Poor hit hardest by gov cuts - Professor

Well it's official. The economists agree. The Abbott budget about to be hoisted upon us will have a much bigger impact on the poor than on others:

While the Abbott government will raise some taxes in the budget – including the politically risky petrol excise and the deficit tax – Treasurer Joe Hockey says spending cuts will do most of the “heavy lifting” to reduce the deficit. Mr Eslake says it is “more or less inevitable” that a budget primarily focused on spending cuts will disproportionately affect the poor. 

Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Justin Wolfers, has observed the effects on growing inequality in the US and worries about similar consequences in Australia. 

“It looks like the Abbott government is moving in a way that will increase inequality,” said Professor Wolfers, an Australian economist working at the University of Michigan. 

The Abbott government’s proposed Medicare co-payment on GP visits, increase in the petrol excise and expected tightening of unemployment benefits and the disability support pension, will disproportionately hurt poorer Australians, the economists agree. Other policies that will harm the less well off include abolishing the income support bonus, scrapping the school children bonus and cutting funding from Trade Training Centres. Read more

So this is Abbott's direction. Take us down the path of US inequality and slavery to corporations. This guy it appears has no brain. Obviously this isn't a path Australians want to follow. Australian society has difficulties yes, but copying US social failure will only exacerbate them not move us forward in any way.