Ian Verrender
Does anyone remember the days of the anti-mining-tax campaign and obscene footage of Twiggy Forrest, one of the most offensively wealthy people in the world, dressed in the uniform of a mine worker, pretending to be one with the working class, while prancing around on national television effectively denying truth and justice to all?
Shall we all applaud the turn of events showcased in this article?
Back in the day, in the Eighties, whence all goodness began, there was a book floating around at my alma mater called "Mineral Economics" (don't ask me who the author is) which introduced and promoted a strange concept. This concept was called a 'resource rent tax'. Now a 'resource rent tax' has a number of mystical semi-miraculous but also arcane characteristics. It doesn't tax investment,
nor capital, but only income and not accrual income but only cash income. It is the saviour of capitalism itself and can transmogrify any abstruse mining company into a soft fluffy family friendly entity capable only of acting in the interests of the nation at large.
The circularity of public discourse is appalling. This concept was applied to the offshore gas and oil industry without any complaint. Then it came around to the land based minerals industry and a firestorm of hellish proportions irrupted. The most absurd criticism was that it didn't actually produce any revenue. By definition these things don't produce revenue during the investment phase. They are designed to do this. Well Duh.
Resource rent taxes are in fact an idea dreamed up by miners for miners in the interests of miners. The minute anyone mentions a full blown sovereign wealth fund which would have the benefits we actually need the miners drag out the resource rent tax and say 'no, no. Look over here. Don't look over there. Here good. There bad. here are all the reasons why.'
And we all just keep going around in circles. getting nowhere at a tremendous speed.
Saturday, 28 March 2015
Friday, 13 March 2015
It Reeks of Ideology aka "against stupidity..."
Alan Kohler
Michael Janda
Greg Jericho
Here we are in 2015, staring down the barrel of another joke of an LNP budget. The worst aspects of the robbing hood's first budget were thankfully blocked in the Senate by the forces of the far right, of all people, now clothed in the guise of the progressive. In other words we are now progressing in a regressive manner towards a vague right wing phantasm of an ideological utopia defining our reality in terms of a sepia-soaked image of life reminiscent of a time 60-70 years ago.
I began this entry in the usual format butt now I am simply going to VENT, so those of you with an aversion to brown matter everywhere would be best advised to turn off your devices now.
How can anyone be so stupid, say such stupid things, look so stupid on TV, treat everyone with patronizing belittling contempt, and yet actually be elected???????? Does the electorate despise itself this much?????? That it could elect a party that openly believes it is incapable of understanding the concept of anything????
I was stung out of my apathy by the prospect of being forced to live under Work Choices; a policy so unfair unjust and so biased towards the interests of SME's that the prospect of being forced to live by it's rules was anathematically intolerable. So I became as active as I could in the Keven07 campaign. I attended meetings, chanted slogans and publicized the message under the constraint of time devoted to earning a living.
And so was the joyous facade of the Rudd government initiated.
How quickly it all unraveled. No one can know what exactly happened. Everything unravelled at Copenhagen.When PM Rudd realised that although anthropomorphic climate change was the existential, defining, issue of the new millennium, but that, due to the power and influence of vested interest groups, whose very existence depended on the defense of the status quo, it would not be recognised as such and acted upon, he sort of lost interest and backed away to lick his wounds and re-energise for the next battle.
This sence of utter disillusionment with reality has been experienced by most of us on the left of politics. It's like "abandon all hope ye who enter here", except instead of the gates of hell we stand at the gates of the planet. The reality of climate change deniers has no basis in reality. To say, therefore, that it is unreal, is an understatement of the first magnitude. But let us return to Kevin'07.
It is to the infinite degradation of the forces of light that Kevin Rudd was not strong enough, indeed was too weak, to ignore or overcome his disillusionment and disappointment with the Copenhagen result and push through his climate change policy regardless of his feelings. All the unfortunate stupidity which directly produced the present incompetent government of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood, with its shirtfronting approach to policy, can be traced back to this time. The Rudd Government's abandonment of its principles on climate change, after all its rhetoric on the subject, forced the electorate to reconsider its position, leading to a slump in the polls, which allowed the centrifugal forces within the federal ALP to expose the long knives.
