Miners, charity and corporate tax

[David]

[What'sinaname]

^ By median, we will have 4 that rely on mining, 2 low tax and 2 other developed economies.

Lux
UAE
Norway
Switzerland
USA
Canada
Australia
Sweden

[Skids]

I can tell you a very big issue for mining companies here in WA is water.
Dewatering at some of these huge Iron Ore mines is causing major issues and many of them are on the verge, if not already, of exceeding their license arrangements.

I'm on a site now where our bore water is saltier than sea water and has a massive iron and manganese content. We're just in the process of commissioning a $5 million dollar plant to deal.wuth the issue.

I envisage massive desal plants on the coast piping potable water hundreds of kilometres to supply these mines.

[pietillidie]

[Skids]

What does it say for our training...

Currently mining directly employs 189,000 in almost 400 mines around the country.
In 2012 194,000 were employed, with a population 3 million less than today.

[David]

^ That just suggests to me that the transition is underway.

[pietillidie]

^A transition from a pitiful few to a pitiful fewer. It's a joke how people dumbly gobble up the propaganda. Just how could Australian workers survive without mining?!!

[Skids]

I don't think it's 'workers surviving without mining', more so the Australian economy (covid lockdowns and handouts say 'hello').

Record high for resources export revenue
Trade data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows resources export revenue reached a new record high of $351 billion in 2021 – up 21 per cent from the previous record set in 2019.

Resources contributed 68 per cent of total Australian export revenue in 2021.

Iron ore contributed $154.2 billion, up 32 per cent from 2020 and a new record high. Coal contributed $62 billion, up 43 per cent from 2020. Aluminium (including alumina and bauxite) was $13.7 billion, up 15 per cent from 2020 and copper (metal and concentrates) contributed $12.1 billion, up 14 per cent from 2020 and a new record high. Gold contributed $25.9 billion.

This incredible growth in revenue has also delivered Australia its largest ever trade surplus ($123 billion) during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when it needed economic stimulus the most.

This record growth demonstrates the importance of Australia’s mining industry to our economy.

https://www.minerals.org.au/news/record-high-resources-export-revenue#:~:text=About%20the%20Minerals%20Council%20of%20Australia&text=Trade%20data%20released%20today%20by,previous%20record%20set%20in%202019.

For the few people mining employees directly (indirectly the number would be trebled at a minimum) it contributes over 10% to the nations GDP.

Not to mention, it's where all the minerals required for the climate alarmists 'Green' energy comes from, no, the; lithium, Nickel, manganese, cobalt etc aren't found in rocking horse droppings, or a big bucket at the end of the rainbow, they're actually dug out of the ground... and Australia has plenty of them.

Mining will continue to grow and be the engine room for Australia's economy for many decades, if not centuries to come.

The 'shift' David, isn't so much about a change of direction, rather the growth of automation.
I was simply referencing the numbers with regards to labour shortages in general.

[stui magpie]

Good points Skids, Ptiddy, I don't understand your arguments and you seem to be contradicting yourself. You claim that Mining pillages intellect and suffocates other jobs, yet it's a relatively small employer despite it's importance to the economy.

You could put Agriculture and fishing in the same basket based on your graph, that is also a relatively low employer but vital. We grow our own food and get to export the rest, bringing valuable dollars to the economy.

Countries should play to their strengths. The UK is a shitty cold rock off the coast of Europe smaller than the state of Victoria with nothing going for it, It's a net importer of food and energy because it can't produce enough for itself, whereas we can and export the surplus. Australia is rich in natural resources that the world needs, you'd need to be clinically insane not to take advantage of that.

Having a nation of knowledge workers might work in a small country with no natural resources, but someone has to produce essential minerals and food.

[What'sinaname]

^ apparently all those employed in social assistance will eliminate the deficit.

