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
The Australians may well be very trendy when it comes to CAGW however their treatment of the aboriginal population is an obscenity?
It always amuses me that the same people who say this sort of thing are often righteously apoplectic about sovereign risk in countries where governance is weak, the laws chaotic, the rule of law largely absent and the bureaucracy inefficient, ineffective and riddled with corruption. Such countries notoriously also have badly educated workforces prone to the sorts of disease absent in well-ordered countries. The infrastructure in such countries is absent or poorly maintained. Using the infrastructure by way of a car ride can be lethal. Ecosystem services in terms of clean water, clean air are often lacking. In the absence of effective regulation the food can be lethal. Managing currency risk in such countries can be a nightmare. Finally, in terms of law and order you might wake up one day and find that your mine workforce has been murdered and your mine taken over by a local warlord.
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Who knew Elizabeth Warren was an Aussie?!?!?!?
JUST STOP IMPLEMENTING UN AGENDA 21
“TomR,Worc,MA,USA says:
December 27, 2013 at 3:56 am
Who knew Elizabeth Warren was an Aussie?!?!?!?”
Was (Fundamentally) an import, just like all other non-aboriginal “Australians” (Place/rock of birth important or lineage?). Exactly like non-aboriginal “Americans”.
What will doom Australia is the genetic harm being done since the end of the White Australia policy. That cannot be undone, most anything else can be fixed.
well from personal view.
I could and would like to bake cakes/jams etc to sell at local markets
to do that I now have to PAY council to come and approve/inspect my home
the follow a pile of rules n regs designed for maximum annoyance and no real safety or use in the real world.
of course once councils on the property theyd be looking for other things to enforce compliance over, to add to revenue n control.
even to sell watermelon on the beach..an idea I had decades ago when it wasnt even as bad as now, involved such ridiculous demands for insurances /approval for every beach zone etc
I also didnt bother then ,as now..
entepreneurs are only welcome IF they do govvy course to employ govt seatwarmers n social security/outsourced job agencies etc- total waste of time and money limits us to approved and controlled again.
as for Aus dollar being high?
well if USA wasnt printing money to cover their ass n debt then maybe it would be better?
and as for small crappy imported cars..well maybe for climateace..but out on country roads with roos n emus I want and drive a V6 and would go V8 or heavier diesel if I could afford one.
pity aus govt doesnt reinstate a new version of Commonwealth BANK and the interest we pay goes back INTO! Australias development. ditch the fed reserve. private banksters.
as for rivers n land n animals..theyre fine, the green water releases are damaging riverbanks more than the natural dry n flow cycles.
do we really think NO animal or species ever died out unless man dun it?
phht!
and the no till, mega chemical mega machinery farming is NOT the boon its stated to be, old ways were better. hell this town had 2 dairies an abbatoir greengrocers 2 stores etc etc when the town had less big landowners and more people here who could find work! we have lost close to 500 families over the last 40 years, farmworkers with no work, etc etc.they leave shops etc close and down and down through the chain of supply and lesser demand.
Termiting is the best description of the process. There’s a Dutch article:
http://www.dw.de/briten-w%C3%A4hlen-zwischen-essen-und-heizen/a-17305118
that presents the results of the termiting of the UK – you can have food or heat but not both.
Energy is life; cheap energy is prosperity.
climateace again:
He “ignores” them because his article has nothing to do with the subject. And in any case, how come YOU never said a word about AIDS in Africa!!!??? This leads inevitably to the view that you do not give a rat’s about sick Africans.
The previous paragraph was just trying to wake up a stultified mind – other readers please ignore. Back to the point. You point us to a site listing 66 extinct fauna in over 200 years. I asked you to list 100 since 1901. And for very good reason. The background extinction rate on Earth since life began is about 3 extinctions per year. Modern humans have made it about 4 – i.e. 1 extinction per year due to human beings. (1) That’s not much of a mass extinction event. and (2) you haven’t shown the remotest reason why Viv Forbes has to answer anything about it. 1000 extinctions in a century plus, which I challenged you to find worldwide, would be 3 x the background rate, about the minimum you could call a mass extinction event. 100 in that time a rough guess of Australia’s contribution. And you can’t demonstrate it. The null hypothesis (no mass extincti0on event) stands unless YOU provide the evidence otherwise. Make your case. In trying you might learn something if your mind is not completely shut and welded solid.
Oh, and then you said:
You are a troll, I did argue the issues, unlike you. You are the one who came here insulting Viv Forbes with ranting nonsense about subjects he wasn’t writing about. Given what you clearly are and your own language quoted above, I couldn’t care less how rude I am to the likes of you. And these are all my own opinions, thank you, unlike yours which came direct from the alarmists’ mass production belief factory.
