Monday 29th of April 2024
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working the room...

coalition puddings...

Deficits are immaterial to the progress of the nation. Nations have plenty of ways to get rid of them and turn them into surpluses. One way, of course, is to collect taxes. Another is to print their own money, which is what all major countries do. And, of course, inflation follows as it always has done.

Sixty years ago when I was a newspaper copy boy, earning two pounds ten shillings a week, a haircut cost me two shillings. I could travel around Sydney on a tram for sixpence. A newspaper cost tuppence. My first home in Melbourne cost $4,000.

Inflation is not nice, but it has happened in all the nations of the world as the decades passed, while various wars have been fought, magnificent inventions produced and some people have acquired massive wealth while the rest of us battled on acquiring our day to day needs.

Australia has grown from a population now nearly eight times it was when I was a boy, while governments on both sides of politics have carried the nation forward. Today our country is riding high in prosperity. A prosperity that must be allowed to continue.

The panic about our economy, about whether we should have a deficit or s surplus this year or next, is just another thing to make the voters nervous. Wayne Swan is a confident treasurer. When he brings down his budget, we will hear screams from the Opposition, no matter what the figures show.

We should be much more worried about the first Budget that Joe Hockey [would] bring down next year, so close to the centennial anniversary of World War I.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/to-hell-with-the-surplus/

a decent society...

I wrote this in die brutale Kapital: 

In the hands of Julia's Labor, capitalism is still manageable. And this is what I guess the conservatives hate most. Labor has managed the capital quite well — too well for some of the socialists on the other side... But the sky did not fall after the introduction of the carbon pricing. Tony Abbott had waged his existence on the fact the country would sink in between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Armageddon was beckoning in his little head... 

In the hands of conservatives (Liberals), capitalism becomes an ugly dangerous brute... 

 

And that's the truth.

 

I recall all the shit that was poured on Mark Latham for his approach to "politics"... He unfortunately was not a "faction" man, more of an idealist... In fact Mark was a person who understood the difference between Neoconservatism and capitalism. Capitalism is a tool, not a philosophy... I knew what Mark was about (see The Age of Deceit)... In his thesis about "Civilising Global Capital", Mark Latham was not against Capitalism but against the abuse of capitalism which were evident while in the hands of neocons in the world — or Conservatives (Liberals) in Australia. 


His thesis of course had been written way before the GFC though he predicted without doubt the process in which the Global Financial Crisis would unfold... Capital becomes unruly and dangerous in the hands of a few conservatives who highjack the words "decent society" and selling you these words while shoving a stick up your arse... It's the jungle trick, coming back near you ...