Interesting read so far. I will give you my perspective of Living in Australia as most these examples seem to be from a US perspective.
1. Background - I moved here from eastern Europe with my parents to start a better life.
Before moving to Australia, my father used to work as a telecommunications tech officer and my mother would run an arcade.We sold the arcade, so we could afford flights to Australia. When we arrived in 1990 we basically had 4 suitcases and $2,000. Because my parents could not speak English, the only jobs they could get were minimum wage. My dad washed pots in a pie factor and my mum become a cleaner and had another day time job making food at a cafe.
Now come from what they had job wise, it would have been very easy for them to just say, fuck lets go back as at least in our own country I did jobs that I enjoyed. They stuck it out and now both work in a factory that pays decent money in decent jobs.
Their main goal was this - work hard to send me to a decent school and kick my brother and me in the ass to study hard, learn English and get decent careers so that we would not have to suffer as them.
They even own a house and people always ask how could you afford one? well the answer is simple, multiple jobs, no holidays for 15 years, and not wasting money on luxuries.
2. Skipping 20 years into the future
I graduated as an engineer and now have a decent job that pays well (will expand on this later too).
My brother n the other hand was a lazy sod and well he decided to get married young quit his studies and now has a shitty job.
Now we both had equal opportunity and if anything he had it easier than me as he was the younger one but look how things turned out differently.
Point I am making is in a country like Australia, anyone can make it or break it. It is about attitude, sacrifices, and not being lazy.
I see way to many people whinge about the things I have rather than the road I had to take to get to this point.
3. Wealthy people.
Now by all means I do not consider myself in the A league of the wealthy people that this topic is about, however I am well off to pay my bills on time (but have some issues with Australia's socialist to a degree life style, more on this later).
My opinion on the very wealthy is simple, they employee people like you and me. Without these people and their pockets, most of us would not be as well off as we are today. They are the ones who take huge calculated risks with their money and guess what it pays off most of the time and sometimes it doesn't.
Not all of them are asshole, Bill Gates is a good example of that, he donates so much money to research etc..
4. Australian Life style
This country is pretty laid back, mainly because we are so isolated from the world and most people here have not experienced hardship in my eyes and wouldn't know what do if they did.
In this country a plumber, plasterer, builder can make the same amount of money as an engineer. Do I have a problem with that? Absolutely not. However as a comparison these kind of jobs (well when I was living in eastern Europe) were considered the lowest of all forms and got paid shit accordingly. Hence why my parents drummed into me must use your brain and get a well paying job.
Now this is where I think it becomes unfair.
People who do not work, get a thing called the dole (so free money). However they can be on the dole indefinitely so there is no incentive to find a job. Unfortunately the dole has created a class of lazy people who just do not give a fuck about working. Hell watch enough of the news here, and some will admit that they do not ever have the intention to work, would rather go surfing and call the dole "their pay check". The other reason is, if you have enough kids on the dole, you can get almost the same money as minimum wage. To me this creates irresponsible parents who just have kids, to get more money for their paytv, smoking, drink and gambling addictions and the kids suffer because their parents can't afford to support them properly. These kids grow up brainwashed by their parents thinking that accepting hand outs i acceptable, therefore they don't even try to better their lives. On the rare occasions that one may try to better their lives, their families will bully them about them.
I have no problem with the dole concept for genuine cases like people with disabilities and as a temporary measure for people who fell on hard times. But when there is clear evidence of people exploiting the system then something is not right here when my taxes support these people.
Now I recently got promoted where my wage jumped by 20K pa. When I got the pay rise I was like "you beauty just have scored a jackpot". However the way our tax system works and "means testing" I actually take less money home now (NET) then I did when I was earning 20K pa less. To me this was a shock at first as you would think I worked hard to earn this promotion and now I am taking home less,
Reason for this:
- my taxable income jumped to the next bracket.
- lost my rebate on private health cover for me and my wife (so now I pay 30% more than I used to), and if I don't have private health cover, I have to pay an additional 1% medical taxes because "I earn to much".
On top of that, those who don't work get free health (they had the nerve t complain when the government wanted to change it to $7 payment for a visit to a GP when I pay $80 lol, and cheap subscription drugs).
For me now I am at a point a where there is no incentive for me to progress in my career, unless I can somehow get a 40K pa jump to offset all the lost benefits so that I can afford to send my kids to daycare.
Now lets move onto kids, people say when people get rich they have less kids because they are selfish, but that isn't entirely true.
For me to have kids I have to full support them. Someone who earns much less than me, or for that matter doesn't work, will get government rebates to send them to daycare. Daycare here is about $110 a day where I live, and you have to pay for the full month, or you loose your spot. So even if you take the child on a holiday for a month you still have to pay.
So the other option is this, my wife becomes a stay at home mother for the next 7 years. She becomes a burden on society who become irrelevant once the kids have grown up enough to go to school because she hasn't maintained her kills and becomes unemployable in here field that she studied her ass off to get a job in.
You would think that a smart government would be less socialist and discourage people on the dole from having kids. Working mothers SHOULD get a rebate to subsidies childcare so they go back to work quicker and remain a tax payer. In turn if professionals have more kids, don't you think they are more than likely to provide a better example that people who do not work? Those kids will become future tax payers that contribute to the country and not another burden sitting at home doing nothing.
Final Thoughts:
Now I know I went on a rant that was somewhat offtrack, but my point is valid.
Everyone in a developed country has the opportunity to better their lifestyle. The rich people we talking about now were just smarter and did it quicker. In the case of families with wealth, well they too were smarter and started many generations ago. My parent's parents and ancestors before them did not set the foundation for them, however mine were smart enough to make that choice, for their kids. So if my live gets worst then all I can blame is myself and not the richer people around me.
Family wealth (as big or small as it may be) should be inherited, because if your family isn't selfish, each generation should get richer and richer. After all you are here to leave a legacy not blow your money and tell your children to go fuck themselves.
If you distribute wealth, people who bettered their lives suffer and those who do not want to work at all will benefit. To me that is total BS. I worked hard to get to where I am today, and guess what I will try to make my kids life that little bit easier than I had it, because my parents did the same for me.
