Rhosty, what you assume to be a lack of research on my part is actually a lack of research on yours – for unlike you I look at the claims of the detractors as well as those of the proponents. I suggest you do too. Even if you only read the Wikipedia page on thorium power, you'll find your predictions rest on some heroic assumptions.

Your assumption that I'm confusing oxide reactors with thorium ones is wrong.

Your assumption that I'm taking an ideological position on this is also wrong. I do think thorium power has a bright future. But I was similarly optimistic about solar thermal and dry rock geothermal, and those have been much slower to develop than I thought.

And why are you so obsessed with the transmission losses? Only 5% of our power is lost in transmission and distribution.

And don't &$%^@* well tell me to take up my rebuttal of your claim with the ATO when you did not cite the ATO! I took issue to what you wrote, not what the ATO wrote, and namedropping government departments won't turn your delusions into reality.

Have a look at http://www.aph.gov.au%2F~%2Fmedia%2F05%2520About%2520Parliament%2F54%2520Parliamentary%2520Depts%2F548%2520Parliamentary%2520Budget%2520Office%2FReports%2F01-2014%2520Trends%2520in%2520Australian%2520Government%2520receipts%2FReport01_2014Chapter2.pdf if you want to see the real situation. Admittedly it uses GDP rather than GNP, but AIUI there's less than 3% difference between them in Australia.

You might regard a smaller government as "streamlined" but there's a danger of it losing its capabilities. Beware of false economies.

A dodgy estimate of tax compliance costs is not a fact, and a lower tax rate than we have now won't prevent companies from offshoring profits.

But your tax proposal is a recipe for economic collapse! It would shift the tax burden onto those least able to pay, and would encourage the use of foreign currency for business currently done in Aussie dollars.

As for funding Co-ops, the problem is ensuring they risk losing the money if they fail.

We used to have a car industry making high value items. But mass produced cars are no longer high value items. Better to concentrate on the things that still are.

According to my source, and you or anybody else can read him just by googling, transmission line losses, to find out just how much you Aidan, apparently bend the numbers?

Transmission line losses are approximately 17%; and distribution losses are approximately 50%!

So that's a total of 67% lost between the power station and the consumer, and not the decidedly dodgy 5% you ascribe! Schematics Aidan?

I've read countless economists who claim i.e., that a 2% transactions tax would replace current tax collection; or that one third of one percent would replace all PAYE!

And given both if adopted, would put most tax practitioners and the ATO virtually out of business, or the money for nothing merry-go-round sometimes called tax reconciliation or tax returns; made null and void!?

One can therefore, understand and appreciate your concern?

Yes there is a difference between our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Gross National Product (GNP).

And given the Gross National Product actually includes all the commerce done on these shores, a better number to use for the purpose of calculating a broad based stand alone unavoidable tax.

You don't need to go back very far, to see where I and several other posters have quoted the ATO as the source of the 4% of the GNP, as the total tax take!

The fact that an unavoidable stand alone tax negates the necessity to pay any tax compliance costs, which as memory serves, averages a 7% impost on the average bottom line, and therefore under my model able to be returned to the bottom line.

Given my model and some serious and long overdue rationalization; and streamlining of government services!

The 10, soon to be 15% and applied to everything GST, (bureaucratic honeypot) would be the first to go!

Meaning the worst off currently, would be better off paying a 5% unavoidable expenditure tax on all their purchases/service provision and what have you!

Game, set and match!
Rhrosty.

The reason we can't compete with products sourced from halfway around the world, is our manufacturing model! Take cars as a classic case. We build a body, then outsource all the other component parts. This means we buy and engine from and engine manufacturer, replete with all his passed on costs! i.e, tax, shareholders dividends, Workforce PAYE, council rates, fuel tax and well it's a long list that may include up to 140 different tax imposts, fire levies and licence charges excetera etc.

Ditto the steel supplier, the paint producer/supplier, the gearbox maker, the diff maker, the axles and universals supplier, the bearing supplier, the bolt maker, the windshield/glass manufacturer, the window seal manufacturer, the seat maker, the fabric maker, the leather hide tannery, the spring maker, the spark plug maker, the fuel injection system maker, the instrument maker, the headlight park and turning light manufacturer, the plastics manufacturer, the windscreen wiper motor maker, the washer pump maker, the electronics supplier, the wheel maker and the tyre manufacturer and all the transport applications in between.

