| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Culprit 
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
|
| Post subject: Intergenerational Report & the May Budget |  |
|
Ok the idiot we have as Treasurer is going to use this fictional report to deliver bad news in the budget. I don't know about others but I could not give a toss about what the budget will be in 2050. I expect this will be another budget fail by Joe and it will be his last.
I also hear the rich spruiking that the retirement age should be lifted to 75 due to the ageing population and all this whilst they will retire when they like because they can. This is amazing after a previous report handed down about the high rate of unemployment for people over 55. Naturally all these reports are handed down by people who look at data and manipulate that data to achieve the desired outcome.
I am no rocket scientist, but the more people that are unemployed means that less people paying tax and that in turn more of Government money has to go on welfare. Nothing this Government has done has been for any growth in employment and all their actions have been about job losses. All they seem to be focussed on is hurting low income workers and cutting back anything public and pushing all State Governments to sell their assets. It's dumb and will hurt the country even more. |
|
|
|
 |
Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Standard Abbott-Credlin-Hockey three-step tactics:
1: make up some scary lies
2: get one of your mates to repeat them and call it a "report"
3: break another promise
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
|
|
|
|
Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Ross Gittens wrote: | Joe Hockey turns intergenerational report into a propaganda weapon
The five-yearly intergenerational report ought to be highly informative, leading to serious debate about the economic choices we face. In the hands of Joe Hockey, however, it has become little more than a crude propaganda exercise.
As such it will be quickly cast aside, like last year's report of the Commission of Audit. Within a few days all that will remain is the taxpayer-funded advertising campaign. It, too, will be more about spin than brain-food.
Hockey has shifted the report's focus from the next 40 years to the government's present struggles with the budget. The message he wants us to take away is that it's all Labor fault, but the government has worked hard to greatly reduce the problem. And were not for those crazies in the Senate - who seem to think our spending cuts were unfair - last year's budget would have set us up for budget surpluses right through to 2055.
The message we should take away from it, as with its three predecessors, is one no politician on either side is prepared to admit: as our demands on the government for more and better services continue to grow, we will have pay for them with higher taxes. Since our real incomes are projected to rise by almost 80 per cent, this won't be so terrible.
Instead, the message from all these reports is that there is no alternative to sweeping cuts in government spending, unfair or not.
They come to this conclusion by quietly assuming that before long we will return to annual tax cuts, even as the budget deficit and debt get bigger every year. Sure.
If you wonder how anyone could have any idea of how things will play out over the next 40 years, you are right. No one can. The one thing we can be sure of is that, whatever the budget and the economy end up looking like in 2055, it won't be what this report says they will.
The mechanical projections in this report are based on a host of assumptions about an unknowable future. Some of those assumptions are spelt out in the fine print, some aren't. Some are honest guesses, some have been chosen to lead us to the conclusions the government wants us to reach.
One demonstration that projecting what will happen over the next 40 years is unavoidably dodgy is that the four successive reports have each come up with widely differing figures for where the budget will end up.
One demonstration of the report's lack of genuine concern about our future is its dismissive treatment of climate change. The biggest risk we face in 40 years' time is the budget deficit?
One demonstration of the report's inadequacy is its failure to take account of what may be happening to the state governments' budgets. This allows it to claim last year's budget measures would have restored the feds to eternal surplus, while ignore the consequences of Hockey's proposal for ever-growing cuts in grants to the states for hospitals and schools. Really?
To be fair, before Hockey got into the act Treasury would use the intergenerational report for its own propaganda. Its message was aimed at its political masters: the budget may look OK now, but there is a lot extra spending coming in a few years' time, so keep running a tight ship.
It was spectacularly unsuccessful. The Howard government went mad with tax cuts and middle-class welfare and Rudd and Gillard were a fraction worse with their unfunded schemes to help disadvantaged school kids and the disabled.
And these guys think it's all our fault?
|
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/joe-hockey-turns-intergenerational-report-into-a-propaganda-weapon-20150305-13wce9.html
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
|
|
|
|
David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Did anyone see that credulous debt graph in the Herald Sun?
