Political Discussion part #2 - Let’s go out for 10 Big Macs at the Engadine Maccas!!

[Carmo]

Energy policy/environment
Tax system
Health care

Ideally all major issues would come under Federal system (laws, health & education) to remove much inefficiency.

Merge state & local governments to deal with local issues.

What would you do with energy policy and the tax system?

 

[dogs105]

Are you Tim Flannery
Yep we never known droughts in Australia before, rare as hen's teeth over history!

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains,

etc etc etc,



And for the record it's rained in Guyra for the last 5 days.

You're not linking single events to the concept of 'climate' are you Bicks?

 

[dogs105]

Words of wisdom from one of the World's greatest living brains Thomas Sowell. #10 of particular note.

https://www.aei.org/publication/happy-89th-birthday-june-30-to-thomas-sowell-one-of-the-greatest-living-economists/

1. Knowledge. “The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today.”

2. Obamacare. “If we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical drugs now, how can we afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical drugs, in addition to a new federal bureaucracy to administer a government-run medical system?”

3. Economics vs. Politics I. “Economics and politics confront the same fundamental problem: What everyone wants adds up to more than there is. Market economies deal with this problem by confronting individuals with the costs of producing what they want and letting those individuals make their own trade-offs when presented with prices that convey those costs. That leads to self-rationing, in the light of each individual’s own circumstances and preferences.”

4. Economics vs. Politics II. “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Politics deals with the same problem by making promises that cannot be kept, or which can be kept only by creating other problems that cannot be acknowledged when the promises are made.”

5. Predicting the Future. “Economists are often asked to predict what the economy is going to do. But economic predictions require predicting what politicians are going to do– and nothing is more unpredictable.”

6. Politicians as Santa Claus. “The big question that seldom— if ever— gets asked in the mainstream media is whether these are a net increase in jobs. Since the only resources that the government has are the resources it takes from the private sector, using those resources to create jobs means reducing the resources available to create jobs in the private sector.

So long as most people do not look beyond superficial appearances, politicians can get away with playing Santa Claus on all sorts of issues, while leaving havoc in their wake— such as growing unemployment, despite all the jobs being ‘created.'”

7. Health Insurance. “Whatever position people take on health care reform, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus— usually a sign of mushy thinking— that it is a good idea for the government to force insurance companies to insure people whom politicians want them to insure, and to insure them for things that politicians think should be insured. Contrary to what politicians expect us to do, let’s stop and think.

Why aren’t insurance companies already insuring the people and the conditions that they are now going to be forced to cover? Because that means additional costs— and because the insurance companies don’t think their customers are willing to pay those particular costs for those particular coverages.

It costs politicians nothing to mandate more insurance coverage for more people. But that doesn’t mean that the costs vanish into thin air. It simply means that both buyers and sellers of insurance are forced to pay costs that neither of them wants to pay. But, because political rhetoric leaves out such grubby things as costs, it sounds like a great deal.”

8. Diversity. “If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over the most years, without one speck of evidence, “diversity” should be a prime candidate. Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan’s homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word “Balkanization” remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times? Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?

“When in Rome do as the Romans do” was once a common saying. Today, after generations in the West have been indoctrinated with the rhetoric of multiculturalism, the borders of Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic have been thrown open to people who think it is their prerogative to come as refugees and tell the Romans what to do — and to assault those who don’t knuckle under to foreign religious standards.

It has not been our diversity, but our ability to overcome the problems inherent in diversity, and to act together as Americans, that has been our strength.”

9. Greed. “Someone pointed out that blaming economic crises on “greed” is like blaming plane crashes on gravity. Certainly, planes wouldn’t crash if it wasn’t for gravity. But when thousands of planes fly millions of miles every day without crashing, explaining why a particular plane crashed because of gravity gets you nowhere. Neither does talking about “greed,” which is constant like gravity.”

10. The Anointed Ones. “In their haste to be wiser and nobler than others, the anointed have misconceived two basic issues. They seem to assume: 1) that they have more knowledge than the average member of the benighted, and 2) that this is the relevant comparison. The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear through social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite group.

The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex and crime derive primarily from ‘society,’ rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by ‘society.'”

11. There’s No Free Red Tape/Obamacare. “Do you seriously believe that millions more people can be given medical care and vast new bureaucracies created to administer payment for it, with no additional costs?

Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free red tape. Bureaucrats have to eat, just like everyone else, and they need a place to live and some other amenities. How do you suppose the price of medical care can go down when the costs of new government bureaucracies are added to the costs of the medical treatment itself?

And where are the extra doctors going to come from, to treat the millions of additional patients? Training more people to become doctors is not free. Politicians may ignore costs but ignoring those costs will not make them go away. With bureaucratically controlled medical care, you are going to need more doctors, just to treat a given number of patients, because time that is spent filling out government forms is time that is not spent treating patients. And doctors have the same 24 hours in the day as everybody else.

When you add more patients to more paperwork per patient, you are talking about still more costs. How can that lower medical costs? But although that may be impossible, politics is the art of the impossible. All it takes is rhetoric and a public that does not think beyond the rhetoric they hear.”

