Tuesday 24th of December 2024

a rotten apple called amanda...

amanda's apples

From Amanda Vanstone

It might seem a trifle strange to some that the Labor Party describe people on incomes of $100,000 or more as ''fabulously wealthy''. Perhaps they have both forgotten that despite each of them earning twice that amount they nonetheless gave themselves a very hefty raise so they now collect about three times that or more. So now they are fabulously, fabulously, fabulously wealthy.

To add insult to injury, they declared moves they were making to shore up an out of control budget were really about making superannuation fairer. That might have been tolerable with some serious changes to superannuation but alas that was not to be.

It is no secret people at the top-income end of town have for some time been delighted - and perhaps even felt a little guilty - they have been able to take advantage of some superannuation opportunities introduced in the latter years of the Howard government. I do not have access to Treasury data, but anecdotally it seems these rules have ended up in practice being far more generous than intended. Quite why Labor hasn't chosen to limit these opportunities prospectively one can only be left to ponder. I think they should have.

I say prospectively because it has long been recognised that retrospective legislation is a bad thing. Instead Labor has, yet again, embarked on a ''we'll attack the rich'' campaign. This is just dumb, outdated politics. For starters when you keep attacking the truly wealthy they just take their factories, income, capital elsewhere. And the associated jobs disappear.

Like it or not, the capitalist system has been the greatest generator of income to lift people all over the world out of poverty. Under it some will get much richer than others. Without it the only ones who will get richer are the dictators and leaders. Constantly demonising those who end up richer just undermines, indeed attacks, the system itself.

If people make their money out of working harder, taking risks and being smarter we should celebrate their achievement. Attacking them as the hated ''rich'' is nothing more than the politics of envy.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/plans-to-attack-the-rich-getting-dumber-and-dumber-20130414-2htel.html#ixzz2QVZVqqxp

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Dear Amanda, don't ride on your high horse... or talk of a few rotten apples... as if the rot only came from who you know... There are a few untruths in your diatribe and you know it... It was Fitzgibbon who announce that people (was it families?) on $250,000 were struggling out west... He was of course way off the mark... And your god, John Howard, was far too generous with tax concession for the rich and their superannuation (a new Keating retirement scheme concept which Howard opposed vehemently) — which were not far from being equivalent to premium offshore tax dodges... And when politicians give themselves pay rises, both side of the house applaud, including your mobsters.

Actually what makes the factories disappear overseas at the moment is not so much the "attack on the rich" but the rich profiteering from a high dollar value, you should know that...

A society needs some forms of equalisation... Otherwise the poor get poorer and the rich get richer in a game of giant Monopoly, by end of which there is one super rich (in the past, it was a King) and everyone else is broke... toiling twice as hard to repay borrowings... a repayment process which can never be achieve under these conditions... 

This is why there are some different tax rates for the whatever revenue, otherwise the growing disparity in society would fuel massive unrest... Sure, Singapore is a model of one-rate tax system but it's more of a draconian exception than the rule, where westerners might like to visit but not live there for too long, apart for a few.... And Singapore is classified as a tax haven, and so is Israel...

The people who "make their money out of working harder" is a furphy and you know it... There is something that cannot be ignored: income disparity... Some people work much harder than others and they still get a slave's pittance... 

Being smarter is not obvious either. Some academic bright lights can be far smarter than say an oil executive, but be hammered on remuneration by the way academia rewards. 

Taking risks is often a euphemism for gambling. Gambling in a social environment is not always conducive to produce anything much more but hope of more money. This growth of hope leads government to add to the pool in accordance with "GDP" — or sometimes as a way to salvage the furniture should there be a crash. In this case the rich are often the quickest at collecting the cash since the money is thrown directly at them rather than being given to the poor, except when the Labor government gave people under a certain income a tax refund of $900. It worked, despite what the morons of the Liberal (conservative) Party complain about. As you know there is no point having shops if no-one has any money to buy anything....
As you know though, gambling can lead to addiction and family break ups... And not everyone is clever enough to know how to beat the odds in a market place...

As you know too, the biggest gambling game at the moment is the derivative market... Warren Buffett tells us in his wisdom that it's a market of cluster bombs that could explode everywhere any minute. 

We can let the horse go unbridled, of course, but eventually somewhere some poor bastard (a lot of them) will be run over. In comparison, it's not such of big deal for a few rich people to be held back a bit... especially after having been given hefty concessions.

The rules of Superannuation have been over generous to the rich so far. A small correction in holding that horse a bit at the bit would have had to happen sooner or later... And some people have invested their moneys in reputable outfit that bit the dust because of some capitalistic shenanigans (high crookery for which no-one has been imprisoned for swindling many billions of dollar, while my hungry friend ended up in the slammer for stealing an apple... a rotten apple at that, too) ...

Gus Leonisky
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The local liquidators of collapsed US investment bank Lehman Brothers are seeking a settlement with Australian creditors, including 70 local councils, charities and churches which won a landmark case against the company last year.

If the settlement is approved by the Federal Court then the former Lehman clients will get $211 million in compensation, less than half of what they are owed.

The liquidator of Lehman Brothers Australia is offering up to 49 cents in the dollar in compensation for its Australian creditors who purchased investments linked to the global financial crisis.

The investments plunged in value during the GFC.

Last September, the Federal Court ruled that the Australian arm of Lehman had mislead investors when they sold the complex investments known as synthetic collateralised debt obligations.

The payout will be made in return for the class action being dropped.

The class action was led by Wingecarribee and Parkes Shire Councils in New South Wales and the City of Swan in Western Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-15/lehman-liquidators-offer-multi-million-settlement/4629932

 

das Humankapital...

