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	Australia does not have a welfare problem. We have a poverty problem by John Falzon CEO, St Vincent de Paul Society Australia   Waiting for the wealth to trickle down   Wealth does not trickle down. It''s the job of the tax system to make sure it gets shared around. That is why we need governments to do what markets cannot, namely to ensure a fair go for all rather than a sumptuous banquet for some.   Tax cuts to large corporations do not help the wealth to trickle down. Current policy settings for negative gearing, capital gains tax discounts and superannuation tax concessions do not help the wealth to trickle down. They help keep it at the top by rewarding people and corporations who have already benefited from the prosperity generated by economic growth.   Australia, which is the sixth lowest taxing country in the OECD, goes without more revenue through tax expenditure than all other advanced economies.   A progressive society would tax those who have much rather than taking away from those who have little. But today we have a society and an economy more closely aligned to the principle that to those who have much, more will be given and from those who have little, even the little they have will be taken away. As things stand people who need services and income supports are being punished in the name of deficit reduction.   Taxation is an important means of redistributing wealth and opportunities. We should be using it to make Australia more equal; something we should actually strive for rather than fear. Treasury''s own modelling shows that the trickle-down economics used to justify corporate tax cuts are illusory.   Tax cuts for larger companies might be good for profits but, at the cost of $48 billion over the next 10 years, they will do nothing to create jobs or to secure the revenue for social housing, education, health or social security. Superannuation tax breaks are estimated by Treasury to cost $32 billion annually; by comparison, $20.3 billion a year is spent on Medicare. Negative gearing and the discount on capital gains tax cost over $11 billion each year, and the benefits are overwhelmingly skewed towards higher income earners.   Housing is a human right. But negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts have turned it into a speculative sport. We''re subsidising the wealthy while leaving people homeless. Maintaining these tax concessions and giving big business a company tax cut ultimately comes at the expense of the education, health and social services that ordinary people rely on.   Those who are left out are usually blamed and punished for their own exclusion. The message they receive is that if only they tried a little harder all would be well, whether it''s breaking into the housing market or into the labour market. But when we talk about the unfairness of cuts to social expenditure, we''re not just talking about the effects on people who currently experience poverty or homelessness; we''re talking about the majority.   And we''re talking about a continuum where financial stress and housing stress are only a few steps away from homelessness; where underemployment and insecure employment are only a few steps away from unemployment.   It''s a deeply offensive to suggest that it''s only the recalcitrant few who can''t look after themselves and that if we taxed less and spent less, then most of us would be able to just purchase the goods and services we need, as we need them, putting the premium, of course, on choice rather than equal access.   The truth is that it is only a few who benefit from this formulation; those who have no need, and perhaps even no desire, for universal healthcare or public education; those who believe they will never need income support as a carer, or due to a disability, or age, or unemployment; those who feel there is little, if any, value in anything being held in common for the common enjoyment of all, perhaps with the exception of the odd public park or beach.   Universal healthcare is a precious thing – we need to protect and extend it. We need to make sure that nobody says they cannot take care of their health because they need to put food on the table. If you want build a strong economy, it doesn''t make sense to deny your population access to high quality healthcare.   Likewise, investing in Gonski, in TAFE, in apprenticeships, in universities and in social and community services should not be seen as charity or welfare; they should be seen as a common good that belongs to everybody, from Australia''s First Peoples through to our most recent arrivals. None of these goods should be dependent on the depth of your pockets. And none of these goods should be denied to ordinary people on the basis of the fervent but misguided dogma that if they are patient, the day will come when the wealth will trickle down.   Australia does not have a welfare problem. We have a poverty problem   You don’t build communities up by putting people down. Structural changes to the economy have resulted in entire communities being left without work and often without adequate social and economic infrastructure.   We see manufacturing jobs disappearing, the loss of jobs in some sectors due to privatisation, and the global quest for ever greater profits by using ever cheaper labour.   We have seen a worrying trend towards casualisation and insecure employment and, on the latest ABS labour force figures, a decline in the total number of monthly hours worked in all jobs. Trends change rapidly and, as the prime minister is fond of reminding us, it is useful to be agile and innovative in a period of everlasting uncertainty and flux.   Which is why it really is time we actually invested in people and communities instead of putting people down and blaming them for their own exclusion. Living in poverty is not a sickness. Nor is it a crime. Yet we continue to fall into the ideological trap of either pathologising or criminalising people who sin against the dominant moral code by not being “self-reliant” in the marketplace.   This is not new. The earlier McClure Report, tabled by Jocelyn Newman in 2000, began from the same premise; that we urgently needed to address the problem of “welfare dependency” because it, and people’s lives, are seemingly spiralling out of control.   