The NLP is responsible for gross economic mismanagement

[pietillidie]

The current stock market rout is nothing new to present discussion, but did you see George W. and Hokey Joe's response? Microeconomic tax cuts! You've got to be bloody kidding me!

Do they have a brain in their heads or an ounce of consideration for the citizenry? The problem is not the availability of capital�the world is awash with the stuff; the problem is not the BS story of "business confidence"�there's nothing for business to invest in if it wanted to because of the NLP's horrific all-eggs-in-the-filthy-mining-basket stupidity; the problem is indexing the economy to a very narrow stream of income, and digging deeper holes to prop up the lazy and undisciplined investments of cronies and party funders in commodities.

A striped long-toed macaque would have seen this coming years ago, and of course would've had enough memory to recall Australia's historical commodity and dollar cycles. Hell, an electric toothbrush has enough memory to recall that.

But no, these creeps don't give a damn about the citizenry. If they did, they would've moved a long time ago to diversify national revenue streams, and as explained a thousand bloody times done the following:

• 1. Focused on upgrading, expanding and strengthening services areas in which Australia has a natural competitive advantage
  
  The tourism and education sectors needed to be modernised, upgraded and positioned to boom on the drop of the dollar; but that means you have to back and support them long-term and counter-cyclically, and you have to focus on your national reputation and developing positive and friendly relations with the world on the first front, and encouraging a vigorous, creative intellectual culture on the second.
  
  
• 2. Focused on building high-pay, high-value, great careers in science, technology, agricultural science and technology (very good, but can be strengthened), and medical/health services (very good, but can be strengthened)
  
  Rather than cutting science funding, reducing science to the status of religious feelings through global warming denial, scoffing at high-tech energy, scuppering the HQ NBN, discouraging intellectual reward, and dissing venture culture as if it's the stuff of US comedy, these idiots ought to have had the responsibility to grasp the historical opportunity dropped in their laps in the form of green energy and engineering and creative tech/media.
  
  But no, they didn't step up science and engineering funding; they didn't integrate film, visual arts, multimedia, video gaming and startup tech into a single creative ecosystem; and they didn't re-conceive the education system accordingly. Instead, Abbott, Hockey, Whiny Pyne and co. ran about like infantile morons trying to win first-year university debates they had in 1978.
  
  
• 3. Treated the nation's mineral wealth and the commodities boom as the cyclical stroke of fortune it is and used it to fund a more stable, multi-pronged economy.
  
  Is it too much to ask for the bloody obvious to be implemented?
  
  Contrary to serious economic policy, to win elections these creeps indexed people's lives almost entirely to the over-investment in commodities by elite capital holders and managers, and the ridiculous spike in incomes at the very top fraction of society.
  
  First, they grabbed bribes and payouts from mining to make sure the national focus was exclusively on the short-term: The mining boom accompanied by a crippling fear of the world (failed wars, terrorism, asylum seekers, global change). Meanwhile, they trapped everyone's financial worldview in long-term housing investments through middle-class negative-gearing bribery, crippling people's ability to respond quickly and smartly to economic change by adjusting their investment mix. Finally, they made sure it was too expensive for people to upgrade their skills and education.

Next time you vote, folks, if those three points above are not central to the policy platform of the leader and party concerned, tell them to go and get f^%$cked. Stop being manipulated by short-term, ignorant thugs and racists who stir up your anger against your neighbours for their own filthy gain, and your own loss.

If the country doesn't get these very basic and obvious macroeconomic strategies in place, you won't have any money with which to defend yourself against the ills of the world such as falling real wages, terrorism, crime, urban under-servicing, youth unemployment, and so on.

This enormous economic failure is as costly as the NLP's despicable Iraq and Afghanistan debacles; it's the same short-term, negligent, greedy, callous scum damaging your lives on the basis of lies which benefit their families and their cronies, and scare everyone into voting for them.

