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The Forum > Article Comments > Respect the dismal science: public policy needs some economics > Comments

Respect the dismal science: public policy needs some economics : Comments

By Tony Makin, published 15/9/2016

There are many examples of countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe where the demise of economics as a foundation for policy became a first step to economic demise.

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@Tony Makin, Wow man! Are you for real?

Early 80s lower-middle management my tax impost was equivalent to the national Avg Weekly Earnings, $24K! That was too much. If I was in the same boat today the tax take would be about two-thirds(?) less.

Do not tell the readers that PAYE Taxpayers are paying too much today. Do not suggest that 'welfare' recipients are being paid to much either. Both historically and comparatively it's a fallacy.

Makin says: "Company tax cuts ... were intended to improve Australia’s international competitiveness and improve long-term growth."

An even greater Fallacy. Australian Corporate Taxes, Govt $-Imposts are among the LOWEST in the world - whether local or international businesses AU Govt Tax/Imposts are net positive for 'competitiveness'.

Why are you claiming the opposite while providing zero evidence to back up your assertions/beliefs here? Learn how to write an accurate economics article, as Greg Jericho does, by including supporting evidence!

Imagine you are writing an assignment for your Professor at Uni!

Ideology is not Economics. Economics is not Science. That Economics and Science both use Math does not make them equivalent.

You sound like a "fundamentalist preacher", an ideological shill pushing your "personal beliefs" likely because that's what you're doing.

FACTS Found Here:
http://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/tax-rates-online.html

When was the Plebiscite held that agreed Housing would no longer be about "Shelter for Families" but a Loss-Making Industry and manipulated Financial Instrument for Profit Gouging everyday people?
One that's supported by Direct Government Welfare Tax-Breaks paid to tens of thousands of Property Investors?

2012-2013 Residential Property Owners declared a combined ~30% Loss on this "business activity". Is that sane and rational to keep losing 30% on P&L bottom line EVERY YEAR? Is it RORT?

Australian Taxpayers handed over ~$4 Billion in Tax Credits to Residential Property Owners 2012/13 most above AVG Weekly Incomes.

ex-Minister Kevin Andrews is said to OWN 250+ Residential Properties,
so I wonder what his "on paper" investment "losses" and Tax Credits are each year.

Anytime you want to get real tell the WHOLE story, I may listen to you again.

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Posted by Thomas O'Reilly, Thursday, 15 September 2016 3:44:10 PM
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This is a good article and the subsequent Forum comments only prove Makin’s point about the level of economic literacy in Australia.

The best metaphor I have heard about the interaction between business and government was voiced by Netanyahu when he was the Israeli Treasurer. Every Israeli has to do military service and he reminded every Israeli of the exercise where every soldier must carry another solder on his back for 500 metres. He said the solder doing the carrying was business, the solder being carried was government and only countries that kept the carried soldier as light as possible would succeed in long run.

As to fairness, Milton Friedman’s words still resonate:
The modern tendency to substitute “fair” for “free” reveals how far we have moved from the initial conception of the Founding Fathers. They viewed government as policeman and umpire. They sought to establish a framework within which individuals could pursue their own objectives in their own way, separately or through voluntary cooperation, provided only that they did not interfere with the freedom of others to do likewise.
The modern conception is very different. Government has become Big Brother. Its function has become to protect the citizen, not merely from his fellows, but from himself, whether he wants to be protected or not. Government is not simply an umpire but an active participant, entering into every nook and cranny of social and economic activity. All this, in order to promote the high-minded goals of “fairness,” “justice,” “equality.”
When “fairness” replaces “freedom,” all our liberties are in danger. In Walden, Thoreau says: “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.” That is the way I feel when I hear my “servants” in Washington assuring me of the “fairness” of their edicts.
There is no objective standard of “fairness.” “Fairness” is strictly in the eye of the beholder. If speech must be fair, then it cannot also be free; someone must decide what is fair. Shades of 18C.
Posted by EQ, Thursday, 15 September 2016 5:19:59 PM
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If I read his article correctly Makin believes that “fairness” should not be considered over efficiency and productivity. Also that the whole point of our lives is about how much stuff we have or can consume. He also thinks we should move back to the good old days of the nineteenth century, where business is the only thing to focus on, and it should have a free hand to do whatever it feels like.

First I think Tony Makin should definitely get out of his ivory tower and listen to some ordinary people who don’t own a house and are struggling to keep a roof over their families head, because of the cost of living.

Second he needs to understand that it is money in the hands of those with demand that keeps an economy rolling along. If automation, and out sourcing, continues at their present rate, then we will be back in the nineteenth century in the not too distant future, with all the squalor that that created.

The idea that you can raise GST on the young, because they will benefit in the future, ignores the fact that wealth is accumulating at the top of the hill at an unprecedented rate.

