yes.. our beloved first world DownUnder paradise will be booted out of the Top 20 nations in 35 years
now brace yourselves...who do you think will be elevated?

no prizes for naming China and India

now come the shocker...Brazil...BlangaDesh !

yes...that will be the likely scenario based on a UK report by PWC

meanwhile, let us continue to

a. spend our children's money
b. keep medicare in its present unstainable form
c. increase GST to an insane 15% so that our crazy budget can be sustained to give more handouts
d. prop up industries which are not competitive because we want a minimum wage that can ensure 'good life' we are so used to
e. experiment with a social model that encourages growing of cannabis at home, supporting a political party which messes up the country's budget so badly that the new govt had to take drastic actions to put it right (and then re-electing that same useless party 18 mths later in a State Election)

No, this will not be a wake up call.

shhhhhh...let us slzzzzzzzp quietly at the corner of Bali beach (heck about the boycott on all things indon)

If Tony keeps office wont take until 2050 try 2016

Shear academic sensational speculation.

No need to panic.

The populous are not buying your and Abbott's scare tactics, as toni would say fanciful.
If you are in a business that is not competitive, get out of it, and that will make the ones left more competitive.
This country can only handle so many coffee shops.

@aussieboy

on the contrary, if ALP is in power, we will go down faster
i was dismayed when i see how ALP govern the country for the 6 years before LNP took over
i am not saying all ALP govts are bad...I am saying the last one was terrible
and i am not saying all LNP govts are good, but I can tell you the current one is far far better than the last ALP govt (save the tony gaffs)

thks

@conservative

my response to your post will be the last sentence of my opening post!

:)

@579
LNP believes this PWC article
most LNP mps were biz people... they know australia is heading further south
the 23 million aussies are living comfortably in a land that can support 200m
no wonder we are so laid back

in a decade where we should have grown in leaps and bounds, ALP brought us from a positive budget deficit to a humongous $200m budget deficit!
and we kept buying more cos the A$ was strong (resource supported..not hard work or value add)

i tell all my children to continue to work hard and buy their 4rd...5th...property and assets...they already have 3 each
that is the only way to be able to live comfortably in this beautiful country... because if they do not, the Chinese and the Indians and Indonisians would.

How much money has the LNP saved in its 16 months of govt;
How much has been added to the deficit in the last 16 months.

@579
sorry, i do not have exact numbers and i wont fudge around like the shadow treasurer
i am sure the numbers are there in ABC News or the newspapers

:)

Mr Abbott’s addiction to scare campaigns is well known. From claiming whole cities would be wiped off the map to the Budget Emergency, facts are sacrificed in pursuit of a political objective. But not one of the Prime Minister’s claims about the Budget stacks up against a simple fact check from Senator Penny Wong.

Claim: Australia has a Budget emergency

Nations with Budget emergencies don’t receive AAA ratings with a stable outlook from all three credit rating agencies, as Australia did under Labor.

Australia is one of only 10 economies in the world with AAA ratings from all three agencies – in the company of other countries with strong public finances like Germany, Canada, Sweden, Singapore and Switzerland.

Claim: Debt levels are unsustainable

The Australian government has low levels of debt by world standards.

The latest Budget update shows net government debt for 2013-14 of $191.5bn, or 12.1% of Australia’s GDP. By contrast, net government debt in advanced economies around the world averages 74.7%, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Governments typically run Budget surpluses when the economy is strong and deficits when the economy is weak.

Labor allowed the Budget to go into deficit in 2008-09 because the global financial crisis was threatening to plunge our economy into recession. Our action stimulated the economy, kept Australia out of recession and supported hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The deficit peaked at $54.5bn, or 4.2% of GDP, in 2009-10 – less than half the advanced country average. Then, as the private sector started recovering, Labor started reducing the deficit. In our last full year in office, 2012-13, the federal deficit was $18.8bn or 1.2% of GDP, compared to an advanced economy average of 4.9%.

Claim: Spending was out of control

In the four years from 2009-10 to 2012-13 Labor met its fiscal rule of keeping real average spending growth to less than 2% a year. In fact, this was the lowest four-year period of real spending growth in 23 years.

The Abbott government arrives at a higher figure for political purposes by including the 2008-09 stimulus – an economic program the Nobel laureate, economist Joseph Stiglitz, has described as one of the “best designed” stimulus packages of any advanced economy.

Claim: Labor increased taxes

Labor was a low-taxing government. During our time in office, federal government receipts averaged 22.5% of GDP. By contrast, under the Howard government, receipts averaged 25% of GDP.

@579

seriously, do you want to compare australia with the rest of the world?
yes, all countries and i would say all private companies are geared (as long as it is healthily and sensibly geared), but do you know what is the difference between us and other better managed economies?

we do not save as a nation...yes...australians love the good life
believing that the iron ore and bauxite will last forever
we love to sail..to camp...to sunbath..to chill at the bar....

and when when we borrow as a country... almost all our borrowings are from overseas
go google and find out how much we are paying everyday to the China, SEA countries...ME countries for the debt we owe them
you will be shocked how much of our precious aussie dollars are leaking out everyday

you really think we are ok?

watch tv... we got so many who lives on a weekly basis ... we must be the only country where our aged has to buy insurance for their funeral expenses...imagine...you do not even have money to buy a coffin?
i have frens in asia who will tell you it is the ultimate shame in not being able to look after your own "after life" expenses...even the most destitute have some pride to save up that sum.

