Let Them Eat Cake
May. 3rd, 2014 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easy"We like that you peer through the bars of your cage to all that we have. We like that you think you can have it yourself one day. Because that illusion keeps you on our side." J. Michael Straczynski outlines The Rules of the New Aristocracy. Bill Moyers similarly warns: "We are this close to losing our democracy.". Of white women who went to court in 1950 to try and avoid paying social security tax for their black servants, Moyers writes: "Fiercely loyal to their families, to their clubs, charities, and congregations — fiercely loyal, in other words, to their own kind — they narrowly defined membership in democracy to include only people like themselves." (New Scientist also discusses the cognitive biases behind this thinking, including the "just-world hypothesis" - the belief that people always get what they deserve.)
Commission of Audit: a recipe for a poorer, nastier and more brutish Australia. "The prescriptions advocated by the Audit are stock-standard 1980s-era neoliberalism: privatise government assets, abolish government agencies, charge citizens more." But it mostly a red herring? Commission of Audit: Be afraid, but only mildly so: "What distinguishes this report from its predecessors is the blatancy of its commissioning. It comes from an "independent" inquiry effectively handed over to just one business lobby group, the one composed of the most highly paid chief executives in the country, the (big) Business Council. Not surprisingly, the commission found ways to solve our budget problem at the expense of almost everyone bar the top "1 per cent" whose interests the council represents." The Australian Council of Social Services identifies some of thepeasants vulnerable groups targetted by the cuts, including "people with physical and mental disabilities [that's me - chronically physically and mentally ill], carers, sole parents, and younger people struggling to get into paid work, people on the maximum rate of age pension, and minimum wage earners". Even if the Audit's proposals turn out to be hot air, they tell you how this government and its supporters think.
Speaking of the chronically ill: Poverty Is Literally Making People Sick Because They Can't Afford Food: Low-income diabetics [I am diabetic] are 27 percent more likely to be hospitalized for hypoglycemia at the end of the month — right before paychecks and benefits come out - because they can't afford to eat.
Overwhelming Evidence that Half of America is In or Near Poverty; 1 in 5 American children live in poverty. Australia's inequality gap is not as severe as it is in the US, but 1 in 7 people in New South Wales are living below the poverty line, almost 700,000 people in NSW rely on food assistance each year, and overall 1 in 10 Australians can't afford enough food.
I know that illiteracy is a large, and largely invisible, problem in Australia, but I was gobsmacked by a report from February this year that at least half of Tasmanians over 15 cannot read or write properly - and doubly gobsmacked by the national averages quoted: 42% of students failed "the baseline for maths", 36% "failed the minimum standard of English." Over a third of Australians can't read a newspaper, or the instructions on their medication. This isn't just a matter of practical necessity or economics, it's a basic human right, for heaven's sake.
ETA: Oligarchy, not democracy: Americans have ‘near-zero’ input on policy – report.
Also relevant is this exchange on Tumblr between someone who was able to afford their bronchitis inhaler because of "Obamacare" and someone angry that their taxes went towards it. As an Australian I both pay taxes towards socialised medicine and benefit hugely from Medicare (as well as paying for cheaper, better private health insurance than is available Up Over), but I get the impression that in the US the poverty gap means that you can either afford health care or you can't (until now). Without a safety net, that security is tenuous: "that came from taxes I paid" guy could find himself in the same situation as bronchitis guy if he loses his job or gets cancer (or both).
Commission of Audit: a recipe for a poorer, nastier and more brutish Australia. "The prescriptions advocated by the Audit are stock-standard 1980s-era neoliberalism: privatise government assets, abolish government agencies, charge citizens more." But it mostly a red herring? Commission of Audit: Be afraid, but only mildly so: "What distinguishes this report from its predecessors is the blatancy of its commissioning. It comes from an "independent" inquiry effectively handed over to just one business lobby group, the one composed of the most highly paid chief executives in the country, the (big) Business Council. Not surprisingly, the commission found ways to solve our budget problem at the expense of almost everyone bar the top "1 per cent" whose interests the council represents." The Australian Council of Social Services identifies some of the
Speaking of the chronically ill: Poverty Is Literally Making People Sick Because They Can't Afford Food: Low-income diabetics [I am diabetic] are 27 percent more likely to be hospitalized for hypoglycemia at the end of the month — right before paychecks and benefits come out - because they can't afford to eat.
Overwhelming Evidence that Half of America is In or Near Poverty; 1 in 5 American children live in poverty. Australia's inequality gap is not as severe as it is in the US, but 1 in 7 people in New South Wales are living below the poverty line, almost 700,000 people in NSW rely on food assistance each year, and overall 1 in 10 Australians can't afford enough food.
I know that illiteracy is a large, and largely invisible, problem in Australia, but I was gobsmacked by a report from February this year that at least half of Tasmanians over 15 cannot read or write properly - and doubly gobsmacked by the national averages quoted: 42% of students failed "the baseline for maths", 36% "failed the minimum standard of English." Over a third of Australians can't read a newspaper, or the instructions on their medication. This isn't just a matter of practical necessity or economics, it's a basic human right, for heaven's sake.
ETA: Oligarchy, not democracy: Americans have ‘near-zero’ input on policy – report.
Also relevant is this exchange on Tumblr between someone who was able to afford their bronchitis inhaler because of "Obamacare" and someone angry that their taxes went towards it. As an Australian I both pay taxes towards socialised medicine and benefit hugely from Medicare (as well as paying for cheaper, better private health insurance than is available Up Over), but I get the impression that in the US the poverty gap means that you can either afford health care or you can't (until now). Without a safety net, that security is tenuous: "that came from taxes I paid" guy could find himself in the same situation as bronchitis guy if he loses his job or gets cancer (or both).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:54 pm (UTC)I'd like to see certain People in Power survive on what these people have to cope with. Even just for a week.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-04 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 03:05 pm (UTC)One of the reasons I am a very literate person is that my parents install a love of reading into me and that being able to read *well* was a GOOD thing. We couldn't afford to buy books, so we went to the local public library at *least* once a week. I also was expected to borrow books from my school library. In all the years I've been teaching in Australia, the kids I've seen with literacy issues are kids who aren't encouraged to read for the hell of it and whose parent/s place no value on being educated. Australia needs a cultural shift away from where not only having the bare minimum literacy, with both words and numbers, is seen as acceptable and men who kick around a ball are gods.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-04 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-04 01:27 am (UTC)Oligarchy, not democracy: Americans have ‘near-zero’ input on policy – report
no subject
Date: 2014-05-04 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-06 10:37 am (UTC)I have been watching with somewhat gobsmacked awe at how blatantly this government is trying to cut benefits for everyone except their cronies. I am really hoping that the electorate wakes up to itself and votes them out - and I think/hope Medicare may end up being Abbott's WorkChoices.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-09 03:31 am (UTC)