What Hockey is talking about is pointless and unneccessary, will merely increase inequality and hardship and will likely end up counter-productive in any case. He has made the statement previously that he believes the world risks "running out of money" or words to that effect, which is untrue and patently ridiculous. We could conceiveabley exhaust real resources but never money.
its our nation we are destroying in our pursuit of personal wealth.
In pursuit of temporary wealth. The future will be a poorer, nastier, harder place for the vast majority of Australians if we continue to head down the path of wealth for the few at all costs.
I really like this speech. I'm not by nature a small-govt person (or a large-govt person actually), but people need to open their eyes to what is going on in the world.
Govts are not going to be able to pay for entitlements, end of story. Whats worse is that private pensions and medical coverage are also woefully insufficient, and this will only get worse as we sit through many years of poor stockmarket returns due to the lack of growth in the economy (including developing economies in time).
Western societies are going to need to go through massive adjustments. Non-western societies wont be spared either, as they'll feel the effects of reduced demand in their main export markets.
You see the first examples of this in the Aus govt proposals around nursing home care.
Essentially I like what Hockey's saying, the entitlement mentality of the last 10-15 years has been sickening and has been primarily been exercised by the bulls and because of the bulls and started with Howard. Any cuts in welfare need to be rewarded by significant tax cuts to all who work.
I have zero faith in that, there's a good chance that they'd hand over the savings to their mates in the property mafia by coming up with another first home vendor's grant or to cut capital gains tax, and I shall vote for the Stable Population Party as I was planning to.
The SPP is the real Australian's party.
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.
Essentially I like what Hockey's saying, the entitlement mentality of the last 10-15 years has been sickening and has been primarily been exercised by the bulls and because of the bulls and started with Howard. Any cuts in welfare need to be rewarded by significant tax cuts to all who work.
I have zero faith in that, there's a good chance that they'd hand over the savings to their mates in the property mafia by coming up with another first home vendor's grant or to cut capital gains tax, and I shall vote for the Stable Population Party as I was planning to.
The SPP is the real Australian's party.
You are incorrect re Howard.
Entitlement society started decades ago , when govts concluded they could spend more that they earned to pacify the population and increase their chance of being re-elected. While they all realised the spending had to be paid back each successive govt pushed the burden onto the next. This is not a partisan issue - both parties are just as bad as each other.
To give some perspective - Howard spent less on welfare than most OECD members
"The most recent data on social spending in OECD countries shows that in 2007, the year before the global financial crisis, Australia spent 16 per cent of GDP on cash benefits (including pensions and unemployment payments, healthcare and community services) compared to an OECD average of just over 19 per cent. We actually spent a little less than the United States and Japan, and the only countries that spent substantially less than we did were lower-income countries like Mexico, Chile, Turkey and Korea"
There must be a more equitable way than just leaving it all to business. Like a discredited economic model, you can’t assume that corporations are going to be nice reasonable ones and actually care about the community and its best interests. Unfortunately you can’t also allow the politicians to care about the community either. They are too easily swayed by PR fed to the media as news, which is biased in favour of the highest bidder. It is due to this collusion that we see our dearth of political leadership in this nation.
Whilst I feel that there needs to be responsibility for ones actions, this should not come at the expense of social equality. Therefore I see speeches such as rather dangerous for they will be embraced by the people who stand to lose the most from it. It will be the middle class who not only lose their at times unjust benefits bestowed upon them by the government, but also potentially their jobs as more and more positions are off-shored in the name of profit maintenance. This has been occurring in the US and the UK.
In a study one of my professors is conducting for the OECD, in the UK the skills level required for a previously non-graduate job, requires a graduate. This is not because of the skills required from such studies, just because the graduate jobs have been off-shored. I see this as very dangerous as this flows through the economic strata of society to the very bottom whose number will just increase. We are creating a society which will potentially mirror those seen in developing countries such as Brazil where the rich become richer and the poor and middle class just get left behind fighting for the odd jobs that haven’t been sent overseas. I put it to you, who is important to the rich people staying in business? There is a limit to how far you can push down the middle and lower classes before they can spend no more. Have they really considered the social and economic consequences of this?