Seriously, it's like we're back in Kindergarten.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
nomadjack
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
Location: Essendon
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| But the sky is falling...the sky is falling... |
|
|
|
|
partypie
Joined: 01 Oct 2010
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| It seems we have been in the midst of an economic crisis since 1975 |
|
|
|
|
London Dave 
Ješte jedna pivo prosím
Joined: 16 Dec 1998
Location: Iceland on Thames
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| partypie wrote: | | It seems we have been in the midst of an economic crisis since 1975 |
apart from when the 'adults' have been in charge. If you presented a report that drenched in bullshit to your boss, you'd be sacked. What a windbag Hockey is. If he said the sun is gonna rise tomorrow I'd get a second opinion. |
|
|
|
|
Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| So who are all these countries in debt to? |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
See if you can get your head around this. I've never fully understood it:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_debt
Economics really should be a mandatory high school subject.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
partypie
Joined: 01 Oct 2010
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| London Dave wrote: | | partypie wrote: | | It seems we have been in the midst of an economic crisis since 1975 |
apart from when the 'adults' have been in charge. If you presented a report that drenched in bullshit to your boss, you'd be sacked. What a windbag Hockey is. If he said the sun is gonna rise tomorrow I'd get a second opinion. |
Windbag is up there with knuckedragger amongst my favourite insults!
Economic crisis has been the excuse for decades for all this mad ideologically driven stuff governments do. Meanwhile youth unemployment and the wages gender gap don't seem to have changed much in four decades. |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Not being funny David, but it's a fair summary of the subject and not very difficult for someone of your intellect, I'd have thought.
The H-S graph is utterly ludicrous. Where anyone will be by 2055 is anyone's guess. As JM Keynes said, in the long run, we're all dead. In the short run, it's reasonable for Australia to be running a deficit in a time when our major exports are at a low point in the trade cycle, and our net sovereign debt is under 30% of GDP. For a country with the commodity dependence of Australia, I'd personally like to see sovereign debt kept below 50%, as that is a level commensurate with some fiscal flexibility in the event of a global crisis, and it is unlikely to cause any query over our sovereign credit rating.
I agree that basic economics should be a mandatory high school subject.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^ I have to admit I did and didn't. The nagging question for me (and I remember asking this in year 12 economics and getting a similarly vague response) is whether or not debt is actually real—that is, what actually stops powerful countries like the US from just blowing out their debt ad infinitum? At what point, if any, are creditors going to step in?
Of course, that hardly relates to the Australian situation because we know that our debt is small by international standards and that some long-term fluctuation between debt/surplus is not only okay, but to be expected. So, on that level, even I can see the government and their News Limited lackeys (or vice versa?) are behaving absurdly and irresponsibly. But I admit that I am still confused about the broader implications of debt.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Oh, I see what you mean. Well, the debt is certainly real, in that it's a promise to pay by the Government, and if people start to doubt that promise to pay, then they will only lend more money to the govt at higher rates of interest, or not at all. That is true of the US - they just haven't got to that point yet. Typically the credit rating of a country starts to come under close scrutiny when the debt-to-GDP ratio gets near 100%. The Us is about 85% of GDP the last time I looked.
Sovereign debt is a little different to personal debt in two critical particulars, though - if you're in debt they throw you in jail if you print money or force others to pay your debt. The government can ultimately do that, either via currency issuance or via taxation.
Printing money, however, is default by another means as it degrades the value of the currency, and provokes inflation, and this reduces the real value of the debt itself. It also has all sorts of other nasty side-effects under normal conditions, so it's not often done by responsible monetary authorities (despite what you may hear, "QE " is not "printing money" in the sense that this term is usually used).
Not sure if that is what they told you in Year 12 - they should have been delighted to have a year 12 student who asked such things !
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| David wrote: | ^ I have to admit I did and didn't. The nagging question for me (and I remember asking this in year 12 economics and getting a similarly vague response) is whether or not debt is actually real—that is, what actually stops powerful countries like the US from just blowing out their debt ad infinitum? At what point, if any, are creditors going to step in?
Of course, that hardly relates to the Australian situation because we know that our debt is small by international standards and that some long-term fluctuation between debt/surplus is not only okay, but to be expected. So, on that level, even I can see the government and their News Limited lackeys (or vice versa?) are behaving absurdly and irresponsibly. But I admit that I am still confused about the broader implications of debt. |
Actually, David, our debt is huge by international standards, it's only our government debt which is small. Our private debt is enormous and crippling. A great deal of it is lent against some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. This real estate is overvalued to buggery, of course, and kept so largely by purely artificial means. (In particular, by 100% capital gains tax exemptions on homes, regardless of circumstances; negative gearing, and the across-the-board 50% capital gains tax exemption for investors.) Take away these artificial supports - which are the only things keeping the bubble inflated - and the whole thing collapses overnight. But take those thgings away we must - they are crippling the economy and diverting vital funds away from useful investment to create wealth and jobs and into the madness of endless property speculation.
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^yep, that's true too - worth reading Professor Steve Keen on this. The trouble is that if housing ever looks like falling, the govt will bring in another second home vendors grant (aka "first home buyer's grant"). Sadly, the young are having to mortgage their lives to those conditions.
To quote the great JM Keynes again, "the market can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent".
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
