Bolt Report commits a furphy on taxation

I steeled myself to watch The Bolt Report last Sunday in order to give the man a chance to convince me he would be worth time spent on Channel Ten.

Alas! Only minutes into his opening statement Andrew Bolt informed Australia that only people in the workforce or of workforce age were financing government expenditure on things like pensions, schools and hospitals.

Yes, while doing a little welfare bashing he conveniently ignored the fact that almost everyone, except infants and possibly preschoolers, regularly pays a consumption tax ie. the GST and that this revenue (worth $45.5 billion in 2010-11) goes to the states to help pay for things like the public health system and capital works.

That the states spent this extra revenue in part on hospitals is indisputable if one looks at this graph based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data covering the years immediately after the introduction of the GST.

Graph found in Catallaxy archives

Ergo, the very people Bolt is bashing contributed to the hospitals he would likely access should he fall ill.

I won't even mention the fact that Bolt appears not to realise that the indexation of family support payment, Family Tax Benefit A, is not paused at a 'family' income of $150,00 per year, but the 'primary wage earner's income'.

The Bolt Report? Distorted opinion and definitely not worth wasting my time on.