Expressing the debt as a per capita figure doesn't make it relevant to us personally, but it may give some people the FALSE IMPRESSION that it's relevant to them personally. More so if you express it as the portion paying income tax at present (even though nearly everyone has or will at some time in their lives).

It may FOOL THEM people thinking that they, or their children or grandchildren (or any generation in the future) will have to pay the debt off. The reality's very different: there's not even an obligation to pay it down.

Don't get me wrong: there are circumstances where it's desirable for the government to run surpluses. Peter Costello was right to do so even though he didn't understand the reasons for it. There will NEVER EVER be a situation in which the government is unable to borrow more. But when inflation reappears, tightening fiscal policy is a better way to control it than raising interest rates.

Right now, though, inflation is low so there's no good reason to tighten fiscal policy. And I wouldn't trust the projections of the Intergenerational Report - there are so many unknowns that they're not worth the silicon they're stored on!

indvidual,

It "cant go on any longer", you think. But you and I both know that it can and it will go on as long as voters - some of them who post here - allow it to.

And while public servants’ wages are up for discussion, how about recognising the fact that all public servants are not sitting in air conditioned offices.
There are those in hot workshops tied to machines and others, labourers, out in the open in hot and cold, such as the dedicated blokes who travel the country attending to war graves.
I was talking to one such a few days ago as he was on his rounds of far flung graves in small town and where there were once towns.

Re the politician salary rubbish. In total we pay around $55 million in Federal politician salaries yearly. That is around 0.004% of the current debt. Or around 0.2% of the yearly interest bill on the debt.

If we throw in state and local pollies salaries then the figure becomes around 0.45% of the interest bill.

That is, if we stopped paying ALL pollies in Australia it would cover less than half of one percent of the yearly interest cost.

So cutting pollie salaries to address the debt issue works in the same way as cutting toe-nails addresses the obesity issue.

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We are never going to get out of this debt. Never. No party even wants to try and if any did try they'd be voted out of office yesterday. Because the solution involves two broad areas the Australian public don't want to go.

In the mid-1980s, Labor finance minister Peter Walsh, once described as the last true socialist ever elected to parliament, was tasked with getting on top of the Hawke government budget problems. He identified "200 bloody programmes that couldn't be justified on equity grounds". He proposed cutting or slowly defunding them. But it was too hard and never happened.

If there were 200 then, there'd be 2000+ now. Stop funding elite sport. Stop funding the arts. Close the Federal education bureaucracy. Curtail foreign aid. And 1000s more like that. But it'll never happen.

On the other hand, we should be expanding our national income. Immediately authorise fracking throughout the nation. Ditto GM foods. Coal. Bauxite. Remove telecommunication protections. Remove development restrictions.

But none will be done.

So the solution will be more borrowing supplemented by inflation and currency devaluation.

Eventually that will stop working and the cuts will be implemented. Those who lose will be those with the least political clout. The favour groups will be protected. Think Venezuela.

Its going to be a rough few decades. Try to make sure your income/wealth is protected against inflation and currency devaluation.

Dear mhaze,

Chirp, chirp, chirp mate. Singing from a hard right song sheet as usual.

This years budget announced a further 8 billion in tax cuts on top of the 25 billion from the last round and there is more in the pipeline.

Liberal party ideology is what will be driving the squeeze not the responsible provision of services.

Is Mise,

Good point. But they are nor "real" public servants. In my day they were called 'daily paids', although they were paid fortnightly like the "real" public servants, and things would have ground to a halt if they weren't around much quicker than if the office wallahs went missing.