Not only is it possible, there are hundreds of examples we can learn from. It's been done over and over in Europe to astonishing success. That could be us.
That's one of the nice things about Lemmy for me. I pretty much just stick to the local feed and I can read whatever has been posted today in an hour or so. More time for books.
This article claims to cite the ABS, but the ABS has a very different story: https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/annual-net-overseas-migration-falls-second-year-row
Overseas migration added 306,000 people to Australia's population in the 2024-25 financial year, according to data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Jenny Dobak, ABS head of migration statistics, said: ‘Net overseas migration dropped by 124,000 people in 2024-25, falling for the second year in a row since the financial year high of 538,000 people in 2022-23.
‘The change in net overseas migration was driven by both a 14 per cent decrease in migrant arrivals, particularly temporary visa holders, and a 13 per cent increase in migrant departures.
‘While net overseas migration is not currently at the level seen prior to the pandemic, this year’s overseas migration figures are the closest to pre-COVID-19 figures since annual net overseas migration peaked in September quarter 2023.
‘Migrant arrivals in 2024-25 were only 3 per cent higher than in 2018-19, but migrant departures remained 15 per cent lower than they were in 2018-19.’
The irony is: Most people's jimmies would not have been rustled even if this article hadn't been full of shit. Go back a few generations and almost all of us are migrants.
The post has been reported, but isn't breaking our site rules. I'm inclined to believe OP is being dishonest with you all. At this point, I'll leave it with the community to decide if any action should be taken.
The last holdout servos finally went above $2/l today. I topped up at $1.49 last week. Is this even real?
Jazz hands!! 👐
The top 1% of earners pay roughly 40-45% of all income tax.
That's not true, though it's a common misconception. To account for 40% of all income tax, you'd need to incorporate the top 5% of earners. Top 1% vs. top 5% doesn't sound significant, but it truly is. Someone in the top 1% makes roughly twice the amount someone in the top 5% makes. We're actually talking about different things and the same things all at the same time. It's confusing, but bear with me and I'll hopefully get us onto the same page.
Income streams are logarithmic in nature. This is why we always talk about "median salary" when discussing the topic. If we use the "average" salary (mean), then that would come out to roughly $106,000. However, if you are earning this amount, you're in the top 25% of earners in Australia. The median salary sits at around $68,000. That number amazes me, since our rent alone is $41,600. I have no clue how people are surviving on the median, let alone half the nation on less than that.
Someone in the top 20% is making $128,000.
Someone in the top 10% is making $165,000. Not a massive jump in salary, this seems reasonable.
Someone in the top 5% is making $195,000. Again, that's only a $30k jump to account for a decent chunk of the population.
Someone in the top 1% is making $385,000. Roughly double the amount for someone in the top 5%. To speak to your point, their increase in take-home pay is only about $100,700, because yes - they pay 45% tax.
Someone in the top 0.5% is making over $550,000.
Now that we have these numbers out of the way, here's why we're talking about different things: Someone in the top 0.5% of earners still likely doesn't have $3m in super. Or if they do, it's just barely.
Someone in this salary bracket doesn't hit it at 20. They usually hit it in their late 40's to 50's. At that point, they only have 20ish years of work left before they retire. If we assume our top earner is depositing $50,000 into their super fund at 5% growth, it'll take them 28+ years to attain $3m. They just don't have time to get to the point where they are affected by this policy. Or if they are super lucky and have managed to attain say $3.1m, they're only taxed 30% on the earnings of $100k - not the earnings of the remaining $3m.
So, like I said: We're talking about different things. The top 0.5% earners are not the same as the top 0.5% super fund holders. The top 0.5% super fund holders are not getting there from regular income. They are rich. They probably don't work, because they don't need to. They probably don't pay much income tax, because they don't need to work. You probably pay more income tax than these people.
This article is discussing a tax on earnings in super funds above $3m.
I think that people who are earning more than my annual salary just from growth in the value on their pile of cash should be charged tax on that growth.
They can afford it better than any of us, and I'm always amazed at people who think this is a bad thing.
None of the present changes apply to your examples.
Perhaps that's the answer to my question: people criticise this tax because they worry it'll affect them?
Do you honestly think that 0.5% of the population are responsible for 50% of the nation's income tax? That's hysterical.
We aren't talking about specialist doctors and lawyers and successful salespeople. Those peasants on their measly half-million annual salaries are not putting enough away to be affected by this law.
In point of fact, these people are rich enough to employ wealth managers and accountants to manage their tax affairs. Retainers who know and utilise every tax loophole to minimise the tax they pay. You'd be surprised how little as a percentage of their income they are paying the ATO. Economically, we would miss none of them if they left.