Some would say that we are different to the UK, however given what I have seen from the study, we are heading down a similar path. We are mirroring their changes that started in the Thatcher years and are the ever widening social gaps that you see today. I can not see from both sides of politics any solutions or political will to change. As PF mentioned this morning I may have a boy scout approach to it, however debate creates discussion and somewhere in the middle we can find a resolution that takes into account the lives of all of us.
What we are witnessing is a globalization of the labor market, a deregulation of the benefits western nations have built up over two centuries. The deregulation of the labor market is designed PRECISELY as a means to lower the most significant cost to corporations – labor and wages.
This is all occurring at the same time that protectionism for corporations is being made hermetic and irrevocable through means such as IP laws, (SOPA and anti piracy laws in the US is a prime example), World Trade laws, institutionalization of corporate mandated compensation claims against sovereign nations, a complete dismantling of all privacy laws, remove of illegal search laws etc via the digital communications in order to maximize corporate control over their positions of power through invasive practices and control of content and consumption. Terrifying stuff. I did several thesis on the role of corporate militarization and the destruction of western sovereignty through a return to corporate merchantism as seen through the Virginia and East / West Indies trading companies – and piracy as it happens.
The root cause of all these issues is something you touch on – intelligence.
Australia simply does not have intelligent politicians – we have politicians as politicians, career political movers – I simply can not think of a single intelligent politician in Australia since Barry Jones, Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating – not one.
Whats more Australia’s predilection for denigrating and ostracising intelligence and academia has taken a whole new turn for the despicable. I was roundly derided by a table of people the other day as my opinions sounded decidedly “bookish”, as opposed to what ? Arrogant unfounded uninformed shibboleths seemed to be the preference to a well educated balanced conclusions. I was gutted with despair. So people are aligning themselves, finding common ground with moronic, stupid leaders which both parties offer in spades, as a form of identifying with their own stupidity.
It is truly the hallmark of a nation on the precipice of unstoppable decline. Giving away all productive advantages through technology, sciences, intelligence and education in favor of destroying all that in the pursuit of the most low brow short term gain – digging up rocks.
The irony is that people do not realise that Korea was an absolute BACKWATER only 20-30 years ago, I mean people lived with candles, dirt floors and kero stoves. Japan had been bombed into the the middle of Hades, Taiwan was a no go zone etc, etc – however they all regarded education and intelligence with great reverence and are now dominating the planet – as do the Chinese.
Probably the most successful nation is the diaspora of the Jewish, who central tenet is the acquisition of knowledge and education – as a nation who has been dispossessed more so than most they have come to learn that this is the one thing that can never be taken away and can always be used to rebuild.
Australia is now a nation of anti-intellectuals, anti-academic asinine fools – the surest sign in all of history of a nation on the verge of radical decline.
We do not have a culture of continuing self development. A lot of my experience comes from Latin America. They can not understand how Australians can not be interested in developing ones self. They have to, as without the education they can not get anywhere. They live in the type of society that Mr Hockey is advocating and it isn’t fair at all. So they understand that in the end education is power. Where I am completing a Masters Thesis at the moment a minority of the students are Australian. Education is key to critical thought which without we are as a nation are a rudderless ship.
I believe that Australians are as capable and intelligent as the best of them. My issue is with the education system. We are spitting out people who are unable to think. They are told what to think in class and prepared for exams that determine corporate styled rankings of schools.
This is not their fault really, it is on the back of successive governments who have not invested in them. Unfortunately this is not an election winner due to the short term mindset. My question is why are we giving tax breaks so that people can lose money for 20 years on an investment property when we can’t even educate our primary school children properly?
There is vast amounts of evidence that the level of schooling has worsened here. Our children and hence people have been let down. The Economist summed up our universities last year as being like an Australian wine, good but not great. I think they underestimate our wines, however they have got it spot on with the Uni’s. I’m glad they didn’t look at our state primary schools as their opinion wouldn’t be so high. (Remember primary schools can’t supplement their dwindling funding with high fee paying foreign students to bump up their teaching quality)
We are capable, we just have an apathetic population who are being kept that way by self centred politicians who are are doing their best to pander to the ever powerful lobbies that blight our political landscape. Until a leader emerges from the mess that is our political selection process we will continue good but never great.