Looking at the various comments of “climateace”, they bear a striking resemblance to the dissembling of a Labor government stooge, or career bureaucrat protecting his turf by defending the indefensible actions of the last 6 years of federal and state Labor governments in spending like drunken sailors on shore leave. To highlight just how deceptive and disingenuous “climateace” is being about Australia’s low debt, a few facts courtesy of David Murray, former Commonwealth Bank Chief Executive and inaugural Chairman of Australian Government Future Fund Board about the true nature of Australia’s debt and its fiscal health, bearing in mind that we began in 2007 with between $20-40 billion dollars in Australian government surplus, and have since had unprecedented rises in receipts which should have left Australia in far better fiscal position than it currently entertains:
*” More than four million Australians currently living on some kind of welfare – age pension, disability pension, dole, student allowance. Then there’s also a surfeit of government handouts – baby bonus, school kids bonus, baby benefits,etc.
*Total Government expenditure in Australia is now some 36% of GDP, which is at least 6 percentage points too high.
*The Commonwealth’s expenditures on welfare-related items – health, education and welfare – in 40 years has gone from 20% to 58% of all outlays. And welfare is now $132 billion. So, what we have at the Commonwealth level now is a Budget that has all these fixed cost items, and though those remain fixed, irrespective of the fortunes of the economy on commodity prices, terms of trade, and all the things that will swing the revenues around. So, unfortunately, the task is to get those items down, and what money can be spent, be spent on more valuable things that promote investment.
*Defenders of the Government are saying that our current net debt is just 10% of GDP, compared to, say, 80% for the US, and UK. And we’re just one of seven countries with a AAA credit rating from all three big ratings agencies.
*Firstly, net debt is not the right number, because bondholders don’t have a right of set-off against the other Government assets. So the correct number is gross debt – which is about $300 billion, or 20% of GDP. But along with that, that debt, Australia has a structural current account deficit. Even in 21 years of growth, and the best terms of trade boom in 150 years, the Government has still not got an economy that has a substantial trade surplus, and does not have a current account deficit.
* Australia’s net foreign liabilities offshore are 57% of GDP, which is very high, and the private sector in Australia, unlike the UK or the United States, does not have net foreign assets.
*Australia has high fixed costs in the Commonwealth budget, there’s a structural budget deficit, a structural current account deficit, and for these reasons, the Australian federal Budget has to remain close to neutral through the cycle.
*The AAA credit rating. Well, the AAA credit rating fundamentally has been put at risk. If you examine the other countries that have AAA ratings, there’s one important measure in which Australia does not stack up – and that is the relationship between net external debt and current account receipts. And the rating agencies don’t take off all assets from gross debt, they only take out very highly liquid assets. Thus suggesting that our AAA credit rating is under threat. And if the AAA rating at the Commonwealth level goes, then the ratings of the states fall, the ratings of the banks fall, and the ratings in industry fall. ”
I think one can take the rest of what he says about species extinctions and dying river systems and loss of biodiversity with a similar grain of, dare I say it, skepticism.
climateace says:
December 27, 2013 at 2:18 am
“Finally, it has long been a matter of considerable angst for me that Australian plants specialized in huge, heavy, gas guzzling Australian tanks at a time when petrol prices are heading north and we need to move to decarbonise the economy.”
Why would you need to decarbonize the economy?
Now, I know this is the centerpiece of your religion, but the necessity to decarbonize rests one hundred percent on the believe that climate models can forecast the future.
Maybe you should look into that assumption a little closer. I take it you are not a mathematician or the likes. Let me tell you this: The climate modelers played you like a fiddle. Maybe you should ask them some questions.
Believing Six Impossible Things before Breakfast, and Climate Models.
climateace says:
December 27, 2013 at 2:18 am
“…at a time when petrol prices are heading north and we need to move to decarbonise the economy.”
…and the other thing you could say would be, even if climate science forecasts are wrong, we still need to decarbonize because petrol prices are heading north.
Hmmm…. But that’s a PRICE SIGNAL; and there is nothing more important than a price signal in a market economy. Do you really think you bureaucrats can transfrom an economy in a more efficient way than the economy reacts all by itself on that price signal? If you think you can, I have here a nearly good-as-new Great Leap Forward you might be interested in… comes with 70 million free coffins…
Eric Worrall says:
December 26, 2013 at 6:49 pm
Gail Combs, the social good that banks do is help individuals and companies manage risk.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not with Fractional Reserve Banking. That is propaganda to get the masses to agree to allowing the bankers and their buddies to rob them. What banks do is print fiat money. The value of that money is stolen from the last people to have access to that money. It was YOUR wealth that bought the assets for the companies but YOU get cut out of the deal except as the patsy who pays for it.
