Category: Families & relationships

Demo-familism

~ Andrew Norton ~ 12 Comments

First right-familism, then left-familism, and now demo-familism, with Victorian multi-millionaire father-of-three Labor MP Evan Thornley proposing that parents get votes they can exercise on behalf of their under-18 children.

Given Thornley’s narrow victory in the 2006 Victorian state election I can well understand why he might want an extra three votes. But what are the in-principle arguments for his proposal?:

Families are currently underrepresented in our democracy. They pay but don’t have a say. A family of five or six has no more say in our democracy than a couple of two — yet their needs and potential contribution are greater.

“Electorates with large numbers of families can have up to 30 per cent more people in them than ones that don’t. As a consequence, issues of long-term concern to families like early childhood development, education and the environment don’t get the priority they deserve in our democracy.”

The idea of plural voting has a long history. In the 19th century John Stuart Mill favoured it, on the grounds that intelligent people would cast better-informed votes: Continue reading “Demo-familism” →

The familist redistribution of time

~ Andrew Norton ~ 114 Comments

Australia’s leading left-familist academics are at it again today, with a 39 point list of more taxes and regulations, which they call ‘Benchmarks: Work and Family Poilcies in Election 2007’, to enforce their view on family life on the rest of us.

I have criticised much of the underlying analysis in previous posts (eg here, here, and here).

While I have objected to the way familists want to redistribute money to people with children (or to people with children on behalf of children, as backroom girl would insist), I have not emphasised they way they propose to redistribute time.

Given that most taxpayers earn their income via personal labour, some redistribution of time is implicit in the tax system. To get a given amount of after-tax income, the higher the taxes levied to support families the more pre-tax income a worker has to earn, and that means longer hours. Most men prefer to work full-time anyway, so while familist policies appropriate the results of their labour, they probably don’t actually significantly increase male hours. Women, however, are often more sensistive to the financial rewards from working (hence the complaints in ‘Benchmarks’ about high EMTRs) and their part-time work is used to bring household income up to a desired level.

But also important is the redistribution of hours within the workplace. Continue reading “The familist redistribution of time” →

Will the public support conditional welfare?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 30 Comments

Today in The Australian my CIS colleague Peter Saunders comes out in favour of ‘conditional welfare’, in which some welfare payments for parents deemed irresponsible or incompetent are restricted, so that they can only be spent on items the government deems appropriate.

So far as I am aware, this is not an idea that has been directly tested in an opinion poll. But based on answers to other questions we can take an educated guess as to what the public might say if asked.

Most of the people to whom conditional welfare would apply would presumably be on unemployment or single parent benefits, two groups which have not inspired enthusiasm among Australian voters. For example, a 2001 Saulwick poll asked about benefit levels for various beneficiary groups. Majorities supported higher payments for those who could not reasonably expected to work, the aged and disabled. But only 22% wanted more for single parents, and only 17% for the unemployed.

Both groups, perhaps, are seen as vulnerable to the moral hazards of welfare. Continue reading “Will the public support conditional welfare?” →

The maternal state

~ Andrew Norton ~ 94 Comments

The Age reported yesterday on the first women-only political party, What Women Want Australia. Rarely has entitlement feminism been so blatant; usually at least a see-through blouse of principle covers the naked self-interest. According to The Age‘s story:

Launching the What Women Want Australia party in Brisbane today, Justine Caines said women needed better representation and were sick of being paid lip service on key issues.

These included paid maternity leave, post-natal services, access to child care, education and the environment.

Though relatively few women have held senior political positions, much more than lip service has been paid to policies affecting women. Indeed, for all the talk on this blog and elsewhere about redistributing money between income deciles and between household types, one of the biggest things the government does is redistribute income from men to women.

The ATO’s statistics show that men pay more than twice as much income tax as women. Yet they receive back less than women in return.

Nearly 60% of the recipients in the Budget’s biggest expense, the old age pension, are women. Continue reading “The maternal state” →

Why are people satisfied with their work-life balance?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 9 Comments

According to The Age‘s report of the first Australian Work and Life Index

…work follows most people beyond the office with men especially reporting more “spillover” than women. Yet, in a seemingly contradictory finding, three-quarters of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the bargain struck between work and life. (emphasis added)

The seemingly contradictory statistics run like this: around half of workers say that work interferes with ‘activities outside work’ (combining ‘sometimes’ and ‘often/almost always’) and with ‘community connections’. Sixty percent think that it ‘interferes with ‘enough time for family and friends’. Only 16% say that they ‘never/rarely’ feel rushed for time. Yet 75% say that they are satisfied with their work-life balance.

The missing concept that leads journalists to think these results are contradictory – and a concept that is missing rather too often from labour market analysis – is trade-off. There are more worthwhile things that most of us would like to do than we can fit in a day, a week, or even a life, and this means that we cannot maximise them all in the same time period. Yet we can be satisfied with our overall work-life balance because given the objectives we have we are content with the trade-offs we have made.

This is evident in the statistics provided in Work and Life Index report. Continue reading “Why are people satisfied with their work-life balance?” →

Does gay marriage have majority support?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 5 Comments

To coincide with the release of a HREOC report on anti-gay discrimination, political spammers GetUp! have released a Galaxy poll (pdf) on the rights of same-sex partners.

