Why do so few make it out of poverty? I can tell you from experience it is not because some have more merit than others. It is because being poor is a high-risk gamble. The asymmetry of outcomes for the poor is so enormous because it is so expensive to be poor. Imagine losing a job because your phone was cut off, or blowing off an exam because you spent the day in the ER dealing with something that preventative care would have avoided completely. Something as simple as that can spark a spiral of adversity almost impossible to recover from. The reality is that when you’re poor, if you make one mistake, you’re done. Everything becomes a sudden-death gamble. [Christian H. Cooper writing at Nautilus on Why Poverty Is Like A Disease, 20 April 2017]
The total rate paid by a high earner on $200,000 is nothing like 50 per cent. The first $18,200 isn't taxed at all because of the tax-free threshold, the next $18,000 is only taxed at 19 per cent, and so on, meaning the total tax taken works out at $71,232 including levies – a rate of 35.6 per cent. [Economic Editor for The Age, Peter Martin, writing on 24 May 2017]
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