Check out the table here.
Single individuals get $300. Single parents and couples get $1000. Semantically and syntactically, that means all couples, even if they don't have children, and there's nothing in the text to suggest that couples without children are treated differently.
I totally see why parents get a bigger benefit than non-parents. I'm not questioning that at all. But why should a couple without dependents get $1000 when a single individual without dependents only gets $300? The couple is sharing a household, so their per-person necessary living expenses are less and their income would stretch further. But their benefit is greater than the benefit paid to THREE single people. WTF?
7 comments:
It is because of legal issues surrounding defacto relationships, which in most western nations is treated, technically, as a marriage. They may not have children now but at anytime one could fall pregnant. And couples tend to spend more money on essential items as opposed to singles who tend to spend their money on luxury items.
Here in Australia familys get a little more than singles and they get it sooner. However, singles do get $900AUD as long as they're earning under 100K per annum.
I don't get the part about couples needing to spend more money on essential items. You have two earners, but only one household. Even if you need more living space so you have privacy from each other, in the buildings where I've lived a two-bedroom apartment is never more than 150% the cost of a one-bedroom. You still only need one bed and one couch and one coffee maker and one TV and one crockpot - and in any case I can't imagine any circumstances in which a couple needs more necessities than two singles.
But maybe I'm missing something because I've never cohabited. What are these essential items couples are spending money on that singles don't need?
Aside: You call them de facto relationships in Australia? That's interesting - we call them common-law relationships, and if I'd seen de facto without an identifying country attached I would have assumed it was a gallicism (the French being conjoint de fait). I'll have to look into the etymology, I'm super curious how we ended up with two different words and yours is more gallic.
I admire your interest in words but unfortunetly I can't help you with why we call them defacto relationships. We are an odd people on a lot of levels.
As for couples spending more, the government has to look at the issue on a typically broad level; they can't assume two single people live together. Couples are naturally and legally assumed to be in the same household and so they are "compensated" for the higher cost of living (food, bills, travel expenses) as oppose to one person using far less essentials.
I don't base this on any kind of survey or statistic, this is merely my point of view based on what I know on the "stimulus packages" the Commonwealth has given to the Australian people.
We're missing something and I can't quite figure out what it is, because I've got exactly the same premises and I can only arrive at the opposite conclusions. One has to assume that a single person is the only person in their household. One has to assume that a couple shares a household. Therefore, the per-person household expenses are lower for coupled people than for single people, and couples need to spend a smaller proportion of their income on necessities than singles. I cannot envision any scenario in which a couple's expense's could possibly be more than twice a single's expenses.
Using an incredibly simple example:
I'm in my apartment where I live alone. It's dark out, so I have a light on. Since there's only one of me and I'm only in one room at a time, I only have one light on.
If I had a partner living with me, he might be in the same room as me or might be in a different room. If he's in the same room, we still only need one light on. If he's in a different room, then we need two lights on. So we as a couple will need a maximum of twice as many lights as I as a single need.
Everything I apply this logic to comes out the same. I have one TV. As a couple we would need a maximum of two TVs, but we might both watch the same TV at the same time so maybe we could get away with just one. I take one shower a day. As a couple we'd take a maximum of two showers a day collectively. I have a phone line. As a couple we most likely wouldn't need an additional phone line, and if for some reason we did there's no way we'd need more than two. We'd probably need twice as much milk and bread, but my lettuce always goes bad before I eat it all so we wouldn't need twice as much lettuce. We'd probably need to do more loads of dark laundry since we both wear clothes, but the number of linens loads would stay the same since there's only one bed. We'd use more electricity by running two computers, but we'd probably still vacuum once a week so we wouldn't use more electricity there.
I just can't figure out any possible way for a couple's necessary expenses to be more than twice as much as a single's, and I can think of lots of ways that they may be less than twice a single's. So what extra expenses or necessities am I missing that makes living in a couple more expensive?
Imp Strump, you are 100% correct. Giving couples with no children more money than two single people is completely ridiculous. Couples do not have more expenses than single people. As you correctly point out, life is much less expensive as a couple. You are not missing anything.
It's discrimination against singles.
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