If Juliar ran Trade Tools
This company gets it!! The Brisbane Sunday Mail ran an advert from the company Trade Tools. It is one of the best and funniest ads that I have seen in a very long time. Considering the serious blunder of the announced carbon tax (taxing the air that we breathe), Trade Tools has come up with an advert that highlights the very incompetence of those who continue to push the lie of Socialism and Communism. I am not going to beat about the bush. Julia Gillard is a Marxist. Her ideology has not changed. She is one of the many who have used the ALP as a means of gaining power in order to push the Communist agenda. It had been tried in the past and it always failed. Just ask Doc Evatt about his Communist ideology and the split that it caused to the ALP during the 1950s that led to the birth of the DLP.
Without repeating the contents of the ad I am not sure that I can do justice to the delcious comments and scenarios. I will try to give a synopis of each point without their elaboration. I honestly suggest reading it for yourself. Some of you might prefer to substitute the name from Julia Gillard and use B Østupid instead. You will get the same idea.
If Julia Gillard took over Trade Tools you would get:
1. More staff with rostered days off and a 9 day fortnight.
2.The increase in staff will lead to Julia increasing the price of the tools.
3. She would respond to someone killing his dog with a jigsaw by banning the sale of the jigsaw. (the logic in this one is a beauty). This would lead to the use of alternative more dangerous equipment and a glut of jigsaws.
4. would increase the price of tools to the mining industry. This would lead to the mining industry sourcing their tools elsewhere.
5. Because she despises the electric companies she would make an alliance with a flaky inventor to come up with solar powered tools (that will not work at night or in a dark area like in a workshop). These tools will cost double that of the tools that use electricity.
6. Julia would promise not to introduce price increases prior to stabbing the former CEO in the back, and then upon becoming CEO decide to increase prices anyway.
7. She would enforce an equal employment policy, complete with creche.
8. She would ban the word “shoplifter” in favour of the word “forgetful customer.
9. Spend much of the week attending worker health and safety classes.
10. She would source the most expensive builders to help build a shed in the car park of Trade Tools for use as a classroom for all those worker health and safety courses.
11. Insist upon the wearing of hard hats in the lunch room.
12. She would find it acceptable to find Trade Tools running at a loss, and be supremely optimistic in predicting a return to profit in two years time.
Please read the whole thing. The points being made are absolutely spot on and it is a great analysis of what is wrong with the current joke of a government that is run by Juliar-the Marxist – Dullard.
More evidence that it is the 1970s redux
The ABC Australia news site has an article regarding the university graduate job market. It reports that university graduates are taking 4 months or longer after graduation to find work. It also states that the official unemployment rate is 5% but the real rate is more like 12%. You don’t say!! Please click the link to read the whole article.
Well, this is all very predictable, because I have been saying for more than 12 months that we are experiencing the 1970s redux. Also, university graduate unemployment was in fact a very painful experience at the end of my course which was at the end of 1975. By 1975 the market for accounting graduates had dried up. Going for the vocational interviews was really horrible because the people who came to the campus were best described as either stuffed shirts or women haters (and even though I am not a feminist I have no other way of describing these men).
A lot of graduates normally end up in the Australian Public Service, and it was natural to go for an interview to see what was on offer. Imagine my horror over the bad manners of the man from the ATO. I am not sure whether it was the fact that I am a Catholic, or it was simply that he had a preference for male graduates, but either way the interview itself was really terrible. Then there was the man from Coopers and Lybrand who had an absolute set against the employment of women. It could have also been a result of the tight market, but he really made the girls feel very small with his glib talk about how women did not like to move around but preferred desk jobs, which was all about his excuses and not about those who were there for interview. The process was terrible.
