Australians with lower incomes are dying sooner from potentially preventable diseases than their wealthier counterparts

The Conversation, 28 November 2017:

Australians with lower incomes are dying sooner from potentially preventable diseases than their wealthier counterparts, according to our new report.

Australia’s Health Tracker by Socioeconomic Status, released today, tracks health risk factors, disease and premature death by socioeconomic status. It shows that over the past four years, 49,227 more people on lower incomes have died from chronic diseases – such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer – before the age of 75 than those on higher incomes.

A steady job or being engaged in the community is important to good health. Australia’s unemployment rate is low, but this hides low workforce participation, and a serious problem with underemployment. Casual workers are often not getting enough hours, and more and more Australians are employed on short-term contracts.

There’s a vicious feedback loop – if your health is struggling, it’s harder to build your wealth. If you’re unable to work as much as you want, you can’t build your wealth, so it’s much tougher to improve your health.

Our team tracked health risk factors, disease and premature death by socioeconomic status, which measures people’s access to material and social resources as well as their ability to participate in society. We’ve measured in quintiles – with one fifth of the population in each quintile.

We developed health targets and indicators based on the World Health Organisation’s 2025 targets to improve health around the globe.

The good news is that for many of the indicators, the most advantaged in the community have already reached the targets.

The bad news is that poor health is not just an issue affecting the most vulnerable in our community, it significantly affects the second-lowest quintile as well. Almost ten million Australians with low incomes have much greater risks of developing preventable chronic diseases, and of dying from these earlier than other Australians.

Read the rest of the article here.

Australia - where the rich get richer as wealth & income inequality grows (interactive mapping)

The Guardian, 12 October 2017

Australia is among countries with the highest growth in income inequality in the world over the past 30 years, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Vitor Gaspar, the IMF’s director of fiscal affairs, has told an audience at the launch of the IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor that Australia’s income inequality growth has been similar to the US, South Africa, India, China, Spain and the UK since the 1980s.

Last month the treasurer, Scott Morrison, said that income inequality was not getting worse in Australia.

Morrison told the Business Council of Australia in late September that Treasury and the Reserve Bank had found, in specific analysis of current wage fundamentals, that Australian wages were growing slowly across most industries in the economy, and most regions of the country, so the slow growth was evenly shared.

However, he would not release the Treasury analysis.

Graph showing inequality by country by the IMF. Illustration: IMF

Gaspar said IMF staff had used the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s income distribution database, Eurostat, and the World Bank’s Povcalnet data, among other sources, to calculate that income inequality had increased in nearly half of the world’s countries in the past three decades, and Australia had experienced a “large increase” in that time.

“Most people around the world live in countries where inequality has increased,” he said.

The IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor, released overnight, is dedicated to the global growth in income inequality. It warns that while some inequality is inevitable in a market-based economic system as a result of “differences in talent, effort, and luck”, excessive inequality could “erode social cohesion, lead to political polarisation, and ultimately lower economic growth”. 

It also warns that income inequality tends to be “highly correlated” with wealth inequality, inequality of opportunity, and gender inequality……

Earlier this year, the OECD economic survey of Australia in April found “inclusiveness has been eroded” in the past two decades.

“The Gini coefficient has been drifting up and households in upper-income brackets have benefited disproportionally from Australia’s long period of economic growth,” the report said.

“Real incomes for the top quintile of households grew by more than 40% between 2004 and 2014, while those for the lowest quintile only grew by about 25%.”

In July the Reserve Bank governor, Philip Lowe, when asked about his views on inequality at a charity lunch in Sydney, said it had grown “quite a lot” in the 1980s and 1990s and had risen “a little bit” recently, but it was important to make a distinction between income and wealth inequality.

“Wealth inequality has become more pronounced particularly in the last five or six years because there’s been big gains in asset prices,” Lowe said. “So the people who own assets, which are usually wealthy people, have seen their wealth go up.”

He said income inequality had increased slightly in recent years, but wealth inequality was more pronounced because of rising asset prices.

So how do individual regions across Australia fare?

