Thursday, July 19, 2012

Discrimination between various income groups

We live in a society where our government discriminates against various income groups. This discrimination often favours the lower end of this scale - at least that's what it is in Australia right now.

Some days, this fact depresses me more than others, although in general, I try not to "feel" it so much. I think this is because I have not been largely on the receiving end of this discrimination, so it is quite unfortunately annoying to see that I have to support various things that the government thinks I should support.

I don't mind sharing what I've got - but I would like to have a say in how much I share these things and where/to whom I am sharing them with. I am a big proponent for education, especially for young people, so I'd like to see my tax contributions go towards schooling and any other programs that encourage children to go to school. Don't ask me why, deep down, I believe that education is one of the tickets to success. At the very minimal, it gives you something to do so that you stay out of trouble. Yes, I get that most of life lessons are learnt outside the classroom, but it really does not negate the value of the lessons taught within the classrooms.


Another area is the elderlies and the disabled. This is rooted in my belief that in a relatively advanced society that we live in, our level of advancement is judged by how well we treat those who are less fortunate than ourselves. If we go to a third world country, the chance of a disabled person surviving is a lot lower than if he/she wins the geographical lottery of being born in Australia. Sorry, there is no other way of putting this. 


I get that there are other things that is required to make our society the way it is right now, so my tax contribution needs to be spread amongst those things, yet it still annoys me when I can't have a say in terms of where I'd like my contribution to go to. Surely there are other people who feel strongly towards other things, why can't their money goes towards those things.

The answer to that is that it is too hard to manage. In an ideal society, we can just allocate our contribution into the various pools of funds designated for specific purposes. We are a long long way from that.

In every society, there are always those who want to rot the system. This is incredibly unfortunate because these people are denying those who are in genuine need off the assistance that was theirs to begin with. I don't know how these people sleep at night knowing that they have stolen something from those who are in need.

Human nature though is somewhat rather weird. I have not met anyone who wants to pay more taxes, for example. I think deep down we are built to maximise our individual marginal utility.

I guess back in 2007, a lot of people think that voting for Kevin 07 would mean that they would be better off. I'd like to know if they still feel the same way right now.

The wage earners and the those in the top marginal tax bracket contributes the majority of tax revenue in this country. It is just ironic that they are also the ones most discriminated against.

Anyway, I am writing this so that I can stop thinking about this. I need to think about other things, and also think about nothing at all for maybe 10 seconds.

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