Tim Dunlop
"And yet this is where we are heading, mere months into the first term of
an Abbott government. We are, as a nation, being transformed from a
society into an economy."
"Changes to superannuation that favour the rich over the low-paid; abolishing a pay rise
for low-paid workers in the childcare sector; abandoning the Gonski
reforms that set in place a more equitable funding scheme for public
education; floating the idea
of a Medicare co-payment for GP visits; gutting the NDIS: all of these
point to a government trying to restructure the economy not for the
benefit of the many but for enrichment of the few."
All of this stuff is absolutely 100% correct. The same state of existence as Europe with double-digit entrenched unemployment exacerbating an oversupply of labour driving wages down to where the elites like to have them: at subsistence level.
This is "The invisible hand of the market" in action. Adam Smith foresaw this effect and did not recommend its application but the mythology constructed by the elite to maintain its dominance extracts this phrase out of context and uses it for their purposes.
John Maynard Keynes envisaged a capitalist utopia where production in the capitalist market had been allowed to create a materialist abundance where all could live well and good. The advanced economies of the world have already achieved this utopia but it's effects are being held back by the devious tactics of the ruling elite because in such a utopia t.heir elite status may not necessarily be maintained.
We await our nirvana generated by the coming of a new leader of great charisma, insight, and ability.
Monday 17 February 2014
Sunday 9 February 2014
The Hypocracy of the LNP
The politics of deindustrialisation
"Equally importantly, every country that has ever become a successful manufacturing economy – including bastions of free market ideology like the UK and the US – did so with the help of a powerful, protective and supportive state.
Even if we accept and recognise that historical reality – and many don’t, of course – the question is whether such a role for governments is any longer appropriate when capital and companies can easily move around a supposedly borderless world. Workers on the production line at one of the rapidly diminishing band of multinational car producers in this country clearly think it is. They may have a point, despite the obvious self-interest.
While there are still things governments can do to assist or protect local producers if they choose to do so (as many states in competing economies still do), it is evident that the Coalition has decided that those businesses that cannot survive on their own probably shouldn’t. The Abbott government is plainly not persuaded by either the idea that manufacturing has special strategic qualities or that it should use taxpayers money to prop-up the ailing off-shoots of foreign companies."
Remember back during the election the flagrant promises by Friar Tuck of millions of jobs appearing out of nowhere? Yes it's the magic of the free market. Just free it up and all these wonderful things just happen. As I explained in a previous post, the market is a harlot. competitiveness is a learned trait and pure competition is monopolistic. This is because in each contest there is a winner and a loser, and as the contests multiply the number of winner becomes smaller and smaller.
The retreat to free markets has been happening sporadically for a long time now and has resulted in the oligopolies in the supply of many products we see today.
Manufacturing has been nurtured by protective governments at every stage of history. In fact it may be said to not exist if it is not fostered and nurtured by National Governments. I don't think the electorate voted for the abolition of manufacturing in Australia, but that will be the end result of LNP policies.
As for jobs, this fanciful idea that eliminating the emissions trading scheme will magically produce millions of jobs is nonsensically absurd.
Under this imbecilic government we are headed for double digit unemployment and may well be at war with Indonesia by the end of the year.
"Equally importantly, every country that has ever become a successful manufacturing economy – including bastions of free market ideology like the UK and the US – did so with the help of a powerful, protective and supportive state.
Even if we accept and recognise that historical reality – and many don’t, of course – the question is whether such a role for governments is any longer appropriate when capital and companies can easily move around a supposedly borderless world. Workers on the production line at one of the rapidly diminishing band of multinational car producers in this country clearly think it is. They may have a point, despite the obvious self-interest.
While there are still things governments can do to assist or protect local producers if they choose to do so (as many states in competing economies still do), it is evident that the Coalition has decided that those businesses that cannot survive on their own probably shouldn’t. The Abbott government is plainly not persuaded by either the idea that manufacturing has special strategic qualities or that it should use taxpayers money to prop-up the ailing off-shoots of foreign companies."
Remember back during the election the flagrant promises by Friar Tuck of millions of jobs appearing out of nowhere? Yes it's the magic of the free market. Just free it up and all these wonderful things just happen. As I explained in a previous post, the market is a harlot. competitiveness is a learned trait and pure competition is monopolistic. This is because in each contest there is a winner and a loser, and as the contests multiply the number of winner becomes smaller and smaller.
The retreat to free markets has been happening sporadically for a long time now and has resulted in the oligopolies in the supply of many products we see today.
Manufacturing has been nurtured by protective governments at every stage of history. In fact it may be said to not exist if it is not fostered and nurtured by National Governments. I don't think the electorate voted for the abolition of manufacturing in Australia, but that will be the end result of LNP policies.
As for jobs, this fanciful idea that eliminating the emissions trading scheme will magically produce millions of jobs is nonsensically absurd.
Under this imbecilic government we are headed for double digit unemployment and may well be at war with Indonesia by the end of the year.
Saturday 1 February 2014
Head in the Sand
More time on policy, less time on framing
"We cannot call this a "National Broadband Network" any more. That term is fundamentally redundant, when around 28 percent of Australian premises will not receive the infrastructure, and most of the rest will receive a watered down version highly dependent on Telstra's copper network."