By 1975 the big 6 of the accounting firms were taking very few graduates. It meant that they were looking for the top performers. The rest of us were just dirt to them. In the early part of 1976 there were very few jobs being advertised, and when there were jobs becoming available, the employer always seemed to have a convenient excuse as to why a person fresh out of university was not suitable. Take for example the Caulfield hospital requiring an assistant accountant. I applied for the job, and the jerk conducting the interview had the cheek to state that my degree was no good, and he made a comparison between the degree qualification and that of the diploma, claiming that the diploma graduate had more practical experience (it was b.s. and probably pointed up his own deficiencies). This experience, which occurred a week after having my tonsils removed, was followed by a bad experience dealing with the Commonwealth Employment Service. The person I dealt with simply had no idea about matching the needs of the client to the experience or otherwise of the applicant. I was sent to an interview for a job where I was clearly not qualified because of my lack of experience, plus I was too young and because the prospective employer wanted a married woman, older than 25 for the position (the whole thing is laughable). I did get some better help when I changed to the Moorabbin office of the CES where the people there sent me to a factory job, which was boring but it was for a very short time, and at the end of the original contract I got an extra 2 weeks to do some accounting work. At the same time I was doing part-time cleaning of offices at the CSIRO facility across the road from my home.
This was my reality in 1975/76 and I stayed out of the workforce until 1986 when I ended up with a job, which had nothing to do with my degree with the Australian Public Service. There were many other graduates who faced similar struggles. One very well-known Arts graduate, and a concientious objector during the Vietnam War period ended up driving trams. That was Albert Langer. My experience left me wondering why I ever bothered trying to get that degree. It was not easy to get to the end of my course but I made it to the end, yet I was left empty and unfulfilled. It was not until about 1991 when there was a bit of a turnaround that I began to use those early acquired skills. In the end, by 1995 I attained my CPA status which also included further study and I did it with 3 children and a full-time job. Then with a change of location, there was more emptiness because the employment agencies pigeon-holed me into doing credit control or debtors management type work. I left the workforce after I fractured my coccyx for the second time (30 years apart). There was simply no way that I could manage to drive in Sydney to a work destination, and then have to sit all day, then drive home again when I was so darn sore!!!!!!!! On top of that we moved location again, which was a very good reason to not even bother looking for further work. There are other people just like myself who are the hidden unemployed.
This is what I mean by the 1970s redux. There is nothing new about graduates having a tough time finding work. A lot depends upon the economic cycles, and right now we are going through a period of employment contraction, rather than expansion. What must be kept in mind is that it takes 3-4 years to complete a degree. When one starts the course it is often the case that there are plenty of jobs available in the chosen field, yet by the end of a course, it often turns out that the supply and demand situation has peaked and instead of plenty of jobs available it is the opposite reality. In happened in the accounting field during the middle of the 1970s, and it happened in the IT industry by the mid-2000 period. This is because there were more graduates available than there were jobs for them to fill.
The situation is just a sign of the times, and it shows that businesses are worried about the future. My story coincides with the Whitlam era, and the drying up of the accounting jobs was merely a sign of the lack of health in the economy. The same is happening again, only this time Australia is being led by yet another communist Juliar-the Marxist- Gillard (also known as Dullard).
Blame it on the Bossa Nova… actually blame it on the pork barrel.
Ah, Greece. It seems that even though there are lazy Greeks, there are others who simply want work, but they cannot find it during these hard times. I guess we could call the situation in Greece a very deep recession. I have reported on some aspects of the Greece economy that has led to the conclusion that a lot of the economic problems in that country is due to the laziness of the people. Since when do people retire at the age of 45? It is insane, because that kind of retirement age can only have one very bad consequence – that of reducing the base from which taxes come, leading to an ever increasing gap between social welfare and taxes. I would have thought that anyone who is serious about discussing the subject would at least recognize that there are just some things that lead to a government debt problem when those things are allowed to get out of control.
Der Spiegel is leading with an article that gives a slightly different angle to the question of why the Greek economy is in deep doo doo, and why it is likely to default regardless of any rescue packages. The answer my friends is blowin’ in the wind… oops, that should read the answer is to be found in the pork barrels supplied by and to the elites in Greece. According to Der Spiegel the ordinary people of Greece are doing it so tough that they are lining up for handouts from the churches on a daily basis. Now do not get me wrong, I feel for anyone who lost their job in 2009 and cannot find another one. I feel for anyone in that particular situation, and yes, I do think that such people need some income support, but they also need government to provide the means to help them regain useful employment via good labour market policy. According to this article, Greece has had a real problem with elitist cronyism and it has been the families of those privileged few at the top of the political tree that have benefited the most:
George Provopoulos, governor of the Bank of Greece, believes torpedoing the austerity package, as the country’s conservative opposition tried, would have been “suicide.” Still, Provopoulos also believes Greece has “reached the limit” and that it would be impossible to squeeze any more out of the people.
