Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, young people would rather the government keep their money and spend it on climate action.
Tax cuts for the young miss a key point: climate change
By Lucas Walsh and Cathy Waite
February 6, 2022 — 1.37pmWith a federal election looming this year, Josh Frydenberg has been spruiking the benefits of tax cuts favouring younger Australians. Younger Australians (if you exclude the unemployed) have apparently gained $11 billion from personal tax cuts over the past three years. The federal Treasurer also said young apprentices and students under 25 and working part-time were better off on average by $2430 as a result of these cuts.
This election pitch to younger Australians makes sense. Of the nearly 17 million Australians enrolled to vote, over 1.6 million are young people aged 18 to 24.
Such financial inducements miss a key point. Last year, as the world’s largest iceberg broke off an Antarctic ice shelf, thousands of school students (and future voters) assembled for school climate strikes in more than 50 locations around Australia.
…
Student strikes reflect a wider trend. Young people are motivated by big issues and engaging on their own terms. They will inherit debt, unaffordable housing and workforce insecurity, but most of all, they might inherit a planet that is scarcely inhabitable.
Tax cuts miss the point. School protests are just the tip of the iceberg.
…
Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/tax-cuts-for-the-young-miss-a-key-point-climate-change-20220127-p59rns.html
The image at the top of the page is fabricated. There must be a genuine photograph somewhere of a young person refusing free money, but if there is I couldn’t find it.
I doubt the Aussie federal Coalition government’s desperate attempt to appeal to young people will make a difference to their rather dim electoral prospects. Two years of keeping Australians cooped up with overseas travel bans and lockdowns, while largely ignoring allegations of gross human rights abuses by Aussie state premiers, have taken a toll on their popularity.
But I think the SMH authors are the ones who missed the point, if they believe young people are ready to gladly fling all their spare cash at climate action.
Young people want climate action, but they mostly expect their parents to do the heavy lifting..
It is easy. Just go greener. Plant more trees. That takes up the CO2.
YES! Where are the massive campaigns to plant trees by all the greenies? It is telling that they are not happening. It was never about trees or the climate, it was about controlling others.
The greenies in the UK, by introducing beavers, have shown that they don’t give a toss about trees.
Don’t the beavers use trees to build dams?
Is that better or worse than stuffing them (trees, not beavers) into Drax
The dams retain water and water retains heat within the landscape.
It makes nights warmer and likewise winters
Water controls climate – the beavers are not stupid and in a way, although they don’t realise it, neither are the people importing the beavers.
In fact, so fixated on CO2 as they are will never realise but, as I keep saying – “The human animal cannot lie” and “Actions speak louder etc”
Wish the beavers well and do what you can to help them – they’re on our side.
Beavers like wet environments where they can build their lodges and dams.
Nor do beavers cut down many large trees for their food, lodges or dams.
Beavers love deciduous trees, they’re not big on eating pine trees.
Again another example of trying to do good resulting in bad things happening!!!
When in the UK, the well intentioned do-gooder environmentalists campaigned tirelessly for Badgers to be made a protected species, eventually achieving their Pyrrhic victory, & a few years later the same eco-bunnies started to notice that the populations of Hedgehogs were in decline, the cause? Yes, good old habitat destruction & good old Climate Change. The actual cause? Guess what the staple diet of Badgers is,…………yep, Hedgehogs!!! The same eco-bunnies campaigned for the Sparrowhawk to be made a protected species because their numbers were being controlled by evil wicked farmers (Capitalists), well they achieved yet another Pyrrhic victory & the Sparrowhawk was made a protected species. A few years later the RSPB & other conservation groups were most concerned that the populations of Sparrows & other small birds was under threat, the cause being habitat destruction &, yes you guessed it, Climate Change!!! At various environmental meetings around the UK “the people” were very cross about all this, but were not very responsive when some people pointed out that the clue is in the name, Sparrowhawks hunt Sparrows & other small birds!!! Conservationists don’t think things through fully enough if at all!!!
Brilliant. Spot on, and demonstrating the ignorance of the balance of nature by many “nature loving Greens”. They should ask the farmers and others who understand these things a bit better!
