The Coalition repaid a lot of public debt, but during their reign private debt skyrocketed. In the end it did not help really because the private sector had to borrow to do what the government didn't do.
According to a report I read last year the banking sector would have collapsed if the US didn't buy up all their toxic assets. That was the very thing that saved the Australian economy from the collapse, not the low level of public debt.
There is nothing wrong with working for welfare payments. It would be more reasonable if the government could actually organise people on the dole and create a shadow industry, for example, in areas where we have a lot of imports. Utilise people's skills rather than let them sit at home, lay on the beach or work for the dole. Say, if you dropped out of the private sector you would straight away be compulsorily absorbed into the shadow industry and work full time, maybe for 20% less pay. This way people would not waste their time, they would not loose connection with the society and they would create wealth that would reduce our trade deficits. This programme would cost a lot less, I bet, than what is being paid out right now and would keep skills up to date.
I know people who offered companies to work for free in order to gain work experience, but they were not interested.
Other than Australia it is the Scandinavian countries that were the least affected by the CFG. The reason is simply that they have very high tax and strong welfare system. This means much smaller wealth disparity, which in turn means people have money to buy goods and services. The worst affected country is probably the US where the wealth disparity is the greatest, the tax on the rich is the smallest and their welfare system is almost non-existent. As I noted, welfare and a progressive tax system have the effect of reducing wealth disparity. Cutting taxes for the rich and corporations lead to them taking the extra income and investing it in speculation - in stocks, commodities and real estate forcing up the cost of living for everybody. This creates the biggest inflation push because businesses have to pass the increased commercial rent on their customers. Then the government turns around and lifts up interest rate as if home buyers and businesses were responsible for the inflation. The very fact that Western governments heavily cut taxes for the top earners, give away business grants and other corporate hand-outs are responsible for the very mess we are still in.
I did not mean *you* take it away. It is a global trend. Governments serve the rich, they will not tax them. Where else can they get money from? From the poor, for they cannot defend themselves.
Here I am talking about not the unemployed, but the low income earners in general. In a strong economy you have cashed up customers that don't think twice before they pay for something. The head of Harvey Norman stated he hasn't seen the customer so weak. The solution suggested - cut company taxes and cut wages. These measures will not create customers with fat wallets. Without reversing the damage the last two decade has done, there cannot be lasting recovery. You can have "recovery" fueled by further borrowing, but it simply makes things a lot worse in the end.
I meant to say that some benefits have the top family income limit at $150k. the government has determined not to index it with inflation any more, so this limit will stay at that level. I don't know what benefits are affected, I suspect family payments are in view.
This is way too simplistic. We should all pay our due taxes and not allow loopholes for the wealthy. It is not my job to go after the Packers and alike.
The markets are driven by mass sentiment determined by the Fibonacci numbers. Markets do down in 5 waves and correct in 3, then the whole thing repeats. This generally plays out well, but in reality it is more complex as waves superimpose on each other. In 2007-2008 we saw the first large drop, then the markets recovered to a degree. We are heading towards the second decline, which is supposedly a lot steeper than the former was.
You may think the Australian economy is resilient to these things, but it has been revealed last year that we were saved from the crunch because the US printed 12 trillion USD and bought up toxic assets all over the world, including Austrlaia. Without it our banking system would have collapsed. The huge spending program of the government also helped, even if a lot of the money was wasted. But they think we are already out of the woods and in boom time. No, we are not. We are facing another decline pretty soon. Our real estate bubble has been supported by the Chinese bubble.
The non-speculative median house price is 3 times the median income. Today the median house price is 7-9 time the median income. This makes the OZ real estate market not only the biggest in the Western world, but one of the biggest in world history. And when the bubble burst you can only guess what will happen. Do you keep your money at Westpac? They have the biggest exposure to the real estate market. I am not predicting anything, but we will see how all these things will play out.
During the so-called recovery some of the private debt has been converted to public debt. So now governments are in trouble. Keep an eye on Europe.
You think that all people with IT degrees know about websites. IT is a very wide area. I know a guy who is one of the top software designers in the country but he cannot even setup his home network and knows nothing about websites. I think it is like with any other trades. You have your specialist area and know not much about the rest.
Sure, if you can always shortchange your investment into a trade with market stalls and write off a large part of your life. Interestingly, farmers are given a hundred thousand dollars in compensation to get out of their trade. Why? And why not others? You spend many years studying and learning special skills that are very hard and then throw it all away and sell some second hand stuff on eBay. Very exciting.
In Germany you were not allowed to work on a much lower lever than where your qualifications are because they don't want to waste talent. You could only go one level lower.
Getting up early might be a problem for some lazy people, but it has never a problem for me. I used to get up at 4 am to go to work so my work mates could go home earlier.
I have been both on the top and on the bottom. I know what it's like. It is wrong and harmful to generalise that everyone who is out of work is a dole bludger. Just like saying that all Muslims are terrorists. Untrue, false and harmful.