The Guardian on 4 February 2016 published this Australia-wide interactive graphic:

Income Distribution in NSW Northern Rivers Region (based on Australian Taxation Office data for 2012-13)

Byron – top 10%  of individuals lodging personal tax forms held 38.5% of total income – Gini coefficient 0.544

Kyogle – top 10% of individuals lodging personal tax forms held 33.9% of total income – Gini coefficient 0.554

Ballina – top 10% of individuals lodging personal tax forms held 33.2% of income – Gini coefficient 0.495

Tweed – top 10% of individuals lodging personal tax forms held 31.7% of total income – Gini coefficient 0.473

Clarence Valley – top 10%  of individuals lodging personal tax forms held 31.1% of total income – Gini coefficient 0.493

Lismore – top 10% of individuals lodging personal tax forms held 29.7% of total income – Gini coefficient 0.459

Richmond Valley – top 10% of individuals lodging personal tax forms held 28.1% of total income  – Gini coefficient 0.448

*  Some low income earners, eg. those receiving Government pensions/allowances or earning below the tax free threshold may not be present in the data, as they may not be required to lodge personal tax forms. [Australian Bureau of Statistics, Estimates of Personal Income for Small Areas, Total Income, 2012-13]

Ostentatious shows of wealth a habit the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop obviously finds hard to break

Australian Foreign Minister & Liberal MP for Curtain Julie Bishop’s wardrobe shrieks designer labels, expensive shoes and accessories. Chanel, Armani, Vuitton, Louboutin, Choo, Hand, Aujoulet, Zampatti, Gilbert – all form part of the political mannequin parade.

This year’s Midwinter Ball in Canberra was notable because someone managed to put a price tag on the evening gown. 

A whopping AUD$32,142.97 at the time of writing or, to put it another way, worth an est. 93 per cent of the annual wage before tax of an ordinary Australian full-time worker on minimum wage.

A look at some of those F*ck You gowns down the the years

Midwinter Ball 2013

Midwinter Ball 2014

Midwinter Ball 2015

Midwinter Ball 2016

Midwinter Ball 2017

Looking for all those vacant residential dwelling being deliberately kept out of the Australian housing market

In the 2011 Census there were 2,297,460 rented private dwellings recorded. This was 29.6 per cent of the 7,760,322 private dwellings declared covering an est. 8,420,000 households.

By December 2016 the total number of private dwelling stood at 9,802,700 properties, for an est. 9,268,700 households.

Simple maths shows there was possibly around 534,000 private dwellings for which there were unlikely to be tenants and which were potentially available for sale.

Given these excess dwellings are likely to be unevenly spatially distributed, a number of metropolitan suburbs and regional urban areas would still be experiencing limited availability of housing stock for rent or sale and therefore demand may be unmet.

However, according to BIS Sharpnel; In 2017After a record breaking building boom in most capitals, Australia will have 24,039 extra homes above what are needed and will be oversupplied for the first time in more than a decade, a new report shows.

So why is it so hard to find a place to rent in large metropolitan areas and why is housing for sale so expensive?

It appears there is an artificial drought which can only be explained by the high percentage of investment properties in the housing stock mix which had reached 23 per cent by 2015, comprising one quarter of all house stock and two-thirds of apartment stock.

Domain.com.au released a ball park estimate of all vacant properties on 4 April 2017, based on Prosper Australia  research:

QUEENSLAND

An estimated 59,000 properties are standing empty in Queensland.

NEW SOUTH WALES

There are an estimated 121,000 properties vacant across New South Wales (with up to 90,000 properties standing empty in Sydney suburbs).

VICTORIA

The president of Prosper Australia, Catherine Cashmore, who has collected data on water usage to show there are 80,000 empty homes in Melbourne, said an empty home tax was an intuitively appealing policy that could pave the way for greater reforms.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

There are an estimated 23,000 properties vacant in South Australia.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

An estimated 21,000 vacant properties.

NORTHERN TERRITORY

There are an estimated 2,000 vacant properties in the Territory.

AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRIOTORY

An estimated 5,000 vacant properties.

TASMANIA

An estimated 7,000 vacant properties.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 28 March 2016:

Vacant properties were among the "perverse outcomes" of tax incentives that encouraged some investors to favour capital growth over rental returns, according to the analysis by the UNSW's City Futures Research Centre.

