|
It hasn't even been six months before the infighting started
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 10:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 03:57 |
|
|
I can't imagine Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul saying anything other than words of encouragement.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 10:16
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:I can't imagine Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul saying anything other than words of encouragement. "Am I being detained?"
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 10:23
|
|
|
Rod meet bus, Bus meet Rod.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 10:25
|
|
|
First Dog:
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 10:25
|
|
|
Just remember, all Culleton has to do is quit One Nation or go independent and if he resigns or is forced out then whichever party he goes to gets to fill his senate seat.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 10:30
|
|
|
Come on Pauline, hack him off enough to get him to join the Greens for five minutes.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 10:36
|
|
|
Pauline Hanson returns to her most infamous question. Please explain?
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 11:17
|
|
|
Les Affaires posted:Just remember, all Culleton has to do is quit One Nation or go independent and if he resigns or is forced out then whichever party he goes to gets to fill his senate seat. How can we be sure of that if he was ineligible from the beginning?
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 11:23
|
|
|
I can't wait for him to say everything against him is invalid because the flag is the wrong shade of blue or something.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 11:44
|
|
|
Recoome posted:paging Ratbag Ciarg to the thread to tell us about how Shoppies are actually cool and good Lid posted:THE country’s top indigenous leader Noel Pearson has eviscerated the ABC as a “miserable racist national broadcaster” needing “blacks to lead short lives of grief and tribulation” in order to produce bleeding-heart news reports.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 12:12
|
|
|
  
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 12:16
|
|
|
I'm starting to enjoy First Dog now that they've discovered brevity and mercifully undiscovered illustration.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 12:29
|
|
|
Brian Burston (the other One Nation senator) must be feeling a bit left out. Surely he has some reserves of craziness to draw onto get some attention?
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 13:30
|
|
|
DancingShade posted:I can't wait for him to say everything against him is invalid because the flag is the wrong shade of blue or something. well, it was usually red before 1954 so he might be able to try it
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 14:06
|
|
|
Gotta save something for the 2017 season
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 14:07
|
|
|
I wrote a piece on my blog about how the government's policies are terrible for the economy and hoisting them by their own deficit petard. I wrote it for people with no familiarity with economics (I'm no expert on it) and I have kept most of the links/graphs here. ________________________________________ While everyone's attention has been diverted to more newsworthy events including the election of an erratic, slightly unhinged misogynist to the top job (no, not Mark Latham) or the appalling state of Australian cricket, the Federal Government has been quietly and consistently making a hash of managing the national economy. Two recent revelations are illustrative of the Treasurer's inability to understand high school level economics. First, wages growth in Australia is the now at the lowest level recorded, a miserable 1.9%. Secondly and related to the first point, the Government is shortly expected to announce a worsening of its budget position in the order of some $24 billion in the mid-year budget update due early next month. The relation between low wages growth and the worsening budget deficit becomes apparent simply by looking at the budget papers.  This table shows that the taxes on individuals are supposed to bring in $196 billion, $69 billion (nice) is to be collected from companies, and $104 billion from the GST and other indirect taxes. Combined with assorted smaller tax receipts and various sources of Commonwealth revenue, the government has budgeted for a total revenue collection of around $416 billion in the current year.  On the flip side, the budget papers include expenditure of around $450 billion, which you will probably notice is larger than the expected revenue figure this year. The difference between expenditure and revenue gives us the 2017 budget deficit figure of around $34 billion. Now, the intent of this post is not to argue the pros or cons of any particular item of government expenditure. If I did intend to do that, I would be pointing out that the Commonwealth subsidies to private schools this year cost taxpayers $10.5 billion, which is more than the funding provided to universities ($9.5 billion). But nobody is pointing that out right now.  