Guest essay by Viv Forbes
To compete in today’s world we need to score well on resource availability, capital assets, energy costs, tax burden and workforce/management. It also helps to have secure property rights and a sound currency. Today’s Australia scores poorly on all counts.
In 1901, the year of Federation, Australia was the richest country in the world per capita.
The Pioneer generations, with freedom to explore and invest, had developed valuable mineral assets – gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, coal, tin and iron. And they had bred up large numbers of sheep and cattle on our native grasslands.
Energy was abundant – wood, horse power, kerosene, gas, hydro and coal powered electricity – we were among world leaders in cheap energy. Sydney had gas lights in its streets as far back as 1820.
The Pioneering innovators also invented game-changers such as the stump jump plough, the Ridley-Sunshine Harvester and froth flotation of minerals, and they developed better Australian versions of Leviathan coaches, Southern Cross windmills, Merino sheep, Shorthorn cattle, Federation wheat, Kelpies and Blue Heeler dogs.
The Builder generations who followed the pioneers invested heavily in productive capital assets like flour mills and wool sheds, mines and collieries, smelters and saw mills, power stations and electric trams, trans-continental railways and overland telegraph lines, orchards and plantations, stockyards and abattoirs, breweries and vineyards, dams and artesian bores, factories and universities, exploration and research, pipelines and harbours, railways and roads. There were no “Lock-the-Gate” signs.
Governments were decentralised with minimal taxes and red tape, creating new business was easy and union power was minimal and generally beneficial for workers.
But then the Termite generations took over, and for much of the last forty years taxes, handouts and green tape have been smothering new enterprise. We are sponging on the ageing assets created by past generations and building little to support future Australians. The monuments left by this generation are typified by casinos, sports arenas, wind-energy prayer wheels, sit-down money and debt.
The trendy war on carbon has already inflated our electricity costs – this will hasten the closure of more processing and manufacturing industries. Green tape is shutting-the-gate on new investments in exploration, grassland protection, dams, power stations, fishing, forestry and coastal development. Taxes are weakening existing industry and the savings that could build new industries are being wasted on bureaucracy, delays, legalism, subsidies, climate tomfoolery and green energy toys. Finally, union featherbedding is crippling any large survivors.
Australia’s future prosperity demands cheap energy, more investment in productive assets, reduced government costs, more productive labour and the freedom to explore and innovate.
We must change, or more jobs will follow Holden.
More at carbon-sense.com
Farmerbraun,
I’m glad for the opportunity to clarify, because this is not something I necessarily believe.
Wikipedia differentiates between major and lesser extinction events, and lists the ‘Quaternary extinction event’ as starting fifty thousand years ago and continuing to this day. Reading about the ‘Quaternary extinction event’, it seems that some hold that this is due to humans.
In an effort to meet ClimateAce partway, I adopted this position for the purpose of the discussion. I don’t know that I actually believe this, I haven’t given the matter all that much thought.
Regarding permanence, that’s part of the point I keep trying to make. None of our institutions have the endurance to make a difference on these timescales. Indeed, our written records do not even span time on this measure. ClimateAce seems to simultaneously acknowledge this and abstract it away or ignore it, which is why I keep returning to it.
Regarding dominance, I don’t know what I mean. Humans can (and have) wreaked havoc on other species at will. Maybe I mean this. With our brains, numbers, and resources, we’ve got the power to substantially influence ecosystems. I don’t know exactly. ‘Dominance’ wasn’t really central to my point, just the rise and spread of human civilization I guess.
Thanks.
@ur momisugly metro70
I have not applauded Labor and I find your ranting about communism bizarre. In Tasmania we had until recently exactly five card-carrying communists none of whom were affiliated with the ALP.
That aside, you still have not understood that I was against the GST for many reasons — mainly because it was a regressive tax as John Stone frequently pointed out. Far from being a communist, or member of the ALP he was a member of the Coalition.
For example, the industry I was part of, computer user training, was not taxed prior to GST. The GST increased invoices by 10%. While the ever-so-business-friendly coalition assumed that all of that cost would be passed on to clients that did not turn out to be the case. In the event, most professionals became tax-collectors of revenue from their own income. An additional income tax in effect. Billing rates were decreased to levy the same revenue as before except 9% went to the government.
