Other than the USA, Canada and UK no country in the developed world has been been worse since the mid 70's in regard to income inequality
http://www.oecd.org/social/OECD2014-FocusOnTopIncomes.pdf
(graph on page 3)
How is it fair that the top 1% have had 22% of the growth in the Australian economy since 1975 to 2007 and the top 10% have had 48% of the growth?
That means the bottom 90% have had 52% of the growth.
It isn't fair. So what's your point?
You want a world where everyone benefits equally as regards income increases? That would make things better?
The report you provide acknowledges that there isn't an automatic correlation between these income growth inequalities and inequality more broadly. See the gini map, see where Australia fits. Also have a look at countries like France, Italy & Portugal which have most of the income growth going to the bottom over the same period. How's that working out for them?
When governments intervene to too great an extent you just get a manipulated market that ultimately causes its own problems that requires more government intervention that creates its own problems and so on. I understand that some government intervention to assist those who need assistance and to provide basic services is required but your position seems to be one where you see governments role as to attack all income inequality as if it's inherently evil and that "taxing the rich" is a big part of that.
We have a massively effective system that brings everyone back to the middle. We then had a prolonged boom period where much of the middle was treated as if they were poor and were given lots of assistance through reduced taxes and increased transfers. This created people in the middle with higher disposable incomes which, unsurprisingly, drove up the cost of everything and allied with cheap credit particularly drove up the cost of housing. The issue for us now is we have **** all net taxpayers but we can't tax most of those we need to - the middle - because the price of everything went up and they couldn't afford it if we did.
We don't need to massively raise taxes on a tiny number of people because it won't achieve anything. That's Wayne Swan economics of "tax the rich". It's cute and appeals to stupid people but it achieves nothing. We need to get a broader base of taxpayers and we need to wean the middle off transfer payments, this is tricky without allowing prices, particularly property prices to fall.
Your idea seems to be let's just increase their share of income. Solid idea for a country with extremely high wages already. We'd just further kill off Industries and sectors...
We are in a tough spot at present and real action needs to happen and that includes in the area of tax. It needs some increases in revenue in and substantial reductions in outgoings. You aren't achieving anything other than a miniscule amount of that by taxing "the rich" more. They are already amongst the few real net contributors to the system (see the tax report I quoted earlier).
I responded to your earlier post because it was Abbott level cliche one line nonsense. And basing what we need to do now on such stuff will kill us.
But until people grasp that we already have high incomes at all levels by international standards and we currently don't really tax our "average families" much at all (tax and transfers net) we aren't in position to start much of a discussion IMO
We really do have some challenges at present and I'm not sure anyone is really addressing them at all.
For the record my default position is Liberal in terms of politics but this government is pretty bloody average and many of the problems I raise in this thread trace back to Howard.. No side seems right at present. But Labors ideas of raising no taxes (except on "the rich") and sticking with high cost social programs and appearing to cut nothing isn't exactly an inspiring alternative unless you want to live with your head in the sand.