Budget politics

Have you read the Herald today? Good article, but the chart is missing from the online version.
If you are a one income family - on , say $38,000 - with a couple of kids and your partner is working part time to supplement the family income, they probably won't be in 2007. That’s because the Government has decided that a $20,000 pay increase will only amount to a net increase of $2,376. That will not even be enough to cover transport to work and lunch, so why bother when you can get the money through taxes paid by single working people?

It, in some ways, is a victory for mums who want to stay at home and look after the kids. It is also a disincentive for hard-working people to get ahead in their jobs, do overtime or get higher paid jobs. It is a victory for work/life balance.

Your best bet is to get a good job now. For those of you who have a decent job paying $60.000, and a couple of kids, you can reduce your hours to 25 a week in 2007 and get pretty much the same net income
Perhaps the strategy is for high income people to have kids, then reduce their hours in 2007 - that will reduce unemployment as more people than ever will be working part time, thus creating more vacancies - as long as these part-time people have enough kids to make it all worthwhile.

Employers won't be concerned about staff getting pregnant, they`ll be wanting to know how many kids potential employees have before employing them, in case they want to reduce their hours when the state suport kicks in.

When most people get wind of all this, there will be some serious complaining going on, and could lose Labour the election, rather than getting it more votes.

Steve Maharey's response to the fact that high income families would not be getting much more than low income people: "So what?"

He didn’t say " Well , at least high income families are paying us more tax, even if their net income will be less than a beneficary couple with a full quiver of kids". Nor did he comment on how the Official Cash Rate increases will eat away most of the increases the budget will provide low income families who have mortgages.

Roll on 2007….the year before the election.