I really just want our tax dollars to go supporting people who genuinely need it for basic necessities, not people temporarily down on their luck but who have savings or property to fall back on. Everyone in that basket should get nil assistance.
Not that easy to simply liquidate a property in this environment. But people can borrow against them. I still maintain that if the Government has forcibly shut down your business or employment for a purpose such as Covid, then the government is obligated to compensate.
You lose your job, you lose your rental income, you lose your dividends, it's the same thing in the end - loss of income. So let's concentrate on who really needs an income supplement, rather than making arbitrary classifications. Treat everyone the same: everyone should be entitled to access Centrelink subject to an income and assets cap.
In practice, this means landlords will probably be less able to access it, since they'll be over the assets threshold. But that's fine. Point is, we shouldn't class people as "worker" or "tenant or "landlord" and have different rules for different categories because doing so potentially over-benefits workers (or tenants) on high incomes who don't need extra protection. We should just have a universal safety net that you can access once you run down your savings.
Firstly, the government has made quite a point that Jobkeeper is primarily a business support mechanism. Politics prevented the Government from simply handing the cash to business, for the sake of getting re-elected in two years time they had to tie it to workers.
Secondly, absolutely we should be treating workers differently to property speculators like me. People who are taxed at PAYG rates and don’t have the benefit of fucked up shit like trusts and companies and the like to pay no tax on earnings like some of us “investors” have. We lie and say trusts are for bullshit reasons like “asset protection” but it’s really just a way to funnel income to zero rate taxpayers.
The government had one week to design the scheme and about one week more to implement it to cover 50% of the workforce.
There is going to be some waste, there are some losers as we know. Fine, what did we expect for a scheme this large. All things considered it’s a fucking miracle the whole shebang didn’t collapse.
Financial markets are still standing. The property market is still standing. No bank has collapsed. There are no reports of mass death or starvation or homelessness. You do benefit greatly from all of these things, and it is the confidence and money that the assistance packages give that deliver this.
A budget deficit and having to pay a little more tax never killed anyone. Make your peace with it and be grateful you are not in need of assistance.