What is it like back home

[IQSRLOW]

Why were there no deficits for the last few years prior to the ALP being elected?

And you avoid answering the question yet again.

If there was no structural deficit up until the ALP came to power then the fault lies with the ALP

[Machiavella]

Now isn't the time to be transferring your pounds to $au.

^^^Please essplaiin?

Living In Europe part of the year now, I am amazed of how little newsworthy Australia seems here. I'm reminded of that little Piet Hein ditty:

Denmark seen from a foreign land
looks but like a grain of sand.
Denmark as we Danes conceive it
is so big you won’t believe it.


To the original question: Australia is worth living in it alone for its wine, especially the reds. And I'm saying this, living in France atm. !!

The Media here, however, is far more balanced when it comes to discussing subjects that are still victim to political correctness in OZ, and discuss them they do, and feistily! In Australia one gets labelled far too quickly as a raaaaaaaaacist, or "right wing fascist" etc. if one dares questioning certain "fashions".

*Hi IQSRLOW*, nice to see you here - at least I can't see you bowing to "political" (and other) correctness too much !

[IQSRLOW]

Nice to see you too Machi.

Someone has to keep retard boy here in check else his lies get smeared all over the place

[Senexx]

The GST is working
Despite cries of otherwise, Rudd is a conservative, just a left leaning one.
Unemployment is falling.

In major metropolitan areas, there never was a drought. The drought by and large has not broken.

Autumn is here, it can't decide whether to keep the summer weather or move towards winter.

The football codes are up and running.

[Jovial Monk]

Oh dear, guess I will have to explain structural deficits.

Assume Jo Blow has been working for a company, doing a bit of overtime now and then. Then his employer gets a couple of new customers and overtime is on every week, boosting Jo's wages. Well and good, no structural deficit yet.

Jo gets married, buys a house taking out a mortgage so big he needs his regular overtime to repay the bank. He now has a structural deficit in his budget and after some years his employer loses most of the business from the new customers and overtime is cancelled. Jo now has a cash deficit because the bank still wants its regular, high mortgage despite Jo now having not enough income.

Now Jo is actually Australia getting some income from selling the family silver, then the mining boom with China and India taking our dirt all tipping money into the govt coffers. Booms by their nature are temporary, even the mining boom Mk2 starting up now. All the proceeds of the first boom got spent on tax cuts and pork barreling. Mining boom ends, tax cuts continue and voila a big deficit over the forward estimates years.

Really, anyone with arithmetic over Grade 5 can work it out. Access Economics were talking about structural budget deficits since the late 90s for god's sake!

[IQSRLOW]

Except there was no mining boom

And here you trying to tell us there is a mining boom Mk2 already

[IQSRLOW]

And the tax cuts were needed- only a fucking moron like yourself would be crying out for higher taxation.

Now we have "Jo" not even buying a big house that will appreciate. He's now Kevin and has splurged billions on a big TV and new computers

[IQSRLOW]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/ ... 6193.html

From 2005
High taxes 'threat to Australia'

"If our company tax regime becomes too uncompetitive, investment and growth will erode," Mr Morgan said. "This in turn will have a direct impact on Government revenues and the country's capacity to provide the services and standard of living we currently enjoy."

Tax commissioner Michael Carmody last week acknowledged that the corporate tax take had been rising much more quickly than general tax revenue and economic growth.

[IQSRLOW]

From 2004

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2803

From any point of view other than a Eurocentric one, Australia is not a low-taxing country. We should call a spade a spade. With a level of taxation that is 31.5 per cent of GDP, we are high taxing. We are fractionally more highly taxing than the OECD on a weighted average basis and we are well and truly more highly taxing than the seven OECD countries with a Pacific coast.

A close look at the OECD revenue statistics also reveals that Australia has a comparatively high reliance on income taxation. This is true of both the personal and corporate income tax bases. Our use of these tax bases combined (as a proportion of GDP) is more than 50 per cent higher than the weighted average for all of the OECD.

According to the latest OECD data, Australia’s taxation of corporate income (as a proportion of GDP) is the third highest of all OECD members and is more than double the weighted average of these countries.
...
Australia’s very heavy reliance on income taxation is a threat to Australia’s international competitiveness. This is particularly true in the context of an increasingly global operating environment for business and the ever-expanding opportunities for the employment offshore of highly sought after Australian talent.

Our high use of the income tax base has a number of flow-on effects that further dent our competitive performance. Heavy income taxation requires high marginal rates of income tax. These distort individual decisions relating to workforce participation, saving and investment. They also compound incentives to under-report income and otherwise reduce tax liabilities. These incentives, in turn, incite the taxation authorities to write further complexity into the tax law and add to the growing compliance burden on business and on individuals.

[IQSRLOW]

When will the left not only lower taxes but deliver a surplus of of $20Bn for a successor the piss into the wind?

History tells us they are incapable of doing so