It’s time we stopped disguising market failure as a personal failure to participate in the market. For this is where we are starting again, with the current offerings of “revolutionary” vision and “radical” change by social services minister, Christian Porter. By focusing on the supposed failings of the individual, we are missing the bleeding obvious: that there are not enough jobs (and more specifically, not enough hours!) for those who can work as well as a seriously inadequate level of income support for those who cannot.   In the same way, the persistence of homelessness is not a failure of individuals to “do the right thing” and buy a house (or get their parents to pitch in), but rather a failure of the housing market, which is structured in such a way as to be brilliant at providing choice for those at the top, and dazzling as a speculative sport, but lousy at ensuring access to affordable and appropriate accommodation for all.   The other trick that is used to mask the failures of the market is to blame social services. In this discursive sleight of hand, the persistence of unemployment and poverty is proof that the services are not working, and that their funding is a waste of public money because they have failed to end homelessness or unemployment or poverty.   So, the endgame is not even the modest alleviation of poverty, let alone the arresting of inequality. It is the running down of what actually does work or would work as an investment in people and communities, like Gonski, a highly targeted investment in children’s education, focusing on student need rather than sector. Or like Tafe, a national treasure, that on the watch of governments of both sides of politics, has been systematically undermined and gutted.   Likewise, community health programmes, community legal aid programmes, social services and justice reinvestment programmes have been either deliberately cut, like the highly successful Youth Connections, or decidedly ignored.   Australia does not have a welfare problem. We have a poverty problem and an inequality problem, but you know that these problems are going to be ignored when the dominant discourse focuses our attention on the “welfare problem.”   It is true that providing someone with income support and forgetting about them is not the solution to unemployment. But neither is it the cause of unemployment. In short, it is neither the solution nor the problem. And the problem of unemployment and underemployment, which is a structural rather than a behavioural problem, is not going to be addressed by forcing people to live below the poverty line, which is what we appear to be comfortable with allowing to remain as the status quo, even after the welfare revolution. And in the meantime, we are still eagerly being told that corporations need welfare assistance via tax cuts and concessions.   Poverty is not a personal choice. Being a full-time carer, or living with a disability or mental illness, or leaving a violent partner, or being residualised by the labour market, should not result in poverty in a prosperous and progressive country. We should certainly not begrudge the money we spend to make sure that no one is left out or pushed out; that no one is excluded from having a place to call home, a place to work for those who can work (and appropriate income support for those who cannot), a place to learn, and a place to heal. We should not be comfortable with the retrograde notion that charity should be the default mode of providing social security.   If we take as our starting point the supposed need to reduce social expenditure, we will not arrive at the goal of reducing poverty and inequality. If our efforts as a society are predicated on the alleged need to “get people off welfare” we will certainly go some way to cutting the welfare budget and getting people off the government ledger.   But we will find that, even though, as in New Zealand, there will hopefully be some good news stories, there will also be entire cohorts of people who are thrown into the arms of loan sharks and predatory payday lenders and condemned to count on charity when all they long for is justice.   It is time we actually invested in people and communities. It is time we invested in a jobs plan instead of fantasising about a putting-the-boot-into-the-unemployed plan (for example by forcing young people to live on fresh air and sunshine for a month of every year) or a cutting-penalty-rates-and-undermining-the-minimum-wage-plan (exemplified in the PaTH internship proposal).   Unless we see a comprehensive investment in people and communities, in jobs, education, social and affordable housing, public and community health, community legal centres, and social services, and unless we see the billions in cuts to these areas restored, and appropriately indexed and expanded, then instead of an investment in a more socially just Australia, we’ll be staring down the barrel of divestment and the divisiveness that follows.   And in the end, we’ll be going down the US path of building profitable prisons instead of investing in the common good, for being locked up follows hot on the heels of locked out. http://bit.ly/2eqwwKl Visit the related web page
	Study finds that violent video games may be linked to aggressive behaviours by Time Magazine, agencies   Psychologists have confirmed that playing violent video games is linked to aggressive and callous behaviour.   A review of almost a decade of studies found that exposure to violent video games was a "risk factor" for increased aggression.   But the same team of experts said there was as yet insufficient evidence to conclude that the influence of games such as Call Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto led to criminal acts.   The findings have prompted a call for more parental control over violent scenes in video games from the American Psychological Association (APA).   The report from the APA task force on violent media concludes: "The research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in pro-social behaviour, empathy and sensitivity to aggression."   The report said to date research indicated no single influence led a person to act aggressively or violently. Rather, it was an "accumulation of risk factors" that resulted in such behaviour.   It added: "The research reviewed here demonstrates that violent video game use is one such risk factor."   The APA has urged game creators to increase levels of parental control over the amount of violence video games contain. Visit the related web page
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