>>I thought we already had? Or are you suggesting that the Greens do not already share most of the characteristics of a command-and-control, do-as-I-say fascist dictator mentality?<<

No we don't. The Greens, dicks though may they be, do not exhibit any fascist or dictatorial behavior: they are in favor traditional freedoms like assembly, speech, religion and democracy. It's not much of a fascist dictatorship when you won't even form Government because you can't get the votes: proper fascist dictatorships go ahead and form government no matter how unpopular they are.

Cheers,

Tony

Well said Shockadelic.

<< Everyone should stop trying to "debate" with Pericles. >>

Yep. It really is pointless.

<< Skeptical of government in other matters, in this one issue, the government can do no wrong, cannot be questioned. >>

Yes. And there are so many other things about his arguments that just don’t add up.

Greenpeace have issued a call to arms to save our reef. The march to export our raw materials marches ever on with us not value-adding a penny to it.

But as Campbell Newman remkared "people want hospitals". Qld needs a moratorium on infrastructure but that would be political suicide. So we continue the pyramid scheme at ever-increasing immigration levels and the states scramble after whatever income they can.

It's useful to run some ball park numbers to illustrate why population growth policies are economical and ecological suicide and hence why the majority of countries with the highest GDP per capita have small populations (12 million or less). Jane O'Sullivan estimated that each additional person costs $200,000 in infrastructure. Australia is now importing net over 200,000 additional people a year on top of our own population growth of around 150,000. This gives rise to an infrastructure deficit of around 70 billion a year. Current total infrastructure deficit according to William Bourke is around 770 billion.

(Further, it is worth noting that this is before we even start to consider the additional trade deficit which ironically is predominantly paid for by our mining exports - and further that the earnings from our mining exports must be shared amongst ever increasing numbers).


But the claim is made, population growth mean more taxes, duties etc. But this is just plain nuts :) As the 350,000 would have to make on average a contribution of more than $200,000 per year. Now consider that of this 350,000, 150,000 are babies, historically, immigration is dominated by family reunions (some times 3 in 4 migrants are dependants but let's say 1 in 2), the number of working of this is likely to be at most 100,000. So, the average contribution of this 100,000 would need to be over 700,000 per year.

William Bourke suggests that the infrastructure deficit per person may even be as much as double the 200K that Jane estimated.

One of the silly claims made on why population growth is needed is because it creates jobs. This might be news to the 23 million Americans who are out of work. At best you might have a short term gain in job numbers, but here and everywhere else, population growth is well and truly outstripping job creation.

Still even with the ABS's rate of unemployment which might range between 5 and 8%, the reality is rather startling when you translate that to actual numbers - i.e. 5% of 10 million is 500,000 but 5% of 20 million is 1 million. Unemployment is set in part to keep wages and inflation down. Well it keeps wages down, but population growth drives up inflation and cost of living - the major contributing factor to electricity prices is the future investment in poles and wires i.e. we are funding the future infrastructure to accomodate population growth.

But the further flaw in the claim that population growth creates jobs is that all of the industries that benefit from endless population growth are unsustainable and ultimately end up choking. There's only so much land, there's only so much food producing capacity (how many food bowls are we prepared to pave over). The reason is quite simple, resources, energy and technology - this contribute to the situation where you simply cannot keep large numbers of people productively employed. Mining and agriculture are highly automated (and increasingly so). The rate of un/underemployment is actually around 17.5% according to Roy Morgan as the ABS exludes anyone who's even worked as little as an hour a fortnight, is "unemployable" or has just given up.

It is often mistakenly claimed that productivity needs a lot of people - those who say this need to look up the definition of productivty. There are other undesirable side-effects, growth regularly stifles innovation, small-businesses are major employers but are regularly pushed out by big businesses which can afford to wear lossess for long periods and are ever seeking to grow.

Someone mentioned the war, I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it all right. But it got me to wondering about some of the numbers. I was surprised at how reasonably consistent they've been over the decades.

"About one million migrants arrived in each of the six decades following 1950:
1.6 million between October 1945 and June 1960
about 1.3 million in the 1960s
about 960 000 in the 1970s
about 1.1 million in the 1980s
over 900 000 in the 1990s
over 1.2 million between 2000 and 2010."

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/02key.htm

But what I can't follow – given some of the comments about additional people representing accumulating infrastructure deficit spending – is that since there has been nothing but 'additional people a year on top of our own population growth' for at least six decades, shouldn't this mean that our standard of living is negative for each of the preceding six decades?

In other words, it should mean that our standard of living is approximately where it was at Federation.

Since it isn't – it's considerably better, though I base that on personal experience which only encompasses half of the elapsed time – there must be something else going on.

Perhaps we should be grateful that it's not too late for the Department of Health and Ageing Australia to cancel Achieving Pregnancy Naturally Month – which is on their calendar of events for March next year.

Well I suppose if you've managed to remain largely unaffected Trevor then understandably, you might have that perspective. Good luck in your bubble :)