A defining characteristic of conservative parties is an ideologically driven ignorance which is stubbornly clung to in the face of informed opinion, indeed demonstrated fact. Every expert in the field has stated that the FTTN technology is inferior and can not be updated but must be torn down and rebuilt when this factoid impinges on their collective brain cell. The experience in Germany proves this.
Likewise with global warming and climate change.
We need to be governed by light and reason, not by ideological ignorance.
"the major cause of this year's budget deficit was Joe Hockey's $8.8bn gift to the RBA... an amount of money...roughly equal to that spent by the government annually on higher education."
"It's even tougher to sell something as a budget emergency when you also say we have to wait six months before you'll do anything about it.
Most of the decisions have been handballed to the Commission of Audit, which is due to release its interim report by the end of this month."
As H. L. Mencken, the acerbic social critic of the 1920s, put it: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
And so it continues. LNP governments always do the same thing. Stop everything. Our obscenely rich supporters are not rich enough. We must create smoke and mirrors so we can make them richer at the expense of the poor. The unemployed have no voice: lets grind them further into the dust. What else can we cut? Oh I know: education. We don't want people educated. they might then be able to see through our smoke and mirrors and we wouldn't be able to fool them into electing us again.
"We cannot call this a "National Broadband Network" any more. That term is fundamentally redundant, when around 28 percent of Australian premises will not receive the infrastructure, and most of the rest will receive a watered down version highly dependent on Telstra's copper network."
A defining characteristic of conservative parties is an ideologically driven ignorance which is stubbornly clung to in the face of informed opinion, indeed demonstrated fact. Every expert in the field has stated that the FTTN technology is inferior and can not be updated but must be torn down and rebuilt when this factoid impinges on their collective brain cell. The experience in Germany proves this.
Likewise with global warming and climate change.
We need to be governed by light and reason, not by ideological ignorance.
"the major cause of this year's budget deficit was Joe Hockey's $8.8bn gift to the RBA... an amount of money...roughly equal to that spent by the government annually on higher education."
"It's even tougher to sell something as a budget emergency when you also say we have to wait six months before you'll do anything about it.
Most of the decisions have been handballed to the Commission of Audit, which is due to release its interim report by the end of this month."
As H. L. Mencken, the acerbic social critic of the 1920s, put it: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
And so it continues. LNP governments always do the same thing. Stop everything. Our obscenely rich supporters are not rich enough. We must create smoke and mirrors so we can make them richer at the expense of the poor. The unemployed have no voice: lets grind them further into the dust. What else can we cut? Oh I know: education. We don't want people educated. they might then be able to see through our smoke and mirrors and we wouldn't be able to fool them into electing us again.
Just Another Recipe for Disaster
Would you dump rubbish in the Grand Canyon?
"Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has declared "we're in the coal business"."
"The thirst for the project comes from the Queensland government and the coal industry which are brazenly pushing to open up the Galilee Basin."
"Allowing a climate-driving coal-shipping superhighway to go ahead through the Reef will only add to the pressures the Reef is already facing from climate change, land-based pollution and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks."
This article is balanced and well-written and all that, and I congratulate this official Greenpeace Climate Campaigner on getting it published, but it is just so bland and ineffectual.
Let's be perfectly clear about this. Unless large deposits of fossil fuels such as those in the Galilee Basin (and the South China Sea,...and the Arctic Ocean) remain in the ground, this planet faces Catastrophic Climate Change, leading to the probable extinction of most of the present species on the planet, including the human race, and that every further gram of fossil fuel extracted and burnt intensifies this result.
There was a small chance to stabilise a 2 degree world when global warming due to the greenhouse effect entered mainstream consciousness. Remember that a 2 degree change in average surface temperature was all it took end the last ice age and produce our current conditions.
Now that chance has been blown out the window because nothing was done about the problem immediately. We will be lucky if we can stop it at a 4 degree world now and if we keep allowing fossil fuel extraction it won't even stop there.
So full marks for a good piece of journalism, but an official Greenpeace advocate should be advocating much more strongly.
"Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has declared "we're in the coal business"."
"The thirst for the project comes from the Queensland government and the coal industry which are brazenly pushing to open up the Galilee Basin."
"Allowing a climate-driving coal-shipping superhighway to go ahead through the Reef will only add to the pressures the Reef is already facing from climate change, land-based pollution and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks."
This article is balanced and well-written and all that, and I congratulate this official Greenpeace Climate Campaigner on getting it published, but it is just so bland and ineffectual.
Let's be perfectly clear about this. Unless large deposits of fossil fuels such as those in the Galilee Basin (and the South China Sea,...and the Arctic Ocean) remain in the ground, this planet faces Catastrophic Climate Change, leading to the probable extinction of most of the present species on the planet, including the human race, and that every further gram of fossil fuel extracted and burnt intensifies this result.
There was a small chance to stabilise a 2 degree world when global warming due to the greenhouse effect entered mainstream consciousness. Remember that a 2 degree change in average surface temperature was all it took end the last ice age and produce our current conditions.
Now that chance has been blown out the window because nothing was done about the problem immediately. We will be lucky if we can stop it at a 4 degree world now and if we keep allowing fossil fuel extraction it won't even stop there.
So full marks for a good piece of journalism, but an official Greenpeace advocate should be advocating much more strongly.
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