Welfare reform: can we have it all?

My last post consisted of the sort of Sisyphean snark about The Australian that I’d like to cut back on, but can’t resist writing. I was a little taken aback that the same paper that labelled a modest trim to family payments for high-income households as ‘class warfare’  would unashamedly lament that ”the old principle that welfare should exist only for those who genuinely need it appears no longer to hold.”

The carbon price package and low-income earners

Warning: this is a non-technical, but fairly wonky post about tax

Will there be wailing and gnashing of teeth on Sunday? There will if the Coalition’s voluminous prognostications about the carbon price package are correct. There will also be a reduction in the effective tax rates faced by low-income earners, but that doesn’t fit so easily into a glib slogan.