What a peculiar argument.
We have to empty the bucket, so future generations can empty the bucket, so their future generations can empty the bucket...
I think I see a flaw in this logic.

Well said Greg. I emphatically agree that the Australian mining industry has a strong future, not just in the extraction of minerals, but also in the further development of the world leading position in mining services that our industry has supported. Notwithstanding, however, the industry is cyclical, and it does make sense to diversify our economy, generate strong new businesses (like Cochlear and CSL) that provide jobs, growth, tax revenues etc.

Unfortunately, we have a government that has no idea how to do that. For example, just the other day Ms Gillard said in her speech to the UN: “Australia’s economy today is less reliant on our natural resources and our mining boom than you might believe,” her speech announced. “In the next four years, we expect three times as many new jobs to be created in healthcare, social assistance, education and training as will be created in mining.”

What she, and Christine Milne, clearly fail to understand is that new jobs are created by entrepreneurs building new businesses. Not by putting more folk on the public payroll.

Luke Johnson in the FT had a useful comment the other day: "What can be done to create more entrepreneurs – and hence more jobs. We all know this is the way for the private sector to revive, generate taxes to pay down debt, and get our economies growing again. The answers to these challenges are straightforward and well known. We need less red tape stifling business, more early-stage funding, and more mentors. Above all, more people need to start a business. That is really it."

The fact is that too few of our politicians, even on the Coalition side, have ever established and run a business, and so have no idea what it takes, and what policies are needed

Greg you have missed two minor points, firstly you need cheap energy to undertake exploration, development, extraction and transport to markets, we no longer have this option.

Secondly you need lots of capital (usually as credit/debt).

I think that the world has been using growing credit to backstop a lack of real productive growth in the western world for longer than 25 years. We've used up our time badly.

A credit expansion inevitably unwinds, there are ominous signs the expansion is over. This is an analysis of the facts. Things are unstable. Things have been unstable for a while now and are globally getting worse.

The fact that a "deflationary crisis" happened in 2008 was our wake up call. It was deflationary because money froze and became illiquid in the system. Something was and is now broken. It's not been fixed.

We have not been productive (i.e., earning our keep in terms of real wealth creation) for decades.

As far as fixing the global economy goes, it won't work. More and more QE has less and less impact on the economy, we're living beyond our means. That's what has given us the crisis. And it's getting worse. This is deflationary.

Given how much credit has already been created to date, and we're in even more trouble anyway, it is less than likely, more like impossible, for wanton credit creation to last much longer.

How much longer will the voters, not to mention the stock and bond markets, believe it? I don't believe any economy can continue to create unfounded credit.

Risk is terribly pervasive right now, and it's bigger than we've seen it in our lifetimes. Do with that what you will.

The latest evidence that risk is pervasive? QE3 and ECB and BoJ printing money.

These facts are based on data you and I can find if you care to look hard enough, it should be a sign to you that your entire assumption is based on fantasy rather than reality, stop worrying about digging up more dirt for a market that won't be there anyway.

Leaving aside Grim's rather odd argument, statements by enator Milne noted by the author show that despite decades of policy failure, some politicians - notably the greens - simply cannot bring themselves to learn.

Sure it would be good if Australia had a more diverse economy. We could really use more manufacturing, but despite decades of subsidies and tax breaks and blather about improving educational standards and on and on it isn't happening - why not?

The answer is that Australia has the so called dutch disease.. we have plenty of resources and developing those crowds out development of a proper manufacturing base.

If anyone can suggest sensible policies which will counteract this disease - policies which no-one else has been able to identify let alone put into effect - then they should share it with us.

Meanwhile hardly anyone amongst the people who make the decisions that will affect Earthkind altogether have any kind of vision, let alone the conceptual tools, of/for the long term future beyond our present-time generation. Everything is done on a short term basis.

This site The Long Now Foundation provides a more comprehensive vision

http://longnow.org

What should be happening before ANY of our minerals are sold over seas is that Australians "enjoy" the maximum benefit possible, that is NOT happening, and the obscene increases in electricity and gas charges reflect this, partly because CEO's are gaining ridiculous salaries that can not be justified and also the lust for "experimental" power sources by the "gang-greens" whose paranoid ranting's would have you believe that the world will come to an end unless we obey their every order.
We should be enjoying reduced power charges as the coal and gas is ours in the first place, after we have received a fair and just quota then the remaining product can be sold.