Once upon a time there was a want to be socialist dictator by the name of Mao Shortbum. He had a dastardly sidekick by the name of Vlad Bowenstein. Mao and Vlad dreamed of taking over and running a huge country. They set their sites on a magical place called Australand.
Mao and Vald often fantasised about what it would be like to control all the money in Australand. But try as they might they couldn’t figure out how they could steal the money. You see, Australand was a nation where most of the people were very suspicious of those who wanted to control everything. Most of the people worked very hard, and they saved their money and they had wisely invested. They lived in nice houses and drove nice cars and they dreamed of the time when they could stop working and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
But people like that made it very hard for want-to-be socialist dictators like Mao and Vlad. You see, they thought if they could control all the money they could control all the people. So Mao and Vlad put their heads together, and they came up with a cunning plan. (Cue the evil dictator music)
The first thing they did was to divide the nation into two; rich, moderately rich and not so rich. Then they launched a class war. Mao and Vlad did this by turned the not so rich against the moderately rich claiming the moderately rich were the enemies of the people. The not to rich were so engaged by this they didn’t notice that Mao and Vlad were planning to make them less rich.
Vlad said to Mao tax is the key, that’s how we get people’s money. Mao was delighted. Vlad said it can’t just be little taxes if we want to control all the people. We have to make it huge taxes …$200Billion in taxes. Mao was so excited he jumped for joy thinking about all the things he could do with the money. But he said to Vlad but I want more what else can we do. So Vlad put on his thinking cap.
You see, Vlad realised people in Australand were clever, they’d read about socialist dictators and never wanted to live under a socialist dictatorship. These clever people who were now moderately rich (and the enemies of the people thanks to Mao and Vlad) had worked hard to make themselves as independent as they could of government handouts. Vlad knew, that it was handouts that enabled dictators to control people. Vlad also knew these self-funded moderately rich people would ruin Mao and Vlad’s grand plan. If Vlad was to get control of their money he’d have to crush them. But how to do that was the challenge? So Vlad went away to work on a plan…
Vlad was so excited that he rushed off to Mao’s castle. “Mao, Mao I have a plan.”Let’s make the moderately rich poor by taking away their income!! Mao was all ears. Vlad explained if he took away the franking credits of those people who didn’t pay any tax then those people would only have two options. They could live on less money and be really miserable or they could move their money somewhere else where Mao and Vlad could eventually get their hands on it. But Mao wasn’t convinced.
Mao said but what about the not so rich who have shares, or the Unions (who were Mao and Vlad’s friends) they will be very angry with us? Vlad explained we’ll exempt those people. Mao was happy with that. Mao then confirmed with Vlad, that Vlad’s plan was to force the moderately rich who controlled their own money to move their money into Union Super Funds or be poor. Vlad confirmed that was correct. “That’s a brilliant plan Vlad,” said Mao.
Then Vlad said but Mao you haven’t heard the best bit. Once all of that money is under the control of our friends the Union Super Funds we’ll then crush the funds managed by Banks and Insurance Companies and we’ll get control of their money as well. When that happens we’ll nationalise superannuation and you and I will control all of the money. With that Mao went into raptures thinking about the power he would have. Vlad beamed because he knew Mao really needed him….
It was at that point I awoke from my sleep and chuckled to myself, if I were a socialist dictator that’s what I’d do but it was just a dream (some might say nightmare) that would never happen in Australia. Or would it?