Another way to say that is the value of the money placed into the pockets of the elite comes from the inflation of the price of goods the poor and middle class must pay and the devaluation of their savings and wages. The dollar I earned and placed in savings in the 1960s could buy ten colas or ten candy bars or three gallons of gas. Today it does not even buy one.
This is the actual situation in the world as a result:
What happened three decades ago in the USA to account for the wealth that was transfered?
In a leveraged buyout the raider has the bank print up money and give it to him. The ‘collateral’ is the business he does not even own. Once the raider has control he often just sells the hard assets; the land, buildings and equipment taking the accumulated wealth and turning it into cash and then goes on to the next victim. This is how the USA lost many of her mid sized companies. I knew a guy whose business in Boston MA was packing up whole factories and shipping them overseas. The company I worked for, well run with no debt, was a victim. That company and those factories no longer exist here in the USA.
This is the result:
Do you understand what this paper is saying? There are 737 people/families who control the economy of the entire world!
Article relating to this paper:
An earlier work by the same physicists.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, This is what he has to say.
I vote for a redistribution of wealth from us to the elite using Fractional Reserve Banking.
well over half the comments are either written by climateace or reference him, so he has successfully achieved his aim of disrupting this article that someone took a great deal of time and trouble to write.
Why don’t we ask Climate Ace to write an article about whatever it is that bugs him and thereby leave articles such as this one to those that want to make useful comments?
tonyb
Until quite recently I had hoped that the cost of suffocating bureaucracy and handouts for all would be self-limiting as the economy would fail to generate the tax revenue to support it. Silly me. It is now clear we are borrowing from unborn generations without limit or scruple. Future taxpayers can’t restrain a present government. The competing parties are free to promise and to spend as lavishly as they wish, all to keep the Other Guys out of office. (Keeping the other guys out does seem to be the limit of their aspirations, at least in the UK.)
Owen in GA says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 7:16 pm ….
Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. My husband and I were just talking of that the other day.
On civilizations there is the Tytler theory:
It would be nice if we could beat the odds but I would put us at the last stages apathy ===> dependency ===> bondage.
Anthony is certainly doing his best to wake us up. Thanks Anthony.
Banksters are capitalists. Give them an opportunity, and they capitalize. “Laws” are what might limit their behaviors and expansion into fraud. But there must be a large population that cares about laws that limit — whether the power of owner/managers of large corporations or of governmental elites. Where is that large population to come from?
So much of the standard debate around “capitalism” is about pride of the builders/makers (yes deserved, and also often immense wealth to go along with the risk of capital and inventiveness) and envy from the workers (little wealth from the risk of one’s body/mind during a relatively short working life, therefore unions, etc.). Very few have worked on how to solve this conundrum of pride and envy.
In brief, let the prideful builders/makers try to retire on savings from a life of honest labor. Therefore, the workers turn to union bosses who become like government elites with bloated salaries and no creative input into any economic/financial process. Another layer of termites.
There is the tremendous fear of “democracy” from those of builder/maker abilities (this does take great intelligence and fortitude), but little imagination about how to expand (the possibility of)opportunity to all from their good effort. The “gambling spirit” is in most of us. Pride and joy from our achievements. The excitement of the win, and the possibilities before us as a result. Think of the banksters.
Those on the “conservative” side of the debate might have had great numbers following them into battle against the elitist big-government types (no risk/no creativity/no hard personal work) if they had a dog in the fight, too. Some percentage of that immense wealth of the builders/makers should have been the birthright of the workers. And, when you count it, that wealth had been obscene compared to the returns from the labor of those who ALSO made it possible.
There should be a common purpose of worker/builder/maker against the termites, who are evolving into fire ants. I see no love, no community of purpose, no willingness to bring the workers into the fold of “I built that”. Until that happens, democracy will bring wrong choices every time — government hand-outs permitting parasitic elites.
The Zero Aggression Principle is the minimum requirement for civilized society. No individual may initiate force against another, nor may an individual contract with a third party to initiate force against another.
In normal society, coercing someone to give you funds on the pretext of “protecting” them from some harm is called extortion. Claiming that Governments protect the individual (other than from external forces) is clearly fraudulent, as they only step in after a crime, or misdemeanor has been committed. This is not protection, it is at best, revenge.
Climateace is regurgitating all the old, tired saws about how Government protects us – even against totally imaginary threats, but first they need to extort some more money from us…
“wind-energy prayer wheels”
Nice.
‘No Emission’ Tax
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/27/as-city-cycling-grows-so-does-bike-tax-temptation/
Chicago is by no means the only place across the U.S. tempted to see bicyclists as a possible new source of revenue, only to run into questions of fairness and enforceability. That is testing the vision of city leaders who are transforming urban expanses with bike lanes and other amenities in a quest for relevance, vitality and livability — with never enough funds.