Nor is this post aimed at exposing the wretched hypocrisy of people complaining about young people being are welfare cheats and a drain on society by noting that "income support for seniors" is the largest single-purpose use of funds in the entire budget at $45.3 billion (only GST-funded grants to the states is bigger). But nobody is reminding you about the high number of aged pension recipients structuring their affairs to avoid means testing. And this isn't a piece on how deficits are bad and how we need to return the budget to surplus yesterday. In theory, a budget surplus means that the government has collected more money from households and businesses than it has returned to the economy via spending. This actually reduces the size of the economy by removing money from circulation. In practice, the budget is likely to return to a surplus position when people have higher disposable incomes because their economic circumstances have improved. This is what the Treasurer was hoping for. As set out above, just about half of the government's total revenue take is collected from individuals. Because we have a progressive tax system (people earning more pay comparatively more tax), as people's incomes go up, so does the proportion of tax on their income. This is called bracket creep, and it is a mechanism treasurers have relied on for decades to reliably increase their revenue. Take for example the change to the second-highest bracket threshold in the last budget, from $80,000 to $87,000. If their wage grew by 4.5% per year as may was common during the boom years of the mid-2000s, they could expect to move up to the new $87,000 tax bracket within 2 years. With the current growth rate of 1.9%, the move from $80,000 to $87,000 would now take 5 years. Treasury did not budget for this, and it's hurting their coffers.  This explains the connection between our historically low rate of wage increases and the deteriorating budget position. In order to see the link between these problems and the government's economic policies, we need to understand some fundamental concepts in macroeconomics. The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier Imagine I put $1000 in your bank account, right now, in addition to your current balance. No questions asked. What do you do with it? If you're reading this, you may use it for your normal living expenses because you have bills to pay. Or you might buy yourself something nice for yourself which you ordinarily wouldn't. You might do your grocery shopping that week at Harris Farm instead of Aldi. Would you save any of it? Now imagine that I put an extra $1000 in Malcolm Turnbull's bank account. Malcolm Turnbull is one of our country's richest men. Does he spend any of it? How much of that $1000 does he save? My guess is that he will save more of that $1000 than you, perhaps keeping it in a Mossack Fonseca bank account for future investment in a speculative Russian mining venture. The percentage spent and the percentage saved of the extra money gives you the fancily named "marginal propensity to consume" and "marginal propensity to save." All it means is that, for each extra dollar of disposable income someone receives, how much of it is spent and how much of it is saved. The trend is that people with lower disposable incomes have a higher marginal propensity to consume, and people with higher incomes have a higher marginal propensity to save, for the simple reason that those on lower incomes need to spend a higher proportion of their income on immediate needs such as food, housing or transport costs. This sort of leads to the multiplier. If you go and spend some money in the economy (in accordance with your marginal propensity to consume), it doesn't just stop there, the recipient spends in amount in proportion with their marginal propensity to consume. The money that gets spent in the retail sector for example allows shop owners to afford to hire staff, who spend their wages in other shops, who in turn can afford to hire people, who spend their wages, and so on and so forth. At each step the business owner may receive a portion as profit, some of which is taxed, some of which may be spent on capital equipment, some of which may be spent in other shops. The number of times money circulates throughout this system is called the multiplier. Aggregate demand and the four drivers of economic activity One of the standard models of how national economies work is the four-sector model. It looks complicated  Okay it's a little complicated but it can be broken down into showing that there are four drivers of economic activity which determine the size of an economy. These are:
The sum total of these is called our "aggregate demand" which is the economic measurement for everything which is produced in the economy. Economists have a fancy looking equation for this AD = C + I + G + (X-M) but all you really need to know for now is that the size of the economy is determined by the sum of the four things I just listed. Of these four, the most important in the short run is consumption. The most important in the long run is consumption as well. Investment is important in the long run as well because it's how we increase the productive capacity of the economy but John Maynard Keynes said "in the long run we're all dead" so for now we're just dealing with consumption. For a practical example of how increasing consumption expenditure benefits the economy in the short term, remember how at the height of the financial crisis in 2009 how Kevin Rudd gave everyone $900? Remember how thousands of people went and spent that money at Harvey Norman, keeping them and their terrible ads in existence for years to come? Remember how we were encouraged to spend up, and most of us did? Do you also remember how Australia avoided a recession during the GFC and emerged in a much stronger fiscal position compared to the rest of the world? That was basically the applied version of these economic concepts: give a bunch of people with higher marginal propensities to consume (the poor outnumber the