In remarks to the conservative newspaper Kathimerini, he spoke about what he saw as the root cause of the crisis. “There is little doubt that the failings of (the existing social and political) system hindered the implementation of policies that would have averted the existing ills,” he said. “We are paying the price of past mistakes.”
The emergency financing will help Greece through the next months and it will buy the rest of the EU some time — time in which the euro crisis may ease somewhat. But it’s unlikely that it can save Greece. The last few decades have seen an elite, with the Papandreou, Karamanlis and Mitsotakis families at its core, establish a system of economic patronage. They threw around billions the government didn’t actually have and showered friends and relatives with prosperity that was all based on credit. These leaders bloated their country’s administration so that everyone could have a piece, and created a bureaucratic monster in the process.
The political parties’ business dealings were always more about favors than policies. Anyone with access to public funds used them to buy friends and voters, who were then beholden to the party — and to the family running it. The result for Greece has been a feudal democracy, where the generations come and go, but the names remain the same: Papandreou and Karamanlis and Karamanlis and Papandreou, with a Mitsotakis thrown in every now and then. No other European democracy has seen the like.
Who knew? In a country such as Greece, where the Communists threw out the monarchy in the 1920s (Prince Philip had to be smuggled out of the country when the royal family escaped) Greece started on its road to being an absolute basket case. The party elites behaved just like party elites that are to be found in Russia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, as well as in Central America, South America and let’s not forget the same thing that happens in African nations, where the dictators get rich and the poor get poorer. In the majority of cases it is the left that leads the way with this cronyism, as well as the wastage and the vote buying. We see it in Australia, and especially since 2007 when there was a change of government. It is happening in the USA with the incumbent in the White House wasting money on weekly parties, as well as other unnecessary expenditures, including the great pork barrel of all pork-barrels, the money being given to non-farmers, who are taking advantage of the legitimate case that Tom Pigford had against the Agricultural Administration due to its discriminatory policies. They call it Øbama money, but the real name should be PORKY PIG money.
The PIIGS fallout
Whilst the European Union has been busy trying to rescue Greece, Portugal has continued to implode. The latest information via the BBC new site, is that Moodys has downgraded Portugal to junk status. It seems that the credit ratings agency wants Portugal to raise taxes and introduce other measures that will cut their debt.
The Socialist experiment has been a big fail. It has failed for a variety of reasons, and I do think that one only has to go back as far as the 1960s and 1970s to find some of the reasons for the failure that we are witnessing. The decrease in births per family over the years is yet another reason for the current failures. The practice of Socialism via unreasonable welfare payments is another reason. The two actually go hand-in-hand to some extent.
Let me explain why I think that there is a link. The tax base depends upon the number of able-bodied people up until about the age of 65 in the workforce. If the retirement age is lowered any further than 60, and a pension is offered to those no longer in the workforce, then you need a younger base who are coming into the workforce to take their place. Immigration does not address that need for a tax base, since immigrants tend to rely upon welfare payments as well, unless the immigrants are being brought in because there are positions that are available and the current workforce cannot fill those positions.
In the 1960s and 1970s, something changed and I think that something was related to the decrease in the size of families which was due to a variety of social factors, including the introduction of birth control such as the pill, and the widespread (and dangerous) use of abortion procedures (this does not necessarily involve Portugal), followed by an increase in the number of females entering and remaining in the workforce. The dynamics were changing and not necessarily for the better.
With the reduction in family size, there has been an increase in the dependency for government support in later life. Unless there is an increase in taxation receipts, this has the logical consequence of a gap between the welfare spending and the gap of revenue raised from taxation. The government then needs to borrow the funds from other sources.
This is but one example of why this problem has been allowed to get out of hand. The welfare spending on all sorts of things has increased the demand upon government funds, but without the necessary extra funding to meet those demands. When government raises taxes too high on businesses, then the outcome ends up being people losing their jobs as the business will either close down and go elsewhere, thus depriving the government of taxation revenue, or it will reduce the size of the firm so that it can still meet its obligation. The raising of government revenue via higher taxes actually ends up stifling enterprise, with the end result being business closures, as well as fewer business start-ups.
