a bit of politics

[fatcat]

Hi all, I am a sales rep in the field earn basic money. I do not work for goverment, or am I a member of any of parties.

I just want to know how and why Australia has gone from being say 35 billion in profits to 65 billion in the negatives. Why aren't there more people wanting Howard back and Costello back. I live in brisbane and well I agree it's good to see some freeways being built at last, but why are we letting them **** away our country's money. I hope I don't upset too many people. I just hate debt.

Any feed back would be good because from what I can see and know it feels like Rudd has ****ed all our money away.

P.S sure there is a recession but why have they spent so much money so quickly.

Cheers all

[roverrescue]

My understanding goes a little like this...

Government Profit/Debt is "different" to personal Profit/Debt.

$35B "Profit" means one of two things, the people have been over taxed, or the government has underserviced.

The 35 B you mention was only profit on treasury forcasts... that includes royalties/ company taxes and personal taxes. As Australia is only really "good" at digging up dirt, and the big dirt buyers have stopped buying the money inflows to Government have stopped. As companies wind down, and populations spend less the Government receives less "income" from taxes.

The current elected Government has chosen to encourage economic growth by primarily building infrastructure and secondly giving small payments to the population. Australian infrastructure has been negelected for some years and there is much to gain by providing public infrastructure. I gues though the neo-libs would have it that infrastructure should be provided by market forces and the government should just stay out of it.

If the Lib/Nats were "dealing" with the GFC I would imagine they may have chosen to stimulate the economy by giving large tax breaks (which generally benefit the upper brackets who are most likely to spend and stimulate the economy) It still would have cost money, government "incomes" would still be down and the net position would be relatively the same...

The Government Budget is a different beast to the Family Budget - the ideology of the current governing party will decide how money is spent but overall cash flows are probably not significantly effected by local (australian) government actions.

Maybe ;)

Steve

[Sprint]

look at it like this

the GEC has generally assured that theres going to be a ****load of people on the unemployment line

now, do you create tax breaks and pray that people (read: investors and companies) who are already under financial pressure open up thier wallets (which isnt a sure thing) and do "stuff" that will keep people from joining the unemployment lines.... basically nothing is certain, if anything maybe a few less people get laid off, but you still have unemployment growing at a fast rate...... as well as your welfare costs


OR

do you spend money on major infrastructure projects, essentially spending money creating things that can be used as collateral against further borrowing, or can be sold off in better times? doing this means jobs are created, and not so much money is spent on dole payments.

think of it as either deciding to crawl into the bunker and pray that your attacker runs out of ammo eventually, or launching a counterattack

[Slunnie]

Hi all, I am a sales rep in the field earn basic money. I do not work for goverment, or am I a member of any of parties.

I just want to know how and why Australia has gone from being say 35 billion in profits to 65 billion in the negatives. Why aren't there more people wanting Howard back and Costello back. I live in brisbane and well I agree it's good to see some freeways being built at last, but why are we letting them **** away our country's money. I hope I don't upset too many people. I just hate debt.

Any feed back would be good because from what I can see and know it feels like Rudd has ****ed all our money away.

P.S sure there is a recession but why have they spent so much money so quickly.

Cheers all
The party in power is irrelevant and its a situation that is a lot larger than Rudd or Howard. What you're thinking is exactly what the opposition want you to think, but if they were in power then it would still be the same.

If the spending wasn't happening, then unemployment would be significantly greater and we would be on a big steep downward spiral into one cracker of a recession. I heard someone say a while ago that in the economic good times you pack it away for the economic bad times. A dip now is good for our future, likewise good times now will be the end of us in the future.

Interestingly, my parents have been OS for much of the last 12 months and Australia is getting excellent reports on their management of the financial situation, especially in the country of the new financial superpower and owner of the USA.

[Graz]

The party in power is irrelevant and its a situation that is a lot larger than Rudd or Howard. What you're thinking is exactly what the opposition want you to think, but if they were in power then it would still be the same.

If the spending wasn't happening, then unemployment would be significantly greater and we would be on a big steep downward spiral into one cracker of a recession. I heard someone say a while ago that in the economic good times you pack it away for the economic bad times. A dip now is good for our future, likewise good times now will be the end of us in the future.

Interestingly, my parents have been OS for much of the last 12 months and Australia is getting excellent reports on their management of the financial situation, especially in the country of the new financial superpower and owner of the USA.

I don't know if its 'excellent financial management' probably more the fact that we are a resource rich country that gives the government of the day a lot more options. ( I must add, for which we flog off far to cheaply, particularly gas to China ). The wealth generated is enjoyed by a relatively small population even if a lot of it goes OS via the multinationals.
I wonder how oil rich states such as the Saudi's are fairing, I haven't heard how they are going. They are probably saying what recession.

