leftards can't run a govt or a business

[Howard Stinks]

The same shit different name.

[sprintcyclist]

............The Labor government is back in deep debt, the endowment funds for education and health infrastructure have been run down and the Treasury head is proposing a new tax on the resources sector.

What we have to show for the China boom are insulation batts and local school halls.

When the Henry tax review is released this weekend, it will use the extraordinary profits of the mining sector to argue that it should pay higher taxes. But remember that the existing taxation arrangements - royalties on production and company tax on profits - increase the tax take as production increases and profits increase. The government does not need to change the taxation arrangements to collect more from the mining industry. The current arrangements do that already.

Changing the arrangements is just a plan for a double bite. The government wants to increase the rate at which it gobbles those increases. There would be no need to go looking for new money if the old money had not been spent in the way it was.

There will be a lot of talk between now and the budget about savings to improve the bottom line. Savings can offset spending, but the easiest way to improve the bottom line is to stop new spending.

If a member of your family had a credit card debt and asked for help, you could give them advice on how to save in all sorts of ways and let them go out and use the plastic some more. Or you could confiscate the card. If you stop new spending, you do not have to find so many savings to pay for it.

The best saving for the government would be to stop spending on all those school halls. At last it's stopped spending on insulation batts. (Of course, a better idea would have been not to start that spending in the first place.)

The budget will show that just as it is looking for savings, the government will go on rolling out ''stimulus'' spending for next year and the year after. Just as it puts the left foot on the brake, it's got the right foot pumping the accelerator...............

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politi ... -tpy1.html