"Leaving housing empty is both profitable and subsidised by government," researchers Bill Randolph and Laurence Troy said. "This is taxation lunacy and a national scandal."

The ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods analysed Australian Taxation Office data and found at least 4,204 “legislators” who owned investment properties of which more than 13.87 per cent appear to negatively gear their properties.

By 2017 226 of these “legislators” were federal MPs and senators who owned 525 properties between them and about 48 per cent of these parliamentarians own investment properties.

So it is not hard to see why the Turnbull Government is dragging its heels when faced with the “perverse outcomes” arising from negative gearing and capital gain tax concessions.

Or why a Coalition state government like the NSW Government would decide that the best way to address a perceived housing shortage is to give its political supporters free rein.

Sky News, 9 January 2017:

The NSW government will be able to fast-track developments under a massive shake-up of the state's planning system aimed at tackling Sydney's chronic housing shortage.

Councils will determine fewer development applications under the proposed changes but will be responsible for devising more planning strategies with local communities.

Other proposals include providing incentives for developers if they consult with neighbours and the community before lodging development applications and simplifying building regulations.

It defies belief that the NSW Coalition Government would believe that just building more private housing for investors to warehouse for financial gain is a solution to rising house prices and limited availability.

In December 2016 the average annual full-time adult wage/salary of an individual was est. $79,721 or $1,533 per week before tax and in an employment field of 12.06 million workers only 8.30 million had full-time jobs. An estimated half the workforce would probably have earned below $56,000 per annum.

Realestate.com.au calculates that it requires at least one person in a marriage/
partnership, presumably without children, to be in full-time employment - and earning more in wages each week than half the current workforce - for the couple to have any hope of saving for a deposit within a reasonable time period:

[http://www.realestate.com.au/news/how-long-does-it-take-to-save-for-that-first-home]

So if our multimillionaire prime minister, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, and his parliamentary fellow travellers won’t act to ease housing affordability by removing taxation loopholes which allow the greedy to manipulate the housing market to their advantage, then it is up to voters to apply a cattle prod to their privileged haunches – and vote them out in 2018-19.

And if state governments won’t move to penalise investors who deliberately leave residential dwellings vacant for a trouble-free capital gain as well as a tax deduction, then voters with an eye to the future of their children and grandchildren might consider letting them know how they feel about the situation.

Ninety-six per cent of Australian federal parliamentarians own a property

ABC News, 20 April 2017:

There's no housing affordability crisis in the ranks of Federal Parliament's members and senators.

The politicians charged with tackling the thorny issue of spiralling house prices are among the nation's most aggressive property investors, an analysis by the ABC has revealed.

The 226 individuals own 524 properties between them and about half of them own investment properties.

That means many of our politicians have a very personal interest in any changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount……

Ninety-six per cent of parliamentarians own a property. Only 10 out of our 224 elected officials aren't in the game.

Compare that to the rest of Australia, where home ownership is expected to dip below 50 per cent sometime this year.

Register of Members’ Interests for 45th Australian Parliament.

Although a number of investment properties are listed in the members’ register this does not necessarily mean that additional property is not owned as part of superannuation schemes (other than that operated by the Commonwealth of Australia) or included in the assets of a private corporation in which a member has a significant shareholding.

A university education and a highly paid job the road to home ownership in Australia for the masses?

The Turnbull Government’s tin ear was on full display in The Sydney Morning  Herald on 21 February 2017:

The Coalition MP tasked with tackling Australia's housing affordability problems has said a "highly paid job" is the "first step" to owning a home.

The federal Victorian MP Michael Sukkar, who is the Assistant Minister to the Treasurer and has been charged with finding solutions to the country's housing affordability woes, also pointed to his own experience in purchasing two properties by the age of 35 as an example to struggling homebuyers. 

"We're also enabling young people to get highly paid jobs which is the first step to buying a house, it's not the only answer but it's the first step," Mr Sukkar told Sky News on Monday night.

"I want to see young people like me, leave university, I was a terrible university student but I left university because the economy was so good, I got a great start and I was able to forge a career," he said.