12. Helping the Poor. “It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader.

Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing “compassion” for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.”

13. Income Mobility. “Only by focusing on the income brackets, instead of the actual people moving between those brackets, have the intelligentsia been able to verbally create a “problem” for which a “solution” is necessary. They have created a powerful vision of “classes” with “disparities” and “inequities” in income, caused by “barriers” created by “society.” But the routine rise of millions of people out of the lowest quintile over time makes a mockery of the “barriers” assumed by many, if not most, of the intelligentsia.”

14. Giving Back. “All the high-flown talk about how people who are successful in business should “give back” to the community that created the things that facilitated their success is, again, something that sounds plausible to people who do not stop and think through what is being said. After years of dumbed-down education, that apparently includes a lot of people.

Take Obama’s example of the business that benefits from being able to ship their products on roads that the government built. How does that create a need to “give back”? Did the taxpayers, including business taxpayers, not pay for that road when it was built? Why should they have to pay for it twice?

What about the workers that businesses hire, whose education is usually created in government-financed schools? The government doesn’t have any wealth of its own, except what it takes from taxpayers, whether individuals or businesses. They have already paid for that education. It is not a gift that they have to “give back” by letting politicians take more of their money and freedom.

When businesses hire highly educated people, such as chemists or engineers, competition in the labor market forces them to pay higher salaries for people with longer years of valuable education. That education is not a government gift to the employers. It is paid for while it is being created in schools and universities, and it is paid for in higher salaries when highly educated people are hired.

One of the tricks of professional magicians is to distract the audience’s attention from what they are doing while they are creating an illusion of magic. Pious talk about “giving back” distracts our attention from the cold fact that politicians are taking away more and more of our money and our freedom.”

15. Government Assistance. “Do people who advocate special government programs for blacks realize that the federal government has had special programs for American Indians, including affirmative action, since the early 19th century — and that American Indians remain one of the few groups worse off than blacks?”

He sounds like a campaigner

 

[dogs105]

Reserve Bank doing their best to keep Australia out of recession. Hopefully it's enough.

 

[kirky]

When your government is out of ideas I suppose there is no other alternative for the RBA. An economy in trouble.

Those on fixed interest income will be rejoicing at this news.

RBA cuts interest rates to historic low to boost faltering economy

The RBA has made its first back-to-back interest rate cuts since the global economic anxieties of 2012, with the four major banks passing on differing reductions.

www.abc.net.au

 

[kirky]

Reserve Bank doing their best to keep Australia out of recession. Hopefully it's enough.

Doubt it but we shall see.

Interest rate cuts when they are already this low have minimal impact on the economy - see Japan in early 90’s.

Confidence is a bigger issue and it is sadly lacking.

 

[Bicks]

He sounds like a campaigner

Well he's pretty much got that in common with you because that's about where I have you pegged.

I did have you on ignore for ages, big mistake to take you off it recently.

 

[dogs105]

Well he's pretty much got that in common with you because that's about where I have you pegged.

I did have you on ignore for ages, big mistake to take you off it recently.

Lol. "If we can't afford healthcare, we can't afford healthcare and admin".

Umm, you can afford it; it just needs political will.


Also "Thomas Edison gave us electricity" is the kind of stuff you'd find on r/shitamericanssay. It's hard to take someone with such a sheltered view seriously.

I'm sorry if you don't like me, but that bloke seriously does sound like a campaigner who is more concerned with ideologies than people.

 

[kirky]

Is it just me or does Stephen Knoll look like he has just left high school and can barely shave?

What a knob and incompetent to boot.

Out of his depth.

 

[Kane McGoodwin]

What would you do with energy policy and the tax system?

Off the top of my head...There needs to be an actual long term energy policy that provides certainty, equity & puts a value on our environment.

The tax system needs another major overhaul in accordance with the review a few years back, rather than tinkering around the edges.

More should be raised by the GST & many of those minor inefficient taxes which were meant to be abolished last time should be abolished. This would allow lower personal & company tax rates.

Also, the big companies avoiding paying their fair share of taxes need to pay their fair share for operating in Australia. Local companies need to be on a even (in fact favourable) terms compared to overseas owned companies.

 

[Kane McGoodwin]

Is it just me or does Stephen Knoll look like he has just left high school and can barely shave?

What a knob and incompetent to boot.

Out of his depth.

Was funny he was using the London tube as his example of privately run public transport, when the government took back running it years ago.

Whoops...

 

[Carmo]

Reserve Bank doing their best to keep Australia out of recession. Hopefully it's enough.

It won't do enough. There is only one thing that will/ does (to any decent degree -everything else is pissing into the cat 5 cyclone) in this current situation. Government spending.

Rate cuts wont do it.
Tax cuts wont do it.
Only government spending will.

 

[kirky]

It won't do enough. There is only one thing that will/ does (to any decent degree -everything else is pissing into the cat 5 cyclone) in this current situation. Government spending.

Rate cuts wont do it.
Tax cuts wont do it.
Only government spending will.

And they probably won’t to preserve their surplus promise.

