*but between 1945 & 1965 we had full employment despite a tsunami of migrants & a baby boom.*

Ah Formersnag, perhaps you are getting older, so some of the memory
cells are going. Or perhaps you just never really understood how
it all ended and why. At that stage, Australia of course rode on
the sheeps back all the way, iron ore exports were banned at that
time. Things really peaked in the 50s at the time of the Korean
war. Lo and behold, then nylon was invented, then other fibres were
invented and things went down for the industry from there. Australia
tried every Ponzi scheme imaginable to keep the goose laying the golden eggs,
but of course it collapsed in a big heap and today is
only a shadow of its former self and has taken a good 20 years to
recover somewhat.

Meantime Australia suffered massive trade deficits, a mollycoddled
manufacturing industry which was better at lobbying for more tariffs
then anything and Keating was left to pick up the pieces of the mess
and declare that Australia had to change direction, or we'd land
up as a banana republic. He was correct of course.

Today we have more jobs then ever then. Because the little woman
does not want to stay home anymore to darn your socks, she's out
there making a quid to pay for that next overseas holiday. Australians
are travelling overseas in record numbers, are wealthier then ever
before, live in houses nearly twice the size which they were in
the 60s and have average real incomes higher then they ever were.

I doubt if people will fall over themselves to go backwards.

imajulianutter

I think you've misunderstood the nature of the resources taxes.. they are designed to do what you think a GST will do, but have a much larger affect.. it would make no sense to impose a GST on top of the resources tax, and the advantages from companies having no incentive to evade it would be very slight.. a company big enough to pay a resources tax is already subject to a lot of scrutiny from the ATO.

I understand where you're coming from but as an idea its a non-starter.

I think that there should be a tarriff on the wage diffential between here and other countries.It is about time multi-nationals paid people a living wage.

People who work like slaves in factories should be paid enough to save and consume the goods they produce.Then places like China will have a growing domestic market which we can then sell to.

Wages are only a part of the equation, and so is innovation.

I know that certain companies operating in other countries could not operate in Australia, because they could not meet our environmental regulations, nor could they meet our workplace health and safety regulations.

Dumping waste materials into the environment, and dumping injured workers is not that acceptable in this country.

I notice Saul Eastlake will not address the protectionism afforded the private Central Banks on the planet.The the USA Federal Reserve has a monopoly om the creation of new money from nothing to equal increases in inflation + growth.This wealth belongs to the US people and countries around the planet who they loan to.

The Fed cannot be audited.it created this financial mess and this is why Dr Ron Paul the Congressman for Texas has written a Book called 'End the Fed'. The Fed has created from nothing over $ 15 trillion since 2008 and loaned it all around the planet to special interest ghroups,depreciating the US $.Most of this money has now gone into productive enterpriese.The US real economy is cash starved and shrinking yet the banks continue to make record profits.Most of this money has bailed out the big non productive end of town,further inflating the worthless derivative market.

Ron Paul wants to have competing currencies but still it allows private companies to create the new money that really belongs to all people a not the select priviledged few.

Correction,"...most of this $ 15 trillion created by the Fed has gone into NON productive enterprises."