Yes the party is over! However, it's all too easy to outline our problems, without actually offering workable tangible solutions?
Without those solutions we could be enveloped by yet another Great depression as soon as 2016?
Almost assured, if Mitt Romney wins the American presidential election and then proceeds to seriously downsize the American economy with ideologically imposed idiotic austerity programs and tax cuts for the rich?
Who pay only half that charged, in straight % terms, on ordinary workers now!
My solutions include mining the Great Barrier reef for its probable bonanza of low carbon producing fuels and reforming the tax act to vastly simply it, add seriously to the averaged bottom line and household disposables/discretionary spending power!
As would be the case if we simply jettisoned the complete tax act and collection methodology, in favour of a single stand alone expenditure tax.
Which then would grow with the GNP, rather than shrink with a shrinking taxpayer demographic!
The GST ought to be replaced by the Federal Government simply assuming all funding for all public health and education! And state govts consequently seriously downsized to reflect just their remaining core responsibilities.
Many of the costs they now carry, could be offset by the substitution of largely unpaid regional voluntary boards, who would be made up of very experienced world wise retired or semi retired healthy individuals.
Happy to volunteer to beat the boredom; and or, acquire some kudos in their communities, or both.
A new tax regime and seriously downsized state budgets; and responsibilities, ought to produce some sizeable surpluses, which ought to be directed at cooperative local enterprise; and or, our own people and their better more innovative ideas.
Local enterprise that thinks globally but acts locally; and believe me, there is a big existing list that only requires assistance, financial and managerial, to seriously up-size and utilize economies of scale and much cheaper local energy provision, to expand into quite massive international markets!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty wants solutions. There staring us in the face:

1 Repeal the Fair Work legislation. Reinstate flexible employment and continue the good reforms that were begun by Hawke and continued by Howard.

2 Stop wasting money. Stop running up debt (currently increasing at the rate of $100 million per day)

3 Stop the wastage and economic damage from:

a. Renewable energy schemes ($13.4 billion and counting)
b. Large-scale Renewable Energy Target ($10.5 billion cumulative to 2020)
c. Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme
d. Nationalised Broadband Network ($50 billion +)
e. Disability, Dental, Gronski, ($20 billion)
f. Carbon tax ($30 billion cumulative net cost to 2020 according to Treasury but likely to be much more)
g. Subsidies to brown coal power stations ($6 billion)
h. Mining Resource Rent Tax ?
i. Defence Budget cuts $5 billion given out as a “carbon tax offsets” – actually middle class welfare and bribe

This (incomplete) list makes the money wasted on the ‘Pink Bats’ home insulation fiasco and the ‘Building Education Revolution’ waste look like small change in comparison.

Who pay only half that charged, in straight % terms, on ordinary workers now!
Rhrosty,
And I suppose you're still objecting to a flat Tax & National Service ?

Peter, we routinely waste around 26 billion per, on welfare for the rich?
If we had just one govt with the testicular fortitude to roll back this and very costly, counter productive things like negative gearing, the surplus could be very much bigger.
But particularly, if we simply substitute need for greed, in any and all govt largesse?
We had a much better world and far better more inclusive reforms, when conservatives alone, were the inherently decent, inherently Christian, progressive ones!
As opposed to the cronyism and brown paper bag corruption, that has so marked more recent examples?
Cheers, Rhrosty.

Individual: There is little difference between a fixed rate expenditure tax and a flat tax, save that an unavoidable expenditure tax can be set at a significantly lower rate, which can then be more than offset by then entirely unnecessary compliance costs, currently averaging 7%, as a direct unavoidable impost on the bottom line.
I don't recall ever arguing against national service?
Which in other forums, I've even advocated as the end result of enduring long term unemployment!
Please save the quite risible, mendacious verisimilitude, for those who have actually expressed the views you seem most concerned to parry?
You have a nice day now y'hear.
Rhrosty.

Geoff is right to point out that real net national disposable income is a better measure of economic welfare than GDP, especially when the terms of trade are shifting.

But what’s good for the economic welfare “goose” is good for the productivity “gander”.

If we are using net national disposable income as our welfare measure, we should also use that, rather than real GDP, for our productivity benchmark. If we measure labour productivity as real net national disposable income per hour worked, rather than real GDP per hour worked, then the apparent decline in labour productivity growth in recent years all but disappears. In the past 10 years, trend real GDP per hour worked rose at 1.0%pa while real net national disposable income per hour worked rose almost twice as fast, at 1.9%pa.

In recent years, high commodity prices have shifted the economic balance into the resources sector and away from other industries. This has been associated with a spectacular decline in mining industry productivity, and dampened productivity growth generally. But this does not tell the true story of our consumption possibilities, because with high prices every tonne of coal or iron ore we export can be exchanged for a larger volume of ipods and tee shirts.

The regulatory authorities fail to understand productions inability here to adapt on product or price as the labor force is structured in such a manner as to rule out multi tasking or its ability to think constructively outside the square. So those who need to produce, go to where those who do understand the benefits of competition and are keen to understand. Not just increasing costs based on awards but delivering on outcomes.

You are all leaving out the cost of the boat arrivals, the real cost of which is being hidden.
1) A lot of the refugees in the community are looked after by the charities the cost of which is being paid for by the tax payer.
2) The enormous cost of having our navy and air force used as a taxi service.
Just those 2 things alone would run into the Billions.
The sooner the navy lets Indonesia look after their own maritime rescue zone the better.
Billion for new destroyers why when we can't even find the boats till they ring 000 and say where they are.

You are all leaving out the biggest issue of all – the rapidly and constantly increasing demand for everything!

Geoff Carmody writes:

< Sustainable increases in Australian living standards require sustainable increases in productivity >

This is an extremely ‘loose’ use of the word ‘sustainable’

So, does our standard of living depend on a constant increase in productivity?

NO!

Hell no!

That’s the LAST thing we need, all else being equal.

Crikey, we have got an enormously rapidly increasing rate of productivity now, and have had all along.

The most important thing is to stabilise the demand, so that increased productivity can actually increase the per-capita benefits, instead of simply providing the same level of benefits for ever-more people.

Then a little bit further down the track we can stop increasing productivity and hold it at a constant level, while maintaining a much better quality of life than we now have.

How can the author and all respondents so far miss this enormously important point??

The elephant in the living room must be so enormous and so close that you just can’t see it at all!!

It's about supply and demand, not just about supply!!

We've got to work just as much on the demand side of the equation as we do on the supply side.

Disposable income is probably a good measure of gain in the economy.
Government, bankers, financiers and commentators however shove money
in the form of pixel money into the economy in the forlorn hope of
increasing growth.
They generally, like the majority of their ilk, still believe that
growth is dependant on money supply.
With that belief, printing money is the answer.

However some economists are starting to realise that growth is
dependant on having additional energy over what was available last year.
Oil energy is a major factor needed for growth, but oil production has
been static since 2005. Therefore, growth MUST BE static also.