rich) some money to spend, it circulates throughout the economy a few times and the spending will promote economic growth. It's not that we should repeat this tactic now. What the Pennies from Kevin illustrated is that an increase in government spending and consumption - the G and the C in our equation - is effective in increasing the size of the economy. If policies which increase government spending and consumption also increase the size of the economy, it follows that policies which decrease the government spending and consumption components of the economy have the effect of reducing economic growth. This is exactly what the current government has done. The current government has cut the level of support given to low income earners. It has famously attacked the young by reducing their access to payments, lowering the threshold at which HELP repayments must be made and encouraging the proliferation of predatory poor quality private education providers. The Government has cut the level of support given to the unemployed and placed more onerous restrictions on the access the unemployed have to this support. All of these measures make life harder for low income families, young people and the unemployed, precisely the people with the lowest disposable income and the highest propensities to consume. Even if there is a proportion of "waste" in the system, these people spend nearly all of their income! In the economy! On food! And clothes, and study materials, and things to help them prepare for their next job interview. Everything we give to these people is put back into the economy, keeping businesses profitable and increasing the government's tax take. The easiest way to lift our economic growth is to put more dollars into the bank accounts of the poorest either directly or by making it easier for them to find employment. The easiest way to stifle economic growth is to do precisely what the government has done. It is economic vandalism. While I'm speaking about employment, it is important to acknowledge that in our current setup, everyone who isn't an *actual* socialist accepts that a certain level of unemployment is a design feature of the system. This may be variously called the "natural" or, if you're a jerk, the "non-accelerating inflation" rate of unemployment, and is considered to be somewhere in the vicinity of 4 - 4.5% at the moment. The underlying theory as I understand it is something along these lines: imagine if everyone had a job. The only way to entice anyone to move jobs would be to offer them increased wages, but then competing businesses and that person's current employer would have to increase wages to match the new market level. Businesses couldn't afford not to match because there is no spare labour capacity in the economy. The overall increase in wages would be good for people at first, but with everyone having more money the price for everything would go up, leading to an inflationary spiral such that the real value of people's money decreases. In our current setup then the Reserve Bank manages the supply of money in the economy to prevent high inflation, and we maintain some level of unemployment to effectively act as spare capacity for businesses to draw upon. This being the case, we can mitigate the harmful effects of this designed unemployment by (a) promoting policies to ensure that this is short-term rather than long-term unemployment and (b) having a decent safety net which ensures that the unemployed can still afford some level of consumption and as shown above, contribute to the economy. (We can also (c) make sure everyone has a decent standard of living because it's the right thing to do, the morally right thing and economically right thing here coincide.) As an example of just how badly the Government is handling the economy, the Treasurer in an interview with the ABC on 21 November acknowledged that the historically low wage growth of 1.9% was the largest contributor to the increase in the deficit. Why then is the Government offering hundreds of thousands of its employees a barely larger pay increase of 2% which doesn't factor in the 0% wage growth in many public sector agencies since July 2013. Public sector enterprise bargaining has been so poorly conducted that the Senate is holding an inquiry on the matter. The very government which is complaining about low wages turns around and offers people low wages! It makes zero sense, and the multiplier effect means any increase in wages would be largely recouped from increased economic activity and tax collections. I have already shown how the Government's centrepiece economic policy to generate "jobs and growth" was doomed to fail at the outset and will do nothing except lower the taxes paid by large foreign companies at the expense of individual taxpayers. I have also already shown that the Government's failure to reduce or remove the capital gains tax discount harms both housing affordability for young people and the budget bottom line. There can be no question now that the Government has forfeited any claim it has to be effective economic managers. At every opportunity presented to them, both the previous and now the current Treasurer have managed to make precisely the wrong decision when it comes to increasing economic growth and living standards in this country. I said some disparaging things about Wayne Swan on this page in 2012 and I stand by that assessment, but he was surely a giant in comparison to the current mob. Basic economics shows us what we need to do to fix this mess. Pray we get the opportunity soon.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 21:29
|
|
|
Thanks, that was pretty good!
