A couple of years ago, the government changed the rules so that families on $150 000 a year or more wouldn’t be eligible to receive family payments. There were the predictable cries of ‘class warfare’, but there were also claims that $150 000 in Australia leaves you struggling to make ends meet. The Daily Telegraph found a couple on $150k who said “you can survive on $150,000 but you definitely aren’t doing well,” while in The Australian, a couple on $200 000 said “the government are making it bloody hard.”
A discussion of Australian political and economic issues and ideas, by Matt Cowgill.
Archives for posts with tag: inequality
David Uren’s piece in the Australian today has some pretty eye-catching figures:
…nobody starts to pay tax until their earnings exceed $18,200, but the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that 60 per cent of all households receive more in cash benefits than they pay in tax.
A household in the middle 20 per cent of the earnings distribution pays income tax of $143 a week but gets cash social benefits totalling $164. Subsidised health, education and childcare deliver that average household a further $346 a week.
How would we know if we were having a wages breakout? Back in the 70s, there was a period in which wages rose faster than productivity, leaving a situation that some economists dubbed a “real wage overhang”. This, I believe, is what people are talking about when they warn of a “breakout” – an inflationary burst of wages growth well in excess of productivity growth. In fact, since around the turn of the century, we’ve experienced the opposite phenomenon in Australia. Wages haven’t kept pace with labour productivity. They’ve “decoupled”.
I can understand why libertarians might favour a flat tax on superannuation contributions and on ordinary income. I disagree vehemently with that position, but it’s logically coherent to me. Personally, I favour a progressive tax on both of those things, and I think that position also makes sense. What isn’t coherent to me is the idea that we should tax ordinary income in a progressive way, with higher income earners paying a greater proportion of their income in tax, but we should tax super contributions with a flat tax. How does that make sense?
Today, Barack Obama announced his intention to push for the US federal minimum wage to be lifted to $9 per hour by 2015, and then indexed to inflation.
In case anyone is interested in how the Australian minimum wage[fn1] stacks up against other advanced economies, I thought I’d post a few charts. As at February 2012, the National Minimum Wage is $15.96 per hour, which works out to $606.40 per week for full-timers. The rate is higher if you’re a casual employee (and therefore don’t accrue paid annual leave and sick leave). To find the minimum wage that applies in a particular circumstance, try the Fair Work Ombudsman.
The Australian editorial, 11 January 2013:
Australia’s welfare system is crying out for comprehensive reform… Is it fair that a couple with one child and a household income of $160,000 a year receives a family tax benefit, or that a young couple buying, for their first home, a $700,000 apartment in Toorak are paid the first-home owners grant? The old principle that welfare should exist only for those who genuinely need it appears no longer to hold.
The OECD has released a new report on inequality. I haven’t had a chance to read it properly yet, but a few points that stand out are:
- From the mid-1980s to the late-2000s, the incomes of the top decile of Australian households grew by an average of 4.5% per year, by far the fastest income growth enjoyed by high income earners in any OECD country. The average annual growth for the top decile in OECD countries over the period was 1.9%.
- Low income Australians also saw relatively strong growth from the 80s to the 2000s, growing at an average of 3% per year. Interestingly, the only countries in which low income earners saw stronger gains were Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
- Overall inequality in Australia, measured by the Gini coefficient, is slightly higher than the OECD average, though I wouldn’t put too much stock in the small difference between us and the average.
- We achieve less of a reduction in inequality inequality via taxes and transfers than we did a decade ago.
- “Labour market trends have been a key driver of inequality in Australia.”
- The share of income going to the top 1% has roughly doubled since 1980 (which we already knew from Andrew Leigh’s work), while the taxes paid by high income earners have fallen.
I plan to post more detailed analysis when I’ve had a chance to read the full report.
