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Scorched Earth is a great policy for getting back into office

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I must praise the Labor Party and Bill Shorten; they must be enjoying watching PM Tony Abbott squirm over having to commit electoral suicide over the deficit levy. The Labor Party are gambling that the LNP winding back entitlements for electors is electoral suicide, which it is, as that is what starts revolutions.

It speaks of a core weakness of Democracy, that, “It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing” (often misattributed to Alexis de Tocqueville)

The easiest thing to do in Democracy is to vote for someone else to pay more taxes. The major parties will do the rest- by promising votes to marginal electorates, they can “redistribute” this money as welfare. Electors often forget that government spending at some point had to be ripped from a productive taxpayer, and is parasitic in nature, with an overhead of voting public servants to administer. Not only this, often the claiming of “public good” excuses inefficient rollout, such as NBN, NDIS, Gonski, pink batts and “Building the Education Revolution.” The National Disability Insurance Scheme is so horribly designed that it has been described as ”plane that took off before it was fully built and is being completed while it is in the air”.

Each of these is an enormous, uncosted landmine for the next government to deal with. It makes sense for Labor to promise far more than the budget can support, because they are being voted out and can scorch the earth on their way to the door .

What a mess. Now, when it comes for the LNP to discuss funding commitments, it becomes a “revenue question” (i.e. more taxes, because the rich do not pay enough!) to left-leaning members of the commentariat. Increasing taxes to pay for these inefficient initiatives is selling Boxer to the glue-factory- we cannibalise the productive part of the economy to pay for socialist initiatives. It makes the galling assumption that big government knows how to spend money better than the private citizens it taxes. Multi-national corporates will then take investment to more competitive jurisdictions, along with money, jobs and investment.

Frankly the LNP deserve these land mines because they didn’t stand up and say, “we can’t afford this” during the election campaign. They even added their own paid parental leave scheme on top of this pile-up, on top of a debt levy that wouldn’t have been necessary if spending was properly reigned in. Australia has a spending problem and indeed a budget emergency- the goodies promised by Labor have to be funded by something- Taxpayers. We’re not Greece yet, but intelligent electors can read the mathematics and see that spending is far outstripping tax revenue; the liabilities from health and the pension are far outstripping tax receipts.  Give it ten years, and an uncorrected course will see the country down the tubes.

Part of me wants to see this happen, like watching a morbid train wreck and not looking away. If we “don’t have a budget emergency” as Mr. Shorten suggests, let’s leave all of the spending commitments in place and abscond on the debt levy. Let’s have another 6 years of Labor and see whether Australia turns out like Greece. It would be a morbid experiment which one would hope to avoid in our own country. However, we can look at a country like Venuzuela, where rationing is occurring and now the electors have to protest when it is too late- the money has already run out after the country was gutted by socialist strongman, Hugo Chavez.

If the LNP are throw out over their “hairshirt budget” after one term, it would be a true sign that the children outvote the adults among the electors. In that way, it made great sense for Labor to do scorched earth- burn the country to be re-elected sooner. It was clever and it is working. If we vote Labor in, the electorate deserves every pitfall that it receives. We deserve the tax rises, such as the Mining Tax and the Carbon Tax, and the Medicare Levy being means tested. I hope we are smarter than that.

The post Scorched Earth is a great policy for getting back into office appeared first on Controversial News, Controversial Current Events | Intentious the Internet's Home of Controversial News.


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