The question is whether any of it was sustainable. Now, there is a growing and dismaying recognition that too much growth in the past 30 years has been built on an unsustainable credit, banking and property bubble and that Britain's true long-run growth rate has fallen to around 2%. The productivity gap is widening. All that heightened inequality, the unbelievable executive remuneration, wholesale privatisation, taking "the shackles off business" and labour market flexibility has achieved nothing durable.

This bitter realisation has been sharpening in non-conservative circles for some months. The pound has fallen by 20% in real terms since 2008, yet the response of our export sector to the most sustained competitive advantage since we came off the gold standard has been disastrously weak. Britain's trade deficit in goods climbed to 6.9% of GDP in 2012 – the highest since 1948 – and February's numbers were cataclysmically bad. Britain simply does not have enough companies creating goods and even services that the rest of the world wants to buy, despite devaluation.

The legion of Mrs Thatcher's apologists argues she can hardly be blamed for what is happening 23 years after leaving office. But economic transformations should be enduring, shouldn't they? Thatcherism did not deliver because dynamic capitalism is achieved through a much more subtle interplay. She never understood that a complex ecosystem of public and private institutions is needed to support risk-taking, the creation of open innovation networks, sustained long-term investment and sophisticated human capital. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/14/thatcher-economy-talk-based-fraud

more vanstone crap...

 

Perhaps the most profound legacy of Baroness Thatcher is that she managed to produce such spectacular effects on the other side of politics.

The British Labour Party almost imploded whilst in opposition and it had to reinvent itself under New Labour.

People hated her then and now and that political hate is arguably self-defeating and self-destructive.

Have we seen that level of hate in Australia? Yes we have

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/australian-update-april/4625744

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Circumstances and carpe diem can have a profound effect on the balance of politics... Thatcher got pot luck that English Labour then did not have a leader to spank her butt... Thatcher used the common practice amongst dictators to find a weak enemy and stick to it like a dog with a bone... With this, she needed an accomplice which she found in a certain then young Uncle Rupe, who had his own battles at Wapping.

Thatcher's "enemy" were the simple folks: the miners, the unemployed, the young people, the workers, the unions... In her despotic folly against these she gathered on her side the accountants, the Lords and the shop-keepers (Open All Hours)...

The Labour Party in England, while being shafted by Mr Murdoch, had also been corrupted by a few union officials, who like Eddie and the woman from Jacksonville, were more or less annoying opportunists or plants from the other side sent to sabotage the common good...

At this point in time, in Australia, we have a leader who has chosen to fight against a more powerful entity in the miners, the rich, the excessive capitalists — not to stop them being what they are but to stop them oppressing and robbing the community — all for the protection of most people and that of the environment with proper steps for the future.

Under the constant push by the same now old Mr Murdoch who prefers gambling to equality and environment, this country might dice Gillard and replace her with a moronic little despot who has no idea of economic dynamics, who has no idea of science and sees everything in relation to his fascist days at the seminary...

If there is a god, a real one, please, oh god make sure that little rat does not get there, otherwise god, you're bloody sadist...

And yes Amanda, we've seen that level of Hate in Australia... That hate is generated by the little rat Abbott, who like B A Santamaria won't stop throwing punches around, until he gets his ways... Unless his trousers are pulled down and he can't say a word:...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=zyY-xI6zgfk&feature=endscreen

 

vampires pay less personal tax these days...

We are in the midst, apparently, of (another) class war. Questions, without ready answers, arise. Who's winning? Have the Battlers defeated the Elites? Has Struggle Street been taken? Has ''Fair Go Mate'' suffered collateral damage?

In March last year Treasurer Wayne Swan added some momentum to the issue with his article ''The 0.01 Per Cent - The Rising Influence of Vested Interests in Australia''. Clive Palmer, a Queenslander, said that Swan was ''an intellectual pygmy'', and decried the notion that ''vested interests'' had too much influence in Australia.

Quite quickly, for having the temerity to talk about equality of opportunity and outcomes, the opposition's shrillest voices were accusing the Labor government of indulging in class warfare.
This conveniently overlooked the fact that a bunch of heavy-weight miners - Gina Rinehart, ''Twiggy'' Forrest, BHP, Rio, among others - had recently squelched the Resource Super-Profits Tax with some hysterical special pleading about how punishing life would be if this modest redistribution of wealth were to take place.

The Liberals had tapped into the well-worn idea that people hate class wars because most people aspire to move up a notch. This affects people's responses to just about every political policy position, from superannuation tax reforms, education funding, health insurance, and the national disability insurance scheme (where a class of lawyers will be done in the eye).The physical embodiment of the front line of defence has been a collection of well-padded people: Rinehart, Palmer and now Amanda Vanstone.

Vanstone, this week in these pages, decried the fact that ''rock stars and movie moguls [who] acquire mega wealth'' don't do enough to defend capitalism.

Capitalism needs all the support it can get, as Vanstone said in a flurry of mixed imagery: ''We should understand that every time a bad apple gets away with a misdeed another cancer cell is implanted in the capitalist system.''

Vanstone warned if the wealthy are attacked they will take their businesses and factories elsewhere.

Labour opposition leader Andrew Fisher in 1908 swept fattist sensitivities aside when he told Parliament: ''The fat man calls for one grand scheme of reform, but declines to support any measure which benefits one class.''

So the 0.01 per cent are back at it, defending and expanding their patch, with rhetorical pump priming from the opposition.

The implication is that the wealthy are suffering because of Labor's class war. Obversely, this suggests that inequality in Australia is reducing because the well-to-do are losing their share of the pie.

It's a proposition that doesn't bear close, or even superficial, scrutiny. Last month, the Productivity Commission released its Trends in the Distribution of Income in Australia.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/theres-only-one-winner-in-this-phoney-class-war-20130418-2i2tp.html#ixzz2Qt0zfZrh