Thread by @PaulHenry524

Some thoughts on lockdown and incomes; or lack thereof.
Bill Bowtell, and others in the broad epidemiology community are stressing the need for people to not be impoverished in a matter of days due to lockdown.
They're on the money; ppl will do all sorts of they're on the ...

... edge of not eating, providing for kids, meeting rent obligations. Bear in mind we've been living under a punitive austerity-focused FedGov since late 2013. The lowest incomers, and the least securely employed, be they casual with several jobs, or gig workers, are always ...

... the first to be hit. FedGov, as monopoly issuing and taxing Govt., can very easily get this in hand, and get payments out to ppl. The detail of the arrangements, how to reach accounts, how long to pay them for, are incidental. Ppl need support, now.
But here's the ...

... crazier thing. They'd be filling a precipitous demand drop, mainly on day to day staples. Apart from being a fair thing to do for ppl hit with income loss due to no fault of their own, it makes parallel macroeconomic sense. It's counter-contractionary ...

... yet the LNP are so ideologically entrenched in the punish-the-poor ideology that they're missing an opportunity to, if we could put it crudely, effectively buy votes with fiscal support. But they won't, unless they're really feeling shaky. Interesting that Perrottet, ...

... on the Right of The Liberal Party, and an Opus Dei Catholic zealot, can see they're in the shit here and is pleading with the feckless Frydenberg to revive JobKeeper-style payts.
At this stage he's doing an Easter Is statue impersonation.
What a weirdo rabble
#MMT #auspol2021

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