Lexi, i have to disagree with you.

Why i will not vote Labor is because of three reasons

1)It has been too slow in implementng change in accordance to what it mostly gains support for (education and health);
2)it hardly gives me confidence in regards to policy implementation (many policy debacles) and even its big picture policies such as the carbon tax are based on wishful thinking at best.
3)I cant see what it has done to address the balance between consumption and production. This last point is crucial to the well-being of any nation.
4)there is other important issues such as housing and defence.

Now i am sure if the Coalition will be any good either and lift its game in these difficult times, but i expect it to do much better in regard to most of the above criteria. That is enough for me.

What Individual and rehctub do not understand is that a sovereign government, one that issues a country's currency, is nothing like a household.

The sovereign government is charged with keeping the potential of a country fully employed to maximise the wellbeing of the country's citizens.

That requires that the government often has to create the money necessary to achieve its aim. The accumulated government deficit can always grow at least at the rate of growth of the real economy. The sovereign government need not even pay interest on the debt; it could simply sell its bonds to the Reserve Bank which it owns on our behalf.

Unfortunately the USA is a special case; its currency is the international reserve and the currency of world trade. All the currency created to fund those two separate situations probably appears somewhere in the balance sheet of the USA government.

As an example, the USA provides a loan to the IMF to fund drought relief somewhere. That loan appears in the USA budget documents. That situation gives the USA a tremendous, undeserved, economic advantage. Undeserved at least since the 1970s, when the USA became a debtor nation.

International trade and sovereign government reserves should be in a basket of currencies as Keynes proposed at Bretton Woods. Had Keynes proposal been accepted there probably would not have been several wars and certainly no Asian Crisis or GFC. A Jullia Gillard recent comment indicated that she understands this situation.

As I have said earlier on this site, in this sort of argument, most of the commentators have little knowledge about the subject.

To overcome that they need to read more.

The following provides a list of articles that would be a reasonable start;
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/06/modern-money-theory-primer-on.html

The sovereign government is charged with keeping the potential of a country fully employed to maximise the wellbeing of the country's citizens
Foyle ?
Then why don'y they do that ? Oh yeah, the pollies getting 50 grand a year more etc & pleasing the Labor back bone is far more important. Shows how much they care.
It also shows that they don't know what you're telling us here either.

Yes Indi, I posted that on another thread, none of the labor lovers could offer comment.

Foyle, if it's as you say it is, why then the mad panic to return t surplus in the first place. Remember the Surplus at any cost, or the , failing is not an option.

Sure goes against what you say, dont you think?

Dear rehctub,

Try being objective and looking at things from
different perspectives, if you can:

http://www.newmatilda.com/2013/05/14/budget-night-numbers

Dear Individual,

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject
something you don't know anything about.