I assume “Other purposes” is govt kickbacks to mining and gas companies 😬
I love that it helps you see how little of the welfare payments are going to the unemployed, since that’s the part that concerns people the most.
That’s a newer addition, when it first came out under a conservative Goverment, all welfare was grouped together.
Classic Conservative tactic.
“Evil, stupid, greedy-” stuffs pockets “-jobless, welfare scroungers!” stuffs pockets “Pensioners, vote for me to bring down our welfare spending!”
Uk government tried this a few yrs ago trying to spin the welfare part as work shy bambots then it came out that the lions share was pension pots that took up most of it with the teachers pensions being the one the media focused on
The US has a similar breakdown by % as this Australian one, except that what’s called “welfare” in Australia is called “entitlements” in the US and makes up about 50% of the budget. Welfare in terms of the dole aka money given to “work shy bambots” makes up only about half of one percent.
Indeed, especially since I am quite unconcerned about the Aged. They had their chance!
I strongly believe that this should be the standard everywhere. Unfortunately most governments won’t tell you this, because a few of them are busy building golden temples for their authoritarian leaders, and blowing half of it on cocaine while pretending it’s the immigrants’ faults
I agree with you 100% that this should be standard everywhere, but here’s the thing… this information is readily available already.
At least in the US. But just like with most thing, it takes citizens a willingness to show the tiniest bit of effort to find that information.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888
This is but one of many sites which show a breakdown of where our money in the US goes. Having one that breaks down each person’s personal contribution would be especially interesting, but a percent is a percent so if 20% of our money collectively goes to X, then 20% of what your paid as an individual will also go to X.
sometimes accessibility and user experience is more important than "its available if you look for it.: 99% of people don’t really have time, they have families, jobs, some leisure, cooking, paying bills, visiting family. etc. etc. So it should be easy and the FACT that it isn’t easy is purposeful whereas the Australian system is purposefully easy.
I don’t disagree with your sentiment, but again, it IS easy. It took me less than 10 seconds to find the link I provided. Sure, make it even easier still by including it with every tax return, but let’s not kid ourselves - this shit is incredibly easy but average taxpayers just don’t want to bother.
I would argue average taxpayers don’t know it exists and a ton of them, particularly older ones have a very hard time with technology. I’ve had to show my mother in law how to get a url from her phone to her desk top, I’ve explained what the read mode means in Firefox, and numerous other things. Easy for you doesn’t mean easy for everyone.
Not only this, I think this should be selectable by taxpayers before they pay taxes so they can customize the amount that goes to each category. This would be the true democratic way of doing it. So, for example, based on your salary you need to pay 20k in taxes. You’d then select how much you want to go into Transportation, Healthcare, defense, education, etc.
This would quickly force the government agencies to work for their money.
If you can’t see the obvious ways this would fail and/or be abused you should steer clear of any and all leadership positions.
Then everyone would just fund things 100% and 0% for everything else they deem not important, like education or roads.
That’s the point. If people don’t find it important, then it’s not. Who else should decide if not the people?
There’s no point in having a government if you don’t let them decide how they spend and raise money
Tax-deductible donations get you part way there.
And if you get caught using a public service you didn’t pay for, you get fined.
I also think people should not be allowed to vote unless they pay a flat poll tax. Otherwise it’s a conflict of interest.
No, we should not have more barriers for the poor to vote actually
That would just reduce representation for low income people. That’s an absolutely abhorrent idea.
Then have them pool their money together to get a vote.
What? Are you a teenager or something?
see this for a bit of education on the topic: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/oligarchs-against-democracy
This is a poor take, a few to vote is not the easy to go about this. Even owing taxes shouldn’t bar someone from voting as voting is about being represented and everyone deserves representation. Even hardened criminals.
What happened to taxation without representation.
Many people aren’t represented in America, e.g., DC, Peurto Rico, people who were in prison. Taxation without representation doesn’t exist in America.
Tell me you hate poor people without telling me you hate poor people.
wanna elaborate on that?
One thing to note about this breakdown is that it wasn’t legislated with good intention but it was implemented in a very malicious compliance way that completely counteracted the original intention.
This receipt was legislated by the conservative party in Australia under Tony Abbott, the surface level intention was to “show where people’s tax dollars are spent”. However the underlying intention was to show welfare spending as a huge category that totally eclipsed all other spending in order to demonize welfare, particularly unemployment welfare. In order to build public support for rolling back that spending.
However when the letter was implemented, the welfare category was further broken down as you see here, completely working against the narrative that the government at the time was trying to spin (that unemployment welfare particularly was a huge drain on society).
Instead it shows that boomers are the real drain on society
Nice
Makes sense. I was already worried as soon as I saw “welfare” being bigger than “health”.
Well, are they lying? It’s just true that welfare costs a lot of money (the “aged” category takes like half of my country’s taxes)
Eww you guys are getting close to spending more on education than the military. Slippery slope.
It gets worse-
They spell defense with a c!
Those goddamn commies need some freedumb!!!
As mentioned by @w2qw@aussie.zone above:
This is just federal spending. Most educational spending is at the state level.
Another thing that’s great about aussie tax… you can fill it out yourself, it’s very easy, all online, and it takes a very short time. They also explain every question in the form and have lots of materials that you can read. For me, I finish it each year in about 10 minutes, and never think about it again.
In Norway, we just get it prefilled based on automatically reported data, and it’s delivered by default after a certain date - you can of course make changes up until then (and retroactively up to 3 years later).
It’s prefilled in Australia too, we just go through and double check it’s okay and then hit submit
In the UK tax is deducted ‘at source’ by your employer for anybody employed. You have a personal tax code, which tells your employer how much tax to deduct and pay on you behalf.
You then have a number of allowances you can claim against if you are eligible, to reduce your tax, which issues you an updated tax code.
Always liked this because it helps people see to some extent where money is going.
I know the UK and Portugal do this as well. It was especially interesting in the UK during the Brexit years because you could see a tiny piece of that pie chart with EU contributions, almost saying “this is how little of our money is going to Europe”, didn’t do any good in the end but hey, still great info to have that all detailed
the UK do this as well
They do?
Well shit, they do! Shame they don’t actually tell you about it actively - as you said, they probably don’t want most people to realise.
That welfare budget is a load of of shit, too. If you have a look at the actual breakdown, most goes on housing (read: private landlords) and(!) pensions.
Some crafty fucker in the dwp had the genius idea of splitting up state and civil service pensions, placing civil service pensions under the welfare group to make the welfare bill higher. Out of the welfare budget I think only 5% of that goes on the unemployed. Out of that 5% only 1% of that 5% figure goes to the long term unemployed. (Being on the dole >6months). Yet they only bang on shit the feckless and workshy…
Do you know where I could look for the actual breakdown - I’m not sure what to search for - would it be in the budget documents?
I think something like this would make U.S. citizens feel better about taxes in general, since it can sometimes feel like you’re throwing a large portion of your hard-earned money away.
The data to create this is essentially public with budget bills right? It would just take building a percentage tree and categorizing them appropriately. I might look into how complex this would be to build.
its basically just proportioning out the nations budget against the amount of tax paid,assuming you had access to how much was spent where by category, it would be a peice of piss to make
Luckily they even do the categorization and calculate percentages for you!
I had no idea this existed; thanks for the share!
true but seeing how much goes to welfare might make republicans hit the roof. Everyones got that uncle that hates the poors.
Mind you the largest chunk of that is the elderly with the unemployed being one of the smallest ones. I’m very much in favour of both by the way.
If you think your taxes are too high then it’s not because too much is going to welfare; it’s because too much is going to tax breaks (which won’t show up on a chart like this) for fossil fuel companies and the wealthy.
Most in Australia don’t read where the money goes. Taxes aren’t too bad (IMO) and the system is so easy that once you submit you don’t really go back to see where it went. Or maybe I live in a bubble.
The US doesn’t give you a nice little letter, but you can go to https://usafacts.org/visualizations/the-big-picture/ to see something similar.
In America, our government organizations can’t pass an audit
Most can. The DoD has consistently failed for years. Yet we still keep ballooning their budget.
I mean, how else is the US going to afford to kill brown people in other countries to ensure rich white people can keep getting richer?
Such edge lol
Such worthless, juvenile commentary. Fucking Redditors.
