This story is behind a paywall. A very interesting read
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/paying-the-price-for-the-age-of-entitlement/story-e6frfhqf-1226594297706
IT'S like a secret. How could this country run out of money even in a mining boom?
How come Deloitte Access Economics warns we're tracking for years of more federal Budget deficits?
Sure, we can blame Labor's big spending, up from $272 billion a year when it took office to $363 billion now.
But here's a specific problem even the Liberals avoid discussing: in a country of just 22 million Australians, more than four million are living on welfare.
Almost two million more are public servants - federal, state and local.
That's six million people living on some form of state income. Who is paying for them all?
Who must also pay for the handouts given even to working Australians from the Schoolkids Bonus to subsidising broadband?
Who must do all that, and still look after their own family?
Hear that crack? A back just broke.
Few politicians before an election dare speak about us catching the European disease - too many people living off too few - though shadow treasurer Joe Hockey did try last year to an audience in Europe.
As he later told the ABC: "With an ageing population and an entitlement system that has seen extraordinary largesse built up over the last 50 years . . . Western societies are going to have to make some very hard and unpopular decisions . . .
"The age of entitlement is coming to an end because governments are running out of money."
But pushed to say if he was referring to Australia and, if so, what he'd slash, Hockey took fright.
"I'm not going to get into cherry-picking Australian initiatives from London . . . Australia hasn't got the enormous challenge that other countries have."
Not yet. But soon.
A Centre for Independent Studies report last week noted spending by all governments grew on average more than 4 per cent a year (after inflation) for 40 years.
But government revenue in the past three years slowed to just 1 per cent and, if mineral prices fall or the economy stalls, we're in strife.
We must cut spending, and that means tackling the entitlement culture that has so many Australians, not all deserving or helpless, living off the sweat of others.
How can it be, when we need so many foreign workers, that 530,000 Australians are still on the dole? How can even more - 819,000 - be deemed too sick or disabled to work, and in need of a pension?
Are we so feeble?
Then there are the 2.2 million Australians who didn't save enough for their retirement and are on age pensions. Add another 350,000 students we pay to study full-time at universities.
There are only eight million of us in full-time work, and one in five are public servants.
So almost every Australian with a full-time job in the private sector pays for either a public servant or someone living on welfare.
For now, those workers still just outvote people with a big stake in keeping the Age of Entitlement going, but soon the entitled will outnumber those paying for them. Then the chance of reform will be as slim here as it is in Greece.
Best start cutting now.