So what is the roll of the economy in this more enlightened age. I would have thought the phrase, “give everyone a fare suck of the sav” would be a good place to start. That means curtailing the carpet bagers who use lobbyists in parliament to assist their blind greed obsession. Australia is a lucky country in many ways, however an increasingly large proportion of the population are finding that luck for them, is running out.

Chris
Posted by LEFTY ONE, Thursday, 15 September 2016 8:32:46 PM
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Hear,hear and well said Thomas!

Let me conclude on this note, if I stepped outside my house and filled a cubic metre sized box with earth then separated the thorium content, I'd get about 3 MM's of thorium? And that's enough thorium to power my home (air conditioners, heaters hot water etc) for a year for a total cost of a cent a day? Or a $1.50 a quarter!?

Power that cheap would reinvigorate our vehicle building industry, shipbuilding, metals smelting and all manner of high tech manufacture!

It puts medical isotopes in our hands that cure cancer, demonstrably.

The after turbine residual heat is still enough to desalinate water and thorium reactors do not create Co2! A frozen salt plug in line below the set and forget reactor, means if the liquid fissile material drops down, it hits the frozen salt plug on it way to a heat tolerant holding vessel, to remain there until cooled back to sodium fluoride crystals!

This clean, cheap, safe energy that creates medical isotopes and very little waste, waste that is miniscule in comparison to that created by the uranium industry, and just what we need to ramp up jobs and growth and our energy dependant economy!

Moreover, this technology can be used as FBR's to use up the waste of current nuclear technology!

Now if a old retiree like me can know this stuff,(see u tube) it's london to a brick that our super smart pollies know it as well, but take considerable pains to hold the current (king coal) going to hell in a handbasket, energy line and the devil take the economy, jobs and growth?

Which given we have some, are just a fraction of the potential that's available with a decidedly bolder, vastly less timous mindset at the nation's helm!?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 15 September 2016 9:16:10 PM
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EQ,

That you, or indeed anyone else, regard Makin's rant as a good article tells a far more damning tale of the level of economic literacy in Australia.

You seem to have failed to notice that government has a symbiotic relationship with business. Business pays taxes, and the government creates conditions where business can thrive.

If you want to use Netanyahu's metaphor, keeping the carried soldier as light as possible is not the best strategy for long term success; ensuring the soldier remains strong is a far better strategy. The countries with the lowest tax rates aren't the most successful at all.

Fairness has not replaced freedom, but the Founding Fathers you refer to were America's not ours, and their emphasis on freedom was reactionary. But there was a country that fairness played a more prominent role in the founding of: New Zealand.
Posted by Aidan, Thursday, 15 September 2016 10:39:08 PM
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@ Alan B., related to Peter Lang? :)

You are preaching to the converted by targeting my name in your spam posts about Thorium Nuclear Reactors and their benefits.

It is off topic here though, take this as my reply to every time you have mentioned this recently and into the future.

I am aware of Thorium and HTRs for about a decade now. Being able to reprocess atomic fuels and nuclear arms waste 'plutonium' etc is well documented. I can't recall the exact numbers but basically thousands of years in half life can be reduced to a 100 or so and thereby making storage of nuclear waste safe and rational and in an economically affordable way.

Unfortunately the world is still being run by psychopaths and war mongers, otherwise...

China's application of old German tech using "pebble-bed" Nuclear Reactors is a still an improvement on Thorium, because these types of HTRs are 100% safe in regard a nuclear plant 'meltdown' - as occurred in Japan and Ukraine. This a proven fact.

The nuclear fuel balls can in fact be held in one's hands without any radiation, and yet the operate at a much higher temperature than the typical GenII/III water cooled reactors.

THis kind of nuclear tech was not developed properly in the 60s or 70s because of the accepted myths of that time, and the reasons why the original electricity reactors were used - they made the necessary product for plutonium and MAD national security purposes.

My humble suggestion to you is to keep researching the subject, there are many advantages to the pebble-bed reactors, the first commercial sized Nuclear electricity plant opens in 2017 in China, and they already have orders on the books for this "modular designed" nuclear power plant.

http://neutronbytes.com/2016/04/09/progress-report-on-htgr-reactors-in-china-and-u-s/
http://www.technologyreview.com/s/600757/china-could-have-a-meltdown-proof-nuclear-reactor-next-year/
http://www.rt.com/news/332254-china-meltdown-free-reactor/

Recommend your Thorium/Nuclear news you include some decent URLs to quality info to make it easier for the few who may be interested.

It's unfortunate the SA Commission failed to address China's HTR-PM reactors, building HTR-PMs in SA to reprocess the worlds nuclear waster while producing carbon free electricity.
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Posted by Thomas O'Reilly, Saturday, 17 September 2016 12:57:31 PM
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