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 > 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.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All
Very good article, Peter McLoy.

I am constantly amazed by the naivity of the tree hugging, western self loathers who seem to think that prosperity is a human right and that money in Australia simply grows on trees. They think that Australians have a responsibility to finance failed societies, and helping anyone who wishes to barge into Austraia, while never realising how tenous prosperity can be.

Whatever windfall profits Australia is reaping from its mining boom must be invested in worthy projects for the future, because like Arab oil, our resouces are finite. Just like the Arabs, who do nothing with their wealth except try to make atom bombs and build mosques, we will also revert to very real poverty and irrelevance unless we get it right now.
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 8:29:54 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
Some good points - but.
Lego, it is not the "tree-huggers" who are trashing the planet.

And what is a "self-loather"?

That phrase is a now classic example of vacuous right-wing polemics which is used to demonise anyone who questions the seemingly unstoppable momentum of the current system - the military-industrial-"entertainment" complex.

This stark image describes the imperative that drives the current system. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel14.html

Jimmy Carter did not provide the catalyst for the current catastrophe. Ronald Reagan did. Indeed I would argue that he was the only President who even dared to question the not negotiable (George Schulz)USA way of life. Remember too that George Bush exhorted everyone to keep shopping as a response to Sept 11.

Re Ronald Reagan why not check out The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America.
Remember the Savings & Loan scandal? That was just a precursor to the recent and ongoing Global Financial Crisis.
Never mind too that casino Capitalism now rules the world. Which is to say that very little of "money" etc that now changes hands in the stock exchanges of the world is used to create tangible BUILT wealth,even in the form of infra-structure.

Speaking of welfare, there was a huge increase "social-welfare" spending for both the middle-class and the already well off during the Howard years. And to the degree that people on $150.000 per year presume that they are entitled to government support. And they loudly whinge if anyone dares suggest that they lose their "entitlements".
They even get support for their whinging from "conservative" columnists.

But everybody knows that the current system of endlessly trashing the natural world is unsustainable. Here in the land of Oz Geoff Davies via his book Economia explains in masterful fashion why. Plus world-wide there are also hundreds of other books, magazines and essays which explain why.
Posted by Ho Hum, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 11:03:28 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
Part 2.

This essay from by favorite "tee-hugger" magazine by the ever marvellous Wendell Berry gives an excellent overview of the absurdities of the current system - it was written in response to Sept 11.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/299

Plus why not check out the new book DREAMS by Derrick Jensen, and his previous book The Culture of Make Believe. Jensen is also regularly featured in Orion Magazine.
Posted by Ho Hum, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 11:13:12 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
Ho Hum.

Me Thinks you confuse Trashing of the World with the authors Article which discusses ...

" In Australia 40 years ago, it was time for Gough Whitlam. He initiated a massive change in the way our government spends its income – spending on infrastructure was replaced by spending on social benefits – from about 80% / 20% to 20% / 80%"

Tell me how the massive change in the direction of Government Spending over the past 40 years and how the real cost of this is now appearing relates to your Statement of the 'Trashing the World "
Posted by Aspley, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 11:23:01 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
Peter,

You are so right!

I'm the generation after the boomers, it's the forfgotten generation. It's the generation that is going to miss out on all those extravagances of the boomers ... just.

I saw my generation reject much of Whitlam and Fraser. We elected Hawke and were sadly duped when he and Keating rolled back many of the safeguards put in placed by Chifely and you builders.

We are all starting to see this x and y gen pay for that with the falling home affordability.

Sadly you and I won't see any great change in the way Australia is mismanaged and I think you oike me and many of my generation are insulating ourselves from the coming ravages.

My youngsters gen Xers are extremely well educated both academically, socially and have an abundance of parental instilled common sense. They are heading away from Australia... as I start to roam the world in my self-sustaining and environmentally savvy yacht.

Cheer
Posted by imajulianutter, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 12:31:11 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
Great article Peter, but it is hard to get home truths across to those who don't want to see. I am heartily sick of all those who want me to pay for their perceived sins.

Imajulianutter I don't know where your kids think they are going to find sanctuary, I think here will be better than most places. Perhaps they should stay here & help repel boarders, rather than join the heard of the lost.

I'm not sure there are many environmentally friendly yachts mate. Most of them require sails, rope, epoxy & polyester from oil, steel, [or stainless], brass & aluminum from mining & smelting, & much other stuff from an industrial society. They need fuel for cooking, engines & out board motors for the dingy. Not many get far on wind power alone. And don't kid yourself that wind will power your lights. Like solar, it only works until you get 100 miles from a service man.

Now if you can be that service man, for other yachties, & any isolated communities you visit, things are much better.

Continued.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 3:38:35 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
Julienut, I was cruising almost 40 years ago, & even then a yachtie was no novelty. Most locals anywhere had no interest in you, unless you had something to offer, that they lacked. Of course there were not as many pirates then as now. They will be interested for sure.

Pick up some useful skills before you go, if you don't have them now. If you can fix a tractor, a diesel generator, or a two way radio, you will find a welcome. Island communities can be very accommodating if you come across the right way, & they probably need more help now than back then.

I flew around some of my old stamping grounds, by Google Earth the other day. Many of the plantations I knew are going back to scrub, & at least a dozen airstrips have disappeared.

Some of the jetties I built are now tens of meters inland, as atoll islands migrate. I'd say European plantation owners have gone, & the maintenance of many things has just stopped.

Anyhow, have fun with that boat, just keep it off the coral. But do remember that after spending a night or 2 in 500 pretty little anchorages, anchorage number 501 doesn't do all that much for you, no matter how pretty. Keep a line of retreat back home open, you'll probably want it one day.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 4:02:56 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
Thanks for the advice.