The Liberal MP for Deakin since September 2013 and Assistant Minister to the Treasurer, 35 year-old Michael Sven Sukkar LLB, BComm (Deakin), LLM (Melb), who apparently walked straight into well-paying employment at PricewaterhouseCoopers after leaving university and eleven years later owns his own home in Blackburn and a residence in Canberra after selling a second investment property in Fitzroy.

Conveniently the Australian taxpayer is assisting Mr. Sukkar with the mortgage on the possibly negatively geared Canberra property by supplying him with $273.00 for every night he stays in his own residence while parliament is sitting – an est. $11,466 for the 2017 calendar year alone.

Even at a stretch, married to a professionally qualified wife with a business partnership in a multinational firm, Michael Sukkar’s economic progress though life is hardly typical of a couple seeking to buy their first home.

However, typically of a member of the Liberal Party he assumes almost everyone can be fortunate enough to have small business owners as parents, a good education and a well-paying job before securing a parliamentary seat with an excellent superannuation plan.

According to They Vote For You during his almost three and a half years in the Australian Parliament Michael Sukkar has voted for:

A same-sex marriage plebiscite

An Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC)

An emissions reduction fund

Charging postgraduate research students fees

Decreasing ABC and SBS funding

Decreasing availability of welfare payments

Deregulating undergraduate university fees

Increasing funding for road infrastructure

Increasing indexation of HECS-HELP debts

Increasing or removing the Government debt limit

Increasing scrutiny of unions

Increasing the initial tax rate for working holiday makers to 19%

Increasing the price of subsidised medicine

Privatising government assets

Senate electoral reform

Speeding things along in Parliament (procedural)

Stopping people who arrive by boat from ever coming to Australia

Tighter means testing of family payments

Unconventional gas mining

Regional processing of asylum seekers

Temporary protection visas

And voted against:

Implementing refugee and protection conventions

Increasing scrutiny of asylum seeker management

Suspending the rules to allow a vote to happen (procedural)

Increasing Aboriginal land rights

Increasing funding for university education

Increasing investment in renewable energy

Increasing marine conservation

Increasing protection of Australia's fresh water

Increasing restrictions on gambling

Increasing the age pension

Increasing the diversity of media ownership

Increasing trade unions' powers in the workplace

Increasing transparency of big business by making information public

Letting all MPs or Senators speak in Parliament (procedural)

Letting environmental groups challenge the legality of certain government decisions

Protecting citizens' privacy

Restricting foreign ownership

Stopping tax avoidance or aggressive tax minimisation

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)

The basic relationship between wealth, power, economic growth - globally and in Australia

It is no secret that the world is an unequal place when it comes to the distribution of wealth and the free exercise of political power.

This month Oxfam International released its Oxfam Briefing Paper January 2017, AN ECONOMY FOR THE 99%: It‟s time to build a human economy that benefits everyone, not just the privileged few.

This paper pointed out that new estimates show that just eight men own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world.

That’s eight men in a global population of over 7 billion people.

The briefing paper went on to say:

By any measure, we are living in the age of the super-rich, a second "gilded age" in which a glittering surface masks social problems and corruption. Oxfam's analysis of the super-rich includes all those individuals with a net worth of at least $1bn. The 1,810 dollar billionaires on the 2016 Forbes list, 89% of whom are men, own $6.5 trillion – as much wealth as the bottom 70% of humanity. While some billionaires owe their fortunes predominantly to hard work and talent, Oxfam's analysis of this group finds that one-third of the world’s billionaire wealth is derived from inherited wealth, while 43% can be linked to cronyism.

On 16 January 2017 BizNews reported that:

The world’s 8 richest people are, in order of net worth:

1.    Bill Gates: America founder of Microsoft (net worth $75 billion)

2.    Amancio Ortega: Spanish founder of Inditex which owns the Zara fashion chain (net worth $67 billion)

3.    Warren Buffett: American CEO and largest shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway (net worth $60.8 billion)

4.    Carlos Slim Helu: Mexican owner of Grupo Carso (net worth: $50 billion)

5.    Jeff Bezos: American founder, chairman and chief executive of Amazon (net worth: $45.2 billion)

6.    Mark Zuckerberg: American chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Facebook (net worth $44.6 billion)

7.    Larry Ellison: American co-founder and CEO of Oracle  (net worth $43.6 billion)

8.    Michael Bloomberg: American founder, owner and CEO of Bloomberg LP (net worth: $40 billion)

Oxfam’s calculations are based on global wealth distribution data provided by the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Data book 2016.

The wealth of the world’s richest people was calculated using Forbes’ billionaires list last published in March 2016.

According to the Credit Suisse Research Institute in November 2016:

For financial wealth at least, direct estimates for the first quarter of 2016 were available for 27 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries account for 76% of global wealth in 2016.

Australia’s percentage share of global wealth was 2.5% in First quarter 2016, with 1.06 million individuals in a population of almost 23 million holding most of that wealth.

The wealth spread in Australia last year was calculated as:

§  20 individuals holding over US$1 billion each

§  39 individuals holding US$500 million-1 billion each

§  685 individuals holding US$100-500 million each

§  1,476 individuals holding US$50-100 million each

§  25,924 individuals holding US$10-50 million each

§  55,812 individuals holding US$5-10 million each

§  976,193 individuals holding US$1-5 million each

In Australia household gross wealth was estimated to be composed of 60.6% non-financial wealth and 39.4% financial wealth.

Forbes Media listed Australia's top eight richest people in 2016 as:

Blair Parry-Oakden - heiress to Cox Enterprises fortune ($8.8 billion)
Gina Rinehart - mining magnate ($8.5 billion)
Harry Triguboff - property developer ($6.9 billion)
Frank Lowy - co-founder Westfield Group ($5 billion)
Anthony Pratt - CEO Pratt Industries & global chair Visy Industries ($3.6 billion)
James Packer - media mogul ($3.5 billion)
John Gandel - property developer ($3.2 billion)
Lindsay Fox - trucking magnate ($2.8 billion)

On 20 August 2015 The Washington Post reported a new study (based on Does Wealth Inequality Matter for Growth? The Effect of Billionaire Wealth, Income Distribution, and Poverty, IZA DP No. 7733 November 2013 and later reworked as Billionaires and Growth by Sutirtha Bagchi and Jan Svejnar).

This study reportedly found that 65% of all billionaire wealth in Australia is based on political connections rather than on business innovation and, In sum, wealth inequality that comes from political connections is responsible for nearly all the negative effect on economic growth that we had observed from wealth inequality overall.

Or to put it another way, wealth amassed by certain billionaires world-wide, through the giving of political donations, public and private lobbying of politicians and/or the exchange of political favours, was responsible for nearly all declining economic growth this century. 

Australian Federal Election 2016: spot Amanda Vanstone's attempts at political deception in The Age newspaper

This was former Liberal Senator for South Australia and former minister in the Howard Government, Amanda Vanstone writing in The Age on 9 May 2016 in an article titled Turnbull or Shorten? The choice seems clear:

Let’s break that down a little.

Schooling

Yes, Malcolm Turnbull went to a public primary school at Vaucluse in Sydney’s affluent Eastern Suburbs for about three years and, yes he went to Sydney Grammar School from the age of eight with the assistance of a scholarship for at least part of that period. He graduated from university during the years when undergraduate and post-graduate tertiary education was free of course fees in Australia. He was the child of divorced parents. All this is on the public record.

Bill Shorten went to a local Catholic primary school before attending Xavier College’s junior & senior schools in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne – his mother taught at Xavier and presumably there was some degree of discount on his school fees. So yes, he also had a private education in affluent suburbs. He graduated from university during the years when tertiary education was free of course fees and undertook a post-graduate degree during a period when course fees were re-instituted. His parents divorced when he was about 20 years of age. All of which is also on the public record.

Wealth

Malcolm Turnbull inherited assets worth an est. $2 million from his hotel-broker father before he turned 29 years of age according to one of his biographers Paddy Manning and, he and his wife independently and jointly went on to garner considerably greater wealth which was last estimated to be in the vicinity of $200 million. His last Statement of Registrable Interests lists a veritable slew of financial investments and an expensive property portfolio shared between he and his wife. It is not known if he inherited any money from his mother.

