The Milk Of Human Kindness
… Was turned into Limburger.
Australia has had some problems lately, and those problems are going to cost a lot of money to fix. The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has suggested a tax levy to pay for the clean-up and rebuilding without going into debt [radical concept, I know].
So the ABC has the response from the “leaders of industry”: Cut disabled pensions to help pay for floods: big business
The Business Council says cuts to disability services and foreign aid should be considered as alternatives to the flood levy.
The Federal Government says the $1.8 billion tax is needed to help pay for flood and cyclone reconstruction in Queensland and Victoria.
But in its pre-budget submission, the Business Council, which represents Australia’s top 100 companies, says the government should instead press ahead with returning the budget to surplus through short-term spending discipline.
Council president Graham Bradley says all current spending should be reviewed and disability pensions may not be the best use of government money.
“It is one of the large budget items,” he told ABC Radio’s AM.
“And if you look at what countries overseas are doing in this regard … for example in the United Kingdom, they are taking a really hard look to make sure that there aren’t people currently incentivised to be on disability pensions who really would be much better off going back to work, even if it is only part-time or less rigorous work.”
It would appear that Australian business leaders not only want the “quality of mercy” strained, they want it cut off entirely. They want the disabled to pay for a natural disaster, rather than having to give up some of their profits.
I wonder if the boards of the “Scrooge 100” have an an inkling of exactly how bad this idea is? Perhaps the Australian parliament could review any benefits received by these companies to see how really necessary those are to the Australian people.
3 comments
These corporate creeps should just go to Hades.
The uber wealthy seem to just want everyone who isn’t
“perfect” to just die. Alan Grayson was right…but he didn’t
go far enough in describing the hatefulness and heartlessness that
is so prevalent on the right and their monied masters
“‘If they would rather die [than beg for subsistence],’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” — Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
I am ROFL over the invocation of England as the model for how Australia should do things. England is the model for how to screw up an economy, their austerity kick is causing immense suffering for absolutely no good purpose, since all the debts in question are denominated in pounds and the Bank of London most certainly has a printing press capable of addressing them…
There are few things as low as a child molester, but these “business leaders” belong on the same level of Hell. You have to wonder how many of the disabled are in their current condition because of working for these companies?
Logically, you would think that since the problems are “acts of G*d”, they would have wanted the churches to pay and take responsibility. Of course, we all know that the greenhouse gases these companies have been pouring into the atmosphere for years had nothing to do with these problems, right. It’s not like they profited while adding to the causes of these events. [/sarcasm]
I would hope that Australians boycott as many of these companies as they can. It won’t have a great effect on most of them, but money is the only thing they seem to care about.