Month: February 2009

Ram raiders take on the tax system

Posted by Chief Blogger – 25 February, 2009

The Community Tax Forum is a collection of groups that promote dependency and addiction to government welfare at the expense of individual freedom and liberty – unions, green lobby groups, the welfare lobby, etc… Their basic philosophy is: people that earn no income, regardless of reason, have a right and an entitlement to the hard earned income of others. These groups want to basically legislate stealing. Once people are hooked into free money they can be more easily manipulated for political gain to support causes they would not normally consider important. For instance, union voting rights at work, green pet issues, extra funding to special interest groups, etc… Now I am not talking about retirees who have paid their taxes and dues, etc…but people of working age that either don’t or do work but still want free money.

With this in mind, I draw readers attention to an article published back in 2008 by The Australian, written by George Megalogenis. So no conservative thinker:

The tax-free club contained 39.3 per cent of all families in January 2004; by 2006-07 the share had risen to 41.6 per cent. Now it is a record 42.2 per cent….it covers every family on the bottom four rungs of the nation’s income ladder and a fair portion of those on the fifth.

For instance, single mothers effectively pay no tax. Tax-payers bear the burden for left-wing social experiments that have undermined the natural family. Now the problem with the tax-system is not that taxes are too low, but the benefits that people are entitled are too high relative to the taxes they pay.

So the scene is set and the Community Tax Forum comes on stage to describe the tax system as having:

…contributed to a culture of greed, through a lack of restraint on tax avoidance by high-income earners….the system to ensure people on higher incomes pay their share of tax and governments have revenue to provide essential services for all Australians…fund essential community services like healthcare, schools and housing

In other words, they want the 58 per cent of Australians that do pay income tax to pay more tax to fund the most heavily unionised and left-wing workplaces in the country. No surprises there. You’ll also notice also that no definition is given for what constitutes a high income earner. Presumably that will change depending upon the Forum’s funding demands.

Welcome Tim Blair blog readers

Posted by Chief Blogger – 25 February, 2009

I’ve also received a few links in the comments field from Andrew Bolt’s blog. This month as been the best so far, with thousands of unique readers.

Cheers.

The Rudd Rout continues

Posted by Chief Blogger – 24 February, 2009

The ASX is down again this morning by 1.2 per cent. With the rout that has occurred in the markets over the past last week compounding losses over the past few months, Rudd’s idea to fund ceiling insulation looks even more out of place. Soon we will be joining the queue, on hand and knees and with cap in hand, as the Americans have learnt to do:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped up a state visit to China Sunday by urging her hosts to continue to invest in U.S. Treasury instruments and underscoring the two countries’ interdependence, according to published reports….

Concerns have run especially high in the last week that China, the single largest holder of Treasurys, will keep buying, even though some of the biggest Treasury dealers say there have been no signs of a decline. China, with its $1.95 trillion in foreign currency reserves, has been the world’s largest holder of U.S. government debt, with about $696.2 billion at the end of last year.

Rio Tinto continued…

Posted by Chief Blogger – 24 February, 2009

Good article by Paul Monk about the pending Rio Tinto and Chinalco deal:

Whereas the kind of information Chinalco would be privy to if it gets the stake it seeks in Rio Tinto is not available to the Australian or British governments, it will go directly to the Chinese Government. This has considerable strategic implications. If we view the present case in isolation, we fail to think strategically. Xiao and his Communist Party bosses are thinking strategically. What calls for our attention, then, is strategy, not just this individual move.

The deal would also be inconsistent with Australia’s approach to removing government control and ownership of business enterprises.

Turnbull and moderation

Posted by Chief Blogger – 24 February, 2009

Tim Blair on Insiders last Sunday said, to the effect, centre-right parties don’t win government by going moderate. It’s not a good track record, just look at what happened to the Republican Party in the USA by choosing John McCain over Mitt Romney. Disaster!

The media would love the Liberals to go moderate. Gerard Henderson:

Most journalists prefer Labor to the Coalition. This makes Liberals critical of their own party of particular interest to the media.

Any move to moderation would by implication be a critical rebuttal of the Howard years. The media would spend every day up until the next election hammering that issue. MT going for broke by planning to out-do Rudd on the emissions trading front with higher carbon reduction targets is an example of this. Unified conservatism kept the Liberal Party in power for 11 years and in earlier years made Menzies our longest serving PM. It is a formulae for success. The party has to be unified and conservatism provides the rallying call. Moderate luke-warm policies do not because they are not founded upon conviction and principle, but are a poor man’s imitation of the other side.