Actively
Cries in American 😥
99% “defence”
1% other
Forgot the part where the government supports monopolies
In the US that would be a list of Congressmen and the Billionaires who own them.
I think US would have a slightly smaller problem of NOT KNOWING WHERE THE FUCKING CASH IS
Can’t be out of money if you don’t know where the money is!
Fun fact: in the United States you can request this same sort of receipt. It’s slightly different, but all you have to do is request it, and they can show you exactly how many brown people they shot, or godless communists they’ve brought democracy to with your taxes!
In the US they’d have to print it Landscape in order to have room for the Military bar.
On one of those long ass printer papers with the tear off edges from the 80s.
Where is the 1 trillion on defense? /s
It must be so nice to see such a small bar for your defense spending.
It’s still 8.6%, that’s quite a lot actually…
Thats why they lost the Emu war…
See those emus try the same shit in the states and see how that goes
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Except we kinda do need our military, especially with how cunty some point Australia’s neighbours can be.
Yeah, don’t trust them kiwis.
Should just nuke them now and get it over with honestly
Just wait til we buy the govt some nuc subs in the coming years, then that bar gonna be a long boi
Yeah because that shit is totally not needed. AU and EU need to step up their shit. Iran and China sure are.
Except we don’t want to be the USA of the Asia pacific region.
You people live in a fantasy world where physical threats do not exist. The US is leading the way protecting Asia and Europe. The entire balkins would be under RU is it wasn’t for that spending.
The spending it’s needed and it’s EU/Asia doesn’t step up it’s game they’ll ultimately be a second tier power to the United States perpetually. Their call I guess 🤷♂️.
I mean sadly you’re right - people like to hate on our defense spending in the US, but who does the world look towards when Russia invades Ukraine? It sucks that it needs to be this way, but if we don’t have a strong deterrent to other countries then we’re just asking for problems. Look at how aggressive China and Russia have gotten recently, with China inching closer to an invasion of Taiwan. Who’s going to be laughing when the US is there to help Taiwan?
Also isn’t usa paying for other countrys military not sure if this is true
We know more about geo politics in the region than you do. And your drastic oversimplification does not actually result in a reasonable and coherent plan for peace in the Asia pacific region. Again I’ll say, your presence and commentary in this case is misinformed and incorrect.
👌
I’m not sure why your being downvoted, but it’s true. Allied countries of the U.S. do not have to put much towards their military budget do to being able to rely on the U.S.
The U.S. has a strong military presence in the Indo-pacific region and if they didn’t, surely some adversaries would have already been having their way.
It’s unfortunate it comes to this but that’s just the facts.
USA:
Defense: |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| Boomer Welfare: |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| |||||||| Interest on Debt: |||||||| |||||||| Everything Else: |As yet, social security is still a SELF-FUNDING program that lends money to the general fund. I’m gen-x, not a boomer. Stop buying into generational warfare. We have more in common with working class boomers than with gen Z tech bros.
social security is still a SELF-FUNDING program
It’s also had negative cash flow for the last decade despite exponentially growing future obligations, and is currently trending towards insolvency by 2033. That’s what happens when you detach expenditures from taxes. So while boomers are simultaneously enjoying low taxes and reaping the benefits of social security, the fund will run out of money before it can have any chance of paying out for millennials. It’s not like the social security taxes I’m paying now are being “set aside” for me - they’re going directly into the welfare checks for my parents.
and what’s wrong with “social services” having a negative cash flow? It’s to help people in need, that’s the entire purpose of taxes, to help the community/country. why do people think that any government systems should be positive cash flow like it’s a business? LOL
Pretty sure they aren’t upset at the government not turning a profit or taking care of people.
social security is still a SELF-FUNDING program
[Insolvency is] what happens when you detach expenditures from taxes.
So while boomers are simultaneously enjoying low taxes and reaping the benefits of social security, the fund will run out of money before it can have any chance of paying out for millennials.
It’s not like the social security taxes I’m paying now are being “set aside” for me
As someone who has spent a lot of their time around wanna be gen z tech bros, 99% of people have more in common with a damn antelope than gen z tech bros, especially the fanatically devoted ones. Those guys make some Jonestown people look like they
aren’tweren’t in a cult