It is not known to the writer if Bill Shorten inherited any money to speak of from his dry-dock manager father or his mother, however his last Statement of Registrable Interests lists very little in assets held by either he or his wife beyond their mortgaged family home.

What essentially separates these two men are the differences in their personal and political philosophies and the wide gap between their different levels of personal wealth.

Although this is something Amanda Vanstone is trying hard to distort in this federal election campaign and something The Age appears to be so indifferent to that its editor is not reigning in her excesses.  

Federal Election 2016: Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and housing affordability

On 4 May 2016 this on-air exchange occurred between ABC 774 Radio presenter Jon Faine and Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull:

JON FAINE: " Yeh but my question was specifically about the intergenerational aspects of it. It’s  [negative gearing] creating conflict with effectively the kids of your and my generation, who can't get into the market and they're saying oh for goodness sake you baby boomers, you just want everything and you're locking us out.”

MALCOLM TURNBULL: "Are your kids locked out of the housing market?"

JON FAINE: "Yes"

MALCOLM TRUNBULL: "Well you should shell out for them, you should support them, a wealthy man like you"

JON FAINE: "That's what they say" [laughing]

MALCOLM TURNBULL: "Exactly. There you go. See you've got the solution in your own hands”

JON FAINE: “That’s hardly national policy”

MALCOLM TURNBULL: You can provide a bit of inter-generational equity in the Faine family"

There is a reason why Turnbull can be so casually dismissive of concerns about home ownership and housing affordability and, it can be found in his privileged background.

Domain.com.au:

Title records show that Mr Turnbull was a law student at Sydney University when he spent $17,000 on a worker’s semi on Newtown’s Wells Street. At the time he was far from a struggling student kicking around the backstreets of the inner west. He was already a Point Piper resident, with corporate records showing he lived in the Longworth Avenue apartment owned by his late father, hotel broker Bruce Turnbull.

That Newtown investment property was likely Mr Turnbull’s first windfall from the Sydney property market. He sold it in 1981 for $68,000, quadrupling in value over the three years.

The year after his Newtown purchase title records show the Rhodes scholar (or “student” according to the property transfer) bought a terrace on Redfern’s Great

Long before Malcolm Turnbull ascended to the highest political office in the country and took the keys to his official Sydney residence Kirribilli House, he had already amassed a fortune – much of it from Sydney’s property market.

The 29th prime minister has come a long way from his 1978 first-home purchase in Newtown, to his $50 million-plus trophy waterfront home in Point Piper.

Privately educated Malcolm Turnbull was 23 or 24 years old, son of a successful property speculator and a recent university graduate, when he purchased his first property in 1978.

By the end of 1982 this now married practicing lawyer was a member of the Liberal Party, had inherited an est. $2 million in assets, become a grazier and acquired a second investment property – all the while residing in a Point Piper flat owned by his father.

Five years later he was an investment banker at Whitlam Turnbull & Co. Ltd.

By the time he entered parliament as the Member for Wentworth in 2004 he was reputedly worth $133 million.

Turnbull’s fortune continues to grow.

This is a man who has never known Struggle Street. 

So you think Australia is an egalitarian society? Think again.

Based on the World Population Clock as of 16 April 2016, a total of 74 million people (The 1 Per Cent) are said to own approximately 48 per cent of the entire world’s wealth.

In 2015 the Credit Suisse Group calculated total global wealth at US$250 trillion. 

An est. US$7.6 trillion of this was held offshore in low taxing jurisdictions (tax havens) and the majority of offshore wealth is managed by just 50 big banks, with the 10 busiest banks managing 40 percent of these offshore assets, according to Oxfam Briefing Paper 210. 

How much this represents in lost tax revenue to the countries in which profits were generated is unknown.

However, there is some indication that despite many of the extremely rich having residences in more than one country and often living in constant movement between these homes, they are not above seeking political influence in those countries in which they may not be citizens.

In countries in which they conduct business they are also politically active. In Britain the Sunday Times Rich List for 2015 revealed that: In total, 197 people who have featured in Rich Lists between 2011 and 2015 contributed £82.4m, just under half of the £174.7m donated in private and corporate cash. 25 gave more than £1m. Seven donors gave more than £2m.