The European nations have a smaller population than say in Australia. They might have thought that they could cope with the provision of medical services for the population (as an example), but they had not forseen how such welfare spending actually attracts people to use and abuse such services, neither did they forsee the medical advancements. Those medical advancements are quite expensive, yet more and more people are demanding that they be treated with this expensive technology for free. In this regard the IVF program is a very good example. There are other examples, including the organ donation and replacement programs. The money going into these programs is being taken away from cancer treatments (yet another example). However, the real abuse comes from the illegal immigrant population who go to another country, be it the UK, the USA or somewhere else for the purpose of using the available facilities and hopefully getting the service for free.
This is a never-ending cycle, yet the abuses point up the failure of the Socialist economic system. It simply is not workable, and in the long run it has been leading to the financial disasters that are now unfolding.
Fallout
The disastrous Juliar-the Marxist-Gillard government continues to teeter and to topple Australian industry. The most severely hit at the moment is the rural industry involved in the live export of cattle to Indonesia. The latest information is that Indonesia has decided to slap on a ban for imports which affects more than just Australia. It goes to show that when an amateurish decision from an amateurish government is taken, and that decision is taken without adequate consultation, the result is an absolute disaster. The cost to the rural industry is more than $60 million.
However, it is not just the cattlemen who are suffering as a result of this arrogant cabinet decision that was taken when Kevin Rudd the Foreign Minister was in another country at a meeting. It also affects a very large trucking business that has millions of dollars worth of rigs and road trains in the north. This means that the jobs of the drivers of the road trains are on the line as well. This will impoverish a lot of people, not just the cattlemen.
However, wait…. there is more…. the distastrous and unnecessary carbon tax that is being foisted upon us at the insistence of the greens is going to cause enormous hardship upon the population. The reasoning of the greens is so bad that it is truly amazing that people have fallen for their particular style of spin. One very big issue is the fact that such a tax is going to affect the price at the pump… or is it? According to Juliar-the Marxist-Gillard, petrol is to be exempt. However, the well-known Watermelon Bob Brown says differently and the Watermelons claim that the exemption will have to be lifted. In their airy fairy world of pot smoking and other drug taking, the Watermelons cling to the idea that if the petrol prices are so high that people cannot afford to pay to put petrol in their cars then this will reduce the number of cars on the road, thus reducing emissions. This ideas sounds like someone only attended Economics A at university but forgot to attend the rest of the courses.
Let me explain just a little bit, and again I will use the experience of the 1970s to put it in perspective. The oil industry is an oligopoly. It means that there is a tight group that controls the means of production – OPEC. This group determines the output that will bring the best price for fuel. During the 1970s when we had both the first and second oil shocks, the price of petrol began to rise. The economic theory is that when a commodity, such as oil, is inelastic, and there is a shift in the price of the commodity, there will be a temporary shift downwards in demand for the product. Since there are few suppliers and the market is not one where thousands of new suppliers will enter the market then there is actually little change in supply and demand for the commodity. However, what we have seen is that there was a shift in the type of product for cars to both diesel and LPG… but the shift was very small. During that initial period people moved into smaller more fuel efficient cars, but gradually there was a shift back to the 6-cylinder cars.
The illogic of the watermelons is that the price rise which they are demanding will affect the driving habits of the general population, who will then choose other forms of transport over driving cars. They have this airy fairy idea that people will be prepared to shift to electric cars (which are very inefficient with regard to transport). The other expected shift will be a move to use public transport over the use of a car.
Let’s break this down to the micro family level, to see how the thinking of the watermelons remains in Fantasyland. Take for example, a military family, where the husband has family in one state (Newcastle, NSW) and the wife has family in another state (Melbourne, Victoria), and they have three children. As a military family they can get posted anywhere in Australia, including Townsville. Some of the areas where they are posted do not have public transport, and that means that there is a dependence upon the use of a car. It is not possible to fit baby seats etc. into the back of a small car, so out of necessity, the family has a larger car to carry the family. Now imagine for a moment that the family is posted to Richmond, NSW. What is the cheapest method for visiting the family of either husband or wife? Considering the location, as well as fares to and from the actual locations, as well as family size, the obvious answer is that it is cheaper for the family to travel by car. The travelling time from Richmond to Melbourne was as much as 10 hours but this has been cut significantly due to the building of better roads – the better roads actually means better fuel efficiency on the open road. The travelling time from Richmond to Newcastle was approximately 2 hours, but this has also been reduced due to the building of better roads. The awkwardness of the location means that it is not viable for the family to fly to and from Newcastle, and ditto for the train services. Also, the cost of using the public transport makes this kind of alternative prohibitive, as does the luggage limitations that are imposed by airlines and other forms of transport. Another point to make here is that in the Richmond-Windsor district the transport system was rather abysmal, and buses were pretty useless when it comes to toting around a pram because of children. On top of that it is not possible to cart one’s groceries on public transport and taxis are an expensive alternative.