But it was actually worse than this. Income tax that had previously been levied annually became levied quarterly, so earning money for government rather than the business owner when the money had previously spent the whole year in the latter’s bank accounts.
For all of your bluster that we welcomed all of this largesse with open arms, I cannot recall any such sentiment during that period.
Here is how John Stone described Coalition Treasurer Peter Costello’s performance in 2007:
metro70 said @ur momisugly December 29, 2013 at 4:53 pm
It is not “a jaundiced view” that there simply were not enough hours.
CPD — mandatory in the computer software industry: 15-20 hrs/week
Revenuing — mandatory if you want to make money: 20-30 hrs/week
Bookkeeping — mandatory if you don’t want to end up in jail: 6 hrs/week
Learning a whole new taxation system — mandatory if I wanted to stay in business: 12 hrs/week
Managing the farm — mandatory if I wanted to stay sane: 20 hrs/week
Total: 73–88 hrs/week. I might have managed this in my twenties and thirties, but the stress was affecting my health. So it goes… I chose the farm and health.
Whoopsie! Hit send before my second point. If we are enjoying unprecedented prosperity now, then Viv’s excellent essay above has the story arse about. We must have been poorer in the past in order to be unprecedentally wealthy now. I don’t believe Viv has it wrong.
climateace says: “My issue is that we have initiated the event, and that we are responsible for our actions now.”
So climateace, you seem to accept that Homo sapiens is a “future-eater” (as Flannery would have it), and you believe that in the course of consuming the futures of generations of humans yet to be born, we are also destroying the futures of a significant number of other species , and that this is an issue of morality. Is this your position?
The Pompous Git says:
December 29, 2013 at 7:46 pm
. We must have been poorer in the past in order to be unprecedentally wealthy now.
FB responds: I think we are going to have to agree on a definition of wealth if we want to pursue that line of argument.
From the headline article :
“In 1901, the year of Federation, Australia was the richest country in the world per capita.”
” for much of the last forty years taxes, handouts and green tape have been smothering new enterprise. We are sponging on the ageing assets created by past generations and building little to support future Australians. The monuments left by this generation are typified by casinos, sports arenas, wind-energy prayer wheels, sit-down money and debt.”
And “Australia’s future prosperity demands cheap energy, more investment in productive assets, reduced government costs, more productive labour and the freedom to explore and innovate.”
That is the guts of Viv’s argument. I don’t know of what that 1901 measure of per capita wealth was comprised.
@ur momisugly farmerbraun
How about?
I disagree with the meaning of wealth as stated.
The idea of wealth.
Wealth does not have to be agreeable, it does not need to have a positive value, it does not have to have any value. It just needs to be possesable.
The idea that the land owned by someone does not have wealth value to the state is silly. The state ownes the land the “owner” rents the land through taxes.
Hmm. Not too much labour or sacrifice involved in obtaining a welfare benefit is there?
In Godzone at the present time approximately 50% of families are net tax beneficiaries. A lot of these people don’t own much either.
I’m thinking that by this definition , there may not actually be that much wealth about at the moment.
Or such wealth as does exist might be in the hands of very few. I’d have to include myself amongst the few I think.
farmerbraun said @ur momisugly December 29, 2013 at 8:32 pm
Nothing to argue against there… ABS tell me that:
http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3110124.nsf/24e5997b9bf2ef35ca2567fb00299c59/c4abd1fac53e3df5ca256bd8001883ec!OpenDocument
Problem now is the difficulty of comparing incomes across the century. I often note that today’s working class appear to enjoy the prosperity of the middle class when I was a lad.
farmerbraun said @ur momisugly December 29, 2013 at 8:49 pm
Me, too. By the time I wound up my training business all of my clients paid in advance in return for a 10% discount. I banked over $14,000 one month. It would seem I was making almost 10× median income. I had no idea!
£46 in 1901 is equivalent to $6,288.73 in 2012 according to the RBA. Given the median income a decade ago was triple that we would seem to have established that there is more wealth about now than then. But that doesn’t address the in-between times. A decade ago a whole mutton cost me $15-20. Today it’s well over a hundred dollars.
