<< @Ludwig, to which period are you referring with: “We are NOT seeing overall improvements in our basic services and infrastructure”?

Before or since September 2013? >>

Both!

Alan, all the apparent improvements are simply struggling to keep up with the constant and very rapidly increasing demand for the duplication of services and infrastructure and upgrades to existing ones as they become overburdened. This situation has existed for a long time.

Supply is struggling to keep up with demand.

If you only look at the supply side, then yes you will see lots of apparent improvements.

But if you consider the demand side as well, then… no… … there are no real improvements at all!

<< Which countries have a better record than Australia for infrastructure development during the period 2009 to 2013? >>

Not many I would imagine … if you only look at the supply side.

<< Who was International Infrastructure Minister of the Year in 2012? >>

Some drongo.

Who was responsible for judging who was infrastructure minister of the year? Did they consider the demand side at all…. or only look at the supply side. The latter, for sure!

<< Agree completely the IAREM score doesn’t measure social or environmental outcomes. Or education, or health, or life expectancy, or happiness. >>

Wonderful!

<< It is openly a measure of economic performance. >>

Yes yes YES! Your IAREM determination of economic wellbeing is COMPLETELY detached from reality!! … from all the things that the economy NEEDS to be intimately connected to! This is simply bizarre when you stop to think about it!

<< There are other tables which measure and rank social outcomes. >>

Yes. But they are obscure! How much credence do they have compared to the broad measures of economic performance? Stuff all!

The problem is not so much that your economic performance indicators are so demand-blind and quality-of-life-blind, but it is that in the eyes of ‘economists’ and politicians, they are what counts!

OK, Ludwig, I'll bite.

>>Tell me you are willing to respond. Then I’ll address each of your incorrect statements one by one.<<

Off you go. Fill yer boots.

I'll help you along. Here are the points again.

1. A shortage of water may be a problem up where you live (but given the rainfall up there, it would be a tad surprising) but we Sydneysiders have at least planned ahead on that front. We have full dams at present, and a desalination plant in mothballs, ready for the next down-cycle.

2. Improvements are taking place all the time down here in Sydneyland. Our parks are well maintained, our streets are clean, our domestic services (garbage collection etc.) has over the years become the best I have seen anywhere in Australia.

3. Your own ideas about closing the borders and becoming "self-sufficient" are certainly not designed to address [the eradication of poverty] either.

4. We are the healthiest we have ever been, with an extended lifespan and one of the best healthcare systems in the world.

I look forward to hearing your response to each one of these points, one by one, as you have promised.

Did I miss one? Ah yes, here it is.

5. Massive economic activity? Where?

Thanks, by the way. You have single-handedly rekindled my enthusiasm.

Oh, and do us both a favour by sticking to the point, there's a good chap.

Alan
Great idea and I believe it highlights accurately the unsustainability of the Howard error.

Nevertheless, I believe the criteria you are applying is far too narrow. Much of the criteria used is meaningful to economists and business but not necessarily to its citizens

I would like to see a scorecard which includes: unemployment, homelessness, health, mental health, education, mean incomes, adequacy of retirement incomes, adequacy of social welfare, home ownership/rent, prison numbers, media concentration, corruption

Hello again,

@TurnRightTurnLeft, agree completely re income distribution.

The Gini coefficient was included in an earlier draft of the IAREM formula. It was abandoned simply because the numbers are not released annually for all countries and current numbers are inaccessible. We got around it, however, by using Credit Suisse’s median wealth rather than the mean or weighted mean. This effectively takes the Gini factor into account. Also reduces the complexity of the formula and the work required by those using it.

@Hasbeen, re: “10 billion a year we are paying in interest on the debts …”

You really do not need to worry too much about this. Australia’s debt has been far too low for far too long.

Fortunately, the first moves made by new Treasurer Joe Hockey last September were to increase the debt substantially, as the previous government should have done.

There is still a long way to go under current global economic conditions before Australia’s increasing debt becomes anywhere near a problem.

@Ludwig, yes and no.

Re: “Your IAREM determination of economic wellbeing is completely detached from reality”.

No, not at all. The eight variables are precisely those that most concern employees, bosses, investors, taxpayers, voters, bureaucrats and politicians. The figures are those relied on and awaited eagerly by business, treasury, academia, the media and the citizenry to know what is going on.

@YEBIGA, agree mostly.

The IAREM ranking does consider unemployment, but also takes job participation into account. The income measure used is probably a fairer one than mean incomes, as the notes to the chart at the World Bank explain.

Corruption is a small component of the economic freedom variable in the formula, but is dealt with more directly by Transparency International’s corruption index.

Most of the other indicators you list are measured somewhere, such as the most liveable city tables, the happiness index, the World Justice Project’s rule of law index, the UN’s human development index and others.

I agree these are vital indicators, Yebiga. But the IAREM looks strictly at economic outcomes.

Cheers, AA

Talk about gilding the lily by Alan Austin. Aust total debt is about $4.7 trillion. Abbott tells us that Govt debt is not the $300 billion that Labor told us but $667 billion so add another $120,000 debt to every household in Aust.

We are not the magic economy because we have no manufacturing or high tech industries that actually produce something.

So every household in this country owes an average of $427,000 and most of this is over inflated domestic properties.

The next big collapse is coming because they continue to print money.(quantitative easing)The share market is way over inflated. In the West unemployment is up ,manufacturing is down but our share market defies gravity and climbs? Where did that QE go ?

Our banks are not safe and want to pass laws that enables them to convert your deposits into their shares. It is called "bail in".

http://www.cecaust.com.au/

Hi Alan,
No doubt some of those other measures, unemployment, homelessness, health do appear in various other rankings. These other rankings are not taken seriously and work as little more than filler for newspapers and radio shows. The economic ranking are taken much more seriously in business circles but for the general populace there is no agreed or general ranking.

It would be a significant improvement if we had a more balanced ranking system which was understood and referred to as readily as GDP or Inflation. In other words a kind of scorecard on our government and one which is harder to manipulate with rhetoric.

Nevertheless, I find your contribution here informative and important.