I wonder if the sponsors on Tony's garment during his pollie pedal give him some discreet advice on how to fund "private" enterprises with public moneys... The case in point being medical "research" being touted by his roly-poly acolyte Joe Hockey as the saviour of health by putting his grubby hands in your pocket... The major point being that the co-payment is mostly going to be used to fund "private" enterprises. If it was not, then these morons would have said that it would fund "public" funded research. The difference here is that any "discovery" do solve your ingrown toenails will become "private property" of the private enterprise. You see where I'm getting at? Presently pharmaceuticals strongly influence medicare rebates and the way the game is played. I believe the $7 co-payment (now ditched in favour of "deduction from doctors fees") IS A BIG CON to finance the profits of big pharma. NOTHING ELSE.

In November 2014, Uruguayan voters voiced approval for their government's policies of social tolerance and public spending on early childhood education, affordable universal health care and social safety net programs by re-electing former president Tabaré Vasquez from the ruling Broad Front party. With support from allied green and radical left parties, Vasquez won a landslide victory against a neoliberal opponent who ran on a platform of slashing public sector spending and opening the nation's economy to foreign investors. Instead, Vasquez's return to the presidency in 2015 will extend the Uruguayan social democratic experiment another five years to 2020. London's neoliberal, supply-side bankers are not amused.

Less than a week after Uruguayan election results were certified, Capital Economics, a London-based financial think tank aligned with British Prime Minister David Cameron's brand of aggressive neoliberalism, issued an economic report sternly warning that Uruguay is going to face tough economic times after electing another leftist president unless they change their ways. The language of the Capital Economics report is telling:

Capital Economics concludes that given Vazquez' promises of continuity and more social spending, and the Uruguayan economy running at full capacity, any attempt to bolster domestic demand most likely will generate more inflation and more strains in the balance of payments.

"Our view is that policymakers need to tighten fiscal policy and pass supply side reforms to boost medium-term growth," says the report.

Likewise wage indexation is widespread in Uruguay and according to the IMF, as many as 90 percent of labor contracts are indexed, which contributes to high and persistent inflation. "More generally, reducing the power of trade unions will help to ease labor market rigidities."

This report reprimanding Uruguay was published against the backdrop of the most aggressive assault on the public sector in British history. The Cameron government is proposing cuts of 22.2 percent to the national budget by 2020, with cuts of 41 percent to "unprotected" programs, which translates as discretionary social welfare spending.

The leftist economic experiment taking place at the opposite end of the globe in tiny Uruguay is more than the bankers in London can tolerate, never mind that Uruguay, with minimal military expenses, has annual deficits nearly 600 percent lower than the UK as a percent of GDP. From the bankers' perspective, Uruguay is setting a bad example by taking care of their people instead of catering to global financial speculators.

If the Capital Economics report is decoded, it functions as a virtual thesaurus for the language of financial tyranny, bullying and terror used by the new regime of global capital headquartered in London and New York.

Decoding the Language of Neoliberal Bankers

Capital Economics wants to ensure that Uruguay adopts polices that ease "labor market rigidities." While the preciosity of this formulation is not without entertainment value, in plain language, it means union busting in order to lower wages.

Capital Economics also insists that "supply-side reforms" are essential for Uruguay's survival. Here is a typical list of such reforms.

• Cutting government spending, taxes and policies to cut government borrowing
• Passing laws to control trade union powers
• Reducing red tape to cut the costs of doing business
• Implementing measures to improve the flexibility of the labor market, or reforming employment laws
• Enforcing policies to boost competition such as deregulation
• Privatization of state assets
• Opening up an economy to overseas trade and investment
• Opening up an economy to inward labor migration

In sum, the London financial establishment is telling pesky leftist Uruguay that it needs to crush its unions by encouraging an influx of low-wage, immigrant workers to reduce labor costs, slash social spending and privatize as much of the public sector as possible.

It is important to note that 55 percent of Uruguay's government bond debt is held by foreign investors, many of them British. The anti-labor austerity program being recommended by Capital Economics would be disastrous for Uruguay's domestic programs and quality of life, but it would provide a profiteering opportunity for speculative bankers in London by temporarily increasing the value of Uruguayan bonds. This is what is really meant by "a boost in medium-term growth."

The TTIP and TPP

The neoliberal assault on export-dependent Uruguay is likely to intensify in the next few years, and not solely because of their deficit spending on popular social welfare programs that fly in the face of economic austerity recommended by London bankers and the IMF. Uruguay has also become a lightning rod for the global financial elite because they are challenging the legitimacy of international trade tribunals that lie at the heart of the proposed TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade agreements.

read more: http://truth-out.org/news/item/27932-uruguay-takes-on-london-bankers-marlboro-mad-men-and-the-tpp

Please note that neoliberalism is actually neo-fascist capitalism.