Sunday 10 May 2009
Pensioners - be prepared for another rash of social discrimination
After the unemployed, people on a pension often get the most negative feedback from the media and community at large.
Unless pensioners are frail aged or returned servicemen, people who have more in the bank look sideways at them and mutter about where their own tax dollars are going.
When the Rudd Government 2009-10 Budget gets handed down pensioners will have to steel themselves for an increase in the passive-aggressive hostility they frequently face once their welfare recipient status becomes known.
Because even if the media reports are incorrect in matters of fact or nuance, the damage has been done and those still making superannuation contributions will feel that they have been robbed; Rich to pay for pension rises in federal Budget.
It may be human but it is certainly not fair, that ordinary people who were denied a full education by the Great Depression, had their young adulthood ruined by world war or who suffer from a long-term chronic illness are to be blamed for accessing the social and economic safety net that Australia provides for all its citizens.
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2 comments:
Well the people you describe are now in their 80s at least. The problem is that thanks to endless vote-buying by Howard's mob, the age pension also gets paid to lots more people who are comfortably off by any reasonable standards.
Fair-minded people will not 'blame' them for anything, but they will criticise a system that leaves them better off than young people who can only get an equivalent income from working long hours in precarious jobs and then see a good slab of it go in income tax while the elderly pay none. Ditto an unemployed person, who are about to be a lot more numerous, with a family and high rents or mortgage payments.
If the aged pension goes up while payments to the unemployed and disabled remain unchanged it will be a grossly inappropriate response to our current circumstances. Moreover the arrangement introduced by Howard whereby full-time workers over 55 can convert all their income into a tax-free pension through salary 'sacrificing' (talk about a misnomer) is an outrageous rort that should be stopped right now.
Ken, when I said "or who suffer from a long-term chronic illness" I was including those on a Disability Support Pension and most are not in their 80s.
I agree with you on the matter of salary sacrifice as it relates to high income earners.
As for "fair-minded people" - they are often hard to find whenever individuals feel their own interests are theatened.
Quite frankly the number of comfortably off pensioners in my area are very thin on the ground - the majority either rent with no assets/savings or own their home but have much less than a thousand dollars in the bank.
Which is bourne out by statistics I have sighted in the last year or so.
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