Our modern Western technically advanced society was a product of the non-conformist Christians (Baptists, Methodists, etc).
We are only that in name now, and barely so. The average Lib voter is a clueless idiot and thinks the Libs are anti mass immigration(or do they), and all the immigrants should just "go out west", while they sit in $1m-$5m houses collecting pensions, or working for respectable usurious banks.
Count du Monet
13 Dec 2013, 12:28 PM
Our modern Western technically advanced society was a product of the non-conformist Christians (Baptists, Methodists, etc). If anything they had an ineradicably strong social ethic. They seriously believe telling lies was wrong. They were the sort of people you could give a fortune in money for safe keeping and it remained safe.
There will always be a bigger dog waiting around the corner no matter how good you think you are.
I didn't know boomers were buying houses in 1950 when you could acquire one for a thousand pounds.
Nah, in the 70s and 80s where they went for anything from today's equivalent of $120k to $500k.
Yep, the bigger dogs are those workers in shitty countries who know there is no society to catch them if they fall.
stinkbug omosessuale Frank Castle is a liar and a criminal. He will often deliberately take people out of context and use straw man arguments. Frank finally and unintentionally gives it up and admits he got where he is, primarily via dumb luck! See here Property will be 50-70% off by 2016.
Our car market is being invaded from nations like Korea and Thailand who don't play by the rules. They aren't here to sell cars, they want our resources and would prefer to own them.
I've having a look at Thailand's central bank stats.
Over the decade they've printed an average pf 9.5% more cash pa. This is not a true floating currency and a strategy of a loose fix to the USD similar to the one that China has used over the years.
Australia at 6.5% avergage is a true floating currency under the Basel model.
Taking away a basic deflator of 1.5% gives 8% real devaluation pa. And Aus works out 5% devaluation pa. The chronic devaluation of the Bhat is considerably higher than that of the AUD.
Trying to give the Koreans a check but they are proving a little obscure.
The next trick of our glorious banks will be to charge us a fee for using net bank!!! You are no longer customer, you are property!!!
Employees arrive for the 6am shift at the Holden manufacturing plant at Elizabeth in Adeleaide as the company announces it will pull out of manufacturing in Australia by 2017.
"Twenty years from now, Holden's departure will be just another marker on a journey the direction of which is clear and irreversible." Photo: Kate Geraghty
In the short term, there's no consistency in politics. Back when the Gillard government announced the carbon tax, it took about six seconds for the Coalition to scream this would cost jobs and devastate entire towns. Bollocks, retorted Labor, occasionally by way of karaoke.
Sure, some industries would be hit, but they were the kind of industries the environment needed us to scale back. Meanwhile, we would create shiny, eco-friendly jobs. People would retrain and find new opportunities. The workforce was adaptable and dynamic.
Now, with nobody really noticing, Labor and the Coalition seem to have swapped positions. As Labor inspects the carcass of the Australian car industry, it foreshadows monstrous job losses, the devastation of manufacturing towns in South Australia and Victoria, and protests that you can't simply ask people who have spent their lives assembling cars suddenly to work in nursing homes. And the Coalition is suddenly brimming with confidence that these things are always transient, evolving and ultimately leave us stronger.
But in the long run, things are far more consistent than all that. The truth is that the death of Australian car making did not begin on election day, September 7, but 30 years ago, when the Hawke government began abolishing tariffs and opening us to global competition.
This was declared a necessary step in Australia's economic evolution. It would bring growth, dynamism and, after some pain, prosperity.
When Labor today argues the Coalition is sacrificing blue-collar workers at the altar of an economic theory, it omits that, in Australia, Labor was that very theory's midwife. Ask Paul Keating. Actually, don't bother. He's already given his answer when asked what he'd say to blue-collar workers whose jobs disappeared on his watch: "What do I say? 'What's your new job like.' … I mean, did we ever hurt anybody liberating them from the car assembly line?"
For now, an argument rages on whether more government money would have saved Holden. The opposition insists $150 million would have done it. The government points out that Holden, like Ford before it, has been "saved" in this manner several times before, only to be unsaved and threaten to leave again. The truth is we'll never know because Holden won't tell us, and even if it did, it would be guessing.
Either way, the government's argument is interesting because it boils down to the assertion that there is nothing it could reasonably have done to prevent this; that this decision was out of its hands and was based on economic factors largely beyond its control. But in defending itself, the government has made an epic admission: that we're not really in control of our economy.