Leaders live and die by their principles. If a leader is to lead in an efficient manner he or she must ponder the morality and ethics of their stance. Only then can they decide what policies lead in the right direction, as opposed to the wrong direction. Correct or incorrect doesn't really matter. Only the vision of the leader can enlighten the path we all choose.
Most people believed in Rudd's original stance on climate change and the resultant need for his policies. When he turned around and stabbed them in the back by winding these policies back, he set forces in motion which lead him to be dispatched in the same way. Now to return full circle in this piece, let us again contemplate stupidity.
Three links occur at the beginning. These and their content are only a smattering of what is out there, freely available to anyone who may care to look. They refute and contradict in a coldly analytical, rational, evidence-based manner, every policy, argument, direction and principle of this illegitimate farce of a government. Yet the electorate is not boiling with civil disobedience, wrath and unrest, but continues to tacitly and openly legitimise this grave state of affairs.
Now that is stupid.
Michael Janda
Greg Jericho
Here we are in 2015, staring down the barrel of another joke of an LNP budget. The worst aspects of the robbing hood's first budget were thankfully blocked in the Senate by the forces of the far right, of all people, now clothed in the guise of the progressive. In other words we are now progressing in a regressive manner towards a vague right wing phantasm of an ideological utopia defining our reality in terms of a sepia-soaked image of life reminiscent of a time 60-70 years ago.
I began this entry in the usual format butt now I am simply going to VENT, so those of you with an aversion to brown matter everywhere would be best advised to turn off your devices now.
How can anyone be so stupid, say such stupid things, look so stupid on TV, treat everyone with patronizing belittling contempt, and yet actually be elected???????? Does the electorate despise itself this much?????? That it could elect a party that openly believes it is incapable of understanding the concept of anything????
I was stung out of my apathy by the prospect of being forced to live under Work Choices; a policy so unfair unjust and so biased towards the interests of SME's that the prospect of being forced to live by it's rules was anathematically intolerable. So I became as active as I could in the Keven07 campaign. I attended meetings, chanted slogans and publicized the message under the constraint of time devoted to earning a living.
And so was the joyous facade of the Rudd government initiated.
How quickly it all unraveled. No one can know what exactly happened. Everything unravelled at Copenhagen.When PM Rudd realised that although anthropomorphic climate change was the existential, defining, issue of the new millennium, but that, due to the power and influence of vested interest groups, whose very existence depended on the defense of the status quo, it would not be recognised as such and acted upon, he sort of lost interest and backed away to lick his wounds and re-energise for the next battle.
This sence of utter disillusionment with reality has been experienced by most of us on the left of politics. It's like "abandon all hope ye who enter here", except instead of the gates of hell we stand at the gates of the planet. The reality of climate change deniers has no basis in reality. To say, therefore, that it is unreal, is an understatement of the first magnitude. But let us return to Kevin'07.
It is to the infinite degradation of the forces of light that Kevin Rudd was not strong enough, indeed was too weak, to ignore or overcome his disillusionment and disappointment with the Copenhagen result and push through his climate change policy regardless of his feelings. All the unfortunate stupidity which directly produced the present incompetent government of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood, with its shirtfronting approach to policy, can be traced back to this time. The Rudd Government's abandonment of its principles on climate change, after all its rhetoric on the subject, forced the electorate to reconsider its position, leading to a slump in the polls, which allowed the centrifugal forces within the federal ALP to expose the long knives.
Leaders live and die by their principles. If a leader is to lead in an efficient manner he or she must ponder the morality and ethics of their stance. Only then can they decide what policies lead in the right direction, as opposed to the wrong direction. Correct or incorrect doesn't really matter. Only the vision of the leader can enlighten the path we all choose.
