Australia's welfare system isn't "pretty good". It's terrible. Targeting simply means more stigma towards poor folks, and narrower political support. Less targ

Australia's welfare system isn't "pretty good". It's terrible. Targeting simply means more stigma towards poor folks, and narrower political support. Less targeting is actually better if you want more redistribution, more equality, broader political support, and less stigma. Welfare shouldn't be simply a last-resort safety net for the most unfortunate, it should help everybody live a smoother, easier life. The means-tested pension is particularly bad - all it does is result in people restructuring their finances to hack the means-testing measure, and make average people obsessed with "super" (privatized retirement accounts) instead. Key thing to remember is that welfare "spending" isn't "spending" or "costs" in the sense that eg buying a fighter jet is. It's just redistribution - so tax "churn" or low "targeting" doesn't really matter.