How are people finding the current economic climate?

An intellectual light weight with little comparison. Even by normal one liner standards. Why some bother.

He told you, Sir Les. Best stick to commenting on cricket and leave current affairs to the 'masters of the universe!' (See England and Cook finally got their act together! Cook was going through a bad run like ?Mark Taylor? did?)

I was just reading how the Future Fund has just topped $100B.

Set up by Peter Costello in 2006 with a $60B initial contribution to fund future public service superannuation liabilities.

The fund has returned an average of 7.1% per year since startup and is now over $101B.

I can only imagine if Liberals had left that $60B behind for Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan to play with it would be totally frittered away on useless stimulus, pink batts and the like.

I am very appreciative of the foresight and wisdom that Peter Costello had in setting this up, and what a wonderful legacy he left the country.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/future-fund-tops-100bn-after-return-of-12bn-last-year/story-e6frg6n6-1227012763076

Never listen to arrogant Germans is a rule I live my life by.

Never listen to arrogant Germans is a rule I live my life by.

Oh so you are that jack character?

I'm not over there so I can't really comment but I do know this.....

a) if you feel it then it is true. Here in the uk we all felt it before the figures came out - both when we went in to recession and came out of it

b) New Zealand (fantastic country that it is and iMO much better than oz/uk in many ways) is lacking the population size to have a robust economy and I fear that Tassie suffers a bit from the same problem even though it is part of Oz

Interesting point on the 457 visa.

I have two friends in Tassie who are having 457 visa related issues. the first friend who was on a bridging visa for a 457 for nearly two years and then the business folded and he has to leave the country. Another mate is going through hell with an awful employer on a 457 and is finding it very difficult in the current economic climate to find another employer to take on the visa both have Tassie partners so it is causing a lot of upset.

Working on these visa's really doesn't give you a lot of protection and I'm sure if Aussies had to work under those restrictions themselves they wouldn't stand for it.

12

Gillard attacked the 457 visa scheme to curry favour with her union backers, creating a problem when none existed. I don't want to see young people on the dole but how do you stop the mindset that 'the world owes them a living?' I can't get the dole when I'm out of work? I don't get sick leave when I'm off work because I'm employed on a casual basis.

 

Here's you chance Flag. Convince me that it is fair for young people to get the dole forever, and for many people who are not THAT disabled, to get a disability pension for life, whilst it IS fair that I do not get any help from the state?

 

And who pays for it? You want the tax payer to fund all these schemes, and to keep up foreign aid, probably increase it, and to pay for unlimited numbers of asylum seekers to come in, but who pays for it? And why? Big Business I suppose. Tax, tax and more tax.

Perhaps curtailing upper middle class welfare would help the budget and take the focus off the unemployed and disabled, nearly $30 billion per year is wasted on tax cuts to the predominantly wealthy via the superannuation scam, also the massive rort that is real estate speculation (note, not investing) whereby any losses are offset against earned income, ie negative gearing, also predominantly for the well heeled, never mind the 50% capital gains tax scam on such worthy endeavours. All up thats $40Billion saved.

dito the focus should be removed from the 'illegal' immigrants and the $5billion per years spent on policing them, let them in after basic screening, send them to country towns, give them housing and the dole and encourage them to work on farms etc (after all they are mostly rural people, not city slickers) and this would cost (as per estimations) $500million per year leaving another $4.5 billion to smarten up the budget deficit.

Sound good, or would we rather keep paying for the 'gilded' age of entitlement for the already rich and the huge expense of dogmatic right wing political bullsh*t by putting people in their place.

AS for young people, if we are going to bring them into the world then we owe them a living, ie opportunity and real jobs, not destroy it with cheap options set up for greedy and painfully lazy employers who wont train young people any more on account of having a free supply of immigrants all fighting for a job, that in many cases have been devalued due to the massive influx of non needed workers.

And to really please you my outlined reasoning would leave money over for genuine tax cuts where needed along with money over to pay the dole for the coming recession we are bound to have thanks to the wasted opportunity that the mining boom has given us.

Just wonder when some of us will manage to get over the horizon considering that the doomsayers have been preaching alarm and despondency for umpteen years..................never mind..................capitalist economic history ensures that the horizon will be reached sooner or later so you'll be able to say "I told ya so" then

You are being very flippant. Do you not believe in economic downturns? They do happen, and being prepared can help. Why do you not take this thread seriously?