What this all means is that by 2015 The 1 Per Cent had amassed US$120 trillion for their own exclusive advantage and use and, of these an est. 7.4 million individuals have the biggest share of that very large slice of the global riches pie.

In that 7.4 million strong group there is old money and new money - heads of royal houses, heirs of fortunes established in previous generations, hedge fund billionaires, investment bankers, oil barons, mining tycoons, industrialists, shipping magnates, the odd digital genius or two, oligarchs, financiers and other disreputable individuals.

Oxfam pointed out in that in 2015, 53 men and 9 women out of these 7.4 million rich individuals had a total combined wealth of $1.76 trillion.

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, by 2015 in America the 20 wealthiest people owned more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined - that is more wealth than a total of 152 million people in 57 million households.

For the same year, Forbes listed Australia’s 50 richest residents (our very own 0.00020 per cent) as having a combined personal wealth of $85.41 billion - which would roughly equate to 5% of this country’s gross domestic product for 2015.

Also in 2015 news.com.au reported that the chief executive officers of Australia’s biggest corporations earned more than 100 times the annual salary/wage of the average worker - in some cases earning as much as $367,000 a week.

Going into 2015 Westpac Banking Corporation's CEO was already receiving an annual remuneration package worth an est. $13 million.

The gap between the very rich and the rest of Australia continues to grow.

In November 2015 Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that between 2003-04 and 2014-15 the 20% of individuals in the highest income quintile received 42 per cent or nearly half of the total growth in wages and salaries.

In September 2015 The Guardian reported that: The latest figures for Australian household incomes and wealth released last week showed that income inequality has risen in the past two years. The average annual income of the richest 20% rose by 7%, while median households saw their income rise by just 1.3% in the same period.

When one looks for evidence of political influence - it was not unknown for very large political donations from billionaires and millionaires to occur in years past, such as those from Lord Ashcroft and Reg Grundy. While in 2014-15 at least five of the first ten Australian billionaires included on the Forbes Rich List made more modest political donations - between $10,000- $100,000 and predominately to the Liberal-Nationals.

The rich tend to cluster together in life as well as politics. In 2015 Business Insider reported suburban clusters with the highest taxable incomes, of which the following are examples:

* Claremont-Claremont North-Karrakatta-Mount Claremont-Swanbourne, Western Australia, with 10,885 residents having a total combined average taxable income of est. $1.16 billion pa.

* Balmain-Birchgrove-Balmain East, New South Wales, where 10,515 have residents have a total combined average taxable income of est. $1.14 billion pa.
* Middle Cove-Castlecrag-Willoughby-North Willoughby-Willoughby East, NSW, with 10, 295 residents having a total combined average taxable income of est. $1.09 billion pa.

* Darling Point- Edgecliff-Point Piper, NSW, where 5,980 residents have a total combined average taxable income of est. $1.06 billion pa.

* Castle Cove, Roseville, Roseville Chase, NSW, with 8,985 residents having a total combined average taxable income of est. $976.68 million pa.

* Kooyong-Malvern-Malvern North, Victoria. where 7,755 residents have a total combined average taxable income of est. $817.36 million pa.

With all this conspicuous wealth in the top tier of a supposedly egalitarian society, one would expect that any journey towards the bottom of the pile would be more a gentle downward slope rather than a high drop from a cliff. 

However, in January 2015 there were 795,000 ordinary people at the bottom of that proverbial cliff, without a job and living on about $140 per week, and on any given night an est. 1 in every 200 men, women and children were without a permanent roof over their heads.

So when multi-millionaire Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and Treasurer Scott John Morrison begin to explain on 3 May this year how the approximately 90 per cent of Australian households (who don’t have net worths calculated in double digit millions or billions) should start to live on less or expect diminished public health and education provisions in order ’to assist' the national balance sheet, I strongly suggest that every low-income household in this group consider giving both these gentlemen the raised middle finger.

For the last three years it has been those on the bottom tiers of the wealth pyramid who have borne the brunt of punitive federal budget measures and it is time to say “No more!”.

via GIPHY