As for austerity, many today are facing bankruptcy owing hundreds of thousands instead of tens of thousands thanks to Rudds stimulus.

We will go into recession, but it will now be huge. Houses that were a few hundred grand back in 08 are now millions and given many owe 70% of millions rather than 70% of say 200 K it's gunna hurt big time.

The best way to fix this country is to stop the handouts and make everyone do the lifting.

You want six kids, fine, but don't expect the tax payer to raise them.

We must put a stop to the entitlement mentality.

Senator Lamby might be on to something there.

rehctub,

"We will go into recession, but it will now be huge. Houses that were a few hundred grand back in 08 are now millions and given many owe 70% of millions rather than 70% of say 200 K it's gunna hurt big time."

On that point, I'll let Saul Eslake reiterate the answer he so kindly gave to you in 2014:

"....Although I didn't say it yesterday, I would certainly support the abolition of negative gearing as making a useful contribution to reducing the budget deficit.

I agree that 'negative gearing' DOES encourage investment. Unfortunately, the investment it encourages - which is, overwhelmingly, the purchase of existing housing - does nothing to increase the supply of housing, but serves merely to inflate the price of exisiting housing and thus worsening affordability conditions for would-be home buyers."

And this from Saul to Bazz on the same thread:

"....the reason that 'negative gearing' was brought back a short period after having been abolished in 1986 was in response to please from the NSW Labor Party which was about to lose the 1988 State election. Ever since then, defenders of NG have pointed to what they say happened as a result of its temporary abolition - that it 'caused' a surge in rents, and that the same thing would happen again if NG were to be abolished again.

Rents did rise in Sydney and Perth at this time - but that was because vacancy rates in both cities were less than 2%. In other words, rents would have risen anyway, whether NG had been abolished or not. If abolishing NG had been the 'cause', rents should have escalated in other parts of Australia as well - but they didn't.

So this assertion by proponents of 'negative gearing' is actually an illustration of what Josef Goebbels is supposed to have said, namely that if you repeat a lie often enough, and the lie is big enough, people will come to accept it as the truth."

rehctub,

Nice to see you're back to your old self and castigating the lower orders - (of which you as a middle-class butcher appear to believe you've risen to aristo class:)

"The best way to fix this country is to stop the handouts and make everyone do the lifting.

You want six kids, fine, but don't expect the tax payer to raise them.

We must put a stop to the entitlement mentality."

How about these folks?

"Superannuation carries taxation concessions which primarily benefit the rich, with the top 20 per cent of income earners accounting for 58 per cent of superannuation tax concessions, including concessions on earnings," it says.

"The government should reconsider providing taxation incentives for superannuation whereby contributions up to a certain amount attract a concessional rate. This benefits high-income households the most, contributing to equity concerns."

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/superannuation-tax-concessions-benefit-the-rich-committee-for-economic-development-of-australia-20150831-gjbpq9.html#ixzz3pzyQm2OJ

More "leaners" here:

"The latest tax statistics show 75 ultra-high-earning Australians paid no tax at all in 2011-12. Zero. Zip.

Each earned more than $1 million from investments or wages. Between them they made $195 million, an average of $2.6 million each.

The fortunate 75 paid no income tax, no Medicare levy and no Medicare surcharge, even though 60 of them had private health insurance.

The reason? They managed to cut their combined taxable incomes to $82. That’s right, $1.10 each."

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/budget-pain-not-for-millionaires-who-pay-no-tax-20140511-zr9o3#ixzz3pzzjs96A

As for a recession - I've yet to here you once criticise failed Liberal treasurer, Joe Hockey...under whose tenure there was added over $140 billion to our net debt.

Over $140 billion!

Added in debt!

In two years!

You don't cut Rudd any slack for the GFC so I'm not about to cut Eleventy Joe any slack for the resources downturn. If our economy has headed south (and it has since the LNP took over) - then it's down to the pathetic governance of the Abbott/Turnbull govts.

Just as a matter of interest, I want to back up this statement by Saul:

"Rents did rise in Sydney and Perth at this time - but that was because vacancy rates in both cities were less than 2%."

Absolutely true! We were looking to rent in Perth in 1986. The vacancy rate at that time was 0.7%. There were long long lines outside every house for rent at viewing times.

We finally got one - (but that's because we're charming : )

Aiden, yes stimulation does work, although economists are now wondering
why neither stimulation or austerity no longer work as they used to in bygone times.

For the economy to grow it just must have increased energy deployed.
Now, if you do not have extra energy available you cannot get growth.
This is a basic fundamental.

You said:there is nothing to stop business from carrying on as usual.

BAU requires growth, because it operates with the use of credit.
Credit is a promise on future work.
However the future work has to be an increase in work & energy.
It is necessary to repay interest and capital.

The catch22 is that the increased energy is/will not be available.
This then relates to why we need to reserve our fossil fuels for our
own use to build the next energy regime, whatever it is.

Sure the sun can supply lots of energy but how do we build the next
energy regime without using fossil fuels ?
As yet no one has an answer to that.
Also the sun does set and there are calm days & nights.
So how big a solar/wind system do we build to cover how many overcast
still days complete with battery backup ?

To cover those overcast days we need
number of days X one day capacity plus one.

Do we cater for a week of overcast, then what happens if there are
9 days of overcast.
Are we able to invest seven times the cost of one days generation ?

What we need is a real base load facility. Nuclear is the only option
at the present time.
However any base load system will fill in all those overcast days.

The upshot is we are in a world declining production of all fossil
fuels, natural gas being a temporary exception, but Australia is in
a fortunate position as far as coal is concerned but we must make
sure we have enough to build the next energy regime.

This is an absolute priority if we are not to go back to the 19th century.

rehctub,

"Like it or not history shows that both the Rudd and Gillard governments resided over failure after failure..."

I can't help it if you're a partisan economic illiterate - but let's take a look at Australia's economic well-being after the GFC - the greatest global financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Apart from our economy not faltering and ending up with a 3xAAA rating, let's compare our debt to a few of those gung-ho for austerity economies (that you reckon we should have emulated)

Debt% to GDP (time of last election):

Australia - 11%

New Zealand - 31%

Canada - 36%

Germany - 44%

Spain - 52%

United States - 61%

France - 67%

United Kingdom - 86%

Belgium - 97%

Italy - 109%

Greece - 148%

Japan - 190%

To name by a third of the countries on that graph I posted.

So we came out of a global financial meltdown with added debt...well I'll be!

We still kept out AAA rating with three top agencies.

In comparison the Hockey/Abbott govt delivered this in two years:

Govt debt was $273 billion and is now $402 billion.

Unemployment rate was 5.6% now 6.2%.

Wages growth was 3.0% now 1.2%

Private investment is way down.

Consumer confidence is down.

Business confidence is down.

The biggest mistake of Labor prior to the election was to take the bait and rabble-rousing from the incompetent Opposition on debt. Hockey promising a surplus in the first year and every year after - ROFL!...added to all the other outright lies delivered by Abbott and his cronies in Opposition.