COMMENT FROM ROSS GREENWOOD
Reality pill needed for Australians
This is really well put, in terms the average punter can understand ...
it cuts thru political doublespeak and provides clarity
USA Today
Lesson # 1:
Why the U.S. was downgraded:
* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000
Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:
* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts: $385
Got It ?????
OK now Lesson # 2:
Here's another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:
Let's say, you come home from work and find there has been a sewer
backup in your neighbourhood ... and your home has sewage all the way up
to your ceilings.
What do you think you should do?
Raise the ceilings, or pump out the (ummmm) "effluent"?
Lesson 3 :
Australia today
FROM ROSS GREENWOOD
Quoted by: Ross Greenwood of Money News..
Right now the Federal Government is at pains to tell everyone -
including us the mug-punters and the International Monetary Fund, that
it will not exceed its own, self-imposed, borrowing limits.
How much? $200 billion. And here's a worry.
If you work in a bank's money market operation; or if you are a
politician; the millions turn into billions and it rolls off the tip of
the tongue a bit too easily. but every dollar that is borrowed, some
time, has to be repaid. By you, by me and by the rest of the country.
Just after 5 o'clock tonight I did a bit of math for Jason Morrison (
Sydney radio presenter). But it's so staggering its worth repeating now.
First thought; Gillard, Swan, Wong, before that Rudd, all of the Labor
Cabinet, call these temporary borrowings, a temporary deficit.
Remember Those Words : Temporary Deficit.
The total Government debt will end up around $200 billion.
So here's a very basic calculation .. I used a home loan calculator to
work it out..... it's that simple..
$200 billion is $2 hundred thousand million.
The current 10 year Government bond rate is 4.67 per cent. I worked the
loan out over a period of 20 years. Now here's where it gets scary ....
really scary.
The repayments on $200 billion, come to more than one and a quarter
billion dollars - every month - for 20 years. It works out we - as
taxpayers - will be repaying $15.4 billion in interest and principal
every year .. $733 for every man woman and child - every year.
The total interest bill over the 20 years is - get this - $108 billion.
Remember, this is a Government, that just 4 years ago, had NO debt. NO
debt.
In fact it had enough money to create the Future Fund, to pay the future
liabilities of public servants' superannuation, and it had enough to
stick $20 billion into the Building Australia Fund .....
A note was sent to me which explains that the six leading members of the
Government, from Ms Gillard down, have a collective work experience of
181 years, but only 13 in the private sector.
If you take out of those 13 years the number that were spent as trade
union lawyers, 11, only two years were spent in the private sector.
So out of those 181 years:
- no years spent running their own business
- no years spent starting their own business
- no years spent as a director of a family business or a company
- no years as a director of a public company
- no years in a senior position in a public company
- no years in a senior position in a private company
- no years working in corporate finance
- no years in corporate or business restructuring
- no years working in or with a bank
- no years of experience in the capital markets
- no years in a stock-broking firm
- no years in negotiating debt facilities with banks
- no years running a small business
- no years at the World Bank or IMF or OECD
- no years in Treasury or Finance.
But these people have plunged Australia into unprecedented debt.
Well, in a way you can't blame them.
It's clear the electorate did not do their homework, because the
Government is there by right.
Ah, but they are Labor and people vote for them because Labor is good
for the working family - right???
If you have read this you may like to pass it on to your friends to help
educate a little as you, them and I, will be repaying the above.
Or you can rephrase it into a more traditional tale....
The ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER This one is a little different .......Two
Different Versions ......
There are Different Morals
OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the
summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all
summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the
summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands
to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is
cold and starving.
Channel 7,9, & 10 News, and A Current Affair show up to provide pictures of
the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home
with a table filled with food.
The country is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is
allowed to suffer so?
Julia Gillard appears on A Current Affair with the grasshopper and everybody
cries .
The Green Party stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the
news stations film the group singing, We shall overcome.
Green Party Leader Bob Brown condemns the ant and blames The Liberals,
Capitalism and Global warming for the grasshopper's plight.
Wayne Swan exclaims in an interview with TV News that the ant has gotten
rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax
hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally to gain votes to win an election , the Government drafts the
Economic Equity & Anti- Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the
summer.
The ant is fined for failing to consider how his hard work and preparation
has affected the Grasshoppers Mana and, having nothing left to pay his
retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated under the Government Land Repo
Act and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends
finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government
confiscated house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the
ant´s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't
maintain it.
The ant has disappeared to Vanuatu, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a Drugs related incident, and the house,
now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of Skinhead spiders who terrorise the
once prosperous and peaceful, neighbourhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote !
Australian GDP = $924B
Tax Revenue = $~25B
Australian Deficit = $50B
...just to confuse you more here is a graph of US Debt to GDP:
sorry about the size.
The big spike there is post WW2. And that decline is boom time in US history.
If it doesn't make sense to you then you don't understand macro economics. I don't pretend to, unlike 2GB radio shock jocks.
Panda,
Metho and a good scrubbing brush will get that Kevin '07 sticker off your bumper bar 
.
PS - I know dumbing down something so complex as Global economics is not exactly prudent so I'll take your rap across my knuckles quietly.
No problem Sausage. I just like graphs. 
When you look at the graphs, it's like... they look kinda impossible.
It's almost as if The Federal Reserve prints its own money or something. Weird.
) and we are not going to complete with Asia, then India, then Africa on manufacturing. We need to do something else, and we are lucky we do other stuff. The reality is that the opportunities are harder and fewer. We need to be a little more clever with where we invest to maximise our returns. It puzzles me why the government invests heavily in non-competetive industries, making arteficial bubbles, which eventaully burst or deflate and burn us. Encouraging real opportunities in new industries seems a better strategy.
" (and a high Labor cost - sorry was trying to be puNNy)"....one too many "n"s I reckon
And you guys think that regardless, his or her mob in office will mean a better deal for the average punter out here trying to make end meet. 
If you believe that, then please send me some of whatever you are on, I could do with a pound of it
Majority would be horrified to hear what our elected so called politicians actually think about Mr and Mrs average. 
I heard another one the other day:
The little grasshopper went to school in an outer suburban area of the swarm where there not enough big teacher grasshoppers to teach the hundreds of young grasshoppers. "if only we had more money to afford better equipment and could afford to keep the best teacher grasshoppers instead of them being poached by the private ant schools" the young grasshopper said. The teacher grasshopper said, "those Schools are for ants only and for some reason we have to pay for those schools as well as our own. "That doesn't seem fair" said the little grasshopper. "No said the teacher, for some fricken reason we have to subsidise their "antcare" as well". "Still" said the teacher "we can't complain or the ants accuse will us of "the politics of envy" or "communism". "It's just not fair" said the little hopper. "Not fair", said the teacher laughing, "you should try being a girl hopper or a hopper from another country with a darker coloured exoskeleton". "the leader of the ants wants to "turn back the swarms"....."he's a total ****" said the teacher. "yes" said the little hopper "the way his "born to rule ants only party" want us to work for them then oppose every wage increase to grasshoppers but then support ants like twiggyant and Ginaant when they want more". "too Fricken right" said the teacher. "One day the grasshoppers will rise up" said the little hopper," one day,one day" Hundreds of grasshopper had gathered to hear the little grasshopper and he dragged himself up to the highest blade of grass"I have a dream that one day this grasshopper nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all insects are created equal.
This thread is full of stupid email forwards that sound smart for the first 5 seconds, but then logic kicks in and totally destroys them. Moral of the story, if you only think about it for 5 seconds then it sounds smart. But it's not.
America is a good example of letting business people run the country and the economy. They will sacrifice both the country and the economy if it means they will personally get rich. The GFC proved that.
The recent spat between republican senators and warren buffett indicates the real issues is low taxes for the wealthy.
Being 10-12 kg lighter has made all the difference to my sailing
It has been a nice marriage of pun and funny that has helped me with this...
Part of your job at Australian Labor
Select to expand quoteevlPanda said...
Annual family income: $250,000
Outstanding balance on mortgage, credit cards etc. etc.: $500,000
I don't have the other figures, but those are the two important ones.
Scared yet!? I'm not.
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
-Isaac Asimov
where the heck fire did you get that number...
I can tell you, the average is less than half that, the debt considerably more..
and anti intellectualism is an institution in the western world called education...
the 'noted' intellectuals got us into this mess and and have convinced the credit consumers everything is fine and dandy like cotton candy....
^^^Nah, it's been around a while, so blatantly stolen. As I posted it, I was thinking about what the breakdown would look like in our current tax system, probably the revised scenario, with the cash back and the beating
^^^That's great doc... how about posting some proof...
Here are the 2011 - 2012 tax rates:
Taxable income: Tax on this income
0 - $6,000: Nil
$6,001 - $37,000: 15c for each $1 over $6,000
$37,001 - $80,000: $4,650 plus 30c for each $1 over $37,000
$80,001 - $180,000: $17,550 plus 37c for each $1 over $80,000
$180,001 and over: $54,550 plus 45c for each $1 over $180,000
I feel dirty after posting that
EDIT, and now I feel even more dirty... Don't trust my numbers... I can't count... BUT, I put some percentages of income paid as tax to these ranges... Oh, and added the $1,000,000 as an example...
$0(0%) | $6,000(0%)
$6,001(0%) | $37,000(13%)
$37,001(13%) | $80,000(22%)
$80,001(22%) | $180,000(30%)
$180,001(30%) | $1,000,000(42%)
makes you think that the finances of the country weren't as bad as the conservatives were saying......hang on I've heard that before somewhere!