Quite agree. You cannot put everyone in the same basket. There are people who just want to go to the beach and have fun. Young kids share a home together and enjoy themselves. But nobody should think that everyone are like that.
I don't agree with you about "handouts". We all paid our taxes. When you drop out of work you get some of it back. The problem is not with welfare for the poor, but with middle class and corporate welfare. Gee, I'd like to be able write off $5000 when I buy a car. What do they do for this free money (handout)? And can you tell me why on earth families with $150kpa income still receive "handouts"? If your family income is over $100kpa you should not put your hand out for the public money and do nothing for that money.
I remember in the 90's I paid $14k in tax when Kerry Packer paid $10k after his $4billion business empire. These are the guys you need to go after, not the poor.
Welfare has an effect of narrowing wealth disparity. The mess we are in is the result of too great wealth disparity. The Great Depression of the 30's was caused by this very thing. At that time 1% of the population owned 40% wealth. The normal level is 10%. No wonder the 99% stopped buying goods and services.
Today in the US this figure is 75% and in Australia it was 40% in 2005!!! If you think there will be recovery, you are dreaming. I have never seen so many shops closing since I live in Australia.
And now prepare for the second slump - sorry, no boom time - which will be far worse than the first one was. There is a quadrillion dollar debt in the world and it must deflate. Just like the OZ real estate bubble.
Welfare is not the problem. What you need is increased welfare, not reduced. Take from the top and give it to the disadvantage. That is money going straight into the economy as it converts to rents, food, etc. It is an enormous help for small businesses that the government pumps something like $70billion a year into the economy through welfare.
I am not talking about being busy in whatever you do. But the "work for the dole" thing is like answering the phone twice a day the have coffee and have a chat, etc. A waste of time. I'd hate a workplace where I am not flat out because I would be checking the time all the time.
The problem is you don't actually pick up *any* real skills in most of these.
After the dotcom crash I did the work for the dole. I opted for a charity organisation because they agreed that I'd setup for them a complete office network, website, customer management system and document management system along with a complete website (content management system) and would have remotely maintained it as long as I lived.
I got four quotes for them which were within their budget. Apart from this I was sitting in their office chatting and answering a very few phone calls. Nothing else. It was a complete waste of time and effort.
My problem was not that I had to work, but that I wanted to and could not.
They help you to pay part of a Cert III course, that's about it.
Apologies, I am just tired. I shouldn't have written "rubbish".
I agree that some people don't want to work. Others do. But not everyone are the same. All I am saying is you need to look at the individual cases. It is not good to generalise.
This is why you cannot put all unemployed into the same basket. You need to look at them on a case by case basis. Treating everyone the same is very simplistic and harmful.
You have little understanding about the plight of the unemployed. Most of them want to work but don't get jobs. It is not fun to be out of work. If you think it is, why don't you try it?
The idea of the work for the dole was to give work experience to the people. It utterly failed in that respect. Unemployed need training and meaningful work experience, not work for the dole rubbish.
Sure, you can get training while you work to up your skills and climb the ladder. But very often you don't need additional training to do your job and in many trades training is utterly unaffordable to people. Can you shell out $5-6k for a one week training? That is what you need in IT to get a certificate. To get basic training in two areas cost you $10-12k. If you think that raising children you can afford such expenses you must live on the moon. These training charges are designed for companies that can deduct the cost from their taxes, not for individuals. If you are with a company that refuses to send you to training courses you are stuffed.
Contrary to the general belief Paul did not teach Gentile converts that they did not have to keep God's laws. As we read in Acts, Jacov (incorrectly called James in English bibles) asked him to offer a sacrifice to *prove* that the accusations were false.
The quest of that time was what the minimum set of laws were that new Gentile converts were required to observe. These laws, that were required of Gentiles who lived among Jews, were derived from Lev. 17-18. Gentiles were trained up in the full Torah and could convert to be part of the covenant people of God later on, but this training took years.
There was no new movement. The early disciples were considered a sect within Judaism. It became a new movement after the Jewish disciples were excommunicated after the Bar Kochba revolt was crushed and the Gentile leadership replaced Hebraic thought they did not understand with a mix of Platonism, Zoroastrianism and Pagan religious ideas they were familiar with when they interpreted the Jewish writings we publish as the bible today.
You referred to Paul's writing about Jews doing this and that. He did not refer to righteous Jews who did not instigate the death of Yeshua ben Yoseph, but the evil religious Jewish leadership. He certainly did not have all Jews in mind, but only a few and those who followed them.
It was not until after the Bar Kochba revolt was crushed that the Gentile congregations became antisemitic and excommunicated all the Jewish believers. From that point the Hebraic thought was lost and these Gentiles no longer could make sense of the Jewish writings, therefore, they began to interpret them by employing a mixture of Platonism, Zoroastrianism and Pagan religious ideas, and hence historical Christianity was born.