Same with wild bees. Bumble bees nests are a prime target for badgers. 15 nests destroyed by badgers on 1.5 acre site in 18 months, also i wasp nest. Then they say the decline is due to climate change……
With Socialism, you get two types of people, the useful idiots, & the manipulators & controllers who want to impose their ideology upon others. The Climate Scary-Story is just another scary story aimed at achieving power & obtaining oodles of taxpayers dosh to line the bank accounts!!! As already said a lousy 1.1 degree Celcius rise in globally averaged temperatures over 150 years is absolutely nothing to be worried about. At the end of WW2, we were all going to hell in a handcart resulting from the imminent & impending nuclear war & resulting holocaust, that didn’t happen! Then in the late 1950s & 1960s we were all going to hell in a handcart from the imminent & impending bio-chemical war just around the corner, that didn’t happen! Then in the late 1960s early to mid 1970s, we were all going to hell in a handcart as we were just about to enter a new Ice-Age because the Earth’s average temperature has been cooling for 60-70 years or so, that didn’t happen. Then when the Earth stopped cooling & started to continue a modest warming, “they” changed their minds yet again & we were all going to hell in a handcart because of global warming!!! That’s also around the time “they” renamed the new scary-story from global warming to Climate Change, therefore ensuring no further need for a name change to suit the current climate conditions because that way, it doesn’t matter which way the temperature goes it’s Climate Change & it’s all mankind’s fault, well, free-enterprise Capitalism practiced by the evil wicked Capitalist Western democracies!!! Socialism never changes, never will do!!!
Paying more tax always improves things…….
A graphic I can’t copy:
97% of scientists agree with whomever is funding them.
Give us a link to the graphic you can’t copy and I’ll see what I can do.
Spot on, Sir!!!
Never mind the CO2. It’s irrelevant.
Planting trees is a nice idea but where you gonna put them?
The only places where there is any room for a significant number of trees are The Large Deserts
Simply sticking trees into desert sand, throwing a bit of water and a puff of CO2 at them, is a fool’s errand.
They will die.
You have to prepare the soil first
If you do that, you don’t need worry about planting trees, they will move in of their own volition
Beware, if you’re successful it will cause Global Warming.
All you need to see is how the Holocene Warm Period came to an abrupt end when the Sahara was created. The desert made things cold.
So via the simplest of child-like logic, as used by Climate Scientists and Politicians alike, un-making the desert will cause temps to rise.
The Sahara was created after temps dropped – colder air, less moisture evaporatoring and so less rain.
There are tons of places for trees, and other plants. Here in Canada there are trees everywhere, but I still find myself thinking “why don’t they plant trees down the length of the median” or on the berm to block highway noise, or in some residential area that is down in the industrial sector. No need for some huge project, the trees will beautify the area, deaden noise, provide homes for pretty song birds, and soak up the ever increasing CO2, that’s going to keep going up no matter what we do.
What do you mean, to borrow from Micahel Bloomberg
“You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the
corntrees “need i add /sarc ?
Hmmm . . . what’s the saying? . . . If you’re not a liberal by the age of 20, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative by the age of 30, you have no brain.
Confirmed by the above article.
Based on that I’m heartless…
Not in Australia. We have a very different definition of liberal.
Liberal = Conservative in Aus.
Come from being upside-down all the time……..
I disagree, liberal means liberal. They were all openly rooting for Hillary in 2016. We only call our liberals “right wing” because their opposition are borderline communists.
I believe the terms have been reclassified over the years. The elitists/Marxists have changed the taxonomy.
Liberal, when I grew up, meant to spread thickly over a large area, like spreading butter liberally over a piece of bread. Conservative meant to keep things the same, no changes to the status quo.
A classical liberal desires the most benefit for the most people. That occurred with a capitalistic system guided by Judeo-Christian ethos. This system has given mankind the highest standard of living for the highest percentage of people in history.
It seems like the current crop of elitists desire the highest level of misery for the highest percentage of people that are not in their little group.
“It seems like the current crop of elitists desire the highest level of misery for the highest percentage of people that are not in their little group.”
