longweekend58 wrote on Dec 22
nd, 2014 at 6:33am:
Melanias purse wrote on Dec 21
st, 2014 at 5:36pm:
longweekend58 wrote on Dec 21
st, 2014 at 5:10pm:
It is just another wannabe PM lamenting how everything would have been better if HE had been in charge. Howards tax cuts weren't even actual cuts but merely manually keeping tax indexation.
And is there anyone who really believes that if there were another $30Bpa available, that Rudd and Gillard wouldn't have spent that well before now?
and if the argument were true then it does not explain Rudd giving further tax cuts and neither labor buffoon removing them.
How can the article not be true? The Howard tax cuts and super tax concessions to the rich were unprecedented. The IMF described Howard government as the most "profligate" government in Australia’s history. Most of its spending went to the top 10% of earners. It gave the mining boom away, and we now have nothing to show for it.
Without those tax cuts, we’d be 30 billion richer a year. The current deficit is 40 billion. This article describes the legacy bequeathed to Abbott.
And it’s spot-on.
unprecedented and profligate are such evocative terms which when taken out of context give the completely wrong answer. To make my point I refer you to a conversation I had to a woman who won $13M in powerball. her spending was both unprecedented and profligate by the standards of most people and her former experience. But she was very responsible and still had most of it.
Howard's boom was also unprecedented and gave him opportunities to do what no one else had done. "profligate' is one of those terms sometimes used by people who are envious of those with much.
Howards tax cuts were far from unprecedented. The way soe of you carry on you would think there has never been tax cuts before or since even tho Fraser, hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard did exactly that.
as for the 'nothing to show for it' claim it sometimes beggars the understanding as to how some people can be so dense. Howard paid off the national debt of $96B. He put $45B in the bank for a rainy day. He put $80B into a future fund as well as built infrastructure.
$230BILLION.
and what did rudd and Gillard do? SPENT EVERY CENT AND THEN SOME. and what do we have to show for it? school halls, wanted or not, useful or not.
nothing else.
Longy, the "futures fund" is another term for federal employees’ superannuation. The Howard government did
not spend on infrastructure. 45 billion after 11 years in government and two of the biggest mining booms in history is, yes, nothing to show for it.
The Howard government has left Abbott with an age of entitlement, tax cuts for the rich, and the idea of a permanent mining boom. Alas, the party’s over.
Crocodile has given you an excellent analysis of deficits and public and private spending. Now in government, Hockey’s message is changing from making cuts and delivering surpluses to "buffering the economy".
And he has no hope of reaching surplus in his first term, which was again a key election promise.
The current government’s chickens are home to roost. It has gone back on every principle it stated in opposition. It will now abandon its key economic plan and sit with declining revenues and high spending.
If it had the balls it says it has, the Abbott government would raise income tax and abandon the super tax concessiins. There’s 30 billion a year.
Instead, it would prefer to cut welfare, "reform" higher education and charge for GP visits. All these changes, according to the government, are revenue neutral. The GP tax goes into medical research. Uni funding is all about "flexibility". Pensioners "won’t lose a cent".
Thank heavens the grown-ups are back in charge.
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