There are factors not being taken into account.
If you plot world population with oil production you find that the
population increased slowly over the years till about 1900.
As oil production rose population tracked exactly with it.
It rose from 1 billion to the present 6.8 billion because the high
energy content of oil made for increased food supply to feed the new
billions via industrial farming.

However if the supply of oil starts decreasing then the supply of food
must also start decreasing and it follows the number of people must
start decreasing.

There is a problem here. We are told that if no more babies are born
in the world the population will fall at 1% per year.
However typical oil depletion rates are between 3% and 10 % per year
with 5% about average. This will mean that if no more babies are born
then around 4% of the world population must starve to death every year.

These figures are estimates of course, but even so it does mean that
millions are doomed to starvation and no way around this can be seen.
At present something like 1% of the population are farmers.
Without oil we will need about 30% of the population to be farmers.

Have a think about these figures and what it will mean for population
migration.

Dickybird:>> Why should there be cuts in government expenditure? Because in the light of cost increases we can no longer go on offering ourselves the generous public services that we have come to expect as a right during the good times.<<

Dicky whatever the "good times" level of amenities and services previously, that service level is available and affordable to our government right now if they become sovereign again rather than acolytes to corporate global domination.

Here are the IMF GDP/population stats for 2010.
1 Luxembourg 104,390
2 Norway 84,543
3 Qatar[4] 74,422
4 Switzerland 67,074
5 Denmark 55,113
6 Australia 54,869
7 Sweden 47,667
8 United Arab Emirates 47,406
9 United States 47,132
10 Netherlands 46,418

Per head we are the sixth most prosperous nation on earth per our GDP. We should be living like kings and queens, but we are not, we should have the infrastructure of Singapore in all our capital cities, but we do not. Our national household savings against GDP 40 years ago was over 6% and today it struggles at just above 1%, and that encapsulates the reality. That reality is no matter how much we produce as a nation the proceeds go to a diminishing number of hands, and those hands are corporate.

TBC

Here is a lift from the IMF report.

>>The OECD top national average statutory corporate tax rate declined from 42.2 per cent in 1985 to 30.8 per cent in 2000. The OECD-30 full corporate average statutory tax rate declined from 33.8 per cent in 2000 to 28.5 per cent in 2006. Australia’s statutory corporate tax rate increased from 46 per cent in 1985 to 49 per cent in 1987 before declining to 30 per cent on 1 July 2001 and to 28.5 in 2006.<<

This conspiracy by corporate to bring down their taxable incomes has worked brilliantly in all OECD countries, but why would it not, they own the governments and the IMF and The World Bank and the United Nations.

Dicky even with the diminishing tax burden on corporate and the extra tax burden on the citizen we should still be living with social and infrastructure standards well above the crumbling infrastructure of a generation ago. Our governments of all persuasions both fed and state bow to the wishes of the corporations and we are a commodity whose affluence or lack thereof is decided by corporations.

Son of gloin,
The reason why we will not have increased expenditure is
now clear. We will actually be very had put to maintain our present
standard of living as will all those other countries in your list.

Growth is over. We will no longer be making use of the products of growth.
Growth is needed to pay interest and repay borrowings.
This why most European banks and countries are in trouble.
The US has only been able to starve off a financial default because it
is the international exchange currency and has been generating an
enormous amount of pixel money. They don't even have to buy paper now.

In the next few months the US will have to roll over much of their
bonds but the Congress looks like refusing them permission to increase
the amount of pixel money.
Either way a default looks very possible.
Now you know why the AU$ is going up, the US$ is going down as the
Chinese and others are trying to sneak out the back door after buying
gold and Euros with US$.
Look up Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg has published extracts
of his new book The End of Growth. Provokes some thought.

More:
Pimco, so I read is the world's largest trader in bonds.
They have sold their entire holding of US Treasury bonds.

Here is an article written by their CEO.

http://tinyurl.com/3haahcn

If the Us defaults we migtht not be the air raid shelter we think we are.

Son of Gloin - Bazz has it absolutely right and has answered you already. The small surplus that our joint labour produces does NOT go to the "corporate section" as you put it. If only it did the benefit would return to us all through increased dividends sent to our Super Funds. Unfortunately the Govt syphons off ever increasing amounts and then spends them on things like the NBN (which may be nice but we can't afford it) or the irresponsible insulation scheme.