All part of the great reset, Agenda 21, the ruling wealthy intellectual (allegedly) elites don’t want the peasants to have or even want what they have, otherwise they would no longer be intellectual elites, & that’s the bottom line here!!!
AKA fascism.
I don’t know why they are referring to what they think “young people” want… a large percentage of young people have no idea to handle money, as they have yet to spend years earning it… AND IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S MONEY as this headline states. If we wish the ‘perception’ of whose money folks are always writing about, then we MUST label it truthfully. It is TAXPAYER money! Repeat after me….
Not in Aus, due to us being upside-down, liberal means conservative.
Did you try reading the above article upside-down? 🙂
Your liberals are more liberal than most US Democrats.
I’m pretty sure your conservatives aren’t much to the right of AOC.
More than likely this is because those “Young People” haven’t had to “Work” for the money and so have no concept of it’s true value. Like Buying your first car vs being given one as a present and seeing how long it takes to crash it. If you didn’t buy it, you have no sense of ownership and don’t respect it’s value
Also they have been brainwashed in school and don’t know how to look up the facts for themselves.
Looking things up these days depends on the fact checkers. Education should spark curiosity and curiosity should lead to experimenting.
The best form of learning is by doing. More curious kids would ask consensus scientists to prove their beliefs. They soon realise that consensus science is a religious order.
CO2 cannot alter the energy balance on Earth. Well educated people understand this. Well educated people take no notice at all of consensus science. They need to know – educate themselves, not be forced fed propaganda or religious beliefs.
If you didn’t buy it, you have no sense of ownership and don’t respect it’s value.
OT some, but along those lines.
The best “urban renewal” sort of program I ever encountered, trying to improve bad and blighted neighborhoods, focused on ways to help residents own property in the area and finding other ways for the residents to “invest” in the neighborhood in other ways – putting THEIR time and effort into improving it. I saw more success with that program than anything else I’ve ever seen. The investment of time and effort gave the community a sense of value.
This is the reason Socialism (public ownership of the means of production) ALWAYS fails. When everybody owns something, nobody owns anything, leading to over-exploitation and vandalism. Also known as the “Tragedy of the Commons”.
As far as human motivations go, I can see nothing that has changed in the 70+ years I’ve been a part of humanity.
As a teenager, I never had enough cash to buy the stuff I needed to keep up with the “cool set”.
So no way would I ever refuse a cash handout from any source.
And seeing how grandkids and all their peers operate today just as I did at their ages, I call bullshit on this SMH article.
Young people want climate action, but they mostly expect their parents to do the heavy lifting.
Bank of Mum and Dad
So, they are stealing money from the productive and giving it to people in order to buy their votes. Is this legal in Australia?
It’s called socialism.
It is called politics, whatever the ideology.
Reward the reckless. Penalise the prudent. It’s how western governments have always acted.
It is called politics & they have been doing it since at least the Roman Republic—bread & circuses.
Until they run out of other people’s money and had to start printing more currency. Sign of the end of an Empire.
They’ve never known real protracted hunger.
They’ve never known real protracted cold, or heat.
They’ve never known the absence of shelter, or transport.
They will, … “Climate Action” will cause it all, and more.
Restrict the frequency, duration and temperature of their showers. Then, let’s see how they like that action.
Time for the parents to cut back on their consumption … by kicking the other young adults out. They’ll grow up quicker that way.
They have never experienced a war or hard times … #METOO
See if they are willing to give up their smartphones to save the planet.
Children today are subject to twelve or more years of sustained propaganda about existential threats caused by fossil fuels. Until the west insists on a school curriculum that provides a balanced education, not woke disinformation, extinction rebellion will continue.
Of course they do, schools have been propagandizing children with climate fear for 30 years. The gullible youth are all the tyrants have since Climategate destroyed most of their adult base.
Climate Jugend and Green Shirts.
Climate change is Her, not her, choice. And certainly less than several million human lives at risk of her Choice annually, globally for social, clinical, redistributive, and fair weather causes. Dress accordingly.
Bill Maher has an excellent take on just how deep the Zoomer generation’s commitment to climate action really is.
See here: New Rule: OK Zoomer.
It’s just as well – they can’t have climate action and money. Other folk will have the money.