[rangieman]

As far as im concerned you cant blame our current goverment its a world recession as was the last one when the Lib/Nats blamed Keating for the recession we had to have , it was the world that was in recession then as is the story now.

I am more than happy with the job the goverment are is doing at the moment :cool:, It would be hard for any goverment who ever was in power to deal with this situataion;)
And lets face it if these know it alls could do a better job why arent they in goverment instead of playing the blame game and bagging the current goverment:angel:

[Pedro_The_Swift]

, especially in the country of the new financial superpower and owner of the USA.


I find it ironic the two countries you speak of slunnie went after global power in opposite ways---

I think the phrase I'm searching for is--

"Who's laughing now?"

[BigJon]

And lets face it if these know it alls could do a better job why arent they in goverment instead of playing the blame game and bagging the current goverment:angel:

They aren't in power because the average Australian voter likes to give the "other side" a go every now and then.

I know people who started to feel an economic downturn as soon as the election results were announced, long before the global thing started to have effect.

[seano87]

Hi all, I am a sales rep in the field earn basic money. I do not work for goverment, or am I a member of any of parties.

I just want to know how and why Australia has gone from being say 35 billion in profits to 65 billion in the negatives. Why aren't there more people wanting Howard back and Costello back. I live in brisbane and well I agree it's good to see some freeways being built at last, but why are we letting them **** away our country's money. I hope I don't upset too many people. I just hate debt.

Any feed back would be good because from what I can see and know it feels like Rudd has ****ed all our money away.

P.S sure there is a recession but why have they spent so much money so quickly.

Cheers all

I think we've gone that far into national debt because KRudd promised us all the world when he got into power. To his credit, he has delivered on a fair majority of his promises from 2 years ago. The promises 2 weeks ago about the budget "would be tough, and make people unhappy" and etc. however haven't been delivered IMO. I really can't see where he has drastically cut spending and made the "tough" choices - he's made a fair whack of people happy.

The "Hunter Expressway" as it is now so called is well overdue - I'm happy to see the money for this as it has been planned for over 20 years. Pity I most likely be here in the 6 years it will take them to build some road :mad:.

So to answer the original question - how did we go from surplus to a forecast ~60billion in debt - I reckon its because too many election promises were filled and not enough "tough decisions".

I love politics :angel: (not really).

Seano

[abaddonxi]

I remember reading a thing in the paper a good few years ago about Paul Keating's term as Treasurer. He'd received a lot of criticism during the eighties when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were in power. The article said that many people, looking at the situation in retrospect couldn't help but notice that Australia had handled the situation better than the USA or UK.

The article also said that the situation Keating was facing was an economic situation that was affecting most of the world. To paraphrase it reckoned that he didn't follow the flock and run around like a chook with its head cut off.

Seems to me we're in a similar situation now.

Simon

[JamesH]

The oppostion claims that we'd be in a better (fiscal) position if they were in power but they don't claim we would not be in deficit. They would not have given all that money away on the fiscal stimulus so debt would be lower, who knows it's all conjecture.

The Hawke/Keating government did good some good things and certainly helped Australia set itelf up for the bull market and commodities boom and helped Australia side step the asian crisis. Deficits under Keating were way too big and we paid in interest rates. My how people forget what it's like paying a 15%+ mortgage. They might get a reminder.

Thatcher and Reagan, were two of the greatest leaders of the 20Century. Now's not the time to go into why, but anybody who walked the streets of London in 1978 and knows what eastern europe was like before Reagan can figure it out.

People bandy about Keynes and his theories of fiscal policy without truly understanding what he was actually on about. This is no crime, it's complicated stuff but one would like one's elected leaders to actually grasp it a little better than Kevin Rudd does. His rantings on capitalism in that article in The Monthly would be laughable if they weren't scary. If he really believes what he wrote then he is a dangerous fool. He probably doesn't though thankfully, it was the Christmas holidays and he thought he'd give himself a good old fondle and publish it, that's the kind of man he is.

This budget is weak as. Rudd and Swan are dwarves next to Hawke and Keating let alone Howard and Costello.

But all that aside, we all see the world differently, I agree with BigJon, the Howard govt got booted because it was time for renewal. And I think that's great. I'm not exactly cheering about it but, in the long run the electorate is smarter than the pundits because to steel from Bob Dylan, the pundits know what we need but the electorate knows what we want.

[Chucaro]

The theories of macro economics employed by the experts in this world are the one that bought the crisis which is out of the control for the present Government.

It is interesting to know that the "3rd world countries" in South America and only Norway in Europe are the countries that do not are going to suffer so much and have positive outcome.

Also some of the best placed countries in South America are the ones that do not are controlled by the World Bank and the other “expert” organizations.
The budget on these coutries is orientated to look after the poor and the worker and invest in infrastructure.

I am not voted for any of the big two parties but I think that we have to give this Government a fair go considering the situation and how are balancing the expenditure.