How do we steer the economy to higher growth?

Significantly increase immigration!

That’s it. Done and dusted. End of story!

Tony, you seem to miss the most fundamental point: The need to match demand with a healthy ongoing supply capability!

You appear to be totally hooked into continuous growth in both supply and demand.

Surely the single most important thing in our quest for a healthy national economy is to slow down the continuous massive rate of increase in the demand for everything!

ie: slow population growth and head towards a stable population…. which we can very easily do by way of reducing immigration progressively down to net zero or something close to it.

If we did this, we wouldn’t need to be forever chasing rapid economic growth. The rate of growth could actually slow down while the economy actually became healthier at the same time!

We would actually be able to make some headway on improving services and infrastructure, instead of constantly battling to keep up with the ever-increasing burden on existing services and infrastructure and the massive demand for the duplication of everything… all of which chews up a huge part of the national budget, without producing any overall improvements for the existing population!

So please Professor Makin, can we concentrate on what we need to do in order to achieve a sustainable society, with a healthy resource base and a high level of quality of services, infrastructure, environmental health, etc?

Concentrating on how to grow the economy just doesn’t cut it, especially while we have a rapidly growing demand for everything that economic growth is supposed to provide.

Chasing economic growth, in the absence of a goal as to the ultimate size of the demand base, has surely been proven to be one of the major follies of economists and politicians over the last several decades.

If there was any merit to it, we would have achieved our goals by now. But instead we see just about everything actually being worse now than it was in the 60s or 70s!

continued

It’s time for a new approach. And the basis of it is just so simple, with the stabilisation of the demand side of the equation being the most important thing.

Kelvin Thomson has got the right idea. He’s been on about this for years. He was re-elected for the umpteenth time at the last federal election, with the biggest majority of any Labor member. So even though Labor is highly on the nose, he’s got his electorate right onside: http://www.2gb.com/audioplayer/20761#.UneGvvlkNkM

Tony can you tell us how australia compares with those contries for health care, workplace safety and many more other factors that balance some of the things you are measuring.

Would you realy like to see more deaths in the work place to reduce the cost of supply?

Has NZ had to cope with years of the high dollar, we have.

The international monetary system, which for thirty years has been based on debt growth (aka deregulation and credit expansion), is now so crippled by debt that the only means to economic growth is more debt. This is the ‘post-1983 economic consensus’ world that Australia must now operate in. Hockey, Abbott, Murdoch et al pretend to be horrified by debt but in order to be ‘open for business’, they have to be ‘open for much more debt'.

All the huffing and puffing about government deficits were just that – huffing and puffing. In fact, that deficit is making a lot of money for all the 'right' people. The Coalition-Murdoch-RBA troika are not concerned in the slightest about Australia’s household and private debt, which is astronomical compared to our government debt. As long as Hockey is able to protect the banks with the taxpayers' money when the inevitable debt-driven recession deepens, property prices tank and much of the population finds itself in negative equity, Australia will always be ‘open for business’.

Economists would do well for the nation impact and consequences of collapse of ocean seafood supply was seen.
There is more to this than just reaping profit and taxes from aquaculture, only be viable if wild fisheries are allowed to collapse.

In 1982 I warned in the Courier Mail that fish stocks were collapsing. Since then aquaculture policy has been developed, not ocean management policy.

I warn now the same cause of fishery stock collapse is the same cause that is creating dead zones and increased warmth in oceans and estuaries, bays lagoons and rivers.

That cause is unprecedented land nutrient pollution proliferating unprecedented micro and macro algae plant matter.

Neither economists nor AGW – KYOTO – IPCC science have measured and assessed impact and consequences of increased warmth associated with photosynthesis in ocean algae plant matter proliferated by unprecedented sewage and land use nutrient pollution.

Here is just one example where ice is reported melting more than usual.
file:///C:/Users/John/Pictures/Bering%20Sea%20-%20New%20Coccolithophore%20Bloom%20-%20%20Image%20of%20the%20Day.htm

It is an extraordinary situation, economic focus is on more tax from pricing carbon.

In Australia right now, gas and coal profit and tax is being put ahead of economics of tourism and pro and amateur fishing and ocean protein for feedmeal and fertilizer and loss of peace.

Massive nutrient loadings are being dredged and dumped in key Great Barrier Reef ecosystem waters while even seagrass food web nurseries are being ripped out and permanently destroyed.

Whales and seabirds and the Aus fishing industry cannot find adequate food. Mass unprecedented low population starvation of mutton birds is occurring right now along coast extending from about Rockhampton to South Australia and Tasmania, while Aus is importing over 70 percent of fish consumed. Consequences include inflation.

The economics of it all are so stupid because safe and more environment friendly new gas and coal loading ports could be developed in useless sand hill areas, not in living estuaries.

Media suppressed ocean damage evidence may not be reaching economists that are driving government agenda that is causing the damage and consequences.

Google Earth to see elevation of the Gregory Range in NQ where water could be harvested from wet season rains and drained via aqueduct to upper catchment of the Darling River, a river that already runs to the Coorong SA that is supposed tom supply food to ocean fish and other animals.

Look into economics of opening up new grain and beef production for export along such an aqueduct system that could almost guarantee annual water supply even if drastically reduced during drought.

Fly in fly out Pacific Islands unemployed and illegal boat refugees could provide a considerable part of a viable construction workforce in remote construction camps.
UN and IMF resources should be available for such aqueduct water infrastructure because whether it is known or not it is a UN responsibility to sustain open ocean fish populations that depend on estuary food web nurseries.

Australia should have productive infrastructure tied to local food supply and exports instead of roads and high speed trains and light rail and NBN's that virtually just make money for the builders.

Wake up Australia.
Overcome the jealousy, apathy, bigotry and political nonsense and get on with teamwork to make solutions and opportunities happen.