My neighbor told me he is buying a Tesla to prevent catastrophic climate change. I told him he would never see that in his lifetime. He said he was doing it for the kids. I told him he didn’t have any kids. He said “I have a nephew.” I said “Have your nephew buy the Tesla.”
But as it turns out, his nephew is unemployed and is living in his moms basement.
Your neighbour is a gullible fool.
At the current rate of sea level rise, he won’t see catastropic climate change in several hundred years. Meanwhile countries that still have engineers will continue to reclaim land from the sea and progressive prophets of doom will continue to buy ocean front property.
If they truly want to give their money to climate change groups, there is nothing stopping them from doing so. What they want is for government to give other people’s money to climate change groups.
Many young adults have never had a need or opportunity to create their own wealth, have an income, etc. There used to be many ways to do this if you were young and hungry. Things like a paper route, snow shoveling, lawn mowing. All that kind of useful stuff which has gone by the wayside and been replaced by out of reach promises or failed expectations.
A lot of the problems lie with the education system where parents have abrogated their responsibility for raising stable and productive people to a governmental monstrosity which brainwashes any hope for individualism and personal achievement from their lives.
Newspaper are dying. Most people just use social media or blogs for their news.
Snow shovelling is a thing of the past dontcha know. Our kids do not know what snow is!
Lawns are being phased out by reduction in residential block size, down from 1200sq.m to 400sq.m in the last 60 years and increase in house size from 120sq.m to 240sq.m over the same period. Outside spaces are hard surfaces. Not much lawn here:
https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Clyde+North+VIC+3978/@-38.0784029,145.34494,318m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x6ad61b27e16a6a6f:0x5045675218cfc20!8m2!3d-38.1108098!4d145.3287992
So, are they really handing out United States Fifty Dollar Bills to young Australians? Where will they go to exchange them with the lockdowns?
Didn’t seem, from the excerpt, as if they’d actually asked anyone, and the young people’s opinion was out of the author’s imagination. I wasn’t aware that tax cuts were allocated by age in Australia, or that low income jobs were only given to the young. Seems a quite contrived way to argue for higher taxes for the lowest income, but that is the greenunist agenda.
If they want to spend their money fighting climate change they can send it to me and I’ll do as much as their government would do, which is exactly zero.
Actually I would not do this. Taking advantage of innocent dopes would be like clubbing baby seals.
That might help some old polar bears, if you left the clubbed seal for them.
Feeding bullschist to young people can’t be a good plan.
There must be a psychological research group that studies the outcomes.
Note the plural.
As said before, all the great 20th Century Socialists knew the format, get to the minds of the youth first, control them & their minds, you have victory on the doorstep!!!
“They will inherit debt, unaffordable housing and workforce insecurity, but most of all, they might inherit a planet that is scarcely inhabitable.”
Good prophecy of the net zero apocalypse.
That’s why we have adults – to stop the kids from doing stupid things. Unfortunately, in this case, too many adults also want to do stupid things.
Good luck finding a genuine photograph of a young person refusing free money, The last chance may have been at the time of the Pied Piper in Hameln. However young people would certainly endorse their parents chipping in on their behalf.
They simply don’t understand children.
They’ve never spent any serious time with children.
They haven’t taught children anything of importance.
They’ve simply dumped them in a wilderness to fend for themselves
Beyond unforgivable. They should be castrated and jailed.
No need for castration, many of them are voluntarily removing themselves from the gene pool.
Women are the main rearers of children and they don’t have the equipment to be castrated. Just feed them sugar.
My teen years were in the 60s. You don’t have to tell me young people are nuts.
So is there a tax I can pay to make all of this COVID stuff disappear or does that only work with climate change?
Asking for a friend
Sidney Morning Herald’s pollsters are shysters.
Instead of online polling children and activist college kids, they should open charitable bank accounts and try encouraging these kids to donate their tax returns.
Then they can write about the pittance those charitable SMH accounts receive.
Oh to be young and foolish again… but this this time around I’d have money.
