1. Eat the elderly: they don't provide any useful services but their corpses, properly rendered, can provide a useful source of protein and fat for our own consumption. In death, they can martyr themselves to the ultimate cause: the longevity of the human race. Who said old people are useless? A few 'Ol' Man Spam' (patent pending) restaurants would ease overpopulation and associated demographic pressures, whilst providing valuable nutrition for coming generations.
2. Eat babies: not my original idea. The great satirist Jonathan Swift first advanced the idea of eating Irish babies as a way to alleviate the crippling economic problems afflicting his homeland. But the crux of his 'Modest Proposal' is still a corker: eat the babies of the poor to make the rich richer. It's such a good idea I'm surprised it isn't already liberal policy.
3. Better public transport.
4. More funding for R&D in all areas but especially medical science.
5. A more representative democracy: I've nothing against a few lawyers in the parliament but it seems that is all we have: just lawyers. Where are the scientists, the nurses, the doctors, the engineers, the teachers and the tradies? Where are the politicians who have worked a proper job instead of becoming politicians?

6. The penalties for theft, larceny, robbery, fraud, etc. need to be applied with equal vigour to those who can afford good lawyers as to those who can't: theft is theft regardless of whether it is conducted at knifepoint by deadbeats or conducted electronically by deadbeats in nice suits.
7. Secede from Tasmania: they're so far removed from the mainland that they can't really be considered part of Australia anyway. We should give NZ the island in return for an agreement that they'll stop shipping their coconuts to us. A few less drunk coconuts on the streets would slash the rate of violent assaults markedly: white men require a heavy cocktail of steroids, alcohol and stimulants to make them violent; coconuts only need half a light beer and they're happy to coward-punch any skinny little whitefella.
8. More books. Less TV. Until the age of 15 there was no television in my house. My siblings and I read for entertainment. It did wonders for our education. I don't suggest the government should ban television, but maybe it would help if parents gave their kids a book instead of parking them in front of the telly.
9. Legalise gay marriage.
10. Redistribute wealth from those who don't need such ridiculously large disposable incomes to give to those who are in poverty. James Packer doesn't really need another luxury yacht or another mansion and some people can't afford to feed their family. We need to regain some sense of perspective: isn't a 5th mansion purchased as a holiday home a tad excessive when some Aussies can't put a roof over their head?

Cheers,

Tony

Pericles>>. All you are saying, in fact, is that while all these eager countries to our north were gearing up to make stuff for Australians to buy, we were busy borrowing the money to buy it. Right? <<

Yes, in the 1970’s we had an option to buy local or buy imported, today we have no choice.

Pericles>>. Protectionism implemented forty years ago could possibly have prevented this particular over-borrowing position.<<

Australia was NOT asked forty years ago whether we would be willing to give up our ENTIRE manufacturing base for half price socks. That’s exactly what was signed away by both sides of politics when they signed the Lima Declaration. The declaration spells out a plan to de industrialize the first world and all bastard politicians signed it. Do you think the man or woman in the street in 1973 would have said...”yeah we’ll give it a go.”

Pericles>>. Incidentally, North Korea is a pretty good example of what happens when a country shuts itself off from the impact of global economic reality.<<

P, forget about Nth Korea, the family are nut cases....but consider Cuba...not nut cases....the Castro rebels were humanists that rebelled against the Batista oppression and put in a call to America to help them become a democratic nation after the civil war. But America turned them down...America implemented trade sanctions....went to the UN and solicited every other form of sanction....so Cuba turned to the USSR. That stranglehold on global commerce is why the Eastern block lived like Russians....If you can’t trade what you make you survive without prospering. The same elite that shafted Cuba, shafted the first world and most here believe it is for the best. When we had half the population we had three times as many apprentices. How do you measure prosperity Pericles?

Hold on a moment, sonofgloin.

What's this I see?

>>If you can’t trade what you make you survive without prospering.<<

That is exactly what I have been trying to tell you all along.

Isolationism, whether it is self-induced (North Korea) or externally applied (Cuba) is very bad for the prosperity of a nation.

Pericles>> That is exactly what I have been trying to tell you all along.

Isolationism, whether it is self-induced (North Korea) or externally applied (Cuba) is very bad for the prosperity of a nation.<<

P, the issue is the “externally applied” sanctions....applied by whom....the same organizations that stripped manufacturing from the first world. Why strip manufacturing from the first world.....to bring cheaper goods to the first world is the argument tendered by SM and other myopic thinkers.

Are you old enough to recall the global industrial disputes of the 1960’s and 1970’s? The international union movement had issues with the industrialists regarding the sharing of wealth. The unions watched as technology reduced the number of workers to a third of the previous decades. The unions watched output treble with a lower wages fixed cost base....and the unions then demanded outrageous wage agreements for the few workers left.

The ones who run the world decided they had enough and implemented a 30 year strategy to move manufacturing to countries that had no unions let alone human rights agendas. The only obstacle to further indecent profit margins was the protectionist policies that the entire first world had. Free trade agreements were the tool they used to overcome that and the base plan came via the Lima Agreement.

P most think the current situation just evolved....naturally.....but it was a planned and implemented world domination strategy sponsored by the European banking cartel via the UN, IMF, and World Bank.