You didn't get what you want and so therefore it's evil?
yeah. like those big bad businesses
They do provide benefit - it's just not immediately quantifiable to a dollar value, so apparently worthless in your eyes. In your example re housing, the departments all have a role to play to ensure that work is conducted to appropriate standards - ie oversight. Yes it's annoying, but you'll have assurance that the end product will be acceptable - to you as an investment in your health and well being, and financially, and to any prospective purchaser down the track. Just because YOU don't see it as tangible, doesn't mean it isn't so. The irony is that years ago, all the councils did this all in-house, for minimal fee, but now it's (public service) been split up and made more "accountable" they are trying to recover costs for their "products" thanks to the economic/privatisation rationalists out there. So you, the user, pays. So if they charge you nothing, they are are a drain on the purse - if they try to recover costs, they're ripping you off for no benefit? Having just gone through this very process in Vic - a more privatized system, I much prefer the old model.
Having worked in (state govt) public service, at the pointy end, I didn't see or experience waste and inefficiency, I saw a lot of people doing an often thankless job, with an ever increasing workload, while being seeing the budgets and available resources shrink. I do think that in many areas (such as National Parks), there is a vested interest in keeping this in control of the public sector. I'm wary of any politician who starts crapping on about large scale cuts or restrictions to public services.
I can just not accept that everything must have a quantifiable dollar value to be justifiable. At the end of the day, the economy is a means to an end - not the end in itself.
last paragraph - agreed. first paragraph... wat?
why don't they just give us a tax cut & let us hire a building inspector when we want to purchase a house?
kind of like how you get a mechanic to check a car before you buy it? because no matter how well something is built if it isn't maintained then it's totally irrelevant?
Yay for you and your most impressive grasp of economics. Pat yourself on the back and give yourself a big high five in the mirror, you obviously deserve it.
Again, you're utterly missing the point, which was that many things that we pay for every day have a 10% component on them and no-one notices anymore, and in the course of my remembered lifespan, petrol has gone from 30c/L up to as high as $2.00 a litre and yet, astoundingly, the world did not end. If it's a necessity and the price is relatively stable, people adapt/get used to it. They bitch about a short term shock and then they adjust. Utility charges for water and power, net connection and mobile fees, petrol, cooked food, private health insurance premiums...
I'm not even disputing the merits of the GST, it's there and we've all moved on. This is precisely my point. And we could do the same if there was a carbon tax. But even better, if it was put into developing and bringing renewables on line, because we were paying for the carbon, not the power, gradually as the fossil fuel side became a lower component of our power usage, we'd actually be paying less than we previously had, not more.
that's the point. we couldn't. the gst is not the same as a carbon tax.
the reason people have managed to "deal" with increases in prices as you put it is inflation. more non-existent money pouring into things destroying any & all savings.
your argument seems to be "if we jack up the price then people will be able to deal with it". seriously? is that it?
i don't know how else i can demonstrate that a carbon tax is a BAD thing. initially it's going to eat into companies bottom line. then we will get a combination of companies leaving the industries (to make profit elsewhere, i.e just pollute in a different country) and the costs of the taxes being passed on to the consumer because those that are left must make a normal profit. this results in a deadweight loss.
graphically it looks like this
before, all the areas ABC were consumer surplus and areas DEF were producer surpluses.
a tax forces things to point P1.10/Q40 initially, where as you can see the areas C and E have become deadweight loss - these are surpluses that are missed out on by both consumers and producers as producers, hit with the extra operating costs (they're now 10c per item worse off, which for the record is the normal profit levels), wage war to see who can hold out the longest in the industry. point 0.9/40 is what you'd get if you instead implemented a price ceiling, and area BD is the tax revenue.
in other words, in the short term they all make nothing waiting for someone to leave the industry and go make money doing something else. many of which do.
the only way in which the remaining suppliers can make a normal profit then, is to pump the price up and pass the ENTIRE tax cost on to the consumers. this results in us moving even further up the demand curve, because as you can see point P1.20/Q50 is impossible. so the result is we have higher prices, fewer goods sold, less competition due to fewer suppliers, and more people out of work due to companies either going broke (because they couldn't sit there and make nothing for as long as the others) and many others having to retrain because there is no longer demand for their skills from the company.
check out this link
http://www.taxreform.com.au/effects.php
which (to its credit) mentions the extra admin costs of the tax. then there's the WOEFULLY incompetent ways in which government will "use" it. which causes even more waste.
I understand your solution - and in theory it would work well - though I can imagine it would still incur protest from the coal lobby/sceptics/mining.
The slice of the issue that it would not address - an it's a big slice is our fossil fuel export industry. While our absolute contributions to greenhouse gas are low, our per capita input is the highest in the world and could effectively be reduced by incentive to not pollute, yes. However, it would not discourage the export of fossil fuel to other nations - which is far and away our major contribution to the issue on the global scale.
