The Past Delivers A Doddle To Pseudo Otto Swan
PETER Costello was absolutely correct: "Look, despite his best efforts Wayne Swan has an embarrassment of riches on his hands. That's his biggest problem tonight. How to explain a story he has done nothing to build and has merely inherited." And tellingly, the true centerpiece of the budget is the big fund troika that mimics the Howard-Costello Future and Higher Education vaults. The underlying strengths in the economy - many of them built on fiscal and other measures opposed vociferously by the Labor Party for a decade - have tonight given the Treasurer tremendous ease of ideological and economic manoeuvre. 'Slashing' $7.3 billion of public outlays in 2008-09 and budgeting for a $21.7 billion surplus while also providing $46.7 billion worth of personal tax cuts - and declaring the budget's faux-welfarist theme is to "tip the scales" in favour of so-called "working families" - adds up to little more than a nervous re-arrangement of deckchairs. Deckchairs on the economic equivalent of Cunard Line's new Queen Victoria, that is, not the Titanic of Mr Swan's catastrophist imagination. If inflation really is the looming Zimbabwean disaster he says it is, this is not the budget he would have delivered or had the leeway to deliver.
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“A year ago Kevin Rudd insisted those earning $250,000 were working class. Now - see the baby bonus means test - those earning $150,000 are toffs.”
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Apart from the narrative mission-craving that drives Mr Swan to tout himself as the grim-heroic Otto Niemeyer of our times, irrationalities are obvious at the micro-economic level as much as the macro. For example, a country in dire risk of economic implosion doesn't waste $2.3 billion on "climate change." The attitudinal and rhetorical shifts are far more pronounced: a Prime Minister renowned for a hamfisted excoriation of Hayek - "we ... believe in the intrinsic dignity of human beings" - now says families are his second priority. Inflation - which his own IR policy will make worse - is now number one on his shtick parade. A year ago Kevin Rudd insisted those earning $250,000 were working class. Now - see the baby bonus means test - those earning $150,000 are toffs. That downgrade proves there's nothing cheaper than the politics of envy, Medicare thresholds notwithstanding. Mr Rudd, who falsely made Hayek assert that "altruism had to be purged from the human soul," has also cut $2.6 billion from funds for mental illness, dental health and nursing education. So schizophrenic Peter is robbed to pay bourgeois Paul a "green loan" for a new solar panel. A budget of mixed messages and hypocrisy, it's also inflationary.
“A year ago Kevin Rudd insisted those earning $250,000 were working class. Now - see the baby bonus means test - those earning $150,000 are toffs.”
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Apart from the narrative mission-craving that drives Mr Swan to tout himself as the grim-heroic Otto Niemeyer of our times, irrationalities are obvious at the micro-economic level as much as the macro. For example, a country in dire risk of economic implosion doesn't waste $2.3 billion on "climate change." The attitudinal and rhetorical shifts are far more pronounced: a Prime Minister renowned for a hamfisted excoriation of Hayek - "we ... believe in the intrinsic dignity of human beings" - now says families are his second priority. Inflation - which his own IR policy will make worse - is now number one on his shtick parade. A year ago Kevin Rudd insisted those earning $250,000 were working class. Now - see the baby bonus means test - those earning $150,000 are toffs. That downgrade proves there's nothing cheaper than the politics of envy, Medicare thresholds notwithstanding. Mr Rudd, who falsely made Hayek assert that "altruism had to be purged from the human soul," has also cut $2.6 billion from funds for mental illness, dental health and nursing education. So schizophrenic Peter is robbed to pay bourgeois Paul a "green loan" for a new solar panel. A budget of mixed messages and hypocrisy, it's also inflationary.
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