This is the first time a survey has found majority support for gay marriage, with 57% of respondents agreeing that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. As GetUp!’s media release notes, this is a big increase on the last poll on gay marriage, a 2004 Newspoll that found 38% in favour. Could things have changed that much in two years?

Actually, less than two years. Over 2005 and 2006 there were three surveys on the seemingly less contentious issue of civil unions, with the proportions in favour ranging from 45% to 52%. That gay marriage now comes out ahead of civil unions, without any major intervening debate or publicity, inevitably raises question about whether opinion has really changed or it is something to do with the survey itself.
Continue reading “Does gay marriage have majority support?” →

The winners and losers from tax and spend

~ Andrew Norton ~ 33 Comments

Yesterday the ABS released the latest of its surveys of the winner and losers of Australia’s taxing and spending, covering the 2003-04 period.

And the winners are…unemployed single parents with children under 5, taking in on average $878 more a week in income transfers and welfare services than they pay in tax, most of which is indirect tax (it has a statistical caution on the number, but despite low overall tax this group scores the highest payment on ‘tobacco products’, consistent with previous research showing the poor pay a disproportionate share of ‘sin’ taxes).

And the losers are…the top 20% of households by income, who pay on average $571 a week more in tax than they receive back in benefits and services.

As with previous surveys, this one finds that the bottom 60% of households are net beneficiaries of the tax and welfare system, ie they receive more in income transfers and welfare services than they pay in tax. The Australian gave this aspect its lead story, with the heading ‘Tax take helping Howard battlers’. The poorest 20% get more than 40% of all social assistance, and the richest 20% only 9%.

But the redistributive aspect of policy is driven by income transfers rather than government services. Continue reading “The winners and losers from tax and spend” →

Do employees work only for their own benefit?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 54 Comments

The latest ABS data on ‘working time arrangements’ received a tendentious report yesterday in the SMH:

ALMOST a third of Australian employees work unsocial hours – between 7pm and 7am – and even more complain they have no say about when they start or finish. ….Thirty per cent said their shifts regularly overlapped the hours between 7pm and 7am as part of their main job. Three in five said they had no say about when they started or finished.

As for weekends, 16 per cent said they were required to work on Saturdays, and 8.5 per cent on Sundays. One in four were not always allowed to choose when to take their holidays. (emphasis added)

Note the SMH interpretations I bolded. Working after 7pm isn’t necessarily ‘unsocial’ – a lot of people like their colleagues. The ABS report doesn’t anywhere suggest that people were complaining about having no say about when they start or finish; that simply goes with many jobs where predictable opening or operational times are necessary. The ABS doesn’t say that 16% of people are ‘required’ to work Saturdays; it just says that 16% do work Saturdays. As I noted earlier in the month, weekends and evenings are the only time some people with other commitments can work. And workers in particular industries can’t take holidays whenever they choose for good reasons, eg school teachers can’t take holidays during term.

What’s missing in this reporting is the sense that an employment arrangement is one of mutual advantage between employer and employee to provide goods and services from which other people benefit – rather than just something to benefit the employee, regardless of its effects on others.
Continue reading “Do employees work only for their own benefit?” →

Labor and same-sex relationships

~ Andrew Norton ~ 21 Comments

At its conference last week, the ALP endorsed national legislation

which [would] allow same-sex couples to register their relationship and secure legal recognition of their relationship in areas such as property rights and superannuation benefits.

As usual, the idea did not please everyone:

The national secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, Joe de Bruyn, said the Tasmanian scheme [on which the policy is modelled] gave same-sex couples the same status as married couples, which would demean and undermine marriage. …

He said the policy would be poorly received in suburban Australia and would make it harder for the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, to win the 16 seats that Labor needed to defeat the Howard Government.

We’ve discussed the rather difficult-to-detect logic of the first claim before, and some newly unembargoed questions from the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2005 enable us to consider the second, at least if we consider it a near-equivalent to civil unions.

The overall result, with 48% of respondents being in favour of civil unions, was consistent with two other polls on the issue, which registered 45% and 52% support. As is common with questions on this subject, there was a big ‘neither agree nor disagree’ response of 19%, suggesting that this is still an open debate for many people. A third are opposed to civil unions.
Continue reading “Labor and same-sex relationships” →

The fiscal burden of Family Tax Benefits

~ Andrew Norton ~ 35 Comments

In the executive summary of the second Intergenerational Report, released today, it says after noting various fiscal pressures that will build over the next 40 years:

It will be important to focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of government spending

I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, the government isn’t heeding its own advice, as the Integenerational Report itself shows. In an appendix on spending projections the Report compares spending forecasts made in the first report five years ago with those Treasury makes now. Back then, they thought that Family Tax Benefits A and B would consume 1.3% of GDP in 2006-07. In the second Report they say FTB spending will be 1.6% of GDP in 2006-07. In a trillion dollar economy – as various government Ministers for some reason keep telling us – that 0.3% is a lot of money. In real per person terms, it’s gone from $613 per person to $790 per person, or about a 29% increase.

Now what do we have for all this money? According to the Report:

Continue reading “The fiscal burden of Family Tax Benefits” →