This paper looks at the political economy of tax reform in Australia and argues that without an upsurge in resistance to neoliberal policies the ongoing shift of wealth to capital from labor in Australia will continue. The first part of the paper looks briefly at some of the social ferment going on around the globe to give some context to the resistance to neoliberalism and the demand for tax justice. I then explain what neoliberalism and Keynesianism are and how the reality of profit over people renders Keynesianism a dead end while the reality of economic crisis renders neoliberalism an anachronism. I go on to discuss the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in its global and Australian contexts. I finish off by examining the neoliberal tax reforms of the carbon tax, the Minerals Resource Rent Tax and the neoliberalism underpinning the Australia’s Future Tax System Report (‘the Henry Tax Review’).
Uprisings are complex, rare phenomenon, and this article suggests that the shared regional diffusion of protest in the Arab Spring was lubricated by the economic inequalities of neoliberalism. Young people in Egypt and the larger Middle East have been disproportionately disadvantaged by neoliberalism and a demographic youth bulge. They were economically excluded by high unemployment and insecure jobs in the informal sector; they were politically excluded by authoritarianism and state repression; and they were socially excluded by the limbo of “waithood,” or prolonged adolescence as marriage and entry into adulthood was delayed, in part due to the high cost of marriage. Yet, at the same time, these commonly shared grievances facilitated weak ties linking diverse constituencies together, as creative leaders built a “movement of movements.” The April 6 movement, and Kefaya before it, creatively adopted a non-hierarchical model of collective action that was organically suited to the vast informal and subterranean networks already dominant within Egyptian life. Young women and men risked their lives pursuing regime change, and one of the master frames of the uprisings that demanded “dignity” may provide particular opportunities for the women’s movement. A gendered concept, dignity suggests that the state must respect the integrity, safety, and autonomy of the body. Despite massive challenges to the women’s movement and its allies in Egypt as conservative forces are also emboldened by the Arab Spring, the master frame of dignity may resonate across the Egyptian public since it is a revolutionary frame, as well, yet lays bare long-standing grievances of the diverse Egyptian women’s movement.