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Your argument can apply to any industry with generous government subsidy and monopoly. I can argue that if the Government borrowed $40 billion and built a seri

by brc 16y ago

Your argument can apply to any industry with generous government subsidy and monopoly. I can argue that if the Government borrowed $40 billion and built a series of science labs, that research would take off. That if they built $40 billion worth of roads, that businesses based on transport would take off. That if they built $40 billion worth of factories that manufacturing might get a new start. My point is not that new business opportunities can't be created with money, but is wealth being created or destroyed? Sinking public funds into money losing projects destroys wealth, it doesn't create it, no matter how many new business models are created. And that's what I'm against.

andrewstuart 16y ago
Australia is fortunately a very wealthy country. Many billions are paid in taxes to our governments who do little or nothing to invest in infrastructure that will build Australia's future prosperity. John Howard as Prime Minister had gargantuan excesses of money and spent little of it on anything except debt reduction and then when there was no more debt to reduce, he just put it in the bank and refused to invest it back in the future of Australia by actually doing something with it. Instead he just put the money into the bank (the "future fund"). Government has a wider obligation than obsessively not spending money. Australia is doing extremely well financially. It would be irresponsible not to convert some of those mining tax dollars into a national broadband network that will create unknown future opportunity. Obsessively not spending money is not government, it's accounting.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  > John Howard as Prime Minister had gargantuan excesses of money and spent little of it on anything except debt reduction and then when there was no more debt to reduce, he just put it in the bank and refused to invest it As a Prime Minister, John Howard's instinct was to spend the living daylights out of every cent. Mostly in flat out cash transfers to pensioners and middle class families. He set up a churn-based middle-class welfare system that costs nearly $100 billion per year at this point, which is unnecessarily wasteful. The Future Fund's ostensible purpose is to sock away some money for future liabilities that the Commonwealth will face over the coming decades. Superannuation for public servants, mostly. In reality it was a handy place to dump a bunch of Telstra shares and a way for Peter Costello to prevent Howard from introducing ever more harebrained recurrent expenditures.

by brc 16y ago

andrewstuart 16y ago

Australia is fortunately a very wealthy country. Many billions are paid in taxes to our governments who do little or nothing to invest in infrastructure that will build Australia's future prosperity. John Howard as Prime Minister had gargantuan excesses of money and spent little of it on anything except debt reduction and then when there was no more debt to reduce, he just put it in the bank and refused to invest it back in the future of Australia by actually doing something with it. Instead he just put the money into the bank (the "future fund"). Government has a wider obligation than obsessively not spending money. Australia is doing extremely well financially. It would be irresponsible not to convert some of those mining tax dollars into a national broadband network that will create unknown future opportunity. Obsessively not spending money is not government, it's accounting.

jacques_chester 16y ago
> John Howard as Prime Minister had gargantuan excesses of money and spent little of it on anything except debt reduction and then when there was no more debt to reduce, he just put it in the bank and refused to invest it As a Prime Minister, John Howard's instinct was to spend the living daylights out of every cent. Mostly in flat out cash transfers to pensioners and middle class families. He set up a churn-based middle-class welfare system that costs nearly $100 billion per year at this point, which is unnecessarily wasteful. The Future Fund's ostensible purpose is to sock away some money for future liabilities that the Commonwealth will face over the coming decades. Superannuation for public servants, mostly. In reality it was a handy place to dump a bunch of Telstra shares and a way for Peter Costello to prevent Howard from introducing ever more harebrained recurrent expenditures.