Time, inheritance, accumulation : the historical limits of cultural capital

At the time of writing, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has been widely criticised for a media release which glossed its 2017-2018 inequality data by using the heading «Inequality stable since 2013-2014» even though the data testified to an increase in wealth inequalities over the reported period (Jericho, 2019). In these regards, the data merely confirmed earlier reports by independent foundations charting the tendency, since the GFC, for wealth inequalities in Australia to increase and to do so at a greater rate than income inequalities (ACOSS, 2015; Sheil, Stilwell, 2016). The ABS's critics argued that its headline massaged the truth about the present state of inequalities in Australia in ways that fell into line with the political narratives of Australia's current conservative government which try to airbrush questions of inequality off the political agenda. And with good reason, considering that its policies are dedicated to increasing inequalities on a quite unprecedented scale: reductions in the rate of corporate taxes; income tax breaks that favour higher income groups; education policies that have progressively shifted the levels of government support in favour of the private sector and religious schools at the expense of the state schooling system; and significant reductions in welfare budgets. And dedicated too to ensuring that inequalities can be transmitted across generations in the defence it mounted, in the 2019 general election, of an inheritance regime which, since 1978, has been untrammelled by death taxes.