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The Forum > Article Comments > It's time for a Boomer Party > Comments

It's time for a Boomer Party : Comments

By Malcolm King, published 30/4/2014

It's time for a Boomer political party. Not to look back in wistful nostalgia to days of flaired pants and campus sit-ins, but a new party that fights for intergenerational equity.

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So you do realise Malcolm that "a real fight for a prosperous and secure future for our (your) children and grandchildren" is completely dependent upon a reduction in population to a SUSTAINABLE level.
Don`t you?
Posted by ateday, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 9:37:07 AM
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We don't need a boomers party, the boomer are in power now and will continue to hold the power until they died.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 9:57:38 AM
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Well Malcolm, I thought we already had a boomer party, led by the biggest boomer of them all, Clive Palmer?
Your take on debt is also, very misleading, and just too narrow?
It's not govt debt per se, that's the problem, but quite huge and unsustainable private debt, and private sector foreign debt, which may be nearly as high as China's 4 trillion foreign exchange reserve?
Couple that to the fact that our economy is in self sustaining shrink mode, and we do have a problem, not solved by same old same old conventional economics, wet or dry.
That said, there are some thing that could be done to much more massively stimulate and grow the economy, without selling the family farm or the family silver!
Firstly, we should introduce a self terminating, govt guaranteed, thirty year bonds, and issue these in limited blocks when we want to crack on with this or that cash cow infrastructure roll out!
First cab off the rank must be rapid rail, and the system for carrying passengers must be the magnetron.
I'm almost certain the Chinese could build one for us, and for less than we'd pay the Japanese or the Europeans for their slower older models?
Our eastern seaboard is one of the busiest air corridors in the world, and a very fast train service that put you from one capital CBD to another in far less time than any current air service, without leaving the ground, would be a most welcome alternative.
There are other projects we need, like an inland shipping canal.
The rail system would all but pay for itself, as would a very rapid roll on roll off ferry service, connecting us to Asia, via Singapore.
That in time, would be connecting virtually all Australia, to Asia, via a proposed inland canal.
These sort of ventures could be undertaken by a govt, as least as visionary as the one that gave us one of the engineering wonders of the world, the Snowy mountains scheme.
Continued:
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 10:43:43 AM
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An inland canal, even as it was being rolled out, would open up the inland for quite vast new development.
Given natural advantages, in less time than it took we Australians, to build the snowy mountains scheme!
Every decade of delay, on any and or all infrastructure, simply doubles the eventual cost.
Had we rolled out a very rapid rail service in 1954, when the Japanese were building theirs, the cost to us could have been less than 10 billion!
I mean the Japanese, with one nearly as long as our eastern sea board, got their's built, for 5.4 billions?
What do you think they'd pay today, or how many times over, has their system paid for itself.
And how much did it contribute to the miraculous economic miracle, that took a war-torn bankrupt country, from the virtual economic grave, into the second largest economy in the world.
An economy, that followed extremists, and started to wind down when it adopted conventional wisdom and extreme dog eat dog individualistic capitalism, which replaced the hugely successful cooperation model that proceeded it!
And yes, there is a place for individualism inside a cooperating free market capitalist system, just as long as you're happy with more wealth than you can reasonably spend in a single lifetime.
I mean, one Lear jet at a time, you don't need a half dozen, one penthouse one holiday home, and well you get the picture.
Sure we need entrepreneurs, and their better ideas, much of which could be supported via local co-ops, and very low cost Govt loans.
Now, all these lovely things cost real money, and someone somewhere has to earn it! And we could, if we just cracked on and developed the hydrocarbon reserves to our immediate north! And just by emulating big oil and using expert contractors to do the job for us. We will need to reactivate our own oil and gas corporation, lest some air head accuses us of nationalizing our own energy supplies.
And given the problems besetting the Ukraine and the M.E., not before time!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 11:10:22 AM
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Footnote.
The austerity measures, as touted by the current govt has only one possible endpoint! i.e., a much smaller economy in real terms, and given their predilection, that smaller economic pie, will nonetheless, be divvied up, with even bigger portions for the better off, or their traditional support base?
It's almost as if they just didn't understand immutable cause and effect, and just what caused the great depression, or indeed, the Keynesian economic model that not only eventually rescued us from it but created an unprecedented period of prosperity into the bargain.
And given their air head, voodoo economics, the "conservatives" have successfully wound down that same prosperity, and indeed, created the same rust belt and tent cities that so marked the Great depression.
It's almost as if they simply refuse to understand that it's discretionary spending by the masses, and not the crumbs that trickle down, hopefully occasionally, from the rich man's table, that actually imparts the very economic growth, that makes the rich, rich!
We have corporations reporting yet again record profits, and yet we still see shrinking revenue!
Now we could simply change all that with just a bit of practical common sense, arguably the rarest commodity of all, but particularly, up and down the halls of self serving power!?
If we just had the testicular fortitude, and buck huge self interest, we simply junk the current tax act, in favor of unavoidable simplicity.
Or an expenditure tax, that everyone paid.
The poorest paying the lest.
And given everybody including massive tax avoiding Google and Apple, paid just 5% or thereabouts, we'd increase internal revenue, by as much as 100 billion per.
The additional resources/new huge surpluses, could be used to roll out myriad small income earning thorium reactors, right adjacent to dozens of brand new industrial estates, we'd find ourselves almost overwhelmed by high tech companies wishing to relocate here, but particularly, if they' could find Australia partners willing to risk 51% of the capital.
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 12:13:51 PM
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Additional footnote:
Why would high tech companies and millions of self funded retirees queue to relocate to these sunny shores?
Well after the superior lifestyle, they'd gain the lowest tax liability, that actually gave back the biggest bang for the buck, because we would have vastly simplified our system; and just by just doing so, removed any need for costly compliance; and all the middleman profit takers, as well as their endless duplication!
Couple that to the lowest energy costs in the world, courtesy of cheaper than coal, carbon free thorium, [which we have enough of to power the world for 700 years,] then they would queue to relocate here, no two ways about it!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 12:28:23 PM
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