So weird, especially since I’ve been told millions of times that the Liberals are the economy management superiors
chessfused on
Let’s not continue to normalise and promote the unhelpfully reductive framing of surplus=good and deficit=bad at a Federal Government level.
Mexay on
For anyone following along at home, that’s basically enough to fully fund bulk billing for GP visits for every Australian, plus a few dental check ups a year.
The government has done a good job managing the budget, but we shouldn’t be afraid to spend more to offer better services.
Now imagine what we could do if we actually started taxing megacorps, removed the gravy train that is negative gearing, etc.
thewritingchair on
Imagine we pile up all our money to send people to uni. Then we cut thousands of positions and declare a surplus!
A surplus is unhoused people. It’s unbuilt hospitals. It’s kids under the poverty line for years on end.
For a quasi-immortal nation state that makes its own currency, a surplus is a horrific loss, not something to be celebrated.
Butthole_Enjoyer on
Cool cool. Good surplus. Now spend it on something useful. Maybe one of those crisises we are all complaining about
david1610 on
I wish people would stop focusing on budget surplus/deficit. Most economists would say that as long as the debt from the deficit is used responsibly, is used on investment, or course correcting stimulus it is fine. Some countries have debt to GDP ratios 5 times ours, not that that is something to aim for though.
A much more interesting discussion is tax to GDP ratios, Australia had a ratio of 29%. This has been slowly increasing over the last decade but usually pretty stable. Everyone should forget about deficits/surpluses and ask is this level of taxation higher or lower than I’d like, should we aim to keep it where it is?
Acknowledge that there is a tradeoff between efficiency and equity in an economy and that neither direction is necessarily worse or better, it’s a question for you. This will essentially dictate the spending and debt questions.
Then ask yourself, after landing on a position of the overall tax level, in comparison to other countries, ask how should the government obtain that tax? Most tax in Australia is personal income, company (passthrough personal income) and GST in that order of magnitude….I believe the last time I checked…
How progressive should the tax rates be, how would you draw the thresholds? Would you tax certain types of income more? Understanding that you want to encourage work without, limiting living standards, while using your equal representation in voting to get the best deal you can and targeting a level of inequality you are happy with.
This is probably the harder question and one everyone should contribute a lot of time thinking about and studying.
How spending is done is simpler for most people. Most people want a level of safety net, access to education/healthcare, defence etc then they want it to be run efficiently and the government should invest say in infrastructure if it will make living standards higher in future. It is usually very similar between countries the allocations as a % of spending, it is usually the degree of spending that is vastly different.
6 Comments
So weird, especially since I’ve been told millions of times that the Liberals are the economy management superiors
Let’s not continue to normalise and promote the unhelpfully reductive framing of surplus=good and deficit=bad at a Federal Government level.
For anyone following along at home, that’s basically enough to fully fund bulk billing for GP visits for every Australian, plus a few dental check ups a year.
The government has done a good job managing the budget, but we shouldn’t be afraid to spend more to offer better services.
Now imagine what we could do if we actually started taxing megacorps, removed the gravy train that is negative gearing, etc.
Imagine we pile up all our money to send people to uni. Then we cut thousands of positions and declare a surplus!
A surplus is unhoused people. It’s unbuilt hospitals. It’s kids under the poverty line for years on end.
For a quasi-immortal nation state that makes its own currency, a surplus is a horrific loss, not something to be celebrated.
Cool cool. Good surplus. Now spend it on something useful. Maybe one of those crisises we are all complaining about
I wish people would stop focusing on budget surplus/deficit. Most economists would say that as long as the debt from the deficit is used responsibly, is used on investment, or course correcting stimulus it is fine. Some countries have debt to GDP ratios 5 times ours, not that that is something to aim for though.
A much more interesting discussion is tax to GDP ratios, Australia had a ratio of 29%. This has been slowly increasing over the last decade but usually pretty stable. Everyone should forget about deficits/surpluses and ask is this level of taxation higher or lower than I’d like, should we aim to keep it where it is?
Acknowledge that there is a tradeoff between efficiency and equity in an economy and that neither direction is necessarily worse or better, it’s a question for you. This will essentially dictate the spending and debt questions.
https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-australia.pdf
Then ask yourself, after landing on a position of the overall tax level, in comparison to other countries, ask how should the government obtain that tax? Most tax in Australia is personal income, company (passthrough personal income) and GST in that order of magnitude….I believe the last time I checked…
How progressive should the tax rates be, how would you draw the thresholds? Would you tax certain types of income more? Understanding that you want to encourage work without, limiting living standards, while using your equal representation in voting to get the best deal you can and targeting a level of inequality you are happy with.
This is probably the harder question and one everyone should contribute a lot of time thinking about and studying.
How spending is done is simpler for most people. Most people want a level of safety net, access to education/healthcare, defence etc then they want it to be run efficiently and the government should invest say in infrastructure if it will make living standards higher in future. It is usually very similar between countries the allocations as a % of spending, it is usually the degree of spending that is vastly different.