TheMissus contrives a most elaborate piece of scare mongering with ramifications for all.

Not unlike like the Liberal party and/or Industry Captains claiming today, that a $27 per week gross increase for lower paid workers will send small businesses to the wall.

If a small business employing 10 staff cant afford another $270 in wages per week for those 10 staff, then that business must being hanging on by a thread anyway.

If the employer cuts back hrs or sheds jobs to compensate for extra wages he's paying, he loses productivity, but the employee's get to spend more time with their family for the same pay they was already receiving. A smart viable business would not do this.

Also if you keep wages suppressed as claimed necessary by the Lib's/Business and allow inflation to continue unabated without suitable regulations in place, people will eventually stop coming in to buy things at these small businesses, threatening the jobs of those who work in them anyway.

Big money with their spin doctors and their political crony's/allies, whose greed is ugly, mystifying and astounding, all at the same time, will be chipping away at every and any level, based upon the common purpose that they should scare the masses in to believing that they're at risk of losing that ,they already have, by voting in favour of themselves.

An interesting philosophy "letting business do what it recommends" but in my view this philosophy has no real place in our human or earthly future.

Thinker 2, Elaborate scare monger lol

Whatever. We have sunk beause of intervention before and we will sink again. Free market will make the corrections as well so no need to force as this tax does, however what is done is done.

We are cactus now.like the rest of the world..we cooked our goose.

UOG, sounds to me like you are getting all confused there.

Coal seam gas is one thing, its the big thing in Queensland.
In the USA, its shale gas, which is the big game changer
and is affecting gas prices.

Yup, they both crack rocks underground.

Shale gas is still novel in Australia, but they think
there could be a fair bit in the Cooper Basin, so Santos
and Beach Oil would be winners.

Fact is, you as a consumer want energy and you want it
cheap. So they find it one way or another. If extraction
methods are not safe, that is really up to the regulators
to decide.

The only silver that I know about, is the silver that you
are hiding under your bed, as you told us, as you don't
trust banks.

Last I read, you were determined to kill yourself with
nicotine. What is suddenly now the big concern about
diesel? As it happens, I've swallowed a bit of it over
the years, but so far so good lol.

Apologies The Missus, the terminology I used was offensive/in-appropriate. What I am saying TM is that Australia's credit rating wont change as a result of the mining tax changes. Australia's credit rating might even improve with a strengthening of our tax base.

The overstatement you make re the effects of mining tax changes, is not unlike "the same thing we should expect from Mining Giants went they tell us, "that we are all at risk of losing that which we already have".

Clearly the resources we own are ours, and all the rants and/or hysterical extrapolations from the mining lobby will not change the fact in Australia we (meaning us) have very attractive resources that belong to us, the very same resources that are the subject of the current negotiations.

The only way we are at risk of not receiving equitable capital benefits from our resources, for the health and wealth of our economy, is by allowing multinational miners to dictate the terms of our agreements with them, and/by electing leaders sympathetic to their view. Eg Abbott and Co.

Yabby,
All the so called ad homs that up set you, if you checked come from your keyboard I merely repeated them.

By the way just as to add information note these two BBC posts http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8686788.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8637388.stm
On the last one refer to the latter paragraphs.
Q&A last night Lindsay Tanner added valuable information as to the writing off of losses and other variations that the mining industry has asked for.
A genius know it all like you would clearly know that the RBA has said that the mining boom is creating inflation and pressure on interest rates. Which will impact everyone other than miners
While they didn't endorse the Miners tax they would clearly like to take some heat off. "they would prefer a more measured, slower growth rate" I think that was *their* words.

I must admit I'm concerned that everyone else is not running around like headless chooks as you indicate we should be

Thinker 2, like a lot of people who depend on someone else to provide employment for them, you have a silly idea of how much profit many small busuness make.

In the mid 60s I had a quite successful exchange remanufactured auto components business. It employed 26 people, mostly semiskilled, & most trained by me. It was growing, & I was building an asset, but again, you may be surprised how little a moderate business can be sold for.

As a labour intensive business it was very sensitive to productivity, which made the period between christmas eve, & mid May quite difficult.

65% of the staff wanted annual holidays at that period. There were so many public holidays that getting more than 30 hours production from the staff was difficult, & many government charges come in at that time. Also usually, you had nothing you could use to delay paying your provisional tax any longer, at the same time. It was also a time when many of your customers became a bit slow paying their accounts, for the same reason.

If I could have paid all these costs from cash flow I would have been very happy. I would have loved to make enough proffit to take home as much money as I payed the 2 apprentices, but I couldn't. I had to have at least 20% of my gross turnover sitting uselessly in the bank on Christmas eve, if I was to pay all my costs on time, for that next four & a half months.

Any unexpected extra cost was very hard to handle.

I actually made more money, sailing around the Pacific islands, working an average of 30 weeks a year for the plantations & missions around the place, than employing 26 people. It was not that they were not good people, either, but many business aren't all that proffitable, unless you are a rip off merchant.