Things will be different now that Blue Team Leader One has his Blue Team in action... Australia is now open all hours, all business accepted clean or dirty. The blue team is now almost wall to wall in Australia, except Tas & SA and they too will get the blue rinse very soon..Then there is no excuse. Blue Leader one, do you read me. Good news . The price of petrol should start to fall now that the AU $ is rising against US$ .. But wait, will commodity prices stay low. Oil prices can surge again, can they? Blue leader WA on late line last night wants Tony to have a look at raising the GT so that the states don't have to cut state services in health and education...12.5% won't hurt anyone he says and the people will understand that it is better to have a higher GST than to cut services.. If Australia does go into a recession $$ will have to be cut from many areas including NDIS AND GONSKI. Lets hope that Panda keeps building fast track rail to keep our economy going so that we can build the roads of the 21st century. This is Tartan leader to, over. Regards Errol 43
In my opine things really are that bad. When I consider the measuring parameters that were used in the 1930's, and apply them to todays economic situation, we are in a worse situation today. Why the powers that be don't understand this is open to conjecture, however an option may be that it is deliberate - an economic/social reset if you will. Either way, economically, we are all in a fast truck heading towards a cliff. Now it must be stressed, that not all is doom and gloom, and opportunities are to be had and to protect oneself. So do not dwell on the negatives too much TheEnd, just be wise in your decisions etc.
In the late 1920s it was the shoe shine boy... and he was right. Do you think too many people sitting behind desks being paid absurd amounts of money for doing very little has nothing to do with it?
I see it first-hand. In my previous position we had one accountant who played solitaire (the card game) on his computer all day. He didn't even try to hide it. He earned $108,000 per annum. My previous manager attempted to look busy all day (no one knew exactly what he did apart from relaying messages directly from the CEO). He eared over $200,000 per annum. Anybody working in a large organization or a publicly listed company would have seen the absurd amount of wages wasted on unproductive individuals. IMO the Dilbert cartoon is very close to reality for many organizations.
Yeah there was one guy where i used to work back in 2000 he was making $100k. He was out of the office 70% of the time supposedly visiting "clients" in order to bring business in. I'll be buggered if any new business came in after 6 months. He did drive around in a BMW and would flash his Breitling watch at everyone He at least got the sack after 4 years of doing jack and pocketing 100 grand pa.
Actually, whilst there's been quite a few changes to the official rate, it isn't quite as bad as once a month... I went back 4 years: 7 Aug 2013 - rate down by 0.25% to 2.50% 8 May 2013 - rate down by 0.25% to 2.75% 5 Dec 2012 - rate down by 0.25% to 3.00% 3 Oct 2012 - rate down by 0.25% to 3.25% 6 Jun 2012 - rate down by 0.25% to 3.50% 2 May 2012 - rate down by 0.50% to 3.75% 7 Dec 2011 - rate down by 0.25% to 4.25% 2 Nov 2011 - rate down by 0.25% to 4.50% 3 Nov 2010 - rate up by 0.25% to 4.75% 5 May 2010 - rate up by 0.25% to 4.50% 7 Apr 2010 - rate up by 0.25% to 4.25% 3 Mar 2010 - rate up by 0.25% to 4.00% 2 Dec 2009 - rate up by 0.25% to 3.75% 4 Nov 2009 - rate up by 0.25% to 3.50% 7 Oct 2009 - rate up by 0.25% to 3.25% Whilst it might not be all roses and sunshine, I think (and this is me being pragmatic, and isn't directed at anyone!)... people today have 2 choices... be an ostritch, stick your head in the sand, do the Axel Foley "Lalalala I can't hear anything" and pray this will all go away... or be alert, be informed, stay on top of what's happening, get prepared (if not already), make wise choices to protect your wealth and loved ones. I know which position I'd rather be in (and hint: it's not hanging around near a sand pit with my @$$ in the air waiting to get whacked up the bum).
I read it but I dont like it. I dont believe it will be all peaches and cream with him as the leasder. With all the states lberal as well it will be easier for him to make drastic (negative?) changes as well australia wide. We should be worried about what Abbot will do to this country. THere is allready talk about raising the GST 2 weeks after the election.
This has been on the political radar since the previous government initiated the Henry Review in 2008, with both sides of politics recognising the need to move toward more broad based taxation as opposed to the system we have, interestingly in 2008 Wayne Swan managed to avoid this issue being examined in the Henry Review by excluding it from it's terms of reference and stating: It is widely acknowledged that an increase in the GST with a subsequent reduction in company and personal taxation is the only way forward. Also note that Swan wanted to preserve the tax-free benefits of super for those over 60 - we all know that has changed.
That stupid "western stater" has NO hope! He should find a copy of 'Basic Housekeeping for Dummies'. The ALP has a room full, all unread. OC
I hope they do raise the GST as labor will be back in a huge back lash against them the likes of which would dwarf the arse reaming they got over work choices.
Not necessarily. The introduction of the GST did not see the removal of the incumbent government at the next election - and that was effectively a 10% "increase" in the GST. I realise you'd like to think that a single move like an increase in the GST would somehow cause a change of government in nearly 4 years, but I would find it a surprising outcome to say the least.
They took the GST to an election as a core policy and won they had a mandate to bring it in then IF abbot raises it now after saying severaltimes over and over that it is not going to happen it will be the carbon tax all over again. He would be headded to election wipeout just like labor just had. Even after 4 years if they break a huge promise and then increase taxes ontop of that they would be gone.
There are plenty of other "ways forward" that don't involve simply bumping up a regressive tax that will have a greater effect on those who can least afford to pay it than anyone else. We could start with the cost to the community of subsidizing loss-making investments in residential real estate for a start. That's worth about $5-$6 billion in tax revenue. Or we could look at the fact that you can have a pretty sweet home worth $10 million plus another a quarter of a million bucks in other assets and still get a part pension, courtesy of the taxpayer. We could find another couple of billion by processing asylum seekers in Tasmania rather than going with possibly the most expensive option possible of doing it on remote desert islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and we could stop handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign-owned car makers which we all know will never manufacture cars profitably in Australia unless the "profits" come in the form of a cheque from the taxpayer. We could even think about maybe not sending tens of billions of dollars overseas to pay for the oil we "need" to drive those cars which could otherwise be powered by electricity which, it turns out, we can generate locally in spades on account of the massive amounts of vacant land, sunlight, wind and flowing water we have on and around this ginormous continent. Of course doing something like that would mean making investments in renewable energy, but why would we want to do something sensible for the long term like taxing carbon emissions (which increases CPI by 0.7%) when we can just whack a bit on the GST? That only increased CPI by 2.5% when it was introduced, so a linear increase to 12.5% would have a corresponding effect on CPI of about 0.65%...which is roughly equivalent the the carbon tax, except we don't have to go through the hassle of "innovating" or "developing" or "being more productive" or otherwise changing anything that we're doing now. Mate, this is Australia. Why have a good tax system when we can just take the easy option and jack up the rate?
"We could find another couple of billion by processing asylum seekers in Tasmania" or how about Sydney