Now imagine that the family is posted to Melbourne, and they find a house in Sth. Oakleigh, followed by a move to Mt. Waverley. Both locations also suffer from a lack of good transport, which is ok if the weather is fine, but limiting when it comes to being able to visit family. A car in this situation is absolutely essential especially when shopping centres are not close at hand, and there is no logical way to bring home the groceries. Now imagine that in this situation, the husband learns that a family member is dying from cancer. Once again the costs of travel for the whole family are prohibitive if they have to choose to fly between Melbourne and Newcastle. It is also a bit complicated to make the tripe that way, and the car is the best alternative for the transport of the family.
My point here is that on this micro level, decisions have to be made about the best means of getting around, and the car is often the best way because of the prohibitive costs of moving a whole family from one part of Australia to another part, sometimes at short notice, as was the case when a family member was dying of cancer, and the word came that the end was close (the call came on the Saturday). This was true in other situations where the trip being made was between Sydney and Melbourne (to attend another funeral or two, or three). There are many reasons why, for example, flying is not always the best alternative to move from one place to another.
The watermelons, on the other hand, are not capable of understanding the scenarios that I have set out, because they have never experienced those situations. They live in their own little worlds. They even think that it is possible to ride bicycles everywhere… again that is a bit of a joke… what if due to an accident (like slipping down the stairs and fracturing one’s coccyx) means that one is unable to sit upon the bicycle saddle? How many people understand what it is like when it hurts to sit down, especially on a little bicycle saddle? The watermelons seem incapable of thinking things through, to the point that they are a total embarrassment with their ideas.
On top of that the push towards electric cars is nothing more than sheer fantasy as well. The electric cars are inefficient. They can only go short distances. They require electricity to recharge the batteries. The electricity is based upon the coal industry. However, the watermelons want to push us towards even more inefficient methods for producing electricity such as windpower – they want those ugly wind turbines with their noise etc. to pop up everywhere. Again, they have no idea because they do not live near the locations. They do not understand the actual harm to the wildlife in the environment that is caused by those wind turbines. This is not clean energy!! If they wanted clean energy then they would look to other alternatives such as nuclear and hydro-electrictiy. However, they refuse to contemplate the nuclear industry and they are attempting to shut down the hydro-electric schemes as well!!
The obvious consequences of following the wet dreams of watermelons is that everything will become more expensive, and on top of that the watermelons are determined that there will be no exemption at the petrol pump from the carbon tax that they want to see introduced. The long term effect of their stupidity will be higher prices for every product – groceries, clothing, transport, etc. etc. This will mean a lot of hardship for families that are already struggling to survive.
I have concentrated on the car aspect of the policies, but there are other aspects because so many products actually use the other bits of the oil production e.g. nylon and other synthetic materials are based upon oil. Also, things like soap and shampoos use oils as part of their ingredients. This affects almost everything that is produced in one way or another. We need to think hard about the long-term consequences of this short-sightedness, because this policy will help to propel us towards one very deep recession, which will be much worse than just the consequences of the stagflation that is almost upon us.
The severe economic consequences of the imposition of a carbon tax
Australia has a problem – we have a Marxist Prime Minister by the name of Julia(r)-the Marxist – Gillard (Dullard). This particular woman grabbed power last year when she stabbed Kevin Rudd (equally inefficient) in the back. We went to the polls in August and the result was a hung Parliament. That bitch, Gillard, was willing to deal with the devil (Bob Brown of the Green Party) in order to grab power and to continue her wrecking ball game. There is very little difference between the disaster in the USA and the impending disaster in Australia. In 2007 when Krudd won the election, Australia was in a good financial position. However, it took very little time before KRUDD had run through the budget surplus and created a large budget deficit – this of course is what ALP governments tend to deliver to the Australian public. It has been one failed program after another, and all of them costing far more money than was necessary, due to wastage and stupidity of the Public Servants who are overseeing these programs. At least when I was a public servant, we had some controls over spending via the contracts system that had been put in place (even though it can be argued that even this could lead to corruption). The controls under Paul Keating as Prime Minister were superior to what is in place right now.