SAMURAI says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 7:44 pm
The world economy is being slowly being destroyed by statist governments’ EXCESSIVE: rules, regulation, mandates, greenmail, public sector union extortion, taxes, government debt and insane monetary policies necessary to feed the Leviathan and create economic bubbles.
The malinvestments, economic distortions, debt and economic inefficiencies created by statist governments will eventually cause one of the worst worldwide economic collapses in human history….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Unfortunately I am afraid that is the plan. Alexander Fraser Tytler published The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic in 1776. The Fabians became active more than a hundred years later. From my comment it is obvious there were men who were looking ahead with plans to shape the world as they saw fit. Carroll Quigley who documented the group was all in favor of them. (So was Clinton)
One of Milner’s groups operating in the USA was the Council on Foreign Relations another was the Committee on Economic Development. This well researched article shows how a goal was arrived at just after WWII, ridding the USA of independent farmers, and pursued through the present day culminating in the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009.
George Bernard Shaw was a founding member of the Fabians and gives us a glimpse of how these people think.
I would love to believe this was just the rantings of a mad man but unfortunately we see the same mindset in Obama’s Science Czar, John Holdren. From the books he co-authored:
From another article
Again it sounds like the ranting of mad men but if you bother to look you see it being implemented.
We are being told Apartments are the core of any sustainability strategy. They are more resource- and energy-efficient than other types of residential development because their concentrated infrastructure conserves materials and community services. California towns passes laws requiring new housing to be built at 20 or more to the acre, which is at least five times the traditional quarter acre per house. and cities are putting in Micro-mini’ 14 foot by 15 foot apartments that used to be too small to pass the old zoning laws.
Worse we find in the UK and the USA the collection of the DNA of newborns. You can then add in the fact the Supreme Court Upholds Warrantless Collection Of DNA from persons who are arrested. This is arrested not convicted. It has gone even farther Federal contractors set up roadblocks in over 60 U.S. cities to harvest DNA samples
Next you can add in the fact that the USDA gave Epicyte bio-lab in San Diego grant money to develop a ‘’contraceptive corn’
Are you starting to feel like cattle yet?
Chad Wozniak says:
“Observing all that has happened around the world these last few years, I have developed a very hard view of what needs to be done to prevent recurrences of the bad developments we’ve seen, not only in Australia and the US but in the EU and other advanced nations.”
VERY interesting list Chad, is that all your work or do you have a source/ multiple sources for that list. It frustrates me to continually whats people hand over their power/control to bureaucrats under the assumption that the Gov’t can do better when history has shown time and time again that it has not. It seems to me that lately only a few Scandinavian around the Baltic have nailed their governments to the wall as far as accountability goes. Recently an upcoming fiscally conservative party in Alberta jumped on the Climate Change band wagon to be more socially acceptable by the masses. Climate change is probably the most fiscally wasteful idea out there, bucket loads of money to fund bureaucratic jobs, that do absolutely nothing to the thing they claim to be changing, that is nothing more than natural weather fluctuations of a ever changing planet. Its perfect exsanguination of the blood that actually makes the world economy go. People fail to see that every dollar they let these vampires blood let kills them in lifestyle. We are not saving the world for our children as they sell it, we are ensuring our kids will be worse off and more owned than ever before.
Chad Wozniak says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 8:43 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..
Excellent list. I would add some sort of campaign funding laws.
All moneys go into a slush fund and divided equally between all candidates. Heavy fines/jail sentences for smearing candidates with untruths especial those that can not be proven either way (I am thinking of Herman Cain and those paid to smear him.)
Finally NO MONEY from foreign entities or persons.
Also get rid of the Corporate/Government revolving door. Once you serve in office or in the bureaucracy you are barred from working for corporations in that field.
Years ago a student of mine gave me a tape on which the speaker outlined a theory of history as being a cycle of four generations that ran in the sequence of entrepreneurs-> institution builders->people who undermine institutions in favor of goals like “fairness”->cynics/rebels and the process repeats. Forbes view is something similar. In fact one can find that each generation contains individuals from every group at any one time. One group or another may get the upper hand for a time, but not permanently–at least in the U.S. this seems true up to the present time.
Bill says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 9:24 pm
…All the issues I have seen on this site boil down to the exposure of different frauds, and the beautiful search through many slings and arrows for the truth.
The truth is that the financial systems of this planet are all frauds, made legal by fraudulant laws.
This is the reason for the failure of our economies.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Very well said. What is interesting is all the strings attaching many of these frauds to each other.
I originally thought that the problems in the USA were just from the accumulation of more and more laws over a period of 200 years. Then I started digging.
Cheap abundant energy is the only strategy that will advance society and civilization. Expensive energy meant to mold society into some desirable behavior will doom us to a luddite un-civil poverty stricken society.