Variants of sexy asian teen….

Precisely. And the way public welfare works, there will always be an underclass, perpetuated by the system and not emancipated by it. People who really care need to explore other ways to help so that able-bodied people can proudly support themselves and their dependents.

“I read your paper and found it very interesting, but I’m not convinced of the argument that the superficial similarity between social spending levels in the USA and Australia means that we really have similar attitudes to redistribution.

Before expanding on this, I agree that there is a lot of evidence of a relationship between immigration, diversity and access to social welfare.

In the first half of the 20th century in Australia this actually worked in the opposite way - the White Australia policy was intended to make sure that we had the

It seems to me that associating ethnic diversity with lower welfare spending is an unnecessarily long bow when underlying cultural differences (which show up clearly in surveys on ‘individual’ and ‘collective’ values) are so clear.

Furthermore - as argued, if it were true, surely welfare would have declined as we got more ‘ethnically diverse’. If anything, the last 35 years (the era of ‘multiculturalism’ as a buzzword) have seen a relentless expansion in the Australian welfare state which wasn’t seen at any stage of the previous 70 years.

Ireland too might be cited as an example - in most relevant areas (tax, welfare, income distribution etc) it lines up with the Anglosphere countries, but - though I don’t have figures to hand - I should think that it is far less ethnically diverse than Australia.

There are negatives associated with immigration, but I don’t think downward pressure on welfare budgets is one of them. If anything, since NESB voters have tended to back Labor more than ever in recent years, the bias could be in the other direction.

I think tax deductions were the best method of recognising kids in the tax system that we had, and the process since (deductions turning to rebates, then cashing them out) really reflects the end of Western Civilisation As We Know It.

Bring back tax deductions.

But to my original point, do cross country (or even cross-time within one country) comparisons exist that are done on a net benefit basis? I have seen some through-time material that looked at families in this way (showing significant net gains in real terms under Howard), but not for other household types.

But even the terminology we use these days, such as ‘family tax benefit’, is a nod to the ideology of self-reliance, trying to water down the ‘welfare’ aspect and play up the own earnings angle.

Over the years, Australia has shifted a long way toward cash payments and away from tax based concessions. This can change the apparent level of welfare paid and degrees of dependency, even though theoretically people may have exactly the same net incomes as they would by not paying as much tax (and getting less cash payment).

Cross country comparisons that don’t factor this in seem to me to be misleading.