Gee, it's very tabloid of Sinclair Davidson to do a post that I find difficult to interpret other than as a dog whistle to the effect "Obviously pensioners and welfare recipients are getting too much money - look they are going on cruises!"
A few points spring to mind:
* pensioners have friends and family, and sometimes they pay, or help pay, for them to go on holidays
* the assets test runs from $200,000 to $433,000, depending on circumstances. Does SD know how cheap cruises now are? Even with Cunard, the website tells me you can get fares from as low as $2,539. Clearly, any assets test with a level above even (say) $50,000 is going to allow for pensioners, who hold it mostly in cash, to have several cruise holidays, if they want.
* SD has previously indicated he thinks the home should not be included in the assets test. What does he want, then, pensioners to be asset rich but cash free, because they might choose to use cash for holidays?
* What hypocrisy for a libertarian/small government type to even imply we or the government should judge how much a pensioner should receive based on how they spend the money they do have. Yeah, a real freedom endorsing position, that would be.
2 comments:
Hypocrisy large fold. The government tells people how to use their money.
He should be lauding people who are so good with a limited Government stipend they can go on cruises etc, I know of a woman who regularly goes overseas and who is a pensioner.
She can do this because she is very canny with money.
I see that a few people in comments are making similar observations to mine. Odd when a dog whistle doesn't even convince amongst some of your rusted on fan club. I expect the SD response, if he bothers, will be "I was just saying it was 'interesting'".
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