maybe we are so far away from the rest of the world we still think we are ok

i will do another post to show why australia is of no consequence in the world stage (except to USA ...who still need small brother..together with the unrepentant japs , as a battle staging area in case there is a conflict in the east)

from GNP..to GNP per capital..to trade...to scientific invention...to arts...to military power... we are nowhere to be counted as a force to be reckoned with... sad

Australia’s net government debt — that is, money borrowed minus money loaned out — was $239.16 billion at the end of December. This was a hefty increase over the level a month earlier of $224.35 billion. In just one month, the debt rose almost $15 billion, or 6.6%. Compounded, that rate would double the debt in less than a year. Fortunately, the December rise was abnormal.
So what was the full-year increase through 2014?
At the end of 2013, the actual net debt was $177.74 billion. Hence the increase over the full year was $61.42 billion ($239.16 - $177.74). That’s a rise of 34.6%.
That December 2013 actual figure is pretty close to the level that can reasonably be attributed to Labor. As Crikey explained last October, the best measure of Labor’s debt is the projection for the end of the full year 2013-14 at the September 2013 election. At that time, projected debt at year end was $178.1 billion, although actual debt then was marginally lower. That year-end projection of $178.1 billion was affirmed in Finance’s statements for October and November 2013. It did not shift until well after Joe Hockey had taken control of the levers.
So is it possible that debt has peaked and will soon tumble, as promised? No — Friday’s figures also show a higher estimate for total debt at year end, still six months away. This is now projected to be $244.84 billion.
If $178.1 billion is the debt level attributable to Labor, then it can be argued that by the end of this financial year the Coalition will have blown out Labor’s debt by $66.7 billion ($244.8 billion to $178.1 billion) or 37.5%. In one budget.

@579

the present govt is repairing damage done for 6 years

my worry is they will be booted out well before that by stupid aussies who still think we are ok

and the sad thing is , when ALP takes over in a couple of years, some of the benefits flowing from LNP drastic (but correct and nec but very unpopular) measures will then be counted as their own

one more time... this is as good a govt we can have for the moment, lets not do ourselves in by prematurely putting this set of current incompetent ALP goons

thks

cont...

"... in power"

sorry for typo omission

Since Abbott has been there he has done nothing but spend money. They have added 70 billion in debt in record time.
This govt; will be worthless while Abbott is still there. The worst of all time leaders. Nothing will improve until Turnbull takes the stage

@579

hmmm... other than his silly gaffs and wagging fingers, i think he is ok
not the best PM but if he can get this team together, ok by me

i support good govts... can be the ALP or LNP

BUT not PUP
its leader's heart is not at the right place
a self centered man who believes votes can be bought by money spent on publicity and advert...
and unfortunately that has proven to be correct in some casess

Only the people who are ignorant of economics think we're spending our children's money. But at the moment the trouble is we're spending too little money, hence the unemployment rate is so high.

Medicare is sustainable, despite the government's claims to the contrary.

A GST rise is totally unnecessary. The best change we could make to the GST would be to abolish it.

Propping up industries has nothing to do with the minimum wage. And historically the Libs have done the most propping up of uncompetitive industries.

The budget emergency is nothing more than a lie, so it's not surprising that voters have seen through it.

We need to do more high value work rather thhan making it easier to do low value work here. If we stick to the latter strategy, we are indeed likely to end up worse off than Bangladesh.

@aidan

responding to you pt by pt

1. wow...which school of economics you graduated from?
i used to lecture economics for 4th year U students many many years ago
maybe theory of economics have changed
i can understand demand induced growth... but spending more than you have is not going to help any country (except the world's biggest cheat ..USA , which just prints money and they can get away with it for the moment bec they are the defacto world currency...that position is going to end soon)

2. did you watch today's news?
the facts says our welfare system is going to swallow the ENTIRE budget very soon
wonder if you understand the grave situation

3. nobody says propping up of industries is solely done by minimum wages

4. that depends on how you define 'emergency'... the frog in the pot is a happy frog

5..forget about high value and low value work
we need to do them both
learn from our neighboring countries which emphasized on high value work, only to run into big social problems when they had to import low value workers by the million

the objective of this post and the other (oz no longer a world player) is to remind us that we are passe and will continue to be if we do not wake up

I think Aidan must have been one of the old Soviet Union economic advisers. His advise sounds just like the path they followed to destruction.

platypus1900,

1. How much obligation to reduce the government's debt do you think our children are under?

If your answer wasn't zero, I pity your former students!
Worse still, your misinformation is now widely believed, and has resulted in economic decline.

Why do you think the private sector should have the monopoly on spending more than they have?

2. No, I missed the news today, though I caught up with some of it online.
The Liberals may say our welfare system will swallow our entire budget, but the facts say this is impossible.

3. You are saying minimum wages help to prop up industries. Please explain how? And iff you're able to explain how, please explain why you think it's undesirable?

4. The pot is cold! Inflation is low, interest rates are low, and there is no chance whatsoever of Australia defaulting on its debt.

5. What neighbouring countries would those be? And do you really think we're better off when people who could do high value work do low value work instead?

Hasbeen, do you really think it was anything resembling my advice that wrecked the Soviet Union? I was pretty young at the time, but I thought it was their suppression of markets (including the currency market) combined with their huge military spending that caused the problem?

@aidan

i am sorry but i am at a loss trying to respond to your last post

nvm... all the best and have a good weekend

thks