No matter how it will damage the economy and hurt the people that are least able to deal with it. But heck, those with money will be able to take advantage. What a genius strategy!

 

[Elite Crow]

I see the boys are back barracking for a recession.

 

[Cap]

I see the boys are back barracking for a recession.

Well they can't barrack for a house price crash anymore

 

[StonesThrow]

Well they can't barrack for a house price crash anymore

The housing 'crash' is interesting.

It's really only been a downturn in certain areas of the country. It's also fascinating to see it blamed for some of the country's economic woes. It was clear that Sydney and Melbourne were in a bubble. Does this mean that growth was reliant on unsustainable property growth in concentrated areas of the country?

It's also interesting to see that a Melbourne and Sydney recovery is being celebrated despite the market not even dropping back to a sustainable trend (could be proven wrong on this as haven't seen the full data).

I guess my main query is in the lead up to the housing downturn, the bubble was a bad thing for housing affordability. Something needed to change. Now it's seen as a bad thing for the economy that the market is correcting at a relatively smooth rate (not really a crash). The narrative is consistent everywhere you look.

Happy to be schooled on this topic. I feel like there are some fundamentals that I'm missing.

 

[Carmo]

I see the boys are back barracking for a recession.

Its not barracking in my case.

I like to go on record with my predictions of how things will unfold.

If it turns out as I've said I'll have credibility in comparison to others. Like how I said ages ago that surpluses are bad for the economy and everyone on here said the opposite. How's that looking for all of you? How good are surpluses hey? You must be a bit salty about that, plus your possible exit from here, so I shouldn't feel too bad about your snarky comment should I?

So, I think all of you think that rate cuts and tax cuts will fix the economy / avoid a recession and government spending wont. We'll see how that goes. I'll see if I can get another one over you.

 

[Carmo]

Well they can't barrack for a house price crash anymore

For the record I'd say the house prices shall continue to fall for sometime and the current blip is just that. Sadly I'd say the current blips on the sharemarket and with house prices is dumb money moving in after the election. All the smart money got out ages ago. The dumb money will be left with losses that will accrue in the next 18 -30 months.

 

[Elite Crow]

Its not barracking in my case.

I like to go on record with my predictions of how things will unfold.

If it turns out as I've said I'll have credibility in comparison to others. Like how I said ages ago that surpluses are bad for the economy and everyone on here said the opposite. How's that looking for all of you? How good are surpluses hey? You must be a bit salty about that, plus your possible exit from here, so I shouldn't feel too bad about your snarky comment should I?

So, I think all of you think that rate cuts and tax cuts will fix spending and government spending wont. We'll see how that goes. I'll see if I can get another one over you.

Well considering there hasn’t been a surplus yet, one might say your gloating is a bit premature

 

[1970crow]

You're not linking single events to the concept of 'climate' are you Bicks?

That’s what happens every time there’s a heat wave or a tornado somewhere. Not when there’s record cold events though. There’s posts in this very thread referencing weather events as being ‘climate’ issue.

 

[Deaneus!]

Fair entourage contesting the Democrat primaries in the US, not up with all of them but Biden appears the only establishment one which is good.

I've got a hunch Warren will be it. I thought Inslee did very well in his debate. I'm wondering about Veep too. You'd think the lower-rating candidates would start jockeying for position soon

Reserve Bank doing their best to keep Australia out of recession. Hopefully it's enough.

It's an admission the RBA have stuffed up - nothing for so long, now 2 in 2 months, with a third forecast for November

Ah, i see the AFR have said as much this morning

 

[dogs105]

I've got a hunch Warren will be it. I thought Inslee did very well in his debate. I'm wondering about Veep too. You'd think the lower-rating candidates would start jockeying for position soon



It's an admission the RBA have stuffed up - nothing for so long, now 2 in 2 months, with a third forecast for November

Ah, i see the AFR have said as much this morning

Was it Howard or Rudd who suggested that the RBA shouldn't act during an election campaign?

 

[relapse]

I see the boys are back barracking for a recession.

Speculating that we're potentially heading towards one is hardly barracking for one.

I'm sure that no one wants Australia to have a recession, but things are trending downward and it is a massive concern.

 

[Carmo]

Well considering there hasn’t been a surplus yet, one might say your gloating is a bit premature

You say that like you disapprove of gloating.

Tending towards a surplus will tend towards a recession. We dont have to have a surplus to get the recession, as is looking increasingly likely.

 

[Carmo]

I've got a hunch Warren will be it. I thought Inslee did very well in his debate. I'm wondering about Veep too. You'd think the lower-rating candidates would start jockeying for position soon



It's an admission the RBA have stuffed up - nothing for so long, now 2 in 2 months, with a third forecast for November

Ah, i see the AFR have said as much this morning

I've got a range of democrats that I do know and a whole bunch that I dont. Veep and Inslee are in the dont know category. Ill have to check them out.


Gee, that was fun. For more fun, go here:

Play Nice - Politics #3 - Covideo killed the radio star

Was it Howard or Rudd who suggested that the RBA shouldn't act during an election campaign? I don't recall, but that would have to be a long, long election campaign

www.bigfooty.com