By Andrew Baker and Peter Saunders:
There are two ways to reduce “poverty”: increase the value of welfare benefits faster than the value of wages, or move substantial numbers of people off welfare and into full-time jobs. Anti-poverty campaigners invariably emphasise the first option and neglect the second, but the first actually undermines the second……
The real solution to poverty: J-O-B-S, J-O-B-S, J-O-B-S | The Centre for Independent Studies.
Extract from an opinion by Robert Carling:
In democratic welfare states, the proportion of the electorate that attracts more in social benefits from government than it pays in tax has become so large that candidates who promise to curb the welfare state have a hard time winning elections.
The same issue has been raised in the United Kingdom, where a recent study by the Centre for Policy Studies revealed that 53.4% of households receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes……
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has compiled data on total taxes paid [including GST] and total social benefits (cash and in kind) received by households in 2009–10 classified into five slices (quintiles) from bottom to top according to their private income. The first three quintiles (that is, 60% of households) each received more in direct social benefits than they paid in taxes……
via Centre for Independent Studies: Self-sustaining leviathan.