Since I started sailing I've re-rigged, standing and running, replaced and rebuilt a 20hp diesel motor, upgraded all electric's and electronics, including enlarging the house battery bank, replaced the eutectic, installed a wind vane (not a prop), installing solar panels (roll out, latest flexible from the US) among a miriad of other things. (My tender has oars.) I did most all of this from manuels with not much great expert help.
I've read meterology, studied tides and seas, read sailors bio's and auto bios, (From Cook to Chichester), learned navigation from coastal to celestial including electronic, understand safety and have a better than average knowledege of likely medical emergencies, with the Captains Med Guide at hand. I simply figured being competent at all things when at sea is essential. I think it was once called seamanship.

I am quite able, it was what I've learned over the years ... through necessity.

Yes of course some things have contributed to degradation to the environment. But the point I tried go make was I think, my 'fooptprint' is far smaller than if I was ensconced in a typical land abode.

I wake every morning to a glorious mooring. Have done for three years. No I wont tire of it, it is so precious.

And the best advice I ever receoived was from the fellow who surveyed my boat when he discovered I was sailing solo from Newcastle to Brisbane, after never having set foot on a small boat before.

"If in doubt, headout. For it's not the sea that will get you but it's the hard bits in it that will."

The US is where my youngsters are thriving.
Posted by imajulianutter, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 4:53:37 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
Dear Hohum.

Demographers usually categorize western communities in terms of the ABCD&E demographics. But there is one other demographic, who demographers call “world savers”. These are the western self loathers who despise the country and the culture they choose to live in.

These people are interesting specimens, and can come from any of the BCD&E demographics (the A demographics are too smart). What defines them is not social status or wealth, but attitudes. They have a compulsive need to think that they are smarter and morally superior to the rest of society. They champion Socialist causes and champion egalitarianism, which is ironic to say the least, as they are the biggest snobs in our community.

All of them think that they are oh, so ferking clever, and they usually present their opinions in terms of thundering self righteousness, as if their opinions are the epitome of intellectual and ethical enlightenment. My favorite trendy was the always outraged Senator Stott Despoya. They can be relied upon to formulate the slogans and man the barricades for every left wing cause whatsoever., adopting fashionable opinions as if from a clothing catalogue.

They tend to think entirely in terms of moral absolutes, with their evangelical devotions to Human Rights their particular substitute for puritanical infallible religious orthodoxy.

The western self loathers are desperate to display their social superiority to the Great Unwashed, a class they claim to lead but whom they completely despise. They also need to display their moral superiority to the bourgeoisie (who are usually their long suffering parents), by adopting causes guaranteed to get up the noses of the middle class.

Their attitudes could best be described as social climbing superiority mixed with Socialist egalitarianism. Card carrying members of this new class express customary hatred for the US, Israel, and western consumer society, while sucking up to terrorists like David Hicks.
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 6:01:32 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
JFK also warned us about the Military Industrial Complex and the need to take heed of the powerful secret societies who control them.JFK before his death had in process the printing of a new US currency issued by Congress as permitted by the Constitution.

In 1913 Pres Woodrow Wilson sold out the US public by giving to a private group of banks the power to create from nothing money to equal their increases in GDP and inflation.The following yr the income tax bill was instigated to tax the people to pay for debt to private central banks.Pres Woodrow Wilson was latter to lament his decision and we are all paying the price more so than ever.

The basic question is;who should own our increases in productivity,a private group of banks or the Govt which represents the people?
Posted by Arjay, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 7:27:49 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
What is interesting to me about all this is - who pays?

A few days ago, Andrew Bolt ran a post that showed (IIRC) that 3% of the population pay 31% of the taxes, and that 60% pay only 10%. Yet we all have the same vote.

To this aged scribe, that means that 60% of the population (who are not paying for it all) are deciding how the proceeds from those of us who are paying are spent.

What we have here is a disconnect between those who are demanding (enforcement of their "entitlements") and those who are paying.

It is a very easy thing to do to vote in such a way that somebody else (certainly not me) gets to pay for the issues that I am concerned about.

Just saying.
Posted by Herbert Stencil, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 8:32:30 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
Herbert, those statistics are from an official release from the tax office. Out of curiosity I did a little "back of the envelope" sums off the same set of statistics to work out if a rise in the tax rate for those that earned more than $180,000 per year (the top tax rate) would be able to cover the cost of raising the tax-free threshold to $30,000. Effectively, it worked out that the top earners (and from memory there was only about 180,000-odd of these people in Australia) would have to pay at about 90% tax to fund such as cut.

One of my gripes is with how the combination of tax rates and welfare impact on the effective tax rate. I would have far more incentive to work harder and earn more if I didnt get any benefits for my children. As it is though, my effective tax rate is 70% when all tax and benefits are combined - I am happy to plod along (actually I work my butt off, but I was taught by my "builder" father that you should always work as hard as you possibly can), but I dont want to earn any more. I am better off to invest my tme in not spending anymore (baking for the kids instead of buying them lunches at school, growing own vegies, paying off the mortgage rather than going on holiday) - for efforts there I get a 100% return.

It really is high time to overhaul the system so that we provide the right balance of assistance, with incentive to work harder. Government is just too inclined to pander to interest groups, rather than leading for the betterment of the country (actually to be honest I am not sure that they are capable, no matter what persuasion).
Posted by Country Gal, Tuesday, 21 June 2011 10:11:35 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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. 2
  4. 3
  5. All

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