Julia Gillard lied to the voting public. During the election last year, the bitch stated that she would not implement a carbon tax. SHE LIED. She is now in the process of attempting to implement a tax that will have dire consequences for the Australian economy and for families that are already struggling because of higher electricity and gas charges. All of this is happening because of a non-existent crisis that the Marxists are claiming is real – that is Climate Change or Global Warming or whatever the euphamism for the redistribution of income happens to be this year. The fact is, the earth is not warming like it is claimed by climate alarmists. The fact is that this is just one giant scam.
If the tax is so necessary, why are they trying to work out a “compensation package”? The fact is that any industry that is hit with this unnecessary tax is going to pass on the costs to the consumer. The logical consequence is going to be cost-push inflation.
As I have been writing on this particular blog, I have tried to come back to the things that caused the prolongation of the stagflation of the 1970s, and I have tried to compare that situation to the present. One of the indicators of the 1970s was cost-push inflation, due in part to the union demands for higher wages, which was fuelled by inflation. It was a wages-price spiral. It was the Fraser government that attempted to bring this under control through the implementation of a wages freeze. The Whitlam government had attempted to control prices through the implementation of the Prices Justification Tribunal, but that tribunal did nothing to bring prices under control because of the nature of the inflation. It is obvious that if the cost of production rises because of both increases in materials and labour, then the price of the product must also rise. In other words, you cannot control one element without controlling the other elements. BIG FAIL.
The twist in the current situation is that too much attention is being given to Green or Watermelon policies. The Watermelons have an agenda that is designed to hurt the community as a whole. Their economic policies absolutely stink to high heaven. They have absolutely no idea when it comes to the consequences of their total stupidity. It is the Watermelons who have been pushing for the carbon price or carbon tax, and it is the Watermelons who have been pushing inefficient methods of producing energy, such as windpower, whilst at the same time rejecting other methods such as hydro-electricity, as well as attempting to get rid of the coal powered stations such as Yallourn and Hazelwood in Victoria, with their bullshit lies that these are heavy polluters, and as such these power stations are somehow responsible for the normal changes in the climate and the weather.
What is even worse, is that Australia exports its coal to countries such as China and India where there is no effort to control the “pollution” from their power stations. The Watermelons want to shut down the coal mining industry. If this happened then this would hurt the Australian balance of trade. The watermelons have already severely affected our live meat exports to countries such as Indonesia and the Middle East. It is as if they also want to shut down the rural industry as well. All this because they live in an ideological vaccuum.
If the bitch of a Prime Minister is not stopped, and if the Greens are allowed to continue to hold the country to ransom with their nonsense, then the consquences for the economic well-being of Australia will be absolutely dire. This is because those policies are affecting the industries that actually export product to other countries. We need to have exports in order to pay for our imports. The proposed carbon tax will also harm our exports, making the Australian products too expensive on the open market.
A warning to Australian banks
Australian banks are profitable, which is a credit to the way that they have been doing business. It seems that they are amongst the most profitable in the world. When we were hit by the GFC, Australia was not completely immune but we were in far better shape than Europe and the USA. However, with a Great Recession perhaps just around the corner, things could change.
The ABC report, at least in the first two paragraphs is ok, but then I think it seems to be at odds with the idea of good fiscal management. First the writer criticizes householders for their rate of savings which is about 11.5%. I am not sure why this should be criticized since Savings are a necessary part of liquidity for Investment. In other words, banks use household savings for other purposes, even though the money remains on demand to households, unless of course the money is tied up in term deposits.
However, I do see a weakness in the Australian economy that needs to be addressed, but will not be addressed so long as the building industry continues to hold sway. Here in Australia there is great emphasis on new home starts. At the same time prices for houses on the market continue to rise. The problem is the dominance of one sector of the economy over other sectors such as rural, mining, and industry in general. There is an imbalance and that imbalance could court disaster in the future.
Australia, like the USA has seen a lot of industry shut down, and the work being moved to Asia, especially China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Jobs were lost as soon as wages got too high to be competitive in the marketplace. Instead of being an exporter, Australia has become an importer. Even our yarns are being spun in China and Turkey instead of being spun in Australia. This is not a very healthy situation for Australia.