Most people believed in Rudd's original stance on climate change and the resultant need for his policies. When he turned around and stabbed them in the back by winding these policies back, he set forces in motion which lead him to be dispatched in the same way. Now to return full circle in this piece, let us again contemplate stupidity.
Three links occur at the beginning. These and their content are only a smattering of what is out there, freely available to anyone who may care to look. They refute and contradict in a coldly analytical, rational, evidence-based manner, every policy, argument, direction and principle of this illegitimate farce of a government. Yet the electorate is not boiling with civil disobedience, wrath and unrest, but continues to tacitly and openly legitimise this grave state of affairs.
Now that is stupid.
Saturday, 6 December 2014
Credentialed Argument
Max Corden
It has been blindingly obvious since before the GFC that taxes are too low. The neo-liberal free-market right-wing swill who have professed to have governed most of the planet - although many have experienced this as mis-governed - since the advent of Thatcherism.
I draw your attention to Paul Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal" and Thomas Picketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century".
For some unknown reason the conservative side of politics in almost every part of the world have chained themselves to this neoliberal Thatcherite ideology which prohibits raising taxes for any reason and obsesses with driving them down and this causes so called "budget emergencies" which are in fact nothing of the sort
On the macroeconomic side they have their noses stuck to Hayeck and the politics of scarcity and thrift.
In his op-ed in the New York Times Paul Krugman points out that pursuit of such policies leads directly to long term recession and generational unemployment. That this is a historically proven fact, in that all these things have been tried before and this was the result. He has predicted a decade of generational unemployment and underperforming economies in the Eurozone. Its been six years now and his prediction is holding up so far. The question is: "which will come first; the truth of his prediction or the next GFC.
I congratulate Max Corden for supplying some credentialed argument for our neoliberal swill of a government as to the idiocy of their stance on the budget.
It has been blindingly obvious since before the GFC that taxes are too low. The neo-liberal free-market right-wing swill who have professed to have governed most of the planet - although many have experienced this as mis-governed - since the advent of Thatcherism.
I draw your attention to Paul Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal" and Thomas Picketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century".
For some unknown reason the conservative side of politics in almost every part of the world have chained themselves to this neoliberal Thatcherite ideology which prohibits raising taxes for any reason and obsesses with driving them down and this causes so called "budget emergencies" which are in fact nothing of the sort
On the macroeconomic side they have their noses stuck to Hayeck and the politics of scarcity and thrift.
In his op-ed in the New York Times Paul Krugman points out that pursuit of such policies leads directly to long term recession and generational unemployment. That this is a historically proven fact, in that all these things have been tried before and this was the result. He has predicted a decade of generational unemployment and underperforming economies in the Eurozone. Its been six years now and his prediction is holding up so far. The question is: "which will come first; the truth of his prediction or the next GFC.
I congratulate Max Corden for supplying some credentialed argument for our neoliberal swill of a government as to the idiocy of their stance on the budget.
Friday, 31 October 2014
To Regress or Not to Regress
Fuel tax indexation: the pressure is on
Did someone say 'tax reform'?
The term sounds so innocuous, even good, but that depends on whose mouth it comes out of. A reform that comprises the introduction of , or increase in, a regressive tax, is a reform backwards.
A rise in fuel excise is an increase in a regressive tax. Any rise or increase in the base of the GST would also be an increase in a regressive tax. These are both moves this government is contemplating, whether they admit it or not.
Regressive taxation is LNP policy whether they admit it or not. Beware of the term 'tax reform'. It is a vector concept and will therefore be progressive or regressive depending on which side of politics uses it.
Did someone say 'tax reform'?
The term sounds so innocuous, even good, but that depends on whose mouth it comes out of. A reform that comprises the introduction of , or increase in, a regressive tax, is a reform backwards.
A rise in fuel excise is an increase in a regressive tax. Any rise or increase in the base of the GST would also be an increase in a regressive tax. These are both moves this government is contemplating, whether they admit it or not.
Regressive taxation is LNP policy whether they admit it or not. Beware of the term 'tax reform'. It is a vector concept and will therefore be progressive or regressive depending on which side of politics uses it.
