As people on low tax, generally receive more in government services than they pay in tax, they are effectively receiving welfare. Calling it welfare helps direct the supply of services on a needs basis.
Subsidising child care is a most inefficient way of helping people. Can we afford, as in many cases, to subsidise two income families at a time when some families have no income. It also encourages people to enter the workforce, when, in many cases, there are not enough jobs to go around, creating unemployment.
Perhaps the money earned by the wife equals the cost of the child care plus the cost of the dole to the person she displaces from the workforce. And the increased tax burden makes it even more necessary for people to enter the workforce.
If it is recognised that the bringing up of children is an investment in the future of the nation and that these children will one day pay taxes to support those elderly who never had children, it would seem only fair that those who never have children should pay more tax, perhaps an extra ten percent.
This would alleviate the tax burden on those with children, allowing some women to work half time instead of full time, thus creating job opportunities for others to fill up the other half not worked. Flatter tax rates would also help more women to spend less time working because less tax would be paid by the high income earner (usually the full time man) and more tax would be paid by the lower income earner (usually the woman).
This would increase the incentive for the higher income earner to work longer hours, boosting GDP, rather than taking another’s job. But the woman reducing her hours will create employment opportunities for other part time women, especially as women generally take on lighter jobs with less investment in machinery needed.
Lowering home loan interest rates, as outlined in another article, would reduce the burden on families, making welfare or work less necessary for families. Institutional child care is unavoidably regimented, and as such reduces the personal freedom and inpidual attention that a young child needs to develop. While some group activity may be beneficial too much may not be good.
Traditionally, children provide for their elderly parents. I do not see why this Christian tradition, and not only Christian, should be changed.
If the old age pension were removed, taxes could be lowered, and women, not then needing so much, to enter the workforce, could care for their elderly parents, as well as have more money to provide for them. I am sure that it is more efficient for the wife to work half time from home, whilst looking after children and elderly parents, than for her to work full time and pay taxes to the state for them to use institutionalising old and young.
The old age pension should only be paid to those parents whose children cannot afford to provide for them, and failure to provide for one’s parents should be treated similarly to failing to provide for one’s children. Personal responsibility worked perfectly well for thousands of years, before the State began to spread its ugly tentacles over every area of life.
The result of replacing the responsibility of caring for parents by the children with state care is an aging population. Some are under the misapprehension that superannuation will solve this problem. But this is only true if superannuation is invested in such a way as to increase the productivity of future generations. Whatever way the economics is examined, the young of the future must bear the burden of the old, whether through taxes or through profits. Investment must be made in the future in terms of education, infrastructure and research, and of course, children.
Some spend their welfare payments on drugs and alcohol, and then expect free food and shelter. But for such, their welfare payments should be directed to the agency that supplies these.
For those who live in squalor, building materials could be supplied for them to build accommodation for themselves and their families, on cheap land. With work, even to build one’s own house, will come self esteem, and gratitude of the wife to the husband for building her a house. Family relationships will be strengthened and many social problems will disappear. Thought and care, rather than more money is needed to solve, for example, Aboriginal poverty in Australia. A more flexible wages policy is also needed, to employ those whose productivity is lower than the award wage. Otherwise there will be perpetual unemployment.
If the plight of the young at the hands of their parents was as widespread as some press stories lead the community to believe, God would never have told children to honour their mother and father. Nevertheless a problem exists for some, and they must be helped, but without doling out money for drugs and alcohol to every rebel. I think the best solution is to set up orphanages in the country, where land is cheap, and where they are well away from many of the social problems that plague large cities, and to supply the children with food, clothing, shelter, education, recreation and care, but not to supply them with money. Then only those children who were genuinely mistreated would seek refuge.