Five truths in ten seconds:

[youtube]VN-hbWVXsyE[/youtube]

I don't really like Abbott that much but hard decisions have to be made.

In layman's terms...

If I lent someone money to someone I expect them to pay it back.

But in Labor's thinking its a matter of borrowing more money and if they can't pay it back then ask for more money to spend.

Question is who's gonna pay it back?

Government debts aren't like personal debts. We're still owed money than we owe. Financially we're in the black and stable. The debt as a percentage of GDP is just 17% while most other OECD nations' debts are up around 70% of GDP. This "budget emergency" is a work of fiction.

I don't like the budget any more than you do, but if what you say is correct then I don't think the Coalition would be sticking their heads for it to be chopped off after just being voted in. It is not popular what they are doing. If they had their way then they would keep handing out money if they could.

Conservative politicians want the public to mistrust all politicians. They want everyone to believe that public < private in all situations.

Do you really think that the public have forgotten the narrative of the former ALP governments that Abbott and his mates successfully peddled?

Well no because thats completely against their ideology

Think you've been reading a bit too much news.com.au mate.

Australia is only one of 8 countries in the world with the highest AAA financial rating. The Abbott government is fearmongering. Don't fall for that shit.

Im not pro liberal if thats what your thinking. Im pretty much dead centre. But the years under Howard were pretty good and Rudd couldn't organise a root in a brothel if he tried....he fucked up a lot of things and made things worse.

Edited by SocaWho: 16/5/2014 01:23:24 AM

You need to be friends with less idiots.

-PB

Except the debt isn't black/white like that, not does it operate in the same manner.

-PB

I take it you paid cash for your house then?

Not entirely. Peter Costello had the baby bonus for mothers remember and that was pretty much a hand out.

The government doesn't need to worry about sticking their neck out, there's plenty of ways of spinning the national debt so that it looks bad on Labor and people are stupid, and therefore don't do their own research and don't understand basic economics.

And even then, this gives the conservatives a vessel to privatization and big ass paychecks from the companies backing them.

No...but if I had my way I would have.

I used to work for a bank and in home loans and I used to get the occasional person call me up asking for a home loan and I asked them what they did for a job and their answer was that they on centrelink benefits.

Some people just don't get it.

-PB

Thats true...but a debt comes with interest and the interest is a big killer.

Interest is the silent killer. Except if you borrow money off family or you are Jewish.

Issue isn't so much clearing debt (which isn't in and of itself a bad thing), it's the way it's being done. At least in my opinion, the debt is being used as excuse for ideologically driven and not economically driven choices by the current Government. Debt is just an excuse. If the debt didn't exist the Liberals would be doing damn well near the same thing out of their tea-party ideology and just use "saving for the future" as their excuse (either that or making 'investments' by giving their mates in big business billions in subsidises and infrastructure that we pay for and they profit from).

The only bad debt is unserviceable debt.

Even multi-national companies, bastions of free enterprise that they are, borrow billions and billions to get things done.

If you waited until you had the cash in the bank nothing would get built.

Having said all that it is probably a fundamental principle to try and spend less than you receive. (Occasionally going into debt to pay for big ticket items.)

The thing is, government debt doesn't work like that. Why is another nation going to charge you protracted interest on money they already know you don't have?

I really hate Sarah. Smug fuck with her stupid leading questions.

When is Leigh Sales coming back? :(

Companies only borrow billions when the return on the borrowed money is higher than the interest rate. They don't borrow to fund things like parental leave, coffee machines and redundancy packages, every borrowed dollars goes into capital to boost the bottom line.

Money borrowed to build infrastructure does not automatically boost the bottom line.

Once upon a time our taxes paid for infrastructure. Now every time they build a road or a tunnel they stick a friggin toll on it or build via BOOT or some other model.

Governments should borrow money. They just have to be careful in how and what they spend it on.

This this this this this this this this.

-PB

+1.

Why would anyone, institution or country lend a large amount of money if they knew they would not get it back? it doesn't make sense.

Im not saying that Capitalist systems are perfect (since they have their problems) but pure Socialist / Communist models are far worse. Look at a lot of the South American countries and the Soviet Bloc. They have been destroyed by those ideals. i.e. Look at Venezuala.

China was and mainly is Communist but once they started to blend it with Capitalist ideals it became a much more functional society.

Edited by SocaWho: 16/5/2014 02:21:52 PM

Because the needs of a country in regards to debt aren't the same as a company or personal household?

This was painfully obvious when they had to cut education funding but somehow found 250m for a chaplain guidance program. Because GOD knows what's wrong in your life, not that 'psychology' pseudo-science...

Because that's how government debts work . Sadly your views are in the majority due to the government and media have made it seem like it's like personal debt .

At the end of the day...any debt / borrowing has to be paid back. It becomes personal in the form of higher taxes. Maybe you just wish that debts can be written off easily which isn't the case.

Edited by SocaWho: 16/5/2014 05:48:04 PM

How many times do you need to be told that it's not that simple?

At least one more, it seems.

Yes the idea of unrestrained debt definitely doesn't appear in any credible text books. All respected economic schools of thought acknowledge the important of balancing budgets and generating surpluses in good times, even Keynesian economic theory the Labor party previously subscribed too. Today he current Labor party doesn't subscribe to any recognisable school of economic theory, it has fallen off the ideological cliff and I'm actually not sure what it stands for anymore, other than mawkish ideals like fairness and equality.

Do you remember prior to the election when the Labor party tried to implement some cuts and talked themselves up as the party who best able to achieve surplus? Well now they lost election and we can now all see their true colours, they are morally and intellectual opposed to the concept of 'cuts', they simply do not take the economy or finances of this country serious, taxpayers money is their money to go and piss up the wall on all their nutty social programs that most of the time are extremely expensive, inefficient and simply don't achieve anything.

The truth is they are ideologues and things like 'affordable', 'unsustainable', 'profit' and 'surplus' to them are dirty words they consider beneath them and best left to some faraway future generation to sort out.. long after they're dead.