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The Forum > Article Comments > Who pays the piper? > Comments

Who pays the piper? : Comments

By Peter McCloy, published 21/6/2011

Australians are about to find that fantasy and self-delusion can only forestall the bills so long.

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Country Gal, it works in a similar way at the other end too.

Some time in the 70s an acquaintance drifted into Gladstone looking for some highly paid work on the new power house being built at the time.

Being on the dole he had to report to the centrelink of the time, the Commonwealth Employment Service in town.

There was a shortage of labour in town at that time & he found himself sent to work for the local council immediately.

I got a letter from him a couple of weeks later, complaining most indignantly, after he found his first fortnights pay, after tax, was only about $75 more than the dole. He reckoned he was worth more than a dollar an hour.

Evidently he considered the dole was his by right, & only what he earned above that was pay.

I also remember some complaint in Maryborough when the greenies were manning the barricades for some obscure reason on Fraser Island. Many in the town were very critical when the dole office, [what ever it was called] sent staff to the island to process the greenies for their dole payments. Apparently they couldn't be expected to travel to the office in Maryborough once a fortnight like ordinary people, & interfere with their protest.

Some wondered how they were complying with the work search part of their dole requirements, but that's different for no hopers I guess.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 11:27:07 PM
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There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TA NSTAAFL)

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch? Is there another word in here?

Just a minor detail that interests me. What is the correct match?

The article does make one think. And I do agree TANSTAAFL.
Posted by Sandpiper, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 11:12:59 AM
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If we followed Lego's "logic" to its inevitable conclusion we would have to abolish all traces of the culture of liberal humanism in both its religious and secular forms.

Indeed all expressions of high culture altogether.

All of the Sacred Texts of humankind and thus every form and trace of religion. The inspiration for which did not come from the ordinary street-level every-person.

All of its great visual art, music, poetry, and literature. All of its philosophy and theology (none of which was produced and created by the ordinary man or woman on the street struggling for survival).

All of the humanities departments in universities - sociology, history, philosophy, psychology, religious and theological studies, sociology, literature, art and art history, etc etc.

This is of course exactly what Pol Pot tried to do in Cambodia. And of course advocates and practitioners of any of the forms of high culture, or people who criticize the way-things-appear-to-be in their various times and places, are the first to be eliminated (as enemies of the "people) when the salt-of-the-earth "realists" take over. Or when "religious" fundamentalists pretend that they are trying to return their culture to its roots, by eliminating "decadent" modernist elements.

Having abolished all traces of high humanist and humanizing culture, what would we have left.

The Hobbesian war of all against all.

Adam Smith of course was primarily a moral philosopher.
Posted by Ho Hum, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 12:54:11 PM
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Lego, everybody is dissatisfied or frustrated and thus wishes that things could be different - such is the nature of the human condition.

Everyone who becomes a politician wants to change the world, according their own understanding and vision.

Every piece of legislation and large scale initiative always produces unintended consequences. A recent example was in the invasion of Iraq by the coalition of the killing, the consequences of which are described at: http://erasingiraq.com

John Howard was of course awarded the "freedom medal" by the village idiot from Texas for services to the coalition of the killing.

It is almost impossible for any politician to make the world a better place, especially in 2011.

Did George Bush or John Howard make the world a better place? See Erasing Iraq.

Ronald Reagan is much admired by those on the right side of the culture wars. But was the nature of his legacy? This reference gives a profoundly different understanding to the usual hagiography.
http://www.psychohistory.com/reagan/rcontent.htm

Of course a similar profile could be made of every president, prime minister and leader, past and present.

Re delusions of grandeur and the lust for power, what about Newt Gingrich who recently made noises about wanting to be the Prez.

Remember The Contract With America which was a manifesto for restructuring EVERY aspect of USA politics and culture. It was compulsory reading for all freshmen GOP politicians at the time, and widely promoted by the right-wing STINK tanks who supported him. It turned out to be an inevitable HUBRISTIC disaster.

And yet according to Lego the vision that inspired the former Democrat senator here in the land of OZ was completely beyond the pale.
Posted by Ho Hum, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 5:15:07 PM
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ho hum

you show very very little understanding of the nature of the US and it's citizemns. Few of them share your idealistic socialistic world.

Go there and see ... with an open mind.

And it was Jimmey Carter who introduced and promoted the Community Reinvestment Act.

What's the Community Reinvestment Act you ask? Oh it was the insignificant little piece of Congressional legislation that allowed dopey Barney and co along with Clinton to force the US banks to lend to poor people and minorities to buy property they could not afford to financially maintain let alone repay the original debt. (Try buying property in the US... it's easzy but the local community monthly taxes that pay the schools teachers, hospitals staffs, local councils and police departments are horrendous). The same idiotic bunch then enabled Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac to bundle those unrepayable mortgages and sell them as securities. Once property started to fall instead of rise well the collapse was unstoppa ble ... and is ongoing even now.
I researched the collapse and that was the cause.
Posted by imajulianutter, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 6:03:36 PM
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Careful, Hohum, your elitist slip is showing.

I lived through a time when the educated and supposedly intelligent university Artz grad caste were all out waving Red flags and singing the “Intenationale.” The most incredible aspect about this stupidity, was that many of them are still crying over the total collapse of Socialism, and they still want to turn back the clock. This is because they still think that planned economies run by unelected central committee tyrants and ideologues is better than free societies with a free market.

One definition of insanity, is to persist in making the same mistake, over and over again.

Just one more five year plan would have done the trick, comrade, and we would all now be living in the workers paradise.

Hitler was an artist, and Pol Pot was one of yours also. Pol Pot was a university student from the Sorbonne who’s head was filled with anti western and anti capitalist propaganda from the educated people the “humanities departments” of French universities, who should have known better. What he did to his own people is an indictment of your mindset, and your socialist ideals, not mine.

Oh, and you will be happy to know that I agree with you about Iraq. I do not think that saving the Iraqis from themselves is worth the cost of a single western soldier. Muslims have always been our enemies, and they always will be, because their stupid, backward, aggressive, and misogynist religion demands it. So it is better that they do not adopt democracy. I want them to keep living under military and religious tyrants, because I want them to keep stuffing everything up.
Posted by LEGO, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 9:36:13 PM
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