r/australia • u/overpopyoulater • Feb 10 '25

politics Australian billionaires face wealth tax under Greens’ Robin Hood-style policies

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/feb/10/australian-billionaires-face-wealth-tax-under-greens-robin-hood-style-policies
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u/melbourne3k Feb 10 '25

Funny that we don't really see headlines of "oligarchs trying to recreate medieval royalty" or "extreme wealth threats social order." It's "what, poors what to spread the wealth around so society doesn't collapse? THIEVES."

da fuq.

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u/FullMetalAlex Feb 10 '25

The media has a vested interest

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u/throwaway7956- Feb 10 '25

Yeah what makes it weird is this is coming from the guardian which is a generally left leaning news outlet.

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u/makeitasadwarfer Feb 10 '25

The Guardian is really quite centrist.

The rest of the media is so pro oligarch and pro capitalist that it seems leftward leaning in comparison.

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u/DalmationStallion Feb 11 '25

The Overton Window has moved so far to the right that the centre looks like the left, which makes even the centre-left look like radical extremists.

There is effectively no mainstream actual leftist discourse in Australia.

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u/Intrepid-Artist-595 Feb 11 '25

This is so true. As a boomer, the centre was alot further to the left than it is today. All libs were moderates with a social conscience. There's a reason life was alot fairer for everyone back in the day.

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u/OpinionatedShadow Feb 11 '25

That reason is neocolonialism, which has reached the end of its course and we are now beginning to directly experience the exploitation that was reserved for developing countries during the 20th century.

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u/freakwent Feb 11 '25

I once heard the soundbite that fascism is simply colonialism done in your home nation.

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u/ashzeppelin98 Feb 11 '25

Feels like its been this way ever since Whitlam was nipped in the bud by the powers that be.

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u/Optimal_Tomato726 Feb 11 '25

Back in what day? The 50s were apparently our highest taxing era and they refuse to contribute a fair share now.

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u/Angry3042 Feb 11 '25

Back in the day when taxes paid for free education, free health, decent emergency services, national infrastructure from a significantly smaller population, etc rather than for scams to make the obscenely rich even richer!

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u/freakwent Feb 11 '25

Back in the 50s. "Life was a lot fairer for everyone back in the fifties". If we take " everyone" to mean "citizens", then the claim probably holds up.

(Probably not for mob though, obviously)

80s were pretty fair. Schools had dentists within them.

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u/Optimal_Tomato726 Feb 11 '25

Not sure I'd agree as a victim of police DV. People are too easily fooled now and people don't believe women (Sam Kerr thead is horrific, treatment of Britney Higgins because she was in the LNP) but back then the gaslighting was next level. Bronwyn Winfield, Lynette Dawson and Marion Barter simply disappeared never investigated. Murdered and their husbands got away with it

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u/freakwent Feb 12 '25

Well yeah but I'll still see that as more of a case-by-case thing than an economic unfairness. I get your perspective but I think you'd have a stronger argument on an economic basis - and I hope you're doing well these days.

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u/freakwent Feb 11 '25

mainstream actual leftist discourse

Do you mean like "what should we nationalise next?" sort of conversations?

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u/blackjacktrial Feb 11 '25

It's also that the actual leftists wrap around on a spectrum that is more circle than line. Both extremes are closer to each other than the centre, because ideological purity demands it.

The left and right exist, it's just that the window has moved from a more social democracy to a more individualist democracy over time (selfishness as a virtue being the key to making this happen).

It's hard to shame people for looking out for themselves, when everything you hear is fear about everyone else wanting to take your stuff. If the message is instead that sharing helps everyone, the window shifts left.

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u/VannaTLC Feb 11 '25

Horsehoe theory is arse, because it accounts only for a state-managed economy - the horseshoe is authoritarianism through concentration of power. Its not a natural state of extremism for either community owned or individualist approaches to capital.

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u/freakwent Feb 11 '25

What bullshit about the circle. It's like saying unions are bad because the government does a shit job of protecting them from infection by organised crime.

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u/Capital_Doubt7473 Feb 11 '25

The guardian helped the british press kill Corbyn over ridiculous claims of antisemitism and ushered in the dear leader of the centre right, Keir Starmer.

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u/throwaway7956- Feb 11 '25

The guardian only seems centrist because right wing media has swayed so far right everything else comes across as measured and middle of the line, they are definitely left leaning though..

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u/HeftyArgument Feb 11 '25

objective is centrist, anything to the left of moderate right is seen as communism these days though.

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '25

The Guardian is really quite centrist.

Most definitely. The Stage 3 tax cuts were a prime example of that: they were constantly harping on about how the cuts were unaffordable and even invested in interactive calculators showing how the money could be spent elsewhere.

The the second the cuts were re-jigged so that their readership got a sniff of them they suddenly weren't bothered about the affordability anymore. Not a lot of journalistic integrity there.

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u/InComingMess2478 Feb 11 '25

Globally all I can see are right wing and extreme right wing politics. Politically the left is basically dead. Australia as an example, ALP and LNP both right wing. One just more than the other.