It is one good reason why Australia needs to start looking inwards and by that I mean we need to start providing for the domestic market at a price that shows efficiency within the industry, rather than worrying about exports. The truth is that those rural subsidies have hurt the economy in the very long run, and it helped to keep the inefficiencies within rural production going, rather than getting farmers to look at their methods and encouraging them to become efficient. However, this is not really about the farmers but about those other sectors where we have seen a decline in production.
Australia should not be relying upon tourism to take up the slack of the unemployed. This is an industry that varies according to the world situation. Tourism should not be seen in the same light as the housing industry. Building schools and shopping centres is also not a viable long term option. We need to get back to the basics when it comes to providing jobs, and we need to find ways of stopping the shift towards the use of offshore call centres etc. A good starting point is to review payroll tax. Get rid of it, and encourage employers to take on more staff. Payroll taxes cause employers to use staff ceilings, which means that they use temporary workers to take up the slack, but those temporary workers are not able to end up participating fully in the workforce. Get rid of those things that are preventing the hiring of staff, and yes, payroll tax is one of those things. What is lost by way of revenue from payroll taxes is more than made up with an increase in taxes raised as more people are able to join the full-time work-force.
Greece gets downgraded to a CCC credit rating and their unions go on strike
Greece is a financial mess, and there does not seem to be a real willingness to deal with the problem. The Marxist Papandreau has to introduce austerity measures that will no doubt hurt a lot but it is necessary if Greece is to avoid total bankruptcy. Greece is in this mess because of all of their double dealing they did to get into the Euro zone, as well as the ridiculous welfare measures that exist in that country. They have to face the fact that a retirement age of 45 is contributing to the killing of the Greek economy.
Instead of dealing with the mess, the unions are preparing for yet another general strike. It seems that they do not comprehend that general strikes make matters worse, not better. The BBC reports the following:
Activists and unionists plan to gather at Syntagma Square on the front steps of the assembly in central Athens on Wednesday.
Mr Papandreou faces the risk of a backbench revolt over the plans.
One MP defected from Mr Papandreou’s PASOK party defected on Tuesday, leaving it with only 155 of the chamber’s 300 seats.
“You have to be as cruel as a tiger to vote for these measures. I am not,” George Lianis, a former sports minister, said in a letter to parliament’s speaker announcing his departure from the parliamentary group.
At least one other Socialist MP has threatened to vote against the new programme of cuts and privatisation of state assets.
The government has appealed for consensus over its proposals, which would see 6.5bn euros (£5.7bn; $9.4bn) worth of tax rises and spending cuts this year.
“Every Greek, particularly the new generation, demands that we fight the battle with all our power, a battle to avoid a disastrous bankruptcy which will undermine the future of the country,” government spokesman George Petalotis told reporters.
“We are fighting the battle to serve the common good, in the most crucial moment in the country’s modern democracy.”
The EU and IMF is demanding the measures in return for the release of another 12bn euros in aid next month which Athens needs to pay off maturing debt.
The welfare state in Greece is contributing to this situation. There is no way that any state can survive when a majority of the population is on welfare, and it is left to the minority to pay the taxes to keep the majority on welfare. It is not just the native Greeks who are at fault, it is also the migrants from Middle Eastern countries who have flocked into Greece and who have helped to overwhelm the system.
This is a case of where the State must get rid of those enterprises that do not need to be state run, because these are costing money. Greece needs to return to being a free market economy, and it needs to learn to be entrepreneurial. Greece also needs to become a producer of goods, rather than a “taker”. There are plenty of things that can be made, especially things like cotton, that can be exported to overseas countries.
Greece needs to offload the Socialists and they need to boot the Anarchists in the backside, telling them to go get a job and stop being spongers on society!!!!
IMF candidates
The IMF has picked Christine Lagarde and Agustin Carstens as the candidates for the post of CEO. The Israeli, Stanley Fischer, who would in fact be ideal for the role, was not chosen to be a candidate. The IMF cited their by-laws that the CEO must be under 65.
This should be interesting because in either case, there will be a first – it could be the first woman to head the IMF, which is not a bad thing, but it could be a first for a non-European to head the IMF.
