Politics or Propaganda?

I have only read 35 pages of this book, but I am already at odds with it. After calling the Tax System suppressive because it doesn\'t teach a person how the system works, Tony then goes on to say, on Page35:- \"Take a walk through the dole ridden streets scattered around Australia. You\'ll see for yourself; desperation, drugs, violence and criminality. Giving somebody something for nothing is about one of the cruellest things you can do to that person, and they\'ll hate you for it.\" What a stupid statement. Is it really only the tax system which is \"suppressive\"? What about the Political System? Very few people can name three of their State\'s Senators. Except for practicing politicians, very few know the workings of the House, where our Laws - including our Tax Laws - are made. Is it really the dole-bludgers who are getting \"something for nothing\"(despite having to work for the dole, and fill in forms and wait in long queues in order to get some relief? What about the Non-executive Directors on big Ltd companies? What about the idle rich living off their family inheritance? But, what irks me most is that the passage, which I have quoted, seems to suggest that the black side of society is caused by giving the unemployed dole money. Surely it is a consequence of unemployment, that we need the dole, not the other way round. For a supposedly logical thinker, Tony, you don\'t have a clue about causality and correlation. Surely it is ethically right and responsible to help the poor and unemployed? Do we want to end up like America - which puts a greater percentage of its own people in goal compared with any other country in the world including China, where if you can\'t pay for medical insurance you die on the streets, where the unemployed are given very little assistance or support, where the disenchanted and the discontented take the matter into their own hands and randomly shoot people out of frustration - because they don\'t understand the political system, because they feel trotally fed up, and they don\'t know how to express a grievance. I suggest that Tony should read the transcript of the Peter Singer interview with Geraldine Doogue on ABC\'s compass,http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2657896.htm, in which Peter says, \"I think it\'s true that trade has played a huge role in pulling hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. We see that particularly in China and in India. But there are some things that trade doesn\'t do. Trade doesn\'t seem to be very good at really reaching the people on the very bottom, that poorest 10% of the world\'s population. Trade hasn\'t really been so effective in some parts of Africa where the proportion of people living in extreme poverty is highest but there really isn\'t the infrastructure for them to produce something and then transport it to a port where they can sell it to us.\" OK, Peter is talking about Trade, but it is relevant because he is talking about how the system fails the poorer people in wealthy countries like Australia.