Oh deary me, Lexi. One day you are going to have to get over this
"I am just a poor little librarian/architect" thinggy.

As a worker you would also have superannuation, so you are in fact
one of the owners of the big end of town.

If the big end of town isn't doing ok, nobody does ok. We are all
in it together, get used to it. But the big end of town is likely
to be more intelligent then your average voter, that is why they
are where they are. So they reward talent, unlike the common,
gullible voter.

Keating and Costello are both highly regarded by the business community,
as both have made a difference to all of us. Unlike
your average politician, who might have a job finding a job outside
of politics.

Dear Yabby,

Kindly don't patronise me with your own - "thingies."
I don't qualify you as some kind of farming "hick,"
along the lines of - "when I itches,
I scratches," thingie.

The fact that Howard and Costello were NOT great
economic leaders can so easily be brushed over and
changed in the minds of many people such as yourself,
by repeating a mantra over and over,
and a compliant Media accepting
this without question and repeating it ad nauseum.
Mr Abbott is an artist at this. He speaks in codes
and CAPITALS and repeats it over and over. In the
absence of a questioning and critical media, it works.
As is obvious from your posts. You of course are
entitled to your opinion - but as I've stated to you
in the past - opinions are one thing - facts are another.

Well the facts speak for themselves, Lexi. See you go and
bog this down about Abbott and all the rest. At the end of
11 years of Costello, the Australian economy was in great shape,
with businesses investing, plenty of jobs, low interest rates,
Govt debts paid off, money stashed away for the future.
The Australian economy was doing better then ever before,
those are the facts.

Clearly this bothers you for some reason, but facts is facts.
The business community, who happen to understand things to do
with money, clearly understand this. Lexi does not. Tough titties.

Dear Yabby,

Ian McAuley a lecturer in public sector finance at the
University of Canberra and a fellow of the Centre for Policy
Development tells us that:

The Coalition had the fortune to hold office in
good economic times. The period from 1996 to 2007
when the Howard government enjoyed the dividends of
the Hawke-Keating economic reforms, and when the world
economy was enjoying a long speculative-driven boom,
it was more to do with good luck, then good management.

The Howard government's economic report card is overall
a dismal one.

The first of its claimed virtue of leaving the books in
surplus of 4 per cent of GDP when it left office - was not
a very difficult thing to achieve in a time of strong economic
growth which delivered very high tax revenues.

But the Howard government also left Australia with significant
liabilities in terms of our physical and intangible assets -
our common wealth. It neglected our surface transport -
our interstate roads, railroads and urban public transport. It
starved our tertiary education sector of funds. It neglected
investments which could help us cope with the challenges of
water shortages, climate change and fossil fuel depletion.

In short, it let fiscal impression management displace sound
economic managment, and directed political attention to only
one side of the public balance sheet, the debit side, while
ignoring the asset side.

If the Howard cabinet had been on the board of a publicly listed
company, the shareholders would have thrown them out for weakening
the company's asset base.

Then of course there's also the Howard government's ham-fisted
attempt to deregulate the labour market. Instead of addressing
rigidities which were impeding productivity, the Howard
government in its final term went on a rampage of removing
workers' bargaining powers.

Had WorkChoices not been reversed by the
incoming Labor government, we would be heading down the USA
path of even worse inequality than we have now, and even greater
stresses on the public budgets to divert money to poverty
alleviation at the expense of important government services.

Now you have put your foot right in it Yabby. Inflation was higher when Costello left Govt than when he received the treasury from Keating. Unemployment was higher, interests rates were higher. In fact all the economic indicators did not improve under the Howard Costello Govt at all, but in fact deteriorated despite the selling of valuable public assets.

The facts can simply be stated without any personal derision or colourful invective at all Yabby.

The messiah(Costello)was not messianic but a very naughty boy whom failed to display anything but indolence in govt, even when handed a golden economy on a platter by Keating.

All he and Howard actually did, was redistribute the wealth of that golden economy to the rich.

Dear Lexi,

Workchoices is once again handing over extortion power to unions.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Is-BHP-the-new-Qantas-pd20120227-RUQUP?OpenDocument&emcontent_Gottliebsen

Companies will have to rethink where they invest, hardly a good thing
for your grandkids.

You of course rely on your whole judgement on the opinion of one
academic. Now let me tell you a thing about academics. When one
academic from ABARE was asked why his prections had been so wrong,
he responded by saying that if he could accurately predict things,
he would not be working for ABARE. That kind of sums it up.

Thinker 2, go and recheck your numbers. Clearly they confuse you.