The level of economic ignorance and stupidity has reached such astronomical levels that I can make the forecast that Australia is heading for many years of falling real incomes and a vast increase in the level of poverty.
You really have to stand in amazement at how little flak this morning’s front page in The Oz has received: Election 2022: Labor to turbocharge budget deficits in ‘quality spending’ focus. If Labor wins they will do nationally what Labor has done in Victoria.
Labor is planning to unveil budget deficits up to $10bn greater than the Coalition over the next four years as Anthony Albanese sharpens his election pitch around the need for “quality” spending rather than fast-tracking debt reduction….
“What we need to be able to do is to flick the switch in the budget, not to austerity, but to quality, so we can fund the things that we care the most about,” Dr Chalmers said.
Who could possibly be against “quality spending”? And these are the sorts of things the ALP has in mind.
Last month, Dr Chalmers said Labor would raise almost $1.9bn from its multinational tax policy and recoup billions of dollars through a “waste and rorts” audit during its first year in power. But this is not enough to cover its $5.4bn childcare policy, $1.2bn skills commitment, $2.5bn boost to aged care, $525m increase in foreign aid, $329m for housing and $135m on urgent care clinics.
If you are the kind of person who actually believes that spending money automatically creates productive growth then you are just the person to fall for these idiocies. Our present Government actually does know better but are barely able to explain any of it in a way that will have the general run-of-the-mill Treasury and academic economist on side. Certainly you will find almost not a single warning out there from hardly any of them.
Meanwhile we will be dismantling our power grid and ability to deliver low-cost electricity to industry. I don’t wish to single out The Age but reading its editorial today really did depress me: Fair wage growth must be at the heart of economic recovery.
I’m all in on the sentiment, but first you have to have an economy creating more value adding output than the value of the resources used up in production. If anyone thinks the ALP is remotely capable of that sort of outcome, just vote these people in and then sit back and enjoy the rising level of poverty that will then be inevitable. Not for everyone, of course, just most of us.