Monday, 27 October 2014
There is always an optimum Level
Simon Cowan
"Our projected level of spending is unsustainable with our current tax base."
Contrary to LNP neo-liberal drivel, society does exist, and the electorate knows what sort of society they want to live in. This is not the harsh society of the American socio-economic experiment - the end result and ultimate inevitability of LNP policy - but a society where the government provides services which improve it.
If we accept the truth of this statement then either spending must be cut or the tax base or level must increase. The blind lunatic direction of LNP policy sees only cuts to spending as the only solution, and so protects their vested support.
Taxes need to be raised to provide the services we want our government to provide. These sevices have a price determined by the market.This means taxing those who can afford to pay without dropping into hardship. The level of spending has crossed a threshold above which a structural deficit is enmeshed in the budget.
A rebalance of the income-business tax level is required to maintain services at their present level. This will require an increase in progressive taxation rates for those who can best afford it. Only a Greens government has the guts to do this, judging from recent rhetoric.
What a mess.
"Our projected level of spending is unsustainable with our current tax base."
Contrary to LNP neo-liberal drivel, society does exist, and the electorate knows what sort of society they want to live in. This is not the harsh society of the American socio-economic experiment - the end result and ultimate inevitability of LNP policy - but a society where the government provides services which improve it.
If we accept the truth of this statement then either spending must be cut or the tax base or level must increase. The blind lunatic direction of LNP policy sees only cuts to spending as the only solution, and so protects their vested support.
Taxes need to be raised to provide the services we want our government to provide. These sevices have a price determined by the market.This means taxing those who can afford to pay without dropping into hardship. The level of spending has crossed a threshold above which a structural deficit is enmeshed in the budget.
A rebalance of the income-business tax level is required to maintain services at their present level. This will require an increase in progressive taxation rates for those who can best afford it. Only a Greens government has the guts to do this, judging from recent rhetoric.
What a mess.
Politics
Paula Matthewson
"politics (which by definition is the theory and practice of influencing people)."
"There is an alternative to conceding to popular opinion, and that is to change it, but this is akin to doing a u-turn in a cruise ship.
Getting the voting public to change its mind, not on superficial matters, but on those that tap into core values and concerns, is a slow and laborious task that can take longer than one three or four-year parliamentary term to produce results. Doing so is hard enough for a government, even with the authority that comes from being in power and having a phalanx of departments and battalions of advisers at its disposal."
Patience is a virtue.
"politics (which by definition is the theory and practice of influencing people)."
"There is an alternative to conceding to popular opinion, and that is to change it, but this is akin to doing a u-turn in a cruise ship.
Getting the voting public to change its mind, not on superficial matters, but on those that tap into core values and concerns, is a slow and laborious task that can take longer than one three or four-year parliamentary term to produce results. Doing so is hard enough for a government, even with the authority that comes from being in power and having a phalanx of departments and battalions of advisers at its disposal."
Patience is a virtue.
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
What a Neat Statement of the Neo-Liberal Intention
Ian Verrender
"policy aims to take money from polluters and distribute it to taxpayers. Direct Action takes money from taxpayers and hands it out to polluters."
This sentence encapsulates the end result of neo-liberal policy. Admittedly the context is Climate Change Policy, but if you substitute 'vested interests', 'big business' or what Paul Krugman is now calling 'the 0.01 percent' for 'polluters' and 'government', 'the people', or, to maintain consistency, 'the 99.99 percent', you come up with a reasonable approximation of reality.
"policy aims to take money from polluters and distribute it to taxpayers. Direct Action takes money from taxpayers and hands it out to polluters."
This sentence encapsulates the end result of neo-liberal policy. Admittedly the context is Climate Change Policy, but if you substitute 'vested interests', 'big business' or what Paul Krugman is now calling 'the 0.01 percent' for 'polluters' and 'government', 'the people', or, to maintain consistency, 'the 99.99 percent', you come up with a reasonable approximation of reality.
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