Can you . off with your shit out of aus.comms, wankers
"Don H" wrote in message
news:D1nWj.772$IK1.391@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> "Sir John Howard" wrote in message
> news:53dc49b8-826a-43aa-8dfa-f4e5898142ea@w4g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>> http://business.smh.com.au/inflation-monster-stalking/20080513-2duf.html
>>
>> If it's true that political leaders fall into two broad categories -
>> pleasers and doers - then Kevin Rudd's first budget reveals him to be
>> veering towards the "pleaser" category.
>>
>> For the first budget of the first term of a new government, the time
>> when a government should be at its most ambitious, it displays an
>> unseasonably strong desire to be popular.
>>
>> A former chief of staff to Paul Keating, the economist Don Russell,
>> said recently that pleasers "subscribe to the notion that if you are
>> nice to the electorate, the electorate will be nice to you".
>>
>> Doers, on the other hand, "believe that the electorate is much more
>> impatient and believe that unless you are being useful, the electorate
>> will inevitably tire of you and replace you".
>>
>> There is some doing in the budget, but its overall character is to try
>> to please.
>>
>> The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, talks tough. He trumpets it as a budget to
>> "fight inflation first", yet it is a budget that actually squibs the
>> fight.
>>
>> How? The Government will proceed with tax cuts. It will honour $8.3
>> billion in tax cuts pledged by the Howard government, plus it will
>> enact $7.1 billion in the first year's Rudd tax cuts that were
>> promised before the election.
>>
>> Together, this will tip over $15 billion into taxpayers' incomes in
>> 2008-09. Plus, this budget will increase overall federal spending,
>> after adjusting for inflation, by 1.1 per cent. Whereas the last
>> Howard budget spent $275 billion, this one is set to spend $288
>> billion.
>>
>> These are both measures that will stimulate demand and add to
>> inflation.
>>
>> Swan declared yesterday that the budget delivered a "mild tightening".
>> But, in truth, the budget is stimulatory. It will add to inflation,
>> not fight it. That leaves the Reserve Bank to do the tightening
>> instead.
>>
>> It's true the Rudd Government has not spent as wantonly as the Howard
>> government in its final term. A former director of budget analysis in
>> the Department of Finance, Stephen Anthony, described recent Howard
>> budgets as "Christmas night at the pirate's cave".
>>
>> The Howard government's final budget increased real spending by 5.2
>> per cent, according to the budget papers, and by 2.5 per cent in its
>> penultimate budget.
>>
>> But this is a mismatched comparison. Howard's was an aged government
>> approaching an election; Rudd's is shiny and new, in the full flush of
>> a decisive victory.
>>
>> A better comparison is with the first terms of the Hawke and Howard
>> governments - these administrations cut real spending by more than 2
>> per cent in their inaugural budgets, while Rudd is adding to real
>> spending.
>>
>> And, despite the Robin Hood rhetoric of taking from the rich to give
>> to Rudd's "working families", in truth, the rich emerge from this
>> budget unscathed and, on some measures, better off.
>>
>> The budget does give generously to the "working families" previously
>> known as Howard's battlers.
>>
>> The "typical working family" illustrated in Government budget
>> pamphlets has a primary breadwinner, Patrick, earning $60,000, and
>> Susie, earning $27,000, and two young kids. The family will receive
>> total new benefits worth $4160.
>>
>> This comprises tax cuts worth $1050, an education tax refund of $375,
>> plus an increase in the child-care rebate worth $1255, and benefits
>> through the first home saver account of $1480.
>>
>> All together, that's an increase in Patrick's and Susie's disposable
>> income of 4.8 per cent a year.
>>
>> In his 2005 book Postcode, Swan described families like this as the
>> "splintering middle" of the Australian electorate. This group was
>> "feeling left behind in the race for prosperity, they feel pressured.
>> These are the people who increasingly determine the outcome of our
>> elections."
>>
>> His first budget is plainly designed to stop the splintering - to stop
>> families from splintering financially, and politically, to prevent
>> them from splintering away from Labor, to bind them with largesse to
>> the Rudd Government which is governing so ostentatiously in their
>> interests.
>>
>> But this budget does not give to them at the expense of the winners
>>
>> Proud to be mean, the cut-lunch assassin
>> How strange it is to see a Treasurer trying to convince us of his
>> brutality. Wayne Swan, bringing down his first budget, spent the first
>> 20 minutes of his press conference talking up the nasty bits of the
>> thing and barely mentioning the nice bits.
>>
>> Sure, there are tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts and lovely new
>> Medicare for thousands of people previously dragooned into taking out
>> private health insurance, but all the Treasurer wanted to talk about
>> was the slashing and burning. The Slaughter of the Innocents, in which
>> thousands of babies lose their automatic $5000 lucky door prize!
>>
>> The brutal Cut Lunch Tax Assault, in which office workers can no
>> longer escape fringe benefits tax on their sandwiches from the caf!
>
> # Any government is obliged, if it is honest, to fulfil its election
> promises, and, if this involves tax cuts, and spending, then so be it -
> even
> if more/less than what the Coalition promised.
> That there is a pruning of commonwealth expenditure, in other
> directions,
> while it might be needed due to previous govt's extravagance, can also
> smack
> of a forelock-tugging labour reaction to the boss, or of a Dr.Death doing
> what comes naturally. However, better to get the nasty bits over well
> prior
> to the next election.
> No social democratic party is going to overthrow capitalism, but it will
> try to humanise it.
> Nor can any govt, elected by geographic democracy, do much more than try
> to appeal to all of its heterogeneous constituents.
> Capitalist economics tells us there is an Upper Class, a Middle Class,
> and a Working Class, and, while the term Upper Class is rarely mentioned,
> the other two are played off against each other, to good effect.
> No aspirational family likes to think of itself as other than Middle
> Class, 'cos who wants to sink into the nether regions, and live on the
> Western side of Melbourne, for example - unless it becomes trendy to do
> so.
> As Geographic Democracy has electorates which vote predominately either
> Liberal or Labor (in the suburbs), it is the "marginal" electorates (those
> aspirationalists) who are pandered to by both sides of politics - as they
> can decide elections.
> Who are the Workers? Most of us. After all, if you have no alternative
> but to derive the majority of your income from "sale of your labour
> power",
> then you are a damn worker, like it or not - and this includes
> "independent"
> contractors.
> Yeah, the whole set-up is rather farcical, and only an upgrade to
> Industrial Democracy will really make much difference.
> As to Inflation, that current bogeyman of economics, you control it by
> controlling Prices, one way or another - and cuts to govt spending, while
> assuaging the Top-Enders, are no guarantee Inflation won't still continue
> an
> upward trend.
> If Wages are controlled, then so, too, should be Prices - or at least
> require justification, in both cases.
>
>
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