Rising price of living in Australia
Read more @ur momisugly http://www.smh.com.au/data-point/rising-price-of-living-in-australia-20130426-2ik16.html#ixzz2ovthslzu
[sarc] Now who’da guessed it was caused by high taxation? [/sarc]
Good info PG.I wish I could say that it is different here. The private debt of the residents of Godzone is at very high levels and we are at risk of an interest rate shock to the economy. Otherwise the story is the same ; green/red tape stifling investment in productive activity ; excessive taxation supporting a bloated self-serving bureaucracy ; and welfare handouts (call it what it is . . . vote-buying).
And absolutely no political will to make the hard decisions , because that would mean electoral defeat.
It will be interesting to see if Tony has the balls to do the job , knowing that the consequence could be a rout at the next election.
In other words , does the guy have integrity.
farmerbraun said @ur momisugly December 29, 2013 at 10:36 pm
Indeed! One has to wonder when he utters falsehoods whether he is aware of them. Politicians all seem to suffer from a disconnect from reality.
Interesting read here: http://www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/nov/14/maurice-newman/are-australian-wages-very-high-international-stand/
Are Australian wages very high by international standards?
It would seem that we are indeed living high off the hog. I suspect we are however living on potentially unsustainable debt, i.e. beyond our means.
climateace says:
“Holden was the local marque for locally-built cars by General Motors. Following a rant in parliament by our Treasurer, Holden decided to pull the plug on car manufacturing in Australia.”
In February 2013 when GM anounced the VF Commodore it indicated that is was abondoning the Zeta platform at the end of the VF. This was the point the decision to kill off production in Australia was effectively made. The likelihood of a new platform being built in Australia was vanishingly low – obvious to anyone who understood the dynamics for the industry. To introduce a new platform in Australia was never going to be viable without massive (think billions of dollars) Government subsidies. The Government just called on GM to come clean – to GMs credit they did.
Pompous Git…
You once again dodge the issue.
I was replying to your claim on Tweedle Dumb etc , and all you do is obsess about the GST, which seems to be the only thing that matters to you in assessing the two parties.
There’s no bluster in my comments —just checkable facts, which you don’t even bother to address.
Criminality, incompetence, indoctrination instead of education of our children—national security —national sovereignty——all meaningless to you—it’s only the GST that counts.
And where did I say you and others in business all welcomed the GST with open arms?
What I said was that small and medium business wanted the Coalition to win this election.
They’ll throw the Abbott government under the bus again in a heartbeat, I’m sure though, exactly as business did with the Howard government in 2007, when they thought they had a bright and shiny new advocate in Kevin Rudd, who told them he would be just like John Howard.
Out with the old —on with the new.
That worked out well for them didn’t it [ although it sounds as though really think it did, so perhaps you’re just one of Labor’s true believers , case any argument on the basis of reason is futile].
Re John Stone…I’d like to see him go head to head with Peter Costello.
It’s easy to make lofty pronouncements and assessments about someone else’s performance from the safety of an essay or when enthusiastically given full rein to go for the throat of the Coalition in an ABC interview—but it’s something else to do it with the victim sitting opposite in a back and forth exchange.
John Stone is very pedantic and his style isn’t suited to real time challenge, when the pedantry becomes amplified.
He has personal gripes against Costello, whom he tried and failed to recruit to the Joh-for-Canberra circus.
IMO, Costello’s handling of his portfolio was never going to meet with Stone’s approval thereafter—especially as in some of the matters they disagreed on, Costello turned out to be correct.
Intelligent though he is, John Stone is horribly lacking in political judgment and commonsense.
You misrepresent me when you claim I said we are enjoying unprecedented prosperity now.
What I said was that the Howard government brought Australia unprecedented prosperity—in no contradiction whatsoever of Viv’s essay.
You even labour the point and amplify the misrepresentation with….
‘ We must have been poorer in the past in order to be unprecedentedly wealthy now. I don’t believe Viv has it wrong.’
The point I made was clear and unambiguous, so it’s hard to see your misrepresentation as being anything but intentional.
Also, the ‘jaundiced view’ I referred to was that of the lecturer at the seminar.
I know it’s very fashionable these days to pretend there are no Communists, but the pose doesn’t alter the fact— that China is a Communist dictatorship. You know that, don’t you—even while you pompously claim to find the reference ‘bizarre’.
I don’t think you’re being real—especially in the suggestion that I might think John Stone is a Communist.
You had a Communist or ‘former Communist’ premier in Tasmania, in the person of Jim Bacon.