In the most recent Newspoll, MT trails Rudd badly, but on issues of economic management and national security the Liberal Party still leads the ALP. In other words, people still go along with the Liberal Party’s classical liberal and conservative philosophy towards the economy and defence respectively, but people aren’t buying the Liberal Party moderate selling the message.

 

Queensland Election

Posted by Chief Blogger – 24 February, 2009

Mike Steketee has written an article which details the opportunism of Bligh’s Queensland government in calling an early election to avoid the worst of the economic downturn:

After repeatedly saying her Government would run its full term, Bligh has reached for the Carpenter-Labor script on early elections. She hadn’t changed her mind lightly, she told voters yesterday, but in recent weeks, election speculation had reached such a point that it had become a hindrance to the certainty and stability that Queensland needed.

Believe that and you’ll believe that Bligh can save you from the global financial crisis.

An a note, when former WA Premier Carpenter called an early election the polls were 54-46 per cent on a 2PP basis and he lost that election. In the Queensland it is 53-47 per cent, or a uniform swing of 7.6 per cent is required for the LNP to claim power. Not unachievable, but difficult.

Rudd ‘Stimulus’ packages are go!

Posted by Chief Blogger – 23 February, 2009

All Ordinaries down 2.5 per cent today, 6.4 per cent since the ‘stimulus’ package was passed by the Senate.

Insiders and Rio Tinto

Posted by Chief Blogger – 23 February, 2009

I was pretty unimpressed by Insiders’ analysis of the agreement between Rio Tinto and the Chinese government business enterprise Chinalco. The implication of the discussion was: there are no rational economic reasons to reject the deal and therefore any rejection would be based on racism. George Megalogenis from The Australian:

You just can’t say no because you don’t like the colour of the government.

Well yeah, simpleton stuff. Both the ALP and Liberals have had a long held in-principle opposition to government control and ownership of business enterprises, starting with Fraser corporatising the Post Master General – the ALP’s opposition to the sale of Telstra being the main exception. Why then would an Australian Government turn around and approve a Chinese government business enterprise partial control over a major resources corporation after having spent that last thirty years divorcing itself of involvement in similar enterprises? Historically, the Australian mining industry has been free of public ownership. The only groups that sought to have the government take control of the industry were, ironically, communists. One either supports a demarcation between public and private sector interests of this kind or one doesn’t. The Treasurer should reject the deal on these grounds. No government (foreign or domestic) control over locally operating corporations. Passive equity investor? Not ideal but okay. Board of director influence or control? No.

John Hewson – who cares?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 23 February, 2009

John Hewson has been doing the rounds attacking Peter Costello and the Liberal Party, again. He was on Sky News and wrote a piece for the SMH. He called Costello lazy and unelectable. The media gives Hewson, a failed political leader, so much air time because of their angst against the Liberal Party. Hewson is a failed leader, while Costello succeeded as Treasurer.

The problem with Costello, is not Costello, but the media will use the leadership issue as an excuse to distract attention away from Rudd’s own failings.

Swan vs. ASX 200

Posted by Chief Blogger – 21 February, 2009

A week after the Rudd ‘stimulus’ package was finalised, the ASX 200 has given its initial verdict. Markets around the world are crashing and Rudd it still intent on dolling out money to various government agencies, green lobby groups and the construction and teachers unions. And watching the ABC’s Q&A it soon became more apparent that Swan has next to know idea how to solve the economic downturn. Swan with my notations:

I think that the children of Australia will be very thankful for ($200 billion in debt) the fact that the Australian Government acted to do something (ceiling insulation) about such a sharp contraction in demand which if left unattended would cause very, very high unemployment ($42 billion / 90,000 people = $460,000 per person), and all of the social damage that goes with that. So, the direct payments to increase and stimulate demand (which only have a multiplier factor of 0.5) in the Australian economy are absolutely essential to support business, to support families. So I don’t think that we should run down those payments as being a waste of money (only 50 cents in $1 returned to the economy). That’s not the view of the business community (not according to the stock market), and it’s not what actually happened, when we look at the impact (only 10 per cent returned to retail sales) of the last lot of payments, if you look at how they were spent (pokies, drugs, beer, sent overseas, pay off credit card debt, etc…).

They spent a lot more on fruit and vegetables… (the solution to the current economic downturn) Fruit and vegetables are actually produced by farmers (which the package takes water away from), because that’s what we’re doing – we’re supporting business out there, particularly small business (?), particularly farmers (?), particularly manufacturers  (pink batts are made in NZ). And that’s what the direct payments have been doing, but something like almost three-quarters of the current package is going to be invested directly in our schools and in social housing (and more public housing is some how going to get us out of the current downturn).

Feel confident in our economic future yet?