The budget

[Jovial Monk]

BTW, if you go over to the Sheep Pen you will find Sheepy, the stout champion of small government or so he says, defending middle & upperclass welfare!

Yup, the poor should toil to provide lavish subsidies for the rich who dodge paying their fair share of tax in many legal ways--some straying into illegal ways but that is beside the point.

At the same time the Sheeple is bewailing the size of the deficit!

Not a coherent line of thought over there that lasts for more than five minutes!

[Jovial Monk]

Ross Gittins on middleclass welfare

We need to stop those tax cuts to the upper income brackets to return the budget to eventual structural surplus.

It appears China is well on the way to recovery--16% increase in retail sales in the year to end April--and that should be reflected in increasing demand for our minerals at higher prices. That will be very good for the unemployed eventually--employment lags recovery. It will not stop the need to bring the budget to structural surplus and the tax streams into balance so hopefully Rudd and Swan will keep on removing middleclass welfare.

Would help having a constructive Opposition but that won't happen for years, until the Howardista remnants are gone and the Fib Party begins a moveback to the centre. Talking decades here.

[Jovial Monk]

Sweeeeet!!! Recovery this year says RBA

If we do start recovering Ruddy should get the credit with Swan & Tanner. They then need to keep cutting middle[upper]class welfare, pay off some debt and start building a Sovereign Fund for long term economic welfare rather than just blowing the surpluses buying elections like the Rodent!

[White Indigene]

Yes

sounds all Lefty in solution. No mention by you of the liquid drain though.

How though, do you think an FTA with China will benefit us. Perhaps your answer could include the use of ratios; social comparitives of numbers and weights leveraging Australia, its assets, potentials and internal soverign risk?

[skippy]

Yes

sounds all Lefty in solution. No mention by you of the liquid drain though.

How though, do you think an FTA with China will benefit us. Perhaps your answer could include the use of ratios; social comparitives of numbers and weights leveraging Australia, its assets, potentials and internal soverign risk?

We already lost our sovereignty when we signed the free trade agreement with the USA .
You can blame the bloody rodent for that.

[White Indigene]

Dont be ridiculous Skipp,

Im talking reaal terms, not touchy-feely talk.

There is a manifest difference, and if Monk is any good he will be able to in some way describe what I have asked. Failing that, it is back to sooking about nothing.

There is a large difference.

[Jovial Monk]

Is not "Lefty" you thick twit! Is good financial management, something Costello SUCKED at.

Re the FTA with China, personally I do no like FTAs. I would want to be sure China's low wages/prison labor/artificially low currency do not disadvantage us anymore than we are already. Personally, I would be in favor of leving a tariff on Chinese made stuff to allow for the above.

[Jovial Monk]

And WTF is the 'liquid drain'??? Use simpler, shorter words, make your meaning plain. Private shorthands hinder communication and even thinking.

[skippy]

Ross Gittins on middleclass welfare

We need to stop those tax cuts to the upper income brackets to return the budget to eventual structural surplus.

It appears China is well on the way to recovery--16% increase in retail sales in the year to end April--and that should be reflected in increasing demand for our minerals at higher prices. That will be very good for the unemployed eventually--employment lags recovery. It will not stop the need to bring the budget to structural surplus and the tax streams into balance so hopefully Rudd and Swan will keep on removing middleclass welfare.

Would help having a constructive Opposition but that won't happen for years, until the Howardista remnants are gone and the Fib Party begins a moveback to the centre. Talking decades here.

But wait there's more-
Misguided middle-class moanersRoss Gittins
May 20, 2009 Page 1 of 2 Single page view

Throughout his time as prime minister, John Howard endlessly repeated his contention that the old class conflict was dead and buried. He was right. These days most people think of themselves as "middle class" regardless of the extent of their means. We're conscious of social status, but we don't think in class terms.

All of us, except Howard. Now he's gone and the dust has settled, it's easier to see how assiduously he worked to advantage the interests of the better-off.

Over eight successive tax cuts (the last three of which are being delivered by Kevin Rudd), he quietly cut the tax paid by the top quarter of income earners by a lot more than he cut the middle. At the same time as he was undermining the government's revenue, he was ramping up government spending on the better-off

I couldn't have said it better myself.

See that? over 8 tax cuts he cut the tax of the top quater by a lot more than the middle,what a man.

[Leftofcentresalterego]

Robert Mugabe, you forgot to mention that this period just gone has been a unique one in more recent history for countries like Australia - savings fell to almost zero (below zero in many cases) and everybody lived on debt. Households are now in the process of repairing their balance sheets. In other words, while the government is pumping some new money in (remember too that the bulk of the deficit is not new additional government spending, it is the collapse in tax receipts so the amount of new money is a lot smaller than may appear) households will begin to pull some of it out of circulation and put it into savings. In 1970 the average Australian household saved around 15% of it's total income. If we get back to that it will result in many billions of dollars a year being removed from circulation.

In other words, we may not be able to sustain a surplus anyway. If the issuer of currency and the users of currency are both pulling money out of circulation (government surpluses and private sector savings) it's only matter of time before we experience another downturn and the automatic stabalisers drag us back into deficit.

Note too that most of the voluntary debt is issuing bonds domestically. So the government is taking money out of the economy - to put the same money back in for spending projects. Take 10 buckets of water from the deep end of a swimming pool, walk around to the shallow end and pour them back in. Net loss of water from the pool - nil.

Labor's spending will help address all the years of neglect by ratty and tip.