If you can’t afford a Tesla then don’t worry kids as Bjorn has you covered-
Are electric cars the new ‘diesel scandal’ waiting to happen? (msn.com)
Not so sure about the extra brake dust with regenerative braking but the taxeaters certainly aren’t going to go without revenue from fuel taxes. Greenies started all this paranoia so look forward to a tyre tax most likely kids and that will curb the burnouts and wheelies-
Tires: The plastic polluter you never thought about (nationalgeographic.com)
As ye sow so shall ye reap. LOL.
The UK cross-party Commons transport select committee recently said it saw “no viable alternative” to road pricing and work should start immediately on creating a replacement for fuel duty.
Sales of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK are to be banned from 2030 losing the Treasury around £28 billion in fuel duty and £7 billion in vehicle excise duty
Yep, when bureaucrats and administrators start telling me how we feel or think about things I pretty much stop listening. I have more fun ways to waste my time.
Young people in Australia are…stupid!
“but most of all, they might inherit a planet that is scarcely inhabitable.”
Currently the trend is 1.4°C/century.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahaha hahahahahaha
And we live in an Ice Age. And most of them for holidays prefer hot tropical places with warm ocean water.
They are the most spoiled and pampered generation in history, as far removed and protected from the environment that they claims to love as it is possible to be.
They SAY they’re willing to give up free money, but only a fool would think they mean it.
It’s not just a bit of extra tax is it? People have been hoodwinked into believing a little tinkering with the fiscal rules will suffice to “save the planet.” Once they realise their whole lives will have to be transformed into the level of prosperity enjoyed by post war Britain – if they’re lucky – they won’t be so accommodating.
And most of their grandparents we now try to save from a virus by accepting a dictatorial state and slavery (more Direct Taxation) will freeze to death during the next cold weather event when energy no longer will be affordable to warm the house.
Genetic Determinism:
At a young age people are programmed to want the most advantageous conditions for raising of the next generation.
In middle age are programmed to want the most advantageous conditions for raising of their next generation.
But, of course, we should be better than animals. We have minds.
Fools & their money are soon parted.
“Young minds full of mush”.
After 30 + years of indoctrination and brainwashing young people we now have our Green Shirts and Climate Jugend. The stupid thing is most of them have not experienced warming or cooling.
Fortunately young people age out into older people, and along the way gain experience and appreciation for how hard it is to make money and then keep your money. Young people generally are more liberal economically speaking and less concerned about material wealth than older adults.
The kids don’t see it as a choice. They’ll take the money and demand over the top action on climate change.
How about crypto?
Take the money. You’ll need it to keep warm in the winter.
The article claims:
This election pitch to younger Australians makes sense. Of the nearly 17 million Australians enrolled to vote, over 1.6 million are young people aged 18 to 24.
So within that 6 year bracket we have just shy 10% of the total voters.
So, quick maths. If 10% is a 6 year age bracket then 90% would be a 54 year age bracket. 54 +24 is 78.
Okay, this is basic maths but even from that lazy method I would suggest that the ‘youth vote’ is NOT statistically significant c.f. the total voting pool.
There is also to be considered just how important the Youth Vote actually is long term.
Spoiler? it isn’t.
First time voters can be shown to flock towards the more touchy feel ‘Left’ political parties, which in Australia means The Greens. The Greens promise wonderful things and Youth – having yet to take out a crippling home loan and/or still live with Mummy and Daddy – are yet to personally relate to the fact that Money Grows on Taxpayers.
So First Time Voters tend to vote Green. Yet The Greens have consistently failed to grow their share of the vote, hovering at about 8 to 10%.
Clear conclusion? Second Time Voters leave the Greens for the other parties.
So if you are an Other Party then you shouldn’t be bribing 18-24 year olds, you should be bribing the 25+
If there’s anything one learns when studying economics, it’s that “money talks, BS walks”. What people say in surveys or protests is next to meaningless. It’s how they spend their own money that really shows what they believe.
And what young people really believe is that it’s someone else’s responsibility to do something, and to pay for it.
Every winter about this time, the “youth” in my university town gather downtown to protest “climate change”. They hold signs and jump up-and-down as people drive past. It’s usually in the mid-20s this time of year. After an hour or two of standing in the cold, they go back to their classrooms, dorms or apartments all kept comfortably warm with natural gas and carry on with their easy lives.