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 21:40
|
|
|
Birdstrike posted:I wrote a piece on my blog about how the government's policies are terrible for the economy and hoisting them by their own deficit petard. I wrote it for people with no familiarity with economics (I'm no expert on it) and I have kept most of the links/graphs here. This needs to be seen, blog link? edit: I was made aware of this initiative. The way it works is that they calculated a basic livable income per year and top up income below that. The result is that the local economy is improving due to the very effects you describe. ewe2 fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Nov 23, 2016 |
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 00:16
|
|
|
ewe2 posted:This needs to be seen, blog link? http://deepbrendog.blogspot.com.au/2016/11/its-economics-stupid.html
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 00:31
|
|
|
That was a good read
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 00:31
|
|
|
tithin posted:That was a good read agreedo. Do more of these. And is there an easy link to spread around?
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 00:35
|
|
|
Pickled Tink posted:First Dog: 
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 00:46
|
|
|
Thanks, I just found your tweet! Passing that on to @wellmaywesay.
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 00:51
|
|
|
ewe2 posted:Thanks, I just found your tweet! Passing that on to @wellmaywesay. Thanks much appreciated!
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 00:59
|
|
|
Insufficient graphs. Can prove anything using economics in any case. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 01:15
|
|
|
Heard on the radio last night that this meeting did not take place as Culleton didn't turn up in Hanson's office. When asked, he said he thought the meeting was meant to be in his office. Good going One Nation voters.
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 01:36
|
|
|
Lol one nation
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 01:45
|
|
|
glad that the ~adults~ are back in charge
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 01:47
|
|
|
So the racism is strong in Parliament today. The ALP is trying to run a race motion to enforce a non discriminatory immigration policy. Some charming things said in the process of this (Like Nat Alan Broads comparison of Ann Aly's death threats to wedgies he got in school), but this is a classic:the graniuad posted:Former freedom human rights commissioner and Liberal Goldstein MP Tim Wilson is speaking on the race motion. This debate is in the secondary chamber, the federation chamber. Finally Timmy is being true to himself.
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 02:01
|
|
|
One Nation Senator Rod Culleton says Pauline Hanson is "not the boss" of his office after he failed to meet her last night. lmao
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 02:06
|
|
|
Please let One nation get Palmer'd 
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 02:14
|
|
|
Zenithe posted:Please let One nation get Palmer'd You know it's going to happen. You can even see Hanson roll her eyes at what Mr Sovereign Citizen Roberts says.
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 02:20
|
|
|
more like the alt-wrong
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 02:27
|
|
|
Synthbuttrange posted:more like the alt-wrong
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 02:32
|
|
|
One Nation is barely being held together, with two of the party's four senators in open warfare, bringing their relationship to the brink. Key Points: Rod Culleton and One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson appear to be at loggerheads Sources say Senator Culleton's chief of staff Margaret Menzel is blocking contact between the two Ms Menzel denies the allegations, One Nation employees are divided about the issue Senator Rod Culleton refuses to say if he is happy to remain with the party, and leader Pauline Hanson is insisting she wants it to stay together. The West Australian senator said he has had very little contact with his leader in recent weeks, but One Nation sources say that is not from a lack of trying. Sources loyal to Senator Hanson have told the ABC Senator Culleton's chief of staff Margaret Menzel is blocking contact between Senator Culleton and Senator Hanson. "Every morning he's invited to Pauline Hanson's office, the same as every other senator," the source said. According to those sources, Ms Menzel "stops" Senator Culleton from attending the meetings and "staff constantly all roll their eyes when she intervenes". :popcorn:
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 02:37
|
|
|
BRISGOONS: There's a Rally for the decriminalisation of abortions in QLD on the 1st of December, for any uni students etc. who are able to get there. Honestly I found this out through one of my friends who's with the Greens, so I know they should be there in some capacity. e: I will most prob be there, with a few friends aswell so COME ALONG Recoome fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Nov 23, 2016 |
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 03:08
|
|
|
Abortion is still criminalised in Queensland? What the gently caress is wrong with your state? You have a unicameral system and Labor's in government, why is this a thing?
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 03:14
|
|
|
WhiskeyWhiskers posted:What the gently caress is wrong with your state? WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Queensland
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 03:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 03:57 |
|
|
It's probably confirmation bias at this point but every time i hear about something hosed or read more of an article about something hosed happening it is always Queensland
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2016 03:22
|
|