And that much is the heretical truth. We chose to make it true when we threw our lot in with the global free market. We'll never admit this in stark terms. We'll continue to argue over each sensational development such as this week's. But the grander theme cannot be resisted: we do not call our own shots; no longer is there a hierarchy with the nation-state on top and everyone else - corporations, civil society and citizens - below.
Power is shared now. Companies play countries off against each other looking for the best deal, much as we haggle over a shop purchase. Our world isn't exactly borderless - and some countries are more protectionist than others - but those borders now seem to denote zones rather than dominions. The world is a country now, and nations are its cities.
That's where the difficulties start. The idea of an economy is that people can move within it, that labour flows to where it is most needed. In the case of car making, our workers just aren't needed. Not because they're not good at what they do, but because countless other people are good at it, too, and for a fraction of the cost.
It's not just Australia experiencing this. Take Japan, that car-making behemoth. It's lost about a quarter of its industry in the past five years. Even South Korea, whose workers earn about half of what ours do, has been in decline since 2011. These cars are now made in China and Thailand. Cheaply.
What a shock, Waleed Aly is a "Theory of Comparative Advantage" globalist free trader. Is white anting the nation state considered an act of jihad?
I would especially take exception with the sense of fatalism. There's plenty we could do about it. Only sign trade agreements that are in the national interest would be a good place to start but there is no chance of that with the current bunch of free trade idiots selling our children down the river. We could re-impose reasonable tariffs that protect our industries and jobs and if anyone doesn't want to pay a few dollars extra to support their fellow countrymen they don't deserve to be called Australians and we could reduce immigration to a level that doesn't tear the heart out of our society - 70k per annum tops by my estimation.
Governments have always picked winners and protected them until they were ready to compete internationally or until extreme conditions passed - like the current artificially high Australian dollar. It is only those that have already achieved global dominance that preach free trade with the exception of the free trade idiots in Canberra.
What a shock, Waleed Aly is a "Theory of Comparative Advantage" globalist free trader. Is white anting the nation state considered an act of jihad?
Waleed gets about $200k working at the ABC. He needs a pay cut too. A big one!
stinkbug omosessuale Frank Castle is a liar and a criminal. He will often deliberately take people out of context and use straw man arguments. Frank finally and unintentionally gives it up and admits he got where he is, primarily via dumb luck! See here Property will be 50-70% off by 2016.
From what I can gather the car industry in Aus itself isn't that costly. The problem is that all together Australia is a costly place to operate and Aus wages are only a component of that problem and not the entire story. The import levy is currently 3.5% and zero for nations with a free trade agreement. It appears the government has shot itself in the foot bigtime.
But Senator Carr has told Newsradio the Government has known for some time that preserving Holden's Australian operations would cost less than $150 million extra per year.
"There is no question that this government is seeking to drive General Motors out of Australia," he said.
"For $300 million a year, Holden, Toyota and 160 component manufacturing companies plus all the suppliers that flow from there can be preserved but the Government does not want to face up to its responsibilities."
He says the figure is based on analysis drafted by senior officials in the Department of Innovation in the lead-up to the last election, that the Coalition has had access to.
But Federal Employment Minister Eric Abetz says more taxpayer funding would not necessarily prevent Holden from closing in Australia.
He says it is ultimately a business decision.
"Mitsubishi said to the Australian government when Labor first won office - no matter how much you offer us, we are going to close down," he said.
"Similarly, Ford in recent times said the same thing. And therefore we've got to accept the fact that it's not only an issue of how much goes to these car companies."
The Coalition ministers who briefed the ABC believe the decision about Holden's exit has been made by its parent company in Detroit, General Motors, as part of a global restructure.
An announcement by General Motors that it will no longer sell the Chevrolet to Europe has added weight to their claims.
The ABC has been told the announcement on Holden's exit was supposed to be made during the week, but has been put off until early next year due to balance-sheet issues. 'Ideological obsession' costing Australia jobs: Carr
The Labor Opposition says the Coalition is deeply divided over assistance to the car industry and support for jobs.
"There are dries within the Liberal Party that are trying to force General Motors out of Australia," Senator Carr said.
"They have this ideological obsession, a hatred for the automotive industry and that's being played out to the point where hundreds of thousands of Australian workers will be sacrificed on the altar of this economic fundamentalism."
The Government has asked the Productivity Commission to carry out a full review of car industry assistance, and Mr Abbott was expected to wait until the report was handed down before making any decisions.
However his declaration on Friday that there was no more money for Holden sparked urgent requests for meetings from the ACTU and South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill.
The next trick of our glorious banks will be to charge us a fee for using net bank!!! You are no longer customer, you are property!!!
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