These lies and recent idiotic, irresponsible comments by Hockey on lowering tax rates do nothing for the nation and your future except play silly buggers while the situation worsens. If you want lower real wages, reduced social services and social quality, damaged education and career prospects, increased risk of terrorism, greater general economic instability, more pollution and environmental/health costs and damage, and greater regional and international instability, then for god's sake commit yourself to the nearest mental facility with haste.

We wait for someone do the right f&^%^ing thing in politics and rid us of these slimy, mudskipping dirtbags.

/Motherf*&*&ing rant therein ended

[Culprit]

Who would have thought when we disposed of the previous idiots we would hand over the Country to a worse bunch of idiots?

[Wokko]

Interesting that you single out the government that has been in power half a term rather than the two term previous government that �$%$ed things up just as bad.

Building unwanted school halls and giving out wide screen TV grants to people on centrelink was economic genius after all. You'd have made a better point against Howard/Rudd/Gillard/Rudd because the horse bolted a long time ago. The current mob are just failing at fixing the mess, they didn't make it.

[David]

^ By 'giving out wide screen TV grants', are you referring to Rudd's stimulus packages? Because I was under the impression that most objective observers credited such policies with helping us escape the worst of the GFC.

On the topic, I'm really starting to wonder what Hockey is smoking (apart from cigars!).

[John Wren]

[Wokko]

I suggest you broaden your reading then.

http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/1825/kevin-rudd's-darkest-days

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/kevin-rudds-fiscal-stimulus-the-wrong-solution-to-the-gfc/story-e6frgd0x-1227051897059?nk=fdd680fbe37516c055476d1592b92de7-1440461445

http://www.newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=4112

I would credit Costello and his tightarse fiscal policy delivering a healthy surplus year after year and paying down government debt. I still think Howard governments spent way too much on crass vote buying, middle class welfare and handouts too.

[Culprit]

Reference the IPA & Murdoch? lmao, not biased at all Wokko.

[watt price tully]

[Wokko]

[regan is true fullback]

The ABC has many conservatives on its programs. Trouble is they behave like spoilt embarrassments whenever they get on the air. They then spit the dummy and claim bias rather than look in the mirror. The problem is the ABC and Fairfax are desperate to display such po-faced even handedness that they allow any half wit with a Thatcherite complex to say whatever they like and then look silly. Sheehan on Monday, Amanda on Tuesday, Reith on Wednesday.

I remember Bronnie on Richard Glover's show on the ABC laying the boot into her mortal enemy - Malcolm Turnbull! who until that very morning had the support of all Liberals in parliament. it was embarrassing.

Have you ever listened to the ABC west of the ranges? Any conservative with an axe to grind or a position to sell is given free rein any time he likes, unquestioned. Not just on the Country Hour.

For a bunch of people who wear their arrogance like Linus's blanket, you have precious little to be arrogant about.

[Mugwump]

^ I think the Howard and Costello governments were very complacent, and Australian governments since then have been little better. Partisan barracking along the lines that the NLP governments have been terrible (implying that the Labour govts have been quite good) seems to me a bit of a stretch.

For all that, i think the idea that the economy is primarily an expression of the will of government is a flawed one. Governments can certainly mess an economy up, via monetary mismanagement, excessive public spending or overly restrictive labour laws. They can (probably) smoothe economic cycles to a limited extent through Keynesian stimulus if they have built strong surpluses in the good times. I'm less convinced that they can create prosperity via direct intervention, however.

[regan is true fullback]

Mugwump wrote

[Wokko]

I would also like to add that the IPA are not Liberal Party shills or 'conservative' commentators, they're a free market think tank and have recently been slamming the Abbott government for their high taxing, high spending ways (they've been worse than Rudd's Labor).

http://www.news.com.au/finance/money/joe-hockeys-back-to-the-future-speech/story-fnkji35w-1227496842042

[Tannin]

[Wokko]