Upper class welfare

Adam Creighton makes a convincing argument at The Punch in regard to the absurd situation in Australia, where well off people get handed taxpayers money which they don't need. He quotes some statistics that I've heard before, but goes further into the nitty gritty of it.

Family Tax Benefit B, which is paid to households with incomes up to around $175,000 a year, is the main culprit. The quaint argument that children are the responsibility of their parents lost appeal long ago; now they are a social ‘investment’.

Including child care skews the distribution even more perversely. Taxpayers provide over $4.4 billion a year to more than 900,000 families to help pay for child care, including 140,000 who are not eligible for the means-tested component because their incomes exceed $142,000 a year. 

At a cost to taxpayers of around $750 million a year, the Commonwealth government also forces the States to give grants to first home buyers, money that pushes up house prices thereby ending up in the pockets of wealthier sellers. 

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A simpler, better targeted welfare system could easily shave $10 billion a year from federal public spending, enough to pay for the government’s vast, uncapped National Disability Insurance Scheme for instance, or cut marginal income tax rates lower down the scale, spurring a virtuous cycle of work and decision making as more people bore the costs of their own decisions. 

Labor politicians from McKell to Keating wanted welfare to help the genuinely needy, not to make facials affordable for Toorak mums or entry level Paddington terrace more achievable for a surgeon’s son. One can be fulsomely in favour of children without wanting subsidies for the well off. more

I'm all for welfare obviously (I'm on it now due to illness) but some of those incomes are outrageous. The public servants/paper pushers in Canberra grossly overpaid, and those elsewhere in the country on big money but still getting welfare off the gov. This is all while I have to perform some kind of miracle to get anything. 

There's so much need at the bottom end of incomes, it's outrageous that $10billion a year is being wasted on the well off.