*Presumably if John Howard had cancelled the 2007 elections and had declared martial law, Australia
would still be a democracy according to Yabby's logic*

No Daggett, that is you trying to create a strawman argument, attributing things
to me that I did not say.

*If you choose not to substantiate your claims, it's your funeral and not mine.*

If you choose not to do your homework and examine economies such as those
in Swtzerland, Germany etc, to understand why they still do so well, despite
paying high wages, then that is your problem, not mine.

But Australia has another problem, because of the booming mining industry,
we just don’t have the workers. Virtually every manufacturing industry that
I know of, is complaining of a shortage.

*Boeing has offshored a lot of its work to
China where wages are lower*

So what? The bulk of their work is still in the US. Meantime, take a look around
you at new companies created in the last 10-15 years. Silicon Valley, the whole
IT industry, PC industry, Google, Microsoft etc. The world keeps changing
get used to it.

*even being highly skilled is no guarantee that your job won't be lost to workers
who are paid less.*

If you have skills and the economy is diversified, then even if one door closes,
another opens. Why are you so terrified of change?

Yabby wrote: "No Daggett, that is you ... attributing things to me that I did not say."

I never claimed you said that. I claimed that that is where your logic led. Read your own words again: "In fact it is far more democratic, then being given a vote every few years, ..." and tell me why my conclusion is wrong.

Yabby wrote: "But Australia has another problem, because of the booming mining industry, we just don't have the workers. Virtually every manufacturing industry thatI know of, is complaining of a shortage. "

What you are doing is focussing on circumstances in one state at one particular point in our history, in isolation from all other considerations, and, from that, drawing the conclusion that these circumstances will apply indefinitely into the future.

This is exactly what happened when similar deceitful claims were made about an alleged IT skills shortage starting in 1999. As a result restrictions on the importation of IT professionals were lifted. In conjunction with the off-shoring of IT work, this led to IT graduates for years afterwards being unable to obtain employment in the industry.

Those who anticipated these problems were ignored by those hysterically clamouring for knee-jerk short term solutions, just as you are doing now, whilst refusing to substantiate their claims with hard facts and figures.

Yabby wrote: "Why are you so terrified of change?"

What a stupid question!

I would have thought, in a democracy, the onus should have been on those seeking to change the status quo to prove their case, rather than on those seeking to preserve it.

The real solution to the skills shortages problem that you identify is for more, and not less, government intervention in the economy. A government with its focus on the job would have anticipated the skills shortages problems, whether real and imagined, which exist today and would have either:

1. Made funding available for the training or re-training of workers, or
2. Controlled the growth of sectors such as mining and property development so that the rest of the economy would not have suffered.

Tim Carr has adopted the strategy of embracing the values of Aussie critics, then purports to incorporate these values in trade policies.

For example, he almost tearfully lauds Aussie manufacturing as the creator of genuine full time jobs. Meanwhile, his crony, Simon Crean, invites one of the world corporate giants, Tata of India, to colonise Australia. Not abashed by his own largesse (the gift of our livelihoods and survival) he also paves the way for IT predators Infoseys and Uniys to expand the new Indian Raj of Oz (nodding to your insights here, Boaz). And we have all seen what China is doing to our food producers (two thirds gone) and manufacturers (one third dead).

This is cynical formulaic politics; not good government... which is what the Oz Constitution specifically calls for.

Another example is his reference to skills shortages and training, while his NSW buddy Frank Satour is selling off TAFEs and secondary schools to developers, like toffee apples at sausage sizzles.

Likewise, he refers to the water crisis. In fact there are two separate crises. The first is the cyclical drought we have suffered since settlement, and the second was created by the driving of the rural and regional populations into cities; a one million person urban migration of three decade's duration; precipitated by tariff removal's destruction of family farms, and exacerbated by refugees and migrants. Restore tariffs and we resolve our urban water problem, not to mention the urban housing availability crisis.

Daggett, clearly your logic is not very logical :)

Voting for a Govt is one thing. Letting people make decisions about their lives
is another. People decide which schools they send their kids to, private of public.
People decide if they go to public or private hospitals. People decide if they
go to church or not. People decide what goods they want to buy. That does not
mean that elections have to be cancelled.

You clearly think that Govts should control everything. Perhaps you are a control
freak :) I think that people know better what is good for themselves then Govt.
On that we will always agree to disagree.

If people want better paying jobs, they are free to educate themselves, do a trade,
whatever. If there is no work where they live, well move to where there is work.

There are still plenty of IT jobs out there. Its just that a small % of the population
are difficult types, so employers try to avoid hiring them. Good employees will
always find jobs. At the end of the day, the idea is that employees are hired to
make the company money. It should not be the other way around, or why bother
to employ them?

It is not just WA that is booming. I tried to buy some equipment from Northern
Queensland. He knocked back my order, not enough staff, can’t find any.

Meatworks all over Australia can’t find staff. The list goes on.

You being terrified of change is certainly not a stupid observation. IMHO it is
your problem. We live in a fast changing world, the most permanent thing in
life is change. Those who adapt thrive, those who don’t, well they will sulk for
the rest of their lives. So be it.

Could some patient person with exceptional communication skills explain to Yabby that a person on $15,000 per year does not get to choose what school to send his children to, what car to purchase, what shares to invest in, or what home to purchase.

Then explain very slowly that 54% of the Australian population actually means more than half of his fellow Aussies.

The inescapable conclusion, based on Yabby's clearly exposed values, is that those thus unemployed or retired are lazy, incompetent, ignorant or stupid; or all of these.

My experience has been that most of these victims are no such thing. They have been marginalised to create an impoverished and pliable work force. If Yabby approves of this then he is indeed sociopathic.

Yabby is once again doing exactly what he accused me of, that is, putting into my mouth words I did not say. I wrote: "Presumably if John Howard had cancelled the 2007 elections and had declared martial law, Australia would still be a democracy according to Yabby's logic ..."

What did I ever write that could be construed as saying "elections have to be cancelled"?

I am not interested in Yabby's subjective view of what he claims the state of the IT job market is in 2008. I am pointing out that the hysterical clamouring by IT employers for hasty knee-jerk responses to a claimed IT skill shortages in 1999 led to a glut of IT professionals in this country. The result was that for many years, experienced IT professionals as well as large numbers of graduates, were unable to obtain work in the vocation in which they had trained for many years afterwards. Many of those are still unable to obtain work.

I think this example illustrates how we need to be very wary when Yabby's ilk similarly shriek for knee-jerk responses about claimed skills shortages in 2008.

In the manner to which many of us have already become accustomed, Yabby's response is, without any basis, to attribute the problem to shortcomings in the IT workers who lost their jobs as if suddenly a large number of graduates and experienced professionals who had been previously able to achieve gainful employment had suddenly become "difficult types".

It may be instructive to others to see how, in another discussion thread "Housing affordability squeezed by speculators", Yabby similarly resorted to attributing the worsening crisis of housing unaffordability to the supposed personal shortcomings of those struggling to pay rents or mortgages. See, as just one of many examples, how Yabby referred to one (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834&page=0#98113) as "the 25 year old kid who spat the dummy" (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6697&page=0#103757). (It is most interesting that Yab-bot declined to comment further when I cited statistics of mortgage foreclosures (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6697&page=0#105094).)