Ignimbrite posted:

The current price for a ticket from Sydney International to Phnom Penh is $479

ScreamingLlama posted:

Anyone who serves or gives you booze faces jail time.

quote:

Why is the government prioritising tax cuts for high-income earners over other things, such as health, education, welfare, the environment, et cetera?

It’s always the same reason: “jobs and growth”.

It’s the classic supply-side argument: reduce tax and regulation on capital, and the benefits will flow down to all.

How else can you explain the spending priorities of the 2016 budget, summed up in three figures by the chief economist of The Australia Institute, Richard Denniss? “Forty-seven per cent of the value of those personal tax cuts goes to the top 1 per cent of income earners. Seventy-five per cent goes to the top 10 per cent. Zero goes to the bottom 65 or so per cent.”

It’s harder to determine how much of the business tax cuts will flow to top-income earners, in part because not all small and medium businesses are equally profitable and in part because so many of them are dodging tax anyway.

One can safely assume, however, that most of the benefit of the budget’s tax cuts will flow to wealthy people, even if their tax returns don’t fully indicate that wealth.

It has to be done, though, because, as Morrison said on Wednesday night: “If we wish to continue to see our living standards rise with more jobs and higher wages, we need to ensure our tax system encourages investment and enterprise.”

Tax cuts and inequality

But do lower tax rates result in stronger growth?

In 2012, the US Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan body charged with advising US lawmakers, set out to “clarify” whether there was any association between the tax rates paid by the highest income earners and economic growth.

It found no correlation.

That’s pretty amazing when you consider it was comparing the current low US tax rates with postwar rates above 90 per cent.

There was no conclusive evidence, the report found, of “a clear relationship between the 65-year steady reduction in the top tax rates and economic growth. Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment or productivity growth.”

But the report was even more damaging for supply-siders. It also found that “the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution”.

In other words, tax cuts did not encourage growth but did promote inequality.

Halo14 posted:

The LNP.

turdbucket posted:

The point is RDN is defending abusing out lovely IR laws to pay his live in nannies $150 a week, after charging them $300 a week to live on one of his million dollar properties. Just because it's technically legal doesn't make it ethical or in accordance with core Greens values.

wayne curr posted:

Freudian Slip posted:

As a health researcher this scares the poo poo out of me. For decades we have been warned about antibiotic resistant bacteria, but we kept overusing them particularly in factory farming to cut costs. Thanks antibiotics! It was nice having you for the past 70 years!

http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-superbug-that-could-render-antibiotics-useless-just-hit-the-us-20160526-gp4yl3.html


The other issue is that we are not spending anywhere near enough money on looking for new antibiotics or alternatives. That's because antibiotics are cheap - so there is little money to be made in discovering a new one, so most of the research is being done by the public sector.

GoldStandardConure posted:

So does silver (as a topical antiseptic), that doesn't mean chugging gallons of colloidal silver does you any good.

Anidav posted:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...528-gp6536.html
That zinger!

DancingShade posted:

Simple. You hire one overseas student who is desperate for cash and make whatever they are willing to work for (wages competitive back in mainland China for example) the new standard.

Think of all the Chardonnay you could buy jobs and growth you can create with the savings.

Jumpingmanjim posted: