Mr Makin's apparent concern about " ... The economic consequences of giving money away to stimulate consumption ... " is surely disingenuous, as is his follow-up .. "You may think such a bonus would surely boost spending in the economy, the key rationale for previously announced bonuses."

As a professor of economics on the Gold Coast, he surely must be aware of the hundreds of billions of dollars handed over to the obscenely over-paid 'executives' and wealthy shareholders of huge foreign corporations (mainly based in the U$A) engaged in the manufacture and trade of weapons of mass destruction, ranging from humble land mines, cluster bombs and the like to nuclear weapons and the aircraft with which to deliver them.

And then there are the hundreds of billions of dollars handed over each decade to foreign-owned 'Australian' mining companies, motor vehicle manufacturers and so on in numerous forms of Corporate Welfare. Our reward for such largesse? ... close more Australian factories, car plants etc and set up operations in 'cheap labor (sic)' Third World countries!

And then there are the 'expenses' incurred in hosting periodic war games such as Talisman Sabre at pristine Shoalwater Bay (2 weeks in mid-July) and other, usually similar, parts of Australia.

These "joint training excercises" are dominated by U$ military, naval and airbourne armies, which has been forced to seek new locations for their testing of new 'weapons of mass destruction', following public pressure brought to bear by the peoples of the Carribean, Latin American AND their own 'homeland', whose environments they have trashed, in some cases leaving them uninhabitable.

Whilst all of this is fully intended to improve U$ economic performance,"more government spending" of this type is definitely not the way to improve Australian economic performance, 'Professor'.

Rather than distracting some of the readers with his 'micro-economic' focus on tuckshops and the consumption behaviours of their clients/consumers, Makin might care to read up on Political Economy 101 and reflect on the obscene waste of public, taxpayer-funded money on 'defence' ... against unknown/undeclared or dubious, manufactured 'enemies' in far-off foreign lands such as 'I-rak' and Afghanistan

The budget defecit must be funded by borrowing money that could have been used for alternative, more productive purposes such as infrastructure. At some point, this public debt would also have to be repaid"

What?

Why would a federal government need to borrow money to fund it's own domestic spending programs? That is completely nonsensical!

The sovereign (federal) government is the currency monopolist. It alone is legally empowered to create or destroy money and does so on a daily basis. The assertion that someone who can create their own currency at will needs to earn or borrow from someone else is completely ridiculous. There is nothing inherently bad about federal budget defecits (within the bounds of reason). The fed can always pay them. Running surpluses for the sake of running surpluses is more troublesome since it witholds money needed for continuing growth, forcing a reliance on the continual expansion of private debt, a practice that seemingly will have trouble expanding further.