Social Fact: However it doesn’t indicate the level of opportunity and equality that exists moving forward. Better than America is a meaningless standard in 2023.
America may bill itself as the land of opportunity, but new treasury research says Australians are more likely to climb the socio-economic ladder from poverty to relative wealth.
Source: Income mobility: Australia provides more opportunity than the US to scale the income ladder
The share of total income collected by the top 1% of Australia’s income earners has been trending upwards since the 1980s. It is now about 9% of total income. How concerned should we be about this? To some extent it depends on fluidity of membership of the top 1% (which in Australia means earning a pretax income of at least A$246,000). If someone is part of the 1% this year but not last year, this would suggest income inequality is a fact of life but at least we still have social mobility: people have good and bad years, with the top 1% largely comprising people who happen to be having a good year. It won’t bother the other 99% of us so much. But if the top 1% comprises the same people every year, we will be more concerned about an entrenched elite moving ever further away from the rest of us.
Source: Our top 1% of income earners is an increasingly entrenched elite
Email Twitter2 Facebook LinkedIn Print I’m guessing you earn less than A$200,000. And I’m guessing you think you’re missing out. People keep telling you so. On one side of politics Labor leader Anthony Albanese says anyone earning $200,000 dollars a year “can’t be described as being in the top end of town”. On the other, Prime Minister Scott Morrison parries with interviewers when asked whether people on $180,000 to $200,000 (the biggest beneficiaries of his planned 2024 Stage 3 tax cut) are “high income”. Support non-profit journalism you can trust. “They’re hardworking people working out on mines and difficult parts of the country,” he says. “They deserve a tax cut.” Hardworking or not, Australians on more than $200,000 are rare. And an awful lot of them don’t work at all. $200,000 is unusual
Source: Other Australians earn nothing like what you think. If you’re on $59,538, you’re typical
Executive bonuses inflated by JobKeeper, rising property and share prices, tax cuts for the wealthy. What’s not to like about 2020 for the top end of town? Tasha May takes a closer look at how the pandemic is exacerbating wealth inequality in Australia.
Vintage year for the wealthy: COVID-19 widens gap between rich and poor – Michael West
The last 6 years have all been below average with the LNP claiming they have been “fixing it” the sure have!!(ODT)
While global household incomes grow thanks to the boom, here’s why ours keep falling – Michael West
Astronomical gap between the pay of workers and bosses exposed in report on earnings of America’s top 350 CEOs
The Maoist Revolution in China was inspired by tesesorts of numbers. (ODT)
US bosses now earn 312 times the average worker’s wage, figures show | Business | The Guardian
It says the richest 20% of Australian households own 62% of all wealth, while the lowest 50% own just 18%. The average household wealth in the highest 20% group is $2.9m, five times that of the middle 20% and almost a hundred times that of the lowest 20% at $30,000.
The number of employed Australians seeking help for homelessness has jumped by almost 30% in three years, sparking concerns that stagnant wage growth and high housing costs are pushing workers to the brink.
The Victorian-based Council to Homeless Persons has released an analysis showing 20,302 employed Australians sought homelessness support in 2016-17, well up from 15,931 in 2013-14.
via Cost of living pushing Australian workers into homelessness | Australia news | The Guardian
Meanwhile, few who make the “I did it all myself” argument question the absurdity of seeing earnings as a measure of grit and moral worth. Does anyone really think that a CEO, whose pay is on average 271 times greater than that of his typical worker, works 271 times harder than his employees, who might actually be doing strenuous physical labor?
via What’s behind rich people pretending to be self-made? | US news | The Guardian
it’s literally just a giant giveaway to millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates that 80 percent of the benefits in the new plan will go to the richest 1 percent, while nearly one in three working families would end up paying more.
via Congress’ Tax Plan is a give-way to the Rich, not a Reform
One of the big features of this corporate reporting season, has been the increasing number of companies releasing the company’s earnings, and the CEO’s earnings, on the same day.
Source: Pay bonanza continues for Australia’s CEOs, despite some nips and tucks
Chief executives are more likely to get fired than be denied bonuses for supposedly exceptional performance, an investor group says
Domino’s Pizza boss Don Meij was the third highest-paid chief executive in Australia on $21m, a “remarkable” result given his reported salary was $4m, the report said.
Meij’s windfall came from cashing in options on the back of a share price surge that came to a screaming halt this month when Domino’s missed profit targets, and following months of publicity about problems in its franchises including claims of multimillion-dollar underpayments.
The averaged “realised” pay among ASX 100 chief executives in 2016 was $5.7m, which was 93 times the average Australian earnings as of last November.
The typical Australian family takes home less than when Kevin Rudd was prime minister.
Source: Better under Rudd: Household finances in reverse as job prospects worsen
At last, novel solutions are entering politics! Mike Dowson considers the “Buffet Rule”, for catching wealthy tax-evaders.
The gap between Melbourne’s richest and poorest suburbs is growing fast – and that’s a problem, experts say.
Source: Income gap between Melbourne’s richest and poorest suburbs is widening
Instead of punishing the poor our government should target large companies shirking their responsibility to pay their fair share of tax
The world of wages has gotten out of whack.
Source: Former World Bank chief economist Kaushik Basu sounds warning
In a year of record low wage growth for workers, executives of Australia’s biggest companies received massive bonuses – just for doing their job
Source: CEOs bank on bonuses as average Australian worker left to flounder | Business | The Guardian
Pay ratios are an important measure of income inequality over time and regulators should look at making them mandatory
Editorial: The latest report on chief executives’ pay shows yet another inexplicable rise. It needs action – but pay at the bottom end of the scale is an even greater affront to just returns
Source: The Guardian view on high pay: mind the gap | Editorial | Opinion | The Guardian
The answer to the question “Who’s your daddy?” has never been more important.
Sexism is alive and well in our most respected and trusted professions, a new analysis reveals.
Source: Australia’s top 10 jobs with the biggest gender pay gap revealed
Economist Philip Soos encourages Australians to rise up and see Turnbull’s neo-liberal capitalism for what it is: A racket designed to generate free banquets for the rentier class.
More is never enough. By now we really don’t need yet another statement of inequality, but here goes anyway: The average ratio of chief executive pay to employee pay has reached 335-to-1 in the Uni…
La
st year the IMF released a paper called “Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective.” “We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits…
Source: Tackling inequality – » The Australian Independent Media Network
New research sheds light on why so many high income Australians are reluctant to part with tax breaks. It’s because they don’t think they are well off.
Source: Income distribution: Australia’s highest earners think they are battlers
A report from Peking University warns that China has reached a
Source: Life is unfair: The top 1% now owns one-third of Chinese wealth: Shanghaiist
In an attempt to show that politicians were sharing the pain of the 2014 Budget, Tony Abbott announced a freeze on politicians’ pay rises. Needless to say, that didn’t last long. Federal politicians, judges and top bureaucrats received a 2 per cent pay rise from January 1 this year. Malcolm Turnbull will pocket over $10,000…
Source: People of calibre – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Feeling the pinch? You’re neither imagining it nor are you alone. Middle Australia is doing it tough.
A new Census Bureau report paints a bleak picture of the so-called recovery.
Is it fine for inequality to increase as long as everyone’s incomes rise? That worked OK in the boom but now the richest households are pulling away
The Trickle Down Effect that Just didn’t Trickle The Bailout worked with a trickle up
If You Own a Pitchfork, You Will Grab It When You See This Chart | Mother Jones.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.