Perciles,
My understanding of economics, is that $1 received from an export circulates through the economy about 4 times until it reaches par value of a dollar produced at the mint.

If true, then the trick of course, is to make the value of money stretch as far as possible by circulating it through the economy as much as possible, and not just fall into the hands of a few, or be earnt in Australia via exports, and then immediately sent out of the country to some multinational company via imports.

Yabby,
It does seem odd, that even though there has been globalisation, many countries are now on the brink of economic collapse. Globalisation was supposed to benefit all.

As for houses, about 1 in 4 houses in Australia now only has one person in it, a major economic, social and environmental catastrophe.

Now how did that happen?

As for women, apparently their levels of measured happiness have not increased in 50 years. But you must know how to make women happy, although very few others seem to know.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12474#215793

Yabby, why don't you try the old closet communist trick of selectively misquoting.

the quality of some goods has improved, some have gotten worse. perhaps the concept of choosing between the lesser of 2 evils is just too difficult or complicated for you.

between 1945 & 1965 we had "full employment", in other words as fast as families could produce the next generation & migrants could get off the boats our economy was producing jobs faster.

do you seriously suggest this is worse for workers than the great deppression we are about to fall into? bear in mind we have no "real" industry or jobs left other than quarrying? What happens when we are in "mining bust"?

As for the Melbourne industrial club being rich, what a joke, they "used" to have hundreds of times the income & assetts of the average worker? Now they have thousands of times the wealth they used to have thanks to you & yours?

next you will be telling me the unions did not fat in their feather beds behind the tarriff barriers either?

this may come as a complete surprise to you but many young women are rejecting radical feMANazism, are tired of being tax/wage slaves & want to get back in the kitchen/bedroom making babies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U4c7Ldua2o&feature=related Yabby you are a counter revolutionary, reactionary, enemy of the workers.

You really need to think this through a bit better, Yabby.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12474#215800

Yabby, you do have a short memory, feMANazism promoted retail therapy, unrealistic expectations for the specific purpose of creating self oppression.

Fathers try to create wealth & opportunities for their own children. Mothers try to create wealth & opportunities for Hardly Normal's children.

Au contraire, many Australian consumer products were good quality because there was plenty of competition among small & medium sized businesses behind the tariff barriers anyway.

You reaaly do have a short & convenient memory, Yabby.

Take the big box, emporium style stores like Myers, they had to compete with David Jones, Waltons, McWhirters, Finneys, Barry & Roberts, Enrights, Tritons, McDonald & Easts, etc.

Ummmm... what, vanna?

>>Perciles, My understanding of economics, is that $1 received from an export circulates through the economy about 4 times until it reaches par value of a dollar produced at the mint.<<

What does that mean, exactly?

No, forget exactly, what does it even vaguely mean?

How do an "export dollar" and a "minted dollar" have a different value to each other? And how does one of these change in value by "circulating" through the economy, while the other does not?

And this is also somewhat... opaque.

>>If true, then the trick of course, is to make the value of money stretch as far as possible by circulating it through the economy as much as possible, and not just fall into the hands of a few<<

How does the value of money "stretch"? And how can you tell that it is, in fact, "stretching? Or when it has "stretched" far enough, and can safely stop?

>>...or be earnt in Australia via exports, and then immediately sent out of the country to some multinational company via imports<<

Given that the "export dollar" is of a different value to the "minted dollar", why not simply use "minted dollars" to buy imports, and keep those "export dollars" whizzing around, stretching themselves like crazy?

Bizarre. Quite bizarre. Did you learn your economics from Arjay, by any chance?

*the quality of some goods has improved, some have gotten worse*

Well Formersnag, what is wrong with letting consumers decide how they
spend their money? I recently in fact bought an Australian made
stove. The quality is dramatically better, because they have the
Germans and Italians breathing up their arse. That is competition
Formersnag, not 4 or 5 stores selling the same crap.

*between 1945 & 1965 we had "full employment",*

We still have jobs, for those that want to work. Where I live, we
have South African linesmen, British policemen, Chinese slaughtermen,
SE Asian doctors, Filipino welders, because Aussies didn't want the
jobs. Today they drug test for most work places, unlike in the 60s.
But of course that whole Ponzi scheme collapsed, as I explained a bit
earlier.

*bear in mind we have no "real" industry or jobs left other than quarrying?*

Nonsense. 80'000 people in WA work in manufacturing. Then we have
agriculture, which was nearly sent broke by tariffs. Now you want
us to pay more for inputs and send it completely broke? How the
hell should it survive, if you go and increase the cost of machinery,
herbicides, fertilisers and all other inputs, with your tariffs?
I remind you that WA exports nearly all that it produces, into that
real market where you seemingly can't compete, as you are too lazy
perhaps.

Pericles
Money can be printed or earnt.

If something is made and then sold, money is received, and the more value adding, generally the more money is received.

Money can also be printed by government or sent out electronically, and handed over to the public in the form of payments. A dollar earnt from exports is worth about 4 times the dollar passed out by government.

It may be useful to import, but a lot more should be done with money from exports before it is spent on imports.

The sovereign fund is a good idea, and better than getting money from coal, and handing it to the public in the form of payments or tax cuts, so they can spend it on imported movies from Disney or the latest gadgets from Apple.

Yabby,
Initially, a lot of the items from Asian countries was crap. They fell apart almost on purchase, and often poorly recycled materials were being used. (Remember the imported cars that began rusting before they left the sales yard, and you were lucky to get 30,000K out of them before something broke).

I personally know an Australian saddle maker who reported to customs the fact that imported saddles from India were being stuffed with discarded hospital dressings, and these dressing had not been washed.

There were good quality products being made in Australia, but people opted for the cheap products, with less concern for quality.

We now pay the price of having very little manufacturing industry left.

Regarding GDP, GNP, etc - I thought this little snippet from Alvin Toffler's "The Third Wave" (1980) was pertinent:

"With respect to the pursuit of GNP, an amusing fantasy suggests that women undertake to do each other's housework and pay each other for it. If every Susie Smith paid every Barbara Brown one hundred dollars a week for caring for her home and children, while receiving the equivalent amount for providing the same services in return, the impact on the Gross National Product would be astounding. If fifty million American housewives engaged in this nonsense transaction it would add about 10 percent to the U.S. GNP overnight."

Joseph Pearce writes in "Small is Still Beautiful":
"...the more people are self-sufficient and not reliant on others, the less they are considered "economic". The more they are dependent on others the higher will be their contribution to GNP."