This was the "falling away" Paul prophesied. The mystery of lawlessness (ie Torah-lessness = rejection of the Torah) was already at work, it was the Jewish disciples and their scripture teaching that restrained it. Once they were removed from the Gentile congregations the doctrinal decline was rapid and soon the man of iniquity (lawless one = Torah-less one) appeared, about whom it was believed that he claimed himself to be God.
Do you realise that the virgin-born god-man saviour, who abolished the Torah of God is the fulfillment of this prophecy?
On the contrary, the historical Yeshua ben Yoseph, the patrilinear son of David worshiped his God and upheld/strengthened/established His Torah in his life, so that those who followed in his footsteps would also do the same ("walk as he himself also walked").
Pedro, Jesus was a Jew. His first disciples formed a sect within Judaism. Gentiles from the second century on changed this into what we call historical Christianity.
The Messiah takes away the sin of the world when he established the Kingdom of God in which righteousness dwells. That statement is not some kind of magic bullet. He takes away your sin when you repent and follow his example of obedience.
1. Your statement regarding unemployable people: I have known many unemployed people who had very high qualifications and they were out of work outside of their fault. I am talking about IT professionals with 30-40 years of industrial experience and people who used to work as managers, CEOs but are now over their 40s, 50s. I have a few uni degrees and have been out of work for over six months. Companies are looking for the perfect match and they rather bring in someone from overseas than spend a single dollar on training people up to close the skill gap. Maybe there should be a tax incentive, but these parties are so out of touch with reality.
2. Back problem as invisible: Of course, there are people who claim pain but have no medically established damage to their back, but the problem is that it is even hard for people who have clear medical evidence to get the disability. Unless you have been through treatment and your doctor states that this is best you can get, you cannot get the disability pension. Medical profession cannot help people with disc problems and it is pointless to require them to go through treatments - wasting thousands of Medicare dollars. I know a lady who has been receiving physiotherapy for the last ten years and by now two of her bones in her spine are fused together. Now imagine the huge amount of money that her physio cost.
The problem is, when you are ill, you need that extra money to get by - not years later when you have been through treatments and your condition is accessed as stabilised, but right at the time of your sickness, however, do you realise that you only receive $6/2wks extra for the pharmaceutical benefit? Very generous indeed.
There could be 100% employment if the government sponsored meaningful jobs with real companies where you could obtain real work experience. So if you drop out of work you get straight into sponsored job for less pay, but your skills are not wasted.
When I lost my job I contacted companies and offered them to work for a month for free, so they could check me out with no obligation, risk or expense on their part (except for the additional insurance). None of them were interested.
Hmmm. Two days a week for the whole year. Such a good deal. It works out for $12.50/hour. Well below the youth wage. Very sensible option to do all those meaningless "jobs". Most of the time people who "work" for the dole have nothing to do, but answering phones here and there, the rest is coffee and chit-chat. I just don't see where the "work experience" part is.
Obama Says "Justice Has Been Done" Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Says No
SOURCE The 9/11 Consensus Panel
Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr. David Ray Griffin's 2009 book, "Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?" presented compelling evidence that bin Laden died in December 2001 -- prompting a BBC documentary of the same name. Griffin, founder of the soon to be announced 9/11 Consensus Panel, and named among the New Statesman's "50 People Who Matter Today," today released the following statement:
President Obama, speaking of the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, said: "Justice has been done."
It has been widely assumed that, if bin Laden is now dead, the person most responsible for the 9/11 attacks has been brought to justice. But the US government has never provided evidence that the attacks were carried out by bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization.
In September 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised to provide this evidence, but the next day recanted, saying "most of [the evidence] is classified."
In October, Prime Minister Tony Blair provided evidence that bin Laden and al-Qaeda planned and executed the 9/11 attacks. But he added:
"This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law."
The FBI's acts that made bin Laden a "Most Wanted Terrorist" does not include the 9/11 attacks. The FBI's chief of investigative publicity explained: "The FBI has been no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11."
A December 2001 video shows a heavy-set Osama bin Laden boasting about the attacks. But doubts were raised by experts, including Duke University's Professor Bruce Lawrence, calling the video "bogus."
Could al-Qaeda have carried out the attacks?
The Washington Post reported that the plane hitting the Pentagon was maneuvered "with extraordinary skill," but the New York Times called the alleged pilot, Hani Hanjour, "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence."
The Twin Towers allegedly fell entirely because of airliner impacts, gravity, and jet-fuel fires -- there were no explosives.
But 118 members of the FDNY reported massive explosions going off in the Towers.
Scientists for 9/11 Truth views the rapid, symmetrical, straight-down collapses of the Towers and nearby WTC 7 as consistent only with controlled demolition (as documented in my 2009 book, "The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7").
And 1500 members of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth agree: The 9/11 attacks were not the work of al-Qaeda.
Why was the God of Abraham cruel? Is it because the Pagan gods demanded the sacrifice of firstborn, and El Shaddai wanted to show Abraham that He was unlike them and did not require human sacrifice?
revealer24 Forum Posts (985)
Is Osama Bin laden really Killed - Image is Photoshop Fraud
Why would anyone trust the US government when they can't stop lying?