I heard the government was looking at an optional scheme to take $100,000 from the super. of new retirees in exchange for an extra $192 per fortnight on top of their existing pension for the rest of their lives.
It sounds a bit shifty to me. They get billions in instant revenue while future governments have to foot the bill.

I cannot speak for Australia, but a trend in national accounting in the past decade or so is something known as hedonic indexing, or geometric indexing.  This was adopted in the United States in 1995 and in some European countries in 1997 (not in Germany).  This takes into account supposed "quality" improvements and makes cost adjustments.  Thus if something stays the same in price, but quality is subjectively determined to have increased, economists create an economic price which is lower.  Another trend in inflation indexing has been increased reliance on the substitution effect.  Before when steak went up in price that was reflected in the CPI, but now ground beef (mince in Aussie terms) is assumed to substitute for it.

Tricks like these drove down the official rate of inflation and increased the official rate of productivity growth, and are responsible for much of the alleged economic growth in the United States since 1995.  If Germany calculated data like the USA did their GDP growth figures would be half a percent higher on average.

Other statistical gimmickry includes seasonal adjustments (somewhat useful but also somewhat hazardous), birth/death business creation models to adjust jobs data, and the ever favorite trick of reporting only "core" inflation in the news, which excludes energy and food (useful information for all those people who don't consume food or energy).  Seasonal adjustment here showed that our auto industry gained jobs in the past few months, which is obvious nonsense.

I'm not sure that there's a conspiracy to make Western nations Third World per se; I'm sure a lot of policy makers and economists actually believe in this neoliberal nonsense.  Big business of course is under no illusions and wants low wages, but they don't drive the public debate as much as people think.

Amadd wrote on Aug 15^th, 2009 at 12:17am:

The answer lies in the film Braveheart.  Note in the film how the treacherous Scottish nobles debate material advantages, not so different from how business elites today behave.  What they fail to realize, however, is that Edward I is prepared to give them more lands and power only because of Scottish nationalism, as it's far cheaper to buy off the barons than it is to fight the Scottish nation.  But if there were no Scottish nationalism, Edward would have no reason to deal with the Scottish nobles at all and could simply liquidate them.  Our elites today make the same folly portrayed in Braveheart.  They fail to note that their power base derives from the unified nation-states which support them, and if these nations are sufficiently eroded these elites in turn have no economic or political basis.

Nations often have unifying myths which are not necessarily true.  One such myth is that soldiers die for our freedom.  This is especially prevalent in the United States but also takes place in other nations.  Of course, it's not true--every war in American history has been a war of choice.  However, since wars consist of our flesh and blood fighting and dying, they end up being the ultimate personification of the nation and thus command loyalty.  So ANZAC Day is worth celebrating, it just involves mythos.

States will move to protect their revenue base if necessary, so if mass emigration of talent and capital were to start up for whatever reason they would move to stop it.  The USSR (in)famously required the payment of a massive emigration tax for those wishing to leave the country, under the reasoning that the Soviet Union had invested massively in their education, housing, healthcare, etc.  Preventing capital from escaping is as simple as implementing exchange controls.

I don't really agree with that either, even if material (which encompasses more than economics) causes do underlie most wars.  It's difficult to see any motive other than defense of the faith in the first three Crusades, for instance.

Amadd wrote on Aug 15^th, 2009 at 1:16am:

Coral Sea wrote on Aug 14^th, 2009 at 11:54pm:

When the world economy seizes we will see the true pain of not being a Nationalist nation our national independance has been sold out from under our feet, we are now dependant on importing every thing, we are heading for third world conditions. And if you dont think that everything can halt the joke will be on you, just think how bad can it get, well there will come a time when even our police wont be paid then they wont work and then there will be factional violence between rival groups fighting to re establish national independance, its on the table and its coming.