Never mind finance for a minute, let's pose a philosophical question in light of Wayne Swan's first budget: Who's rich?
Picking your way through the Budget rhetoric and political spin, you might think the official Canberra view is that a family with total gross income of $150,000 a year is rich and those with $110,000 are close to it. The former is the new means test cut-off point for several government handouts, while the latter is the less-well-known cut-off for the child care rebate.
So a young husband and wife who are both ordinary teachers are rich? They wouldn't qualify for the child care rebate, so Wayne Swan must think they're pretty well off. I haven't heard anyone else suggest a teacher's salary is enough to make you rich.
Let's add a couple of years to the aforementioned teaching couple. One of them is promoted to being a subject master. Or maybe both of them become assistant subject masters. Or maybe they're trying to buy a house and raise a child so one gets a second job tutoring. That's all it would take to push them over the $150,000 limit where they kiss goodbye to government assistance.
Yet somehow I can't consider them "rich". And that's where the Budget spin comes in.
It's much easier to sell the budget changes politically if you're giving the impression that it's the wealthy who are missing out, but in truth it is "middle class" welfare that's being attacked. Teachers, police, nurses, ambulance men and women - have two of them in the family with one doing overtime or a second job and they'll lose benefits.
In fairness though to the difficult balancing act that is the Treasurer's job, no-one should be whinging too much because the concurrent tax cuts make up for the loss of benefits. Despite losing some welfare handouts, the middle class still comes out ahead.
Which brings me back to that opening philosophical question - who is rich and who is poor? Who in our society deserves extra assistance from the rest of us (in the form of the government)? It's not an easy question to answer.
Having just come back from visiting Vietnam, I'd say about 99 per cent of Australians are rich, relatively speaking. Within the high expectations of our wealthy country though, it's a lot more difficult than that.
On the other hand, listening to some middle-class whingers who think they're doing it tough, well, all I can say is that if you think times are tough now, you haven't been around long and have no idea of what "tough" actually is.
It's easy to lose sight of the big fundamentals. The important economic and personal finance reality is that there is plenty of work available in Australia and we have a social welfare safety net that provides (mostly) free education and health care.
How much further should government spending go? In my book, beyond the safety net, the role of government is to invest in the nation's ability to become more wealthy.
And that was the best thing about last night's budget. Philosophically and well as economically, the three mini-Future Funds for infrastructure, health and education is where good government lies, rather than increasing handouts.
World growth is slowing a bit, but the commodities boom is good for a few more years yet to give us the luxury of investing in our future instead of frittering it away on vote-buying handouts and stunts.
So the Budget was, mainly, a step in the right direction, but only a first step. The full taxation review has a lot to consider as all the fiddling around just makes our present confused system more confusing.
And there's more middle class welfare yet to be chopped. Here's a question for Wayne Swan: Why on earth haven't you means tested the first home owners grant?