms are needed to clean out a lot of policy deadwood that has accumulated over the past 50 years or so, primarily driven by a neoliberal agenda. It's obvious that neoliberalism is not working, and it has to go.