We're talking about people who are putting over $100k per year into their super funds. They are not moving in the same circles as you and me.
With $3m in super, you could draw $100k/year and assuming 5% growth you'd have over $3.5m after 10 years:
Year,Starting Balance,Withdrawal,Interest Earned (5%),Year-End Balance
1,"$3,000,000","−$100,000","+$145,000","$3,045,000"
2,"$3,045,000","−$100,000","+$147,250","$3,092,250"
3,"$3,092,250","−$100,000","+$149,613","$3,141,863"
4,"$3,141,863","−$100,000","+$152,093","$3,193,956"
5,"$3,193,956","−$100,000","+$154,698","$3,248,653"
6,"$3,248,653","−$100,000","+$157,433","$3,306,086"
7,"$3,306,086","−$100,000","+$160,304","$3,366,390"
8,"$3,366,390","−$100,000","+$163,320","$3,429,710"
9,"$3,429,710","−$100,000","+$166,485","$3,496,195"
10,"$3,496,195","−$100,000","+$169,810","$3,566,005"
"But $100k won't be enough in ten years!" I hear you say. Ok, let's give ourselves a 10% pay-rise every 10 years.
Year Range,Annual Withdrawal,Year-End Balance (End of Decade)
Years 1–10,"$100,000.00","$3,566,005"
Years 11–20,"$110,000.00","$4,355,900"
Years 21–30,"$121,000.00","$5,497,281"
Years 31–40,"$133,100.00","$7,196,668"
With a starting fund of $3m, and a 10% payrise every decade, after 40 years we have over $7m in our super fund. Now, what happens to our poor rich person who needs to pay 30% on growth above $3m?
Year,Annual Withdrawal,Ending Balance,Annual Tax Paid
1,"$100,000","$3,045,000",$0
10,"$110,000","$3,472,749","~$6,144"
20,"$133,100","$3,871,911","~$12,048"
30,"$161,051","$4,110,378","~$15,716"
40,"$194,872","**$4,052,857**","~$15,271"
Instead of ending up with $7m after 40 years, this poor individual now only has $4m after 40 years.
As I said, I really wish I had this problem!
People with inadequate wages don't have $3m super accounts. This law affects 0.5% of Australians.
I know - you're very probably already sixteen. That's why we are here.
If you've managed to miss the coming change in the law, I envy you. This silly law has taken up several hours of my year that could have been spent doing something more productive like watching Golden Girls.
But, the law is here now and we need to take "Reasonable Steps" to ensure that everyone is over sixteen. If you are wondering what "reasonable steps" is, then join the club. Nobody really knows. What I do know is that we have to start to make an effort to be sure that no young'uns are here against the law.
To that end, we have hired a helpful bot called Molly. She's an expert at being sixteen and she's just been told that it's her job is to verify all your ages. Here she is:
What's next? Well, in the first phase we ask that you drop her a Message that verifies you are over 16. She doesn't want to see your government ID. Some ideas that she would accept are:
- A passenger takes a photo of your username on a sheet of paper with you driving (please don't make this one a selfie). Faces not required.
- A photo of your username with a glass of alcohol at a bar.
- A convincing spiel that would only come from someone older than sixteen (Can you tell Molly who Samantha is?). Can you tell her about the Breakfast Club that only 70's/80's kids from Queensland would know?
- Anything else you can think of that only someone over sixteen could/would do.
There's no need to spend a lot of time on this. At this point, I'll go through the users who have messaged her and compile a list of people who have verified their age. You can be creative. Just be aware that there's an infinitesimal chance (but not zero) that whatever you send may be sent to some government agency to demonstrate that we are complying with the law.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- How do you know that the user isn't faking their submission? I don't. No method is perfect, we saw kids defeating intricate and expensive verification systems earlier this year. Kids are smart.
- How do you stop a kid from moving their account to one of the thousands of non-Australian Lemmy Instances and just continuing on with their day? I can't. The fact that the law is totally ineffectual in the context of Lemmy is beside the point. We clearly meet the definition of a Social Media platform according to the law, and we are based in Australia. So we have to comply, even if it is pointless.
- Are you aware that this is pointless and kids are going to get around it? I know that teenage-me sure would have. But again, that's beside the point. We need to comply with the law.
- Will you accept a photo of me in my undies? Ok, this one isn't frequent from previous discussions on the law, but I wanted to include it in case. Please don't send NSFW photos to show you are over age.
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Having worked petrol retail through my late teens/early 20's, I can assure you that people have no idea how much of our society depends on diesel.
Electricity, too: Ten days without power would be almost enough to send us to the Iron Age. It's scary when you think about it, you could seriously cripple any modern nation by attacking just those two vectors of infrastructure and they're both pretty soft targets in terms of the damage you could do.