Thoglette wrote:CKinnard wrote:mainstream media pushing an entitlement mentality
Whose? Murdoch's and Stoke's have both been pushing for "small government" for the past 30 years. All those "dole cheats" and awful “taxed nots” sucking on the public teat we hear about daily.
CKinnard wrote:do you want a public transport system that runs at a perpetual loss for the next 50 years
Remind me again : how much
profit does the road system return to the public purse? (Not to private equity).
Please include in your calculations the cost of hospital beds filled by accident victims and (as you point out) the opportunity cost of land use choices for parking and multilane freeways.
CKinnard wrote:Further, govt expenditure has outgrown revenue. Basically, Australia is borrowing from future revenue AND selling assets to fund its lifestyle.
Yes, we've flogged off (or soon will) all the revenue generating government monopolies and price-setting assets (e.g. CBA, council housing) to the altar of neoliberal economics.
But Gov't activity as a percentage of GDP has remained sullenly
stuck in the low twenties since 1990
Tax receipts have been a problem. Yet we keep giving ourselves tax cuts and loopholes And the big earners (like Gorgon or BHP or Apple) haven't generated anything like the revenue they were expected to. Then we might talk about the banks.
Finally, there's no requirement for the Feds to balance the budget. They can print money as long as they like. The RBA board might get a little cranky at
the inflation that could result if they get carried away
CKinnard wrote:and elites of all colors mask the mess with population and credit growth.
Plenty of "elites*" (and that's a dog-whistle term these days so I'm not quite sure who you refer to) have been saying for decades that GDP-as-KPI and unconstrained lending based on housing "value growth" are breaking our economy. But you will have to step beyond the media duopoly, at least to Aunty, if not beyond.
e.g. CSIRO
MEASURING PROGRESS: IS LIFE GETTING BETTER? 1998 or London School of Economics economist
Richard Layard in 2005
MSM entitlement agitprop : Fairfax, Guardian, and Public broadcasters
They and you would benefit from comprehending the growing rate of chronic disease among the working aged, the ageing population, and the rate of underemployment.
How about the trend of tax revenue as a % of GDP, apportioned to welfare and health care.
And what % of health care goes to diseases of lifestyle choice versus your accident victims?
Don't depend on Aunty to dig that deep.
Compare and contrast the road system VS trains and buses
- operational costs and depreciation allowance for new stock.
- union and State govt corruption within Qld Rail and NSW RailCorp
- industrial action and dirty tricks by unions (start with Qld Rail....my gf is a train driver)
- Victorian State govt incompetency running Melbourne trains, so they sub contract to MTM (nice way to demonize capitalists and sanitize the State gubmint).
why all the corruption and incompetency? it's a given when services run at an operational loss and are dependent on a shriveled tax teat.
Federal Govt expenditure (% of GDP) is no longer in the low 20s, try 26+%
https://www.budget.gov.au/2016-17/conte ... iew-13.htm
But All govt expenditure exposes the accounting trickery, and that's at a rapidly growing all time high of 36.6% GDP.
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/ ... ing-to-gdp
Tax receipts are a problem globally, and happy smiley advocates of open borders and higher taxes have to wake up to that.
Google's Australian sales are paid to Google in Singapore (smart business move by them which more than halves their tax liabilities, because Singapore's company tax rate is 15% vs our 30%)
Even Denmark and Sweden have sub 25% company tax.
So the Australian entitlement mentality is a disease that global competition from other govts is happy to euthanize.
The Feds haven't got open slather on national debt. Tax revenue has to service the debt, which means it cannot then be spent on infrastructure. It's just a way to kick a can down the road.
As national debt increases, eventually banks can't refinance their foreign wholesale funds at expected rates, and the RBA cash rate becomes even more irrelevant than today. They have to move their rates in accord with deregulated banking forces. Household debt gets pushed higher, and the blind wake up to find their real quality of life is going backwards.
Yeah GDP is a smoke and mirrors....GNI is a little better.
But ever greater reliance on private and public credit is a serious indicator a country is deluded about its productivity and lifestyle expectations....but big gubmint prefers deluded citizenry.