I recall a conversation with my wife back in 2005. We talked about this very topic, European welfare state. I said back then it was not sustainable and in time would bankrupt Europe, she argued about all the services and infrastructure and how wonderful Europe was (being from Europe herself). Needless to say I have had a smile on my face the last few years as Europe went down the drain, proving I was right in the debate. For those married men out there you know this dose not happen often, A woman admitting she was wrong.
Except it has absolutely nothing to do with the welfare state - unless we are talking about corporate welfare - then yes you are right.
The debts of these nations is from bailing out banks.
The united states welfare is entirely self funded until the middle of the next century - the shortfall is from unfunded activities like wars and welfare cuts being take out of that fund.
You might want to wipe that smile off your face now.
I recall a conversation with my wife back in 2005. We talked about this very topic, European welfare state. I said back then it was not sustainable and in time would bankrupt Europe, she argued about all the services and infrastructure and how wonderful Europe was (being from Europe herself). Needless to say I have had a smile on my face the last few years as Europe went down the drain, proving I was right in the debate. For those married men out there you know this dose not happen often, A woman admitting she was wrong.
Except it has absolutely nothing to do with the welfare state - unless we are talking about corporate welfare - then yes you are right.
The debts of these nations is from bailing out banks.
The united states welfare is entirely self funded until the middle of the next century - the shortfall is from unfunded activities like wars and welfare cuts being take out of that fund.
You might want to wipe that smile off your face now.
I'm not sure you're right there? Whilst in the US, I remember the argument being that Social Security would run out of money in 2040 or so, depending on various assumptions.
At a lower level, there are plenty of examples right now of municipalities who are unable to service their pension debts, or at the very least are havint to make drastic cuts in order to meet their bills. Michael Lewis has a great one in his latest book where some Californian town is so screwed by its fire and police pension obligations that it can afford virtually nothing else.
Take your point on wars and bank debts. But IMO its still the case that most Western economies are not going to be able to meet their pension and welfare obligations without serious restructuring. These are longer-term issues than the current debt crises we see.
as "flawse" over at macro would say "the answer lies back in time"
There is so much government income dependant on housing, it's all too much to unravel - you would have to erase it all and start again.
Disagree somewhat. Substantially changing the NG rules on existing real estate holdings would indeed be too disruptive for any government to contemplate. But changing the rules just for new transactions is more feasible. Real estate bought under the old rules could have its original tax treatment grandfathered for an extended period of time (e.g. a decade, or even indefinitely) or until sold on again. There are similar precedents for grandfathering within the super system, for example.
But on the political front I don't see even a new-transaction change happening with NG anytime soon. Wayne Swan isn't touching the subject even though he's desperate to balance the books right now, and I can't see the next (Coalition) government pursuing it either. Maybe the next time there is a majority Labor government it will be looked at again, i.e. perhaps 10 years from now, when the full brunt of boomer retirement costs are completely hamstringing federal budgets.
A more immediate target should be stamp duty, which is nobody's idea of a good tax. It restricts labour force movement at a time when productivity growth is stalled, fluctuates wildly as a source of state government income, and isn't closely correlated with any real cost of service provision by state government. (While the states do provide any number of essential services, it isn't at all clear why the costs of these should fall disproportionately on the act of purchasing real estate.)
Changes to stamp duty wouldn't need to be grandfathered per se--though there'd need to be some temporary phase-in provisions, or RE transactions would grind to a complete halt before any cutover date. But the states would need a substitute source of income. Theoretically they already have one in the form of GST allocations from the feds, but both sides (federal vs state) have demonstrated bad faith in making that arrangement work over time. Possibly the states could yank up council rates instead; that's a trade-off that works in other countries with similar federal/state politics (and tax revenue allocation issues), e.g. Canada.
He may not have started it per se but he exacerbated it like mad. It was under his rule that the boomer scum and property specufestors started demanding constant capital gains for housing and middle class workers who had to pay these scum for their overpriced properties started demanding middle class welfare.
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.
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