With each passed on cost cascading and amplifying upwards and onward, through the assembly line and through on to the retailer!

Now if all that could be done on a single site and by a single government funded co-op, with real skin in the game.

Normal passed on costs could be halved, and able to successfully compete with all comers and on an international market.

Except in our case, we would be best advised to create carbon fibre, electric motor vehicles, for niche markets around the world.

And enormously assisted by much cheaper and carbon free power, unheralded economies of scale; and genuine massive simplification and reform, of both the tax act and the trade practices act.

And all too hard for complex rationalists/nay sayers and the odd corporate psycho/micro managing control freak?

Some might question the viability of a co-op, all of which are invariably owned by the workforce; which is the one private enterprise free market model, that undeniably survived the Great Depression largely intact! Is there a safer investment?
Rhrosty.

What an extraordinary article.

Mr Hunter blames the usual suspects - "Thatcherism, Reaganomics, Rogernomics, and economic rationalism" - while completely ignoring the historical impact of those policies across the globe.

Without the comparative advantage that he derides, how would the economies of Asia have grown to bring a billion people out of poverty in the cosmic equivalent of the blink of an eye? Is that Mr Hunter's idea of an undesirable outcome?

"One of the deep costs of neoliberalism has been the destruction of local economies for the lowest common denominator. A McDonaldscape exists in most places, where communities now tend to look physically the same."

Other, perhaps less jaundiced eyes, would describe this in terms of the host of countries who have been able to raise their standards of living to one closer to our own.

But, far more importantly, after the paragraphs of excoriation, where are the germs of a solution?

"Government needs to promote and develop local community industry as a prime tenant of its economic policy."

Ignoring for the moment the rampant solecism (tenant - gah!) Mr Hunter's concept needs considerable expansion in order to be in any way credible. So, how does he propose this may be achieved?

"We need to restock and take another look at new models of regional cooperation that can promote the advantages of large markets, yet recognize the need to maintain local community markets."

An example would be nice, somewhere this has been achieved? No? Thought not.

"We need politicians who are committed to community economy"

A definition here of "community" would be nice - are we talking towns? villages? streets? No? Thought not.

"The cost of not doing this in the near future could be drastic."

And the cost of doing this (whatever "this" might be) would be... what? No idea? Thought not.

"The majority of people won't be able to afford medical services, and three descent meals per day."

Always good to finish with a literal. Adds the finishing touch, doesn't it.

I don't know why articles like this get so far up my nose. But they do.

Rhosty, if transmission losses were 17% and distribution losses 50%, total losses would be 58.5% not 67%, as power that's already lost in transmission could not be lost again in distribution. But why do you base your beliefs on a claim on a single website which doesn't cite the source of the figure?

Try doing that Google search again and look on page 2: You'll find http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS which gives the actual figures for many countries. Australia's at 5%. Only poor countries with poor infrastructure have the high figures that you seem to assume apply everywhere.

A 2% tax on all transactions would raise as much revenue as current tax collection IF it didn't result in people and businesses changing their behaviour to avoid it. But most people would change their behaviour to avoid it, and many businesses would very quickly go bankrupt if they didn't.

GNP differs from GDP by a very small amount in Australia (about 3% IIRC). But you're wrong about what it consists of. GDP defines production based on the geographical location of production, GNP allocates production based on location of ownership.

I'm not going to search through all your old posts just to identify the source of your current error. It's not use blaming the ATO if (as I suspect) you're wrongly assuming the ATO's figure for GST is their total figure for all taxes.

That an unavoidable stand alone tax negates the necessity to pay any tax compliance costs isn't a fact at all, it's just conjecture. Absurd conjecture IMO, as people will always find ways to avoid the "unavoidable" tax.

Earth to Rhosty: You're not the umpire, and considering how blind you are to what's actually happening, that's probably just as well.

(TBC)

If car manufacturers could build their components cheaper than buying them, they probably would. But suppliers have cost advantages when they're not tied to a single supplier. And suppose a manufacturer started making all the components then found a supplier could make some components (to the same standard) more cheaply. What would they do? Would they carry on making them themselves at a competitive disadvantage? Or would they buy them instead? Train manufacturers have traditionally made more of the product themselves than car manufacturers have, but more recently the trend has been to outsource what can profitably be outsourced.

And how many car manufacturing cooperatives survived the Great Depression?

Why are you so quick to assume certain processes will solve all the problems when you haven't bothered to check the opposing arguments?