MajesticNubbin

joined 1 year ago
[–] MajesticNubbin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

More specifically, this talk sheds a lot of light on it. The opening statement alone is interesting: that despite the conventional wisdom it is actually better to be born into a large cohort than a small one. Because being in a large cohort brings collective voting/political power and buying power.

https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A

[–] MajesticNubbin@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

One thing to note about this breakdown is that it wasn't legislated with good intention but it was implemented in a very malicious compliance way that completely counteracted the original intention.

This receipt was legislated by the conservative party in Australia under Tony Abbott, the surface level intention was to "show where people's tax dollars are spent". However the underlying intention was to show welfare spending as a huge category that totally eclipsed all other spending in order to demonize welfare, particularly unemployment welfare. In order to build public support for rolling back that spending.

However when the letter was implemented, the welfare category was further broken down as you see here, completely working against the narrative that the government at the time was trying to spin (that unemployment welfare particularly was a huge drain on society).