Kevin Rudd’s guru who drew up Rudd’s blueprint for defeating Howard, David McKnight, joined the Communist Party in the 70s, long after the extent of the atrocities and executions , the forced famine and the cultural revolutions were known about in full. He later found it judicious to be known as a Socialist, as many in Labor and the unions , have done.
Would you say the Greens’ Senator Lee Rhiannon is not a Communist, when she was trained by the Soviet Union in Moscow, to be a footsoldier for communism back in Australia??
“ggf says:
December 30, 2013 at 5:27 am”
Someone with inside info?
_Jim says:
December 27, 2013 at 8:32 pm
Gail Combs says December 27, 2013 at 1:54 pm
…
Farmers also get squeezed because there is only one buyer who sets the price, at least here in the USA.
Can you support that statement, so we don’t just take this as a wild assertion?…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
All you have to do _jim is search “monopsony farmer pew” Pew as in Pew Trust. or “monopsony farmer Purdue” Purdue as in Purdue University. I am not about to list those 200,000 + hits here.
Just “monopsony farmer” gets 482,000 hits so I narrowed the search down to a bit for you. :>)
metro70 said @ur momisugly December 30, 2013 at 6:54 am
metro70, your rants are rather long and contain far too many different claims for me to be bothered responding to you in detail. I have neither the time, nor the will.
I am not “obsessed” with GST. I said I believed (as do many, dare I say conservatives) that it was a regressive tax; that is it decreases both business activity and consumer consumption. I cited John Stone as being in general agreement with this thesis. His contretemps with Costello is irrelevant. You attempt to portray everyone who opposes Coalition (I hesitate to say policy since they vehemently opposed GST then were responsible for its introduction) actions as a Marxist.
You refer to Jim Bacon (RIP) as a communist. Indeed, he was a Maoist when we were at university in the 60s. But then Keith Windschuttle was a Trotskyite in them days. Would you describe Keith as a communist today? I suspect the obsession is yours and it is with communism, or perhaps what you imagine communism to be. I note that at Latrobe University in the late 60s the Liberal Club was a secret society, membership by invitation only. The Labor Club was open to all.
Most of the calumnies you make upon the Labor Party can equally be made on the Coalition. I take no pleasure in making this observation and would have preferred both sides to have maintained well-developed and distinct ideologies (touchstones for integrity?) I have firsthand knowledge of such having been an ALP branch secretary in the 1980s when both sides seemed to be losing their way. I have maintained cordial relationships with members of the Coalition rank and file and some of its leaders, though I note sadly that many of integrity felt the same need I did in that long ago decade; they too resigned, or were pushed. So it goes…
Finally, “What I said was that the Howard government brought Australia unprecedented prosperity—in no contradiction whatsoever of Viv’s essay.”
The Howard government did no such thing. That is the Big Lie. It was business activity that brought us prosperity. Business activity is either more, or less hindered by government regardless of flavour. Both the Coalition and the ALP have hindered the growth of prosperity whenever in power. Admittedly for different groups at different times, but that merely points to a system of favour. Frank Hardy pointed out long ago that it was easy to bribe politicians, Conservatives with power and Labor with money.
Bill said @ur momisugly December 30, 2013 at 9:14 am
If you find wealth disagreeable, perhaps you need to live in poverty for a while 😉
It is true that at this time we rent what we should own from the state. That is the core of our problems. Both Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber are determined to control (exercise the right of possession) of all we believe to be our own. A very great deal of politics in our Western civilisation consists in maintaining the illusion of private ownership.
Bill says: @ur momisugly December 30, 2013 at 9:14 am
I disagree with the meaning of wealth as stated….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How about:
WEALTH:
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam smith defined wealth as “the annual produce of the land and labor” Wealth creation is combining materials, labor, land, and technology so there is an excess for trade to others, that is “a profit” in excess of the cost of production. The theories of David Ricardo, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Thornton, in the last three centuries refined the views of wealth and became known as classical economics.
MONEY:
Is the term used for Coin, Currency (paper money), and Credit. Money is a medium used to facilitate barter or an economic exchange. If the paper money is not backed by gold, silver or other “wealth” it is a fiat currency and only as good as the people’s ignorance of its origin and trust in the banks and government and the restraint in using the printing press. Federal Reserve notes, and credit is “created” by banks and currently backed by nothing except the promise of the US government that its citizens will make it good via their labor.
