Yorkshiremen Syndrome

The debate emerging from the budget about limiting government payments to families earning more than $150,000 really got out of control. It suddenly became a game about who was doing it tough and then who was doing it tougher still. It’s like we got trapped in that Monty Python sketch with the four Yorkshiremen - oh, you lived in a broken down house? Luxury! All we could managed was a hole in the ground. Well, we lived in a rolled up newspaper in a septic tank dreaming of a hole in the ground. And so it went until the rhetoric in the public sphere finally came to the person who lived in a shoebox in the middle of the road, sucking tea from a damp cloth.

Can we just stop trying to out do each other with how tough we’re all doing already? Can we take into account the fact that we might not have an ability to measure “hardness” and that maybe this is a relative yardstick in constant flux before we judge total strangers on how they’re managing. And could it also be taken that the point about indexing family welfare payments to people earning over this given amount didn’t mean a judgment was made about whether they were rich but whether they were in genuine need. This over-blown reaction has now meant the government is modifying its policy and ending the freeze in 2014. WTF?

Julia Gillard said on Sunday that there had been “a mischaracterisation of these measures” and that “the media coverage which has suggested that somehow I or the Treasurer think people on $150,000 a year are rich is completely ill-informed. We’ve never said that. What we’ve said is that we need to make our system sustainable.” The skewed debate has now arguably contributed to one of the worst reactions to a federal budget in some years, both in terms of whether the punters think it will be good for the economy and how it will affect their own personal financial position.

At the end of last week, in the media, every other story was a case study of a family on a combined income of 150,000 struggling to afford mortgages, car repayments and child care. And so with these online articles would run a million comments below it telling said family to harden up and stop whining. There was one about the Grays family who were on a combined income of more than $150,000, there was another about the Allardyce family and another about the Hardcastle-Fowler family . The implication from tone of all these articles was that there was a judgment being made in the government that these people were too rich, therefore ‘victims’ of Labor’s war on class. An aspect of this whole debate which totally misses the point, i.e whether or not you’re giving to people that need welfare or a side debate about the inefficiency of giving with one hand (benefits) and still take with the other (taxation).

Regardless, what was interesting was the reaction to the who is really rich question that the media played. One commentator said “Maybe I can sponsor one of their kids in the next '40 hour famine' wouldn't want them all to go starving on a mere $150k per year. It's all the governments' fault. If only they didn't make them borrow all that money so they could live in a mansion.”

And another; “Look who's whining. I manage to save living with my wife and a kid on a combined income of $44000...” And another : “Mr Gray - you live in a McMansion in Castle Hill. Get a reality check buddy. Living within one's means includes factoring in the house and suburb you buy into, the car you drive, the Foxtel you have, your iPhone cap, brand name clothes, eating wholesome and home-cooked foods with ingredients bought at Aldi, etc. Being sensible with your money is not that hard. People need to let their egos go a little and be wise.”

One Herald Sun reader even said that people earning over the threshold who can’t afford the bills should be put on income management. You also had Paul Howes weighing in and talking about kids in the Phillipines rummaging through garbage to make a living. These perceptions are all particularly interesting given we are about to head into a pretty important minimum wage case, with further polling on the issue of wealth in Australia showing a serious overestimation of poor people’s income and and underestimate of rich people’s income.

Matt Cowgill’s article put this all neatly into perspective and showed realistically what is the typical Australian income. But it is amazing this ability we have to completely ignore reality and just look at this whole debate as a competition. This is because people will inevitably look around them and always see someone ahead, someone richer, and not look at our own slice of the pie and be satisfied. This whole debate played on something very visceral and human, our complete inability to be happy with what we have and constantly compare ourselves to others even when it doesn’t make sense to. This is some philosophical Alain de Botton type stuff, it’s the Yorkshire men syndrome. It’s a debate where no one wins because it becomes too emotional and detached from a government simply trying to make a welfare system sustainable with some pretty modest cuts.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!