Some of the government policies leave a bit to be desired
I was reading this article today about Australian's being worse off, and I found myself pretty bemused by the following comment by a certain gentleman in Glenwood, NSW:
I think what has amused me the most is the incoherent inclusion of the terms "knob face" and "penis boy".
And despite the fact that the comment really isn't the most eloquently written statement, I daresay I agree with him.
I think I've tried to find the good points in the current Labor party's direction. The 2020 Summit was a good idea. Thinking about the future is a good idea. The bionic eye reasearch - a good idea - but not exactly a new idea, considering that the research for it is already in its very final stages. The promotion of Australian arts - a good idea - pity that anything that pushes the boundaries (such as Bill Henson's works) gets classes as "revolting" by our Prime Minister. Signing the Kyoto Protocol - a very good idea. There's no two ways about that one. I have this feeling that I once said that I didn't think it was all that meaningful. So if I did say that, I'm officially eating my words on that one.
I recently did an economics essay on why markets fail, and I used climate change as the case study. Climate change, according to Nicholas Stern, is the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen" (if you're interested in reading the Exec Summary of the Stern Report - and it's actually not a bad read - you can get to it here).
If I can approve of the Rudd government for any reason, it's for that alone. For me, that mitigates a whole pile of the other fairly mediocre things he's doing/done.
My examples continue:
Raising the medicare levy threshold to $100 000 for singles and $150 000 for couples - not a good idea. A PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report on the effects of the increased Medicare surcharge said that approximately 1 million people will now opt out of private health insurance, having a flow-on effect of placing more burden on the public health system and hospitals, as well as making private health insurers need to increase their prices to cover costs. Wayne Swan (the little tosspot that he is), outrightly rejected the PWC report, saying that "Treasury has done its modelling". One would think that the Treasurer of the country would want to try to look a little deeper into why there was such a discrepancy in figures, rather than blindly saying that he was right. As it transpires, Treasury did not include children or dependents in their modelling; if it had, it would have come to a similar conclusion of approximately 1 million people as the PWC report had. I'm not sure how the states are going to be compensated to cope with the increased demand for public hospitals.
Alcopops tax - one of the more brainless taxes I've ever heard of. Increasing the price of a good, leads to an increase in demand for its substitutes. Extremely basic economic theory. Example: what would an 18 year old do when they're going to a party and they want to drink a vodka cruiser, but they're too expensive? What I would do is go halves on a bottle of vodka with my mate and buy a bottle of softdrink. So does an alcopops tax stop the teen binge drinking problem? No, I don't think so. Effectively it's just another tax that the government has implemented, but not really thought through (at all).
Luxury car tax - again, not the best idea. And funnily enough, the Labor government might have conceded this one. It's basically not a smart idea for a couple of reasons:
1) It's a blanket tax on cars that cost $57,123 or more. This includes cars that are bought by large families and people in wheelchairs, aka people movers. It's not a tax that helps the people he wants to help.
2) It's a tax on a tax. As it currently exists, cars have a 10% GST on them, and are charged a 25% tax on top of that. The Rudd government's proposition in their budget was to raise this tax from 25% to 33%. In an economic sense, taxes result in something called a dead-weight loss, because it reduces consumer and producer welfare, and welfare is effectively "lost" due to the taxes - as in the loss of producer/consumer welfare doesn't get transferred anywhere else (sorry - in economics mode at the moment because I'm studying for my exam :-P).
And lastly (because I really should be getting back to the books now), is the Fuel Watch scheme. To be honest, I don't really know enough about this one to argue that it's a good or a bad thing. Intrinsically, I think that the transparency of petrol prices is a good thing. It leads to a freer and more open market, and less information asymmetries. However, that would only be the case if the petrol producers existed in a more competitive environment. Basically because there's only a few big players (an oligopoly), they really can control the prices. I daresay if they can monitor the prices of the little guys, they can squeeze them out of business, because they can sustainably run at lower than cost prices if need be (for a while at least), while the little guys can't afford to do that. You may say that that's anti-competitive behaviour, and they'll get in trouble for it, but I also think that no one is going to complain to the ACCC for a fuel company keeping their petrol prices low.
To show that I'm not grossly biased, I can't help but try to throw in a couple of good things too.
Good things:
- The tax review. Hopefully it'll make the government get rid of some of their more ridiculous taxes.
- The idea from the 2020 Summit to allow students to reduce their HECS debt by doing community service. I really think that is a super idea. Hopefully the government will create a budget for that.
worse off ? bloody worse off alright Posted by: ash, glenwood nsw, on 9/06/2008 1:03:55 PM
i always knew john howard should have stayed in government. Australia was very stable when he was right up there. Alright workchoices wasnt the best of ideas but the little things he did to get our economy up. I have heard about LABOR'S past and belive that it will all happen all over agen with little kevin rudd penis boy making trips to japan and every bloddy where else he isnt even here to see that petrol prices go down little knob face
I think what has amused me the most is the incoherent inclusion of the terms "knob face" and "penis boy".
And despite the fact that the comment really isn't the most eloquently written statement, I daresay I agree with him.
I think I've tried to find the good points in the current Labor party's direction. The 2020 Summit was a good idea. Thinking about the future is a good idea. The bionic eye reasearch - a good idea - but not exactly a new idea, considering that the research for it is already in its very final stages. The promotion of Australian arts - a good idea - pity that anything that pushes the boundaries (such as Bill Henson's works) gets classes as "revolting" by our Prime Minister. Signing the Kyoto Protocol - a very good idea. There's no two ways about that one. I have this feeling that I once said that I didn't think it was all that meaningful. So if I did say that, I'm officially eating my words on that one.
I recently did an economics essay on why markets fail, and I used climate change as the case study. Climate change, according to Nicholas Stern, is the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen" (if you're interested in reading the Exec Summary of the Stern Report - and it's actually not a bad read - you can get to it here).
If I can approve of the Rudd government for any reason, it's for that alone. For me, that mitigates a whole pile of the other fairly mediocre things he's doing/done.
My examples continue:
Raising the medicare levy threshold to $100 000 for singles and $150 000 for couples - not a good idea. A PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report on the effects of the increased Medicare surcharge said that approximately 1 million people will now opt out of private health insurance, having a flow-on effect of placing more burden on the public health system and hospitals, as well as making private health insurers need to increase their prices to cover costs. Wayne Swan (the little tosspot that he is), outrightly rejected the PWC report, saying that "Treasury has done its modelling". One would think that the Treasurer of the country would want to try to look a little deeper into why there was such a discrepancy in figures, rather than blindly saying that he was right. As it transpires, Treasury did not include children or dependents in their modelling; if it had, it would have come to a similar conclusion of approximately 1 million people as the PWC report had. I'm not sure how the states are going to be compensated to cope with the increased demand for public hospitals.
Alcopops tax - one of the more brainless taxes I've ever heard of. Increasing the price of a good, leads to an increase in demand for its substitutes. Extremely basic economic theory. Example: what would an 18 year old do when they're going to a party and they want to drink a vodka cruiser, but they're too expensive? What I would do is go halves on a bottle of vodka with my mate and buy a bottle of softdrink. So does an alcopops tax stop the teen binge drinking problem? No, I don't think so. Effectively it's just another tax that the government has implemented, but not really thought through (at all).
Luxury car tax - again, not the best idea. And funnily enough, the Labor government might have conceded this one. It's basically not a smart idea for a couple of reasons:
1) It's a blanket tax on cars that cost $57,123 or more. This includes cars that are bought by large families and people in wheelchairs, aka people movers. It's not a tax that helps the people he wants to help.
2) It's a tax on a tax. As it currently exists, cars have a 10% GST on them, and are charged a 25% tax on top of that. The Rudd government's proposition in their budget was to raise this tax from 25% to 33%. In an economic sense, taxes result in something called a dead-weight loss, because it reduces consumer and producer welfare, and welfare is effectively "lost" due to the taxes - as in the loss of producer/consumer welfare doesn't get transferred anywhere else (sorry - in economics mode at the moment because I'm studying for my exam :-P).
And lastly (because I really should be getting back to the books now), is the Fuel Watch scheme. To be honest, I don't really know enough about this one to argue that it's a good or a bad thing. Intrinsically, I think that the transparency of petrol prices is a good thing. It leads to a freer and more open market, and less information asymmetries. However, that would only be the case if the petrol producers existed in a more competitive environment. Basically because there's only a few big players (an oligopoly), they really can control the prices. I daresay if they can monitor the prices of the little guys, they can squeeze them out of business, because they can sustainably run at lower than cost prices if need be (for a while at least), while the little guys can't afford to do that. You may say that that's anti-competitive behaviour, and they'll get in trouble for it, but I also think that no one is going to complain to the ACCC for a fuel company keeping their petrol prices low.
To show that I'm not grossly biased, I can't help but try to throw in a couple of good things too.
Good things:
- The tax review. Hopefully it'll make the government get rid of some of their more ridiculous taxes.
- The idea from the 2020 Summit to allow students to reduce their HECS debt by doing community service. I really think that is a super idea. Hopefully the government will create a budget for that.
Labels: alcopops, budget, economics, Kevin Rudd, Labor, medicare, policies, tax, Wayne Swan
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