Australia will become Greece without tax reform

by Chris Becker

The billionaire class in the US and UK have done a remarkable job transferring wealth from the middle and lower classes into their own back pockets, facilitated by an unproductive banking and political quango. With the death knell of trickle down economics, there is now a push to see this wealth redistribution reversed in the US and Europe, but while that battle may be won with logic and compassion, the war will be a long one to meaningful reform.

Australia does it differently by so-called “civilized capitalism”, essentially creating and then protecting a large rent-seeking upper middle class through speculative asset bubbles, protected by major tax avoidance measures enacted by vote-buying politicians and through a more than helpful column of media commentators, especially through the lens of “the battlers”.