[pietillidie]

^No , it's not a good point. You still don't understand how economics works. You are still wrongly proposing that things are as they are because they can't be anything else, not because the country fell hook, line and sinker for nonsense when there are much better alternatives.

The key economics concept here is opportunity cost. If you put every single dollar that has gone into mining — directly through investment, indirectly through infrastructure, handouts, labour misallocation, environmental damage, global warming mitigation delay, political capture — into other economic activities, the return to the nation would be infinitely higher.

When you look at x billion dollars your eyes light up. Like economists, I'm not impressed because I see this:

(x billion dollars (minus massive national costs)) vs
x billion dollars in industries with vastly superior multipliers and national benefit

If Australia shifted all of that capital into tech (e.g., IT; ag tech; biotech; med tech; life sciences), the real return would be ridiculously greater.

It's a circular problem. Australia has excellent core sciences and engineering but the government is captured by a lying, backroom-dealing, inherently corrupt industry. Sure, every industry is corrupt, but once again it's about percentages, with almost every industry vastly less corrupt than a low-competition high-rent industry like mining.

Mining is an Australian strength because it has been made an Australian strength. It's not the bloody 1700s when all you could do in an economy sat in the field next door, which is the absurdist way you're talking.

Most industries I've listed could just as easily be Australian strengths, but you actually have to be diligent enough and responsible enough to divert all that infrastructure spending from some useless spot in a desert somewhere to R&D tax incentives and university commercialisation. If these clueless idiots did that twenty years ago like anyone responsible with brains would've done, those billions would be in other sectors.

But these dimwits can't think longer than a handout in their electorate next week. The part that's not backroom corruption is a complete national marshmallow test fail. And they lie through their teeth when they fail to deduct all of the costs I've mentioned in this thread and pretend those billions are as they seem at face value. They are simply conning simple people who just see that number but can't account for the rest.

As for the job argument of course it's a black hole. People who should be in other sectors with highly publicised labour shortages, whether be trades, construction, healthcare, education, tech, agriculture or whatever, are misallocated into this parasitic, low multiplying, extremely nationally costly industry.

There is absolutely no contradiction between this argument and the fact that mining has a rubbish capital-to-employment ratio. This simply means that it does nothing for Australian workers compared to virtually any other industry you care to invest in, while still attracting people away from industries with labour shortages.

Then, you could take the cream off the top of mining, making it pay for all those externalities and opportunity costs I mention, as the bargaining power shifts back to the nation and overseas capital bids far more for those rights. But it's all too difficult for the lazy, corrupt or outright hoodwinked.

Exactly as was the case with global warming denial, some of you guys are simply copying and pasting mining industry propaganda. Again and again and again, all the way from Iraq to Trump, and always wrong.

[stui magpie]

Nah dude, with respect, you've been gone from Aus too long

[pietillidie]

^Nice try, but pretty silly given the arguments and data are all basic knowledge. Like Skids, Whatsinaname and many otherwise ntelligent people who keep getting things wrong, you're far smarter than this, but keep reacting against people who annoy you, stubbornly digging in for eternity rather than adapting to new information.

[stui magpie]

Nice try yourself, but you're a knowledge worker and that's your bias. So was I but I acknowledge that we need blue collar workers as the foundation.

[pietillidie]

^Huh? It's clearly the complete, absolute 100% opposite! As per the chart above, mining is rubbish at creating jobs, including non-knowledge jobs. Even worse, there's a shortage of workers in stable, long-term, sustainable non-knowledge work including the trades, construction, healthcare, agriculture and high-tech manufacturing. Mining is plainly a job destroyer for non-knowledge workers because its capital-employment ratio is pathetic.

Even worse, it's a misallocator because jobs it provides are unstable, subject to booms and busts, and remotely located.

And it's not the 00s; all good jobs involve technology. The entire decade has been defined by the merging of software and hardware, whether in healthcare, agriculture, construction or manufacturing.

Anyhow, forget it. I like you guys too much to keep going on about it.