News Coronavirus Thread

[rickety]

Did you move or were you from Kilmore?

Lol well I have moved but I have never lived in or near Kilmore. I grew up in Ringwood and have lived in London, Trinity Beach and Goon Nure to name a few places

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Premier Peter Gutwein said there would be a statewide police "blitz" and an "effective lockdown" in the north-west, where a COVID-19 outbreak investigation is continuing around the North West Regional Hospital (NWRH) and North West Private Hospital (NWPH)


"To be frank, today the gloves come off," Mr Gutwein said.


"The period of education is over. "We still have Tasmanians that are flaunting the rules.


"I have been fair, I have been reasonable and I have taken every step and every precaution that we can to save lives. But we will only save lives if Tasmanians follow the rules.

 

[Horace]

Ahh yes, spoken like someone who has never had any experience with modern day Centrelink bureaucracy.

You don't just stick your hands out and get free money - it can take weeks or even months just to even get through the application stage, assuming there are no fu** ups on their end (spoiler alert: they happen quite frequently)

Yes indeed. Dealing with Centrelink is an absolute nightmare. I'm the Centrelink Nominee for a few people and whenever I have to provide Centrelink of details of changes, I initially contemplate slashing my wrists.

If you go to an office they operate on the basis of non co-operation. If you write them a letter and send it to Canberra, as you are supposed to do, they never action the letter. If you upload it via MyGov, if they do action it they invariably get it wrong.

I've lost count of how many times I have told them that investments, which no longer even exist, should be deleted from their records, but guess what, they never do delete them.

Recently I started writing lo local Federal MP's and this at least gets results. But what an indictment on the system that is.

 

[Twinkletoes]

Geez I long for the simpler times when the only “super spreader” I knew of was the monthly top earner title at Tender Touch.

 

[Tas]

If you assume our adult population is circa 15 million and the UBI would be $2,000 per adult, then you are looking at a total annual cost of $360 billion or approximately 30% of GDP give or take. Total government spending runs in the ballpark of 35% of GDP. I am not sure the numbers do add up.

Yeah, sorry, it wasn't the full pension but it was still a significant chunk of it. It isn't to suggest that is the sole answer, because it would be more complex than that, it is just that we already give out a significant sum of money ($180 billion) in social security payments and management and that is based on very restrictive access to social security.

We could transition from what we currently pay in welfare to form the basis of a UBI, the rest has to be made up of closing taxation loopholes and features which allow people to accumulate a lot of wealth without it being taxed, or poorly taxed.

There was some economic modelling done a couple of years back by Melbourne University with contributions from unions, business sector, etc and it found it was easily affordable, it would cost around 10% of our GDP and it was easily affordable within what Australia currently generated in terms of wealth. What we generated in taxes doesn't necessarily equate to what is fair or equitable. Currently 90% of our tax revenue is paid by the wealthiest 10% of Australians, however, the wealthiest people get a disproportionately larger share of wealth the wealthier the citizens are in general. It is why we see a widening in the distribution of wealth, the more disposable income the average punter has, the more they spend on luxury goods and services, the more money wealthy people make who provide those goods and service. The poorer the people are, the less they spend, their ability to save is compromised, a higher proportion of their income is spent on subsistence spending where there isn't a high profit margin on bare necessities.

UBI is an inevitability, but to get it to be at a level where it puts people above the poverty line will mean we need to overhaul our taxation system so it is generating a fairer amount of tax revenue. Our taxation is 27.8% of GDP, most progressive European countries are 40%+, Norway is 54.7%. Our system has far too many loopholes that allow people to game the system, to generate wealth while minimising the tax they contribute. We do not have enough national pride in terms of corporations and wealthy individuals contributing what is a fair and equitable amount in taxation which benefits the entire nation. We still have a very selfish mindset on tax minimisation, we don't put nation first like we currently do in terms of this pandemic where most people make sacrifices for the greater good. We have too much of an individualistic mindset in market economies and that makes us vulnerable not only in a crisis, but technologically speaking we are fragile, AI will destroy our way of life if it is developed by a Jeff Bezos type and it is in the hands of a country where the people do not come first. It wouldn't if we safeguarded the rights of the people to earn a fair and reasonable share of the GDP, regardless of how it is generated.

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

 

[DesertRoo]

Czech nudists told to wear face masks by police

At the recent height of Czech concerns over the spread of coronavirus, police were called in to insist nudists cover their mouths while letting everything else hang out.

www.cnn.com

gotta love the Czechs, go nude to the beach as long as you like, just have to wear a face mask. Wish we had as forward thinking politicians here.

 

[Tas]

A lot of people hate dole bludgers.

Whatever set of rules you have, there is always going to be a section of any population base that aren't going to function within those set of rules. There is empirical evidence that the kinder you are to this group, the better your communities are going to be, the less you have to rely on individuals to look after these people. If nobody would give you a job and if the government didn't look after you then what are your options? Crime and/or living hard on the streets.

It costs over $300 per day on average to keep someone in jail. That is about $110k per year. What is unemployment benefits? 15k? People who live hard on the streets have their health deteriorate rapidly with many of them developing life-long health issues. The annual cost to the community of these homeless people through the use of government resources is more than $25k on average.

We invariably pay a much higher price because we do not want to live in an authoritarian country which pretty much shoots people who do not fit in.

