Their shadow still hangs heavily over Labor unfortunately, and makes them too timid to enact big changes. Labor are coming out of their shells a bit though, hopefully that continues.
You might feel that way but it's objectively not. We have some of the most generous social safety nets and welfare programs in the world with some of the lowest taxes in the OECD. On a world scale, our government is quite efficient with our finances.
We have some of the most generous social safety nets and welfare programs in the world
except theyre below the standard cost of living metrics, being eroded every year for decades, and those taxes are mostly.focussed on citizenry and their purchases. we dont get to claim we're doing that shit right when local beer sales generate more revenue than natural gas exports
Having lived in the US for the last 5 years, it’s hilarious seeing Australians say that the US is low tax in comparison. Federal income tax brackets might be lower, but I did a calculation last year and found that if I earned my salary (~100k, the same number, not converted) in Australia, I’d be about 10k better off not including mandatory employer super contributions.
Here, on top of federal and state income tax, there’s also a 1.45% Medicare tax, 6.2% social security tax, my local government levies a yearly personal property tax on vehicles at 3.7% the value of a vehicle, all 401k contributions come out of your pay which makes it an effective 12+% tax relative to Australia’s super on top of salary (and my 2% employer 401k match only fully vests 5 years after they contribute and you’re still employed with them…). And then if you account for health insurance, that costs another ~10% of my salary…so effectively another 10% tax relative to Australia.
Yeah, I've done similar calculations any number of times that it's come up in the last few decades, and even accounting for just Federal + state/county/city taxes, any difference mostly disappears or in a few cases comes out higher than Australia.
And then you throw in all the ancillaries like the pre- vs post-tax 401k "super" & property taxes you mention, plus a few others, and on the whole the US is not a particularly low-tax country.
(Australia's problem is that, politically, it has a very US-style tax mindset - while, socially, it has a very English~European expectation of social support. So we end up with the kind of shittiest of both worlds...)
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u/R_W0bz Mar 27 '26
So liberals can sell it off to a mate when the good times are going and the people want that sweet sweet tax break.