Now I understand it's not as simple as sell less coal, China burns less, everyone's happy (except coal miners) as China can get coal elsewhere. However - they're getting it from us because it's the cheapest. We raise the price, they either complain, arrest mining company executives in China and cough it up, or they go elsewhere and pay more. Either way, they pay more, which is likely to reduce Chinese coal consumption. Given we are the largest single exporter of the commodity, if we raise prices, global prices go up. e.g. OPEC nations who decided in the 70's oil was worth a crapload more than what everyone was paying, cranked up the price and created the oil crisis - which massively reduced consumption.
Either way, addressing domestic emissions while still exporting ridiculous amounts of coal, gas and oil to other nations is doesn't really address our primary role in the issue.
Imagine we place a 10% tariff on fossil fuel exports. Invest it in a NHMRC style renewable energy competitively awarded research fund - for $30-50 million per year, you could easily fund a National Research Network with Centre in every capital city, a dozen high end academic research jobs and associated research groups. It would easily be a world class setup. I imagine you'd generate more than $50m per annum - invest the rest in "green" employment creation like set up grants for "green" technology producers.
Now of course China is going to jack up and get pissed about it - and so is the coal industry. Coal industry - oh well. even the Liberals know that there will never be another coal fired power station constructed here, so it local importance will only subside. Why not use its profits to help generate a sucessive industry? China - hmm tough one. No one wants to piss off their major trading partner, and we don't exactly have the moral high ground on the whole emitting greenhouse gases and being a good world citizen on the issue. However it "could" be a bargaining chip in setting up a collaborative approach to tackling carbon emissions - set up and exchange or research and development teams and concepts - invest in green technology actually in China, set up collaborative green enterprise etc and so on...
I dunno. Bit too utopian. But we do need to address the fact our major role is not domestic carbon pollution, but that we sell bucketloads of fossil fuels to other people and therefore profit from carbon emissions. As a result we do have at least a moral obligation to do something about our role in the global issue.
you consider exporting things as being a contribution by us?
if we counted all the exported and used carbon in the world the actual figure would be twice what it really is. you can't expect australia to be responsible for what others do can you?
you know that someone else will just supply the oil to our consumers, right? admittedly oil prices will be *marginally* higher in the short term (so less will be burned short term) in response to the temporary lack of supply, but that will only result in more incentive for more suppliers to open up, returning the industry to its previous state, albeit with us not making any money off of it.
As for seventyseven claiming to be an economist but coming out with "my solution is to reduce the costs of being green rather than increase the costs of not doing so", I'd love to see how he proposes to do this? Increased taxes? Running a deficit due to gov't subsidy? Selling a cow and buying some magic beans?
i've already outlined a very, very workable potential solution. that 1% return would be paid for with cuts to other areas - whichever government departments are the most wasteful.
for the record, if i had my way the vast, vast majority of taxes and government would be abolished.
Rubbish. Economics creates the demand you refer to. We are taught to demand.
You don't watch Madmen, do you?
Bollocks. Wanting more than you need is human nature. Economics just measures it.
Marketing =/= economics.
demand is essentially infinite. marketing is simply trying to mould what people demand most, known in economics as consumer preferences and superior goods.
Bollocks yourself - have you forgotten where you live? The original inhabitants of this country managed to keep the balance for 40,000+ years (by taking ONLY what they needed), yet we managed to put the whole joint at risk in about 200.
Wanting more than you need is the nature of people who ALREADY have more than they need. They teach this behaviour to others to justify their own and, unfortunately, because they are rich and powerful, they have the resources to suck us all in to believing that it's a good system.
population then: 300,000
population now: 21,000,000.
living standards then: lol.
living standards now: infinitely better.
1) where does one get a human harvesting license... are they required... we stand ready to harvest today..... is there a bag limit???
2) Whoa, thanks Arete.... see, the pig was trying to tell me that the scales are just broken.... and now, that no animals over 60kg exists.... whoa, such a relief to read that... awesome... now we're 60kg's..... much better than what those f*cking lying arsed scales were saying on a daily basis.
See what this political void does to pigs.... f*cks 'em up much more than normal... and its very disturbing that he's just worked out what a "hung parliment" was.... and its not the kind of hung he was hoping for.... oh, and he wasn't hoping for that kind of 'hung' either...
pointless posting again..... so just wish we could be sorry... and add something... useful.
s
genuinely lol'd. i too would like to see politicians hung.
So if a tribe makes the payment of an "unrealistic" price for their circumstances - in effect making their own stupid decision - economics is to blame?
I am unable to help you in your lack of understanding of what economics actually does. Economics is simply a set of theories of how our economy works. It does not make people pay more for goods than they can afford.
You may have been attempting to argue that, but this is what you actually said:
So the basis of your understanding of economics revolves around a TV show about an advertising agency, set approx. 40 years ago?
good to see someone else gets it.
And he thinks he's bright enough to be running a country?
Onya Tony.
tony's a douche, there is no doubt about it. but compared to gillard he's the second coming of jesus (for those of you that are unaware of abbot's past & the link with jesus, look it up. you'll have a lol
)
if the liberals had of kept turnbull in power i'd hazard a guess they would have won it, and the country would be infinitely better off for it (turnbull in power instead that is).