There is an irrational fear that given the option of not working, many people would choose not to work. I am sure there are some that would not. I think most would want to live productive lives, you can get by on what the government provides you but it is not going to get people a lifestyle that they would desire.

Its why the system is so puritanical. Most of those people get some level of family tax benefit too so their hypocrisy is ridiculous.

I think people just imagine someone who isn't working is drinking beer and smoking weed all day. Most people have problems making ends meet on the current benefit levels, it hasn't helped that cost of living has skyrocketed in Australia and the benefits aren't linked to cost of living. You might get more mileage if you live in Geelong but in Melbourne or Sydney it wont go as far.

This year my ftb is more than the dole cos I'm not working!! At least it was. I can't imagine how anyone gets by on the dole. There must have been a hell of a lot of minor cash in hand work going on beforehand.

The intention is for it to be something you can't live on, it helps you get by for a while when you have no income, they want people to have the incentive to find work and get off it. That is understandable in the context of how the system was designed. There is a problem with people who can struggle to find work for a long period of time, this is a big issue for older 50+ people who aren't of retirement age because they are discriminated based on their age, even though potential employers are careful not to use discriminatory language.

Probably was and that's probably why the government doubled the dole immediately.

It should be scrapped as part of an economic restructure. UBI comes on and the dole goes and the minimum wage goes as well. Instead of getting $15 per hour for sweeping the floor, maybe they will offer you $5. That $5 is on top of the UBI so now you have the basics covered and even though this job pays a shit wage, you can do this job and you are ahead of where you were before. You end up getting work experience which may help you towards getting a better job and now these companies who are getting killed having to compete against foreign countries with very low labour cost are in a better position to compete because the distribution of wealth is done through the tax system rather than at the employer level.

It would make it much more viable for us to get back into manufacturing and as we have seen from this virus, if you don't make anything then lives are at risk. If the Kung Flu had the mortality rate of MERS, we wouldn't be getting jack shit from any foreign company other than body bags to bury our dead.

 

[Snake_Baker]

I assume these two figures are correlated:



However, this is excellent:




77 in, 80 out.

 

[Snake_Baker]

Excellent WA figures. They will be Covid19 free in 7-10 days going by this trajectory.

 

[Gasometer]

Excellent WA figures. They will be Covid19 free in 7-10 days going by this trajectory.

View attachment 856218

Great news.

Gives Eddie and Caro something to fill in 10 minutes on Wednesday night when all games are played out of Perth.

 

[glenn2479]

Geez I long for the simpler times when the only “super spreader” I knew of was the monthly top earner title at Tender Touch.

Gee Kenny Callender would have struggled with ‘shooper shpreader’

 

[koshari]

Lol well I have moved but I have never lived in or near Kilmore. I grew up in Ringwood and have lived in London, Trinity Beach and Goon Nure to name a few places

"Goon Nure" sheesh theres not much there,

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Bill Maher is right.

 

[roos_fanatic08]

I'm saying that as in those articles until recently there has been a severe underreporting of deaths which is probably why this has been enacted.

Anyway this is probably what you're alluding to- a conspiracy to pump up fatalities. Feel free to believe whatever you want but take this with you

Social Media Posts Make Baseless Claim on COVID-19 Death Toll - FactCheck.org

Viral posts wrongly suggest that the COVID-19 death toll is exaggerated because "the state" has instructed that "anyone who didnt die by a gun shot wound or car accident" be listed as a coronavirus victim. Experts say there is no such default classification -- and that the U.S. death count is...

www.factcheck.org

M2F is clinging to any & all conspiracies to try justify his position that it’s just the flu.

 

[TennisPlayerAndy]

Bill Maher is right.

It originated there. It spread from there.

You don’t hear Spanish people sooking about the Spanish Flu.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

It originated there. It spread from there.

You don’t hear Spanish people sooking about the Spanish Flu.

Every wet market should be razed to the ground, with the animals sic'ed on to those market's customers tomorrow.

 

[SMaturin]

Maher is a smug campaigner. I can’t stand him.

The Spanish Flu didn’t start in Spain either.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Maher is a smug campaigner. I can’t stand him.

The Spanish Flu didn’t start in Spain either.

It didn't. That's the fact he got wrong.

 

[TennisPlayerAndy]

Maher is a smug campaigner. I can’t stand him.

The Spanish Flu didn’t start in Spain either.

Which should give them even more reason to be aggrieved. But I’m sure they don’t give a flying ****.

 

[Snake_Baker]

Bill Maher is right.

A sane voice in a branch of politics that's lost it's mind.

If only he ran as a Democratic presidential nomination? Then again, they would probably overlook him.

 

[krakouers]

Maher is a smug campaigner. I can’t stand him.

The Spanish Flu didn’t start in Spain either.

So, there’s a place called chlamyd? :O

 

[Merlin007]

It originated there. It spread from there.

You don’t hear Spanish people sooking about the Spanish Flu.

that's because the 'spanish' flu originated in.....oh, wait... an American army camp in Kansas

 

[rickety]

"Goon Nure" sheesh theres not much there,

To think it used to be just about the main drag ..... before the Avon flooded and they built the bridge at Stratford

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

that's because the 'spanish' flu originated in.....oh, wait... an American army camp in Kansas

Its origins are still debated. Some say China, some Kansas and others say British soldiers returning from the western front.