The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Nostradamus he ain’t > Comments

Nostradamus he ain’t : Comments

By Matt Meir, published 13/4/2007

John Howard's rhetoric that the 'greatest gift of a strong economy is a job', no matter how poor the conditions, is Dickensian.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. All
The statistics that are usually bandied about are -

The average income is about $60,000
The mean income is about $38,000
The median income of all Australian adults is $26,000
The top quintile of incomes start at about $80,000

As you know mean and average mean the same thing. So I think the median income of wage and salary earners is $38,000.
Posted by billie, Friday, 13 April 2007 6:35:23 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Keith, will you put your daughter on an AWA when she comes to work for you in the face of deteriorating pay and condtions, especially in the unskilled sector? Not everybody's daddy has business that they can go and work for when times get tough.

Mate, the service station down the road from me sacked it's entire workforce and replaced them with junior workers on god only knows what kind of terms. One of the sacked workers held up her certificate for employee of the month that she had recently recieved.

Guess the boss was only paying lip service eh?

This is only the tip of the iceberg, the longer these obscene laws exist, the worse it will get, intitally in the already low-income sectors, but spreading to most other places in the event of an economic slow up.

Don't tell me Howard has Aussie workers best interests at heart, because I am seeing the opposite with my own eyes.
Posted by Fozz, Friday, 13 April 2007 7:09:55 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Ah Keith, as a student of history you obviously need to be reminded of the 22% interest rates under Malcom Fraser in the early 1980s. I don't have too much trouble remembering, as my wife's family lost the family farm when they couldn't afford to pay the interest on the overdraft. Funnily enough, the incompetent idiot who was Federal Treasurer from 1977 to 1983 is still in Parliament. His name? Yes, that's right. JOHN WINSTON HOWARD.

Incidentally, Paul Keating is no longer in Parliament, but "Honest John" still is.

Happy sailing!
Posted by Johnj, Friday, 13 April 2007 7:22:17 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Let's look at some hard nosed realities here.We either stop tarrif reductions and don't have cheap imports or absorb new technologies.The latter means we become an isolationalists state that does not want to compete on a global stage.This means poor quality goods and services as happened in the old USSR.

Our balance of payments deficit implies that we are not paying our way in terms of producing goods and services at competitive prices.Japan and Korea produces far superior motor vehicles at competitive prices than Aust or the US.

There is a "real fork in the road" that Labor fails to confront.We either become more competitive and pay for cheap imports upon which we ride upon the sweat and low wages of countries like China,or we become isolationists and wallow in ignorance with it's resultant poverty.

The real downside for the unskilled/uneducated in our western countries is that the likes of China and India have great masses of poor people that will keep world living standards low,since there is not enough energy or resources on the planet to support all people in the state of our present economic prowess.China and India will have great masses of cheap labour to draw upon for many decades to come and we will suffer more pain as a result.

When too many people fight over diminishing resources and energy,hardship does increase.

The "Bridge too far" does become a "fork in the road" that Kevin's perceptions,does not have the courage or honesty to confront.
Posted by Arjay, Friday, 13 April 2007 9:04:23 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Like it or not on election night conservative Australia will begine the debate on why they lost after such a huge mandate.
It will not be workchoices alone that can take the blame, it however was never part of Howard's mandate.
It however proves that we miss judged the man, even his enemy's said he was in touch with the Australian people, clearly he never was.
His greatest help came from poor leadership and direction in my party the ALP.
We now have both and conservative Australia should review a very long list including climate change workchoices the impending total failure in Iraq and an aging gentle man who thinks lie is spelled plausible denial, and that he alone knows it is not true.
Conservatives may well remember a far different John Howard than the one they blindly follow today after his hand crafted train wreck of an election.
Posted by Belly, Saturday, 14 April 2007 7:09:40 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I have read and re-read Arjay's first paragraph, and cannot find the sense in it. The best sense I can make of it is to assume "former" was meant, rather than latter.

Even so, I'm wary of reducing the problem to an either-or proposition which is then used to justify further simplified analysis and pessimistic fatalism.

"Let's look at some hard nosed realities here.
We
either
stop tariff reductions and don't have cheap imports
or
absorb new technologies."

The latter means we become an isolationist state that does not want to compete on a global stage.

This means poor quality goods and services as happened in the old USSR."
Posted by Sir Vivor, Saturday, 14 April 2007 9:57:30 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy