It’s my opinion that robo-debt represented the full, and hopefully final, blossoming of the neoliberal putsch that’s dominated the financial lives of Australians since 1983; for 40 years.
The logic of neoliberalism is “Unearned economic rent is ours as individuals. All may aspire similarly, and those who don’t, or won’t, or worse, are on welfare, are a clear enemy, and need to be dealt with.” The implication is that those who are on welfare are scroungers, not those people who are suffering from this failed economic regime.
However, at the heart of neoliberalism is a great hypocrisy. Each one of us is indeed entitled to an equal share in the economic rent, the national net income, but there is no way in which neoliberalism will ever deliver it, so “It must be permitted to flow, as now, to rent-seekers, and if you can work hard enough as an individual to break into that group and become accepted, you may receive your particular share.”
It is only a system which un-taxes people, capturing instead economic rents, that can possibly deliver an equal share of the nation’s net income. That system was described by Henry George and has nothing at all in common with the economic programs of Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Bob Hawke.
So, has neoliberalism actually peaked with robo-debt? So far, there’s little evidence from the Albanese-Chalmers government that our neoliberally-indebted lives are about to change for the better.
We may hope, but I fear we have a long way to go. Let’s at least trust we’re on the downside peak-madness of rentierism?