There is nothing wrong with fiat currency as a facilitator of trade except that it is so very very easy to just print up more. Gold is simply a lot less subject to counterfeiting
This confusion between ‘wealth’ and ‘fiat money’ is why _Jim is always jumping down my throat on the subject of banking. I understand there is a critical difference thanks to Mises however _Jim dislikes Mises and his explanations for whatever reason.
Banks typically have 3% of their assets in cash in order to meet customer needs. Since 1960, banks have been allowed to use this “vault cash” to satisfy their reserve requirements. Therefore banks are effectively running on zero reserve.
So when I go to the bank and get a $100,000 loan to buy property, the banker spends a few hours doing checks, paperwork, the closing and then he does a computer entry creating the fiat money on the spot. In return for these few hours of work by a clerk I now owe the bank about 1/2 the output of my labor for the next 15 to 30 years. In addition the $100,000 of newly created fiat money just diluted the ‘market value’ of all the rest of the dollars floating around the economy. This is why a house cost $3,000 in 1945, $30,000 in 1965 and now costs $300,000. The actual value of the dollar nose-dived in comparison to real wealth (the house)
_Jim accuses me of not understanding economics but he considers the exchange of 30 years of my working life for a piece of paper that cost a banker a couple of days total a fair exchange, I don’t.
Now consider the fact that very few stay in the same home and pay it off. This translates to effective confiscation of a portion of your labor over your lifetime by the banks for mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, student loans… The reason we can not buy these things out right is because our wealth (labor) is being confiscated by taxes, inflation and wage devaluation so it becomes a vicious cycle. Why saveas a parent save a dollar towards a baby’s education when it will be worth less than a dime when he is ready for school? As one person suggested, buy ten to twenty acres and plant trees instead, it will be worth more to your heirs. link
I have spent many years trying to work with those definitions, they are incomplete. I have scoured many economist’s work to get good definitions. The definitions that I use are the only ones that I find are complete. YMMV
“The annual produce of the land and labour”, misses intellectual property, also misses unproductive land etc etc. Any holes in a definition means that the definition is faulty.
“Wealth is any thing in existance that may be possessed”. Simple and complete.
This does not mean that something has to be in possession to be wealth, only that it may be.
The value of any wealth is subjective and changes. The value of any thing is determined at the instant of a transaction. and it is unknown and may be only estimated until the next transaction.
Attend an auction where many identical items are sold, their value changes during the auction as each item transacts under the block.
This is how stock markets work. There is bid and ask until they both meet for an instant.
The value of a beer changes depending on how many have been drunk and how full one is.
Wealth may have a positive, null or negative value. We might have to pay to get something taken to the dump. Sometimes a horse may be worth a whole kingdom.
Money is another thing.
Show me a money. You may show me many things that are used as money, you cannot find any thing that is a money.
In the past salt, gold, silver, bronze, tobacco, fish, cattle, grain, in fact all things in heaven or earth have been used as money. Cigarettes or smoked herring are used in jails.
Money is the process not the item.
I had a difficult time getting my head around this, I am always told that paper currency is money and when asked for money my currency will satisfy the bill. It is a convienient form of money.
The common usage of the word money is what is causing the confusion. It is the same as trade names for products where you ask for kleenex rather than a tissue. Money seems on the surface to be a third party to a transaction, the lubrication for the transaction. We use paper or debit money as the counterparty of the transaction.
There is more than one transaction happening when we use currencies.
If you carefully look at it, money is not a medium used to facillitate barter. It is not a third party to the transaction! Money, not currency, is ALWAYS the counterparty in a transaction!
When I get paid wages I transact my “time, effort and intellectual wealth” (money) for some currency (the objet of interest).
I use that “currency wealth” (money) to purchase a car (the object of interest).
See two transactions! Currency may be the object of interest or the counterparty, depending on the transaction taking place.
Confusing currency for money is very easy to do and is a universal belief. It is also not true.
The Pompous Git says: @ur momisugly December 30, 2013 at 10:39 am
….. A very great deal of politics in our Western civilisation consists in maintaining the illusion of private ownership.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I would add to that and disguising the fact we are free ranging chattel. All Agenda 21 wants to do is round us up and put us into enclosures the better to manage us and extract as much wealth as possible.