The Fake Side Of Climate Change

The climate has always changed and there is nothing mankind can do to stop it and no reason to. We'd be better off looking for real ways to stop destroying the environment, not fake ones that involve buying carbon credits and pretending it helps.
 

Trumping The Polls

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The US presidential election has shown us something, it’s ultimately the people who can decide an election, not the political establishment, social activists and certainly not the media.

All kinds of tricks are used in elections such as calling a certain candidate’s supporter’s names or saying the polls have said who the winner will be while suggesting the polls are never wrong.

But wrong they are and they were wrong big time. Before the US election Hillary was said to be the winner by a massive margin and as we know that did not happen.

Many polls, such as this one by Huffington Post, declared Hillary the winner before the actual election

Now there’s mock soul searching by the media and others on why it did not go how they had wanted it to. They’re blaming non-existent racism, misogyny, they’ll probably even blame George Bush.

What it really comes down to is more and more people are waking up to how they are being manipulated and used to keep an elite group of people firmly entrenched in their in lording over us while ripping us off in the process.

Polls may be useful in gauging public views on various issues but as an election tool they are a load of nonsense designed to sway your vote and create talking points for election news shows.

So next time around completely ignore the social activists along with the media and their fantasy world polls. It’s your vote, not theirs. Vote wisely and vote like you mean it.

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Social Media, A Tool For Effective Action

People get on social media and say politicians are out of touch. What we need to ask those people is did they actually communicate with their local member? Your local member will not know what your concerns are if you don’t tell them.

After all, while your local member is doing what they can to serve their electorate they are unlikely to be following you on Facebook or waiting on the edge of their seat for you to say something on Twitter. You can’t really call them out of touch if you don’t tell them what you think, how are they supposed to know otherwise? Don’t sit back and let the media or others dictate to them, they need to hear from the Australian people.

No need to be rude or insulting, just tell them what you think and tell them where they are going wrong. If more people discussed the issues with politicians they may find said politicians will be 'more in touch' with the electorate.

Social media should be where we compare notes on our interactions with our representatives and use that information as to whether or not we are satisfied with their performance. The current action preferred by many people of getting online and calling politicians out of touch is just a major waste of time.

If you get an unsatisfactory or no answers then get on social media to discuss it and compare notes with others.

And of course if you get a good response and see your local member is actually keeping their word get on social media and tell people.

Social media is the tool we can use to help get our country back on track. Don’t tell yourself it can’t be done because that is one of the attitudes that can drag us all down.

Like any tool we have to use it properly, once we do that we will see real change in our favour.

Stop Victim Blaming, Stop Supporting Crime

While there are those who criticise outlooks that treat women as fifth rate there are others who embrace aspects of it and play blame the victim. 

‘She shouldn’t have been drinking’, ‘she shouldn’t have gone where she did’, ‘she shouldn’t have dressed like she did’, ‘she shouldn’t have gone there alone’, she shouldn’t have been out alone at night’ etc. is what we sometimes hear when a woman is attacked. 

In other words she’s to blame, her attacker was not obliged to have any self-control and can do whatever he wants. 

The fact is though no one has the right to attack anyone, that’s an illegal act and that’s where the condemnation should be directed, not at someone who was engaged in lawful activities regardless of how foolish they may seem to be. 

Leave the culture of victim blaming to those who do not respect women. To blame the victim is to stand on the same side of the attacker and their criminal actions.

The Howard Era In Plain Facts And Figures

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There are those who like to pretend that the Howard era was actually a debacle that was of no benefit to Australia. They’ll claim that the only way the Howard government paid down debt was by asset sales and follow this with claims Howard had left the country economically in bad shape.

So without the spin let’s take a look at the situation and the numbers, in 1996 the Howard government inherited the $96 billion debt from the previous Fraser and Hawke/Keating governments. To pay down this debt the Liberals continued with the Labor policy of selling assets. $11 billion worth of assets were sold outright and $53 billion in shares were floated for a total of $64 billion that was used to pay down the debt.

$96 billion minus $64 billion leaves $32 billion, this remaining amount was also paid down and not by the proceeds of asset sales. Not only was the debt paid but there were regular budget surpluses and by the end of the Howard government the Future Fund was in place holding $50 billion and there was $20 billion in the bank that was providing the budget with $1 billion in interest per year. If this was all solely down to the asset sales without any real economic skill then the Howard government certainly knew how to stretch a dollar.

During the nine years of the Howard government Australia functioned as a welfare state, was running continued budget surpluses, unemployment was low, the cost of living was at reasonable levels and the debt was gone.

Howard left the country in bad shape?

The facts and figures say otherwise.

Refer to http://www.finance.gov.au/property/asset-sales/past-sales.html for information regarding the asset sales.

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Criminal Economics.

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Crime would appear to be a necessity to the economy.

Basically Australia has a post industrial service economy which was underwritten by a mining boom.

Because one major economic performance measure looks more towards sales and services made by companies and not by the manufacturing of goods it’s pretty much the more sales the better.

Where crime fits in to the picture is really quite simple, a criminal breaks into your home and for example steals your DVD player and other sundries, there are then several expenses you face.

First of all you hopefully have insurance, your insurance company has been receiving money from you and the money you have been paying has been contributing to the insurance company’s bottom line.

Then you need to get the break in damage repaired. Usually someone needs to be employed for this task. That person will be doing a job and earning money that they otherwise would not be earning.

Then you need to buy a new DVD player and other items, retailers make sales that they would not otherwise be making if a crime had not been committed.

If you are assaulted maybe you will need medical treatment, medication will be prescribed, money for the chemist and if your clothes are damaged they will need to be replaced which means more money for a clothes retailer.

Maybe the experience has traumatised you so you seek help from an appropriate health professional, another patient for them and more money for their practice or maybe you just start drinking heavily which is more sales for a bottle shop.

Money is spent that otherwise wouldn’t have been spent. 

Because of crime more money is spent and in the process it’s helping keep people employed, helping keep businesses running and helping the economy so if a crime is committed against you don’t feel bad because it’s actually for the greater good since crime is helping this nation to have a strong economy.
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Get Your Own.

Chewing Out: Is that gum you are chewing?

Chewing Right: Yes.

Chewing Out: Did you bring enough gum for everyone here?

Chewing Right: Nope, I just have a couple more pieces for later.

Chewing Out: Do you think it is fair that you are chewing gum if you don’t have enough for everyone in the class?

Chewing Right: What’s the problem?

Chewing Out: The others here don’t have gum, you’re chewing gum. If you’re going to chew gum you should have brought enough for everybody.

Chewing Right: Since when is buying them gum my responsibility? Why don’t they bring their own if they want some??

Chewing Out: You are not to chew gum in class, it is bad mannered and also against the rules.

Chewing Right: Well if it’s against the rules why would you expect me to bring some for everyone?

Chewing Out: To help point out how unfair it is that you have gum and the rest here don’t. Thanks to you we have wasted too much time on your ill-mannered ways.

Chewing Right: It’s thanks to you. All you had to do was tell me chewing gum is against the rules and a breach of etiquette and I would have stopped right there and got rid of it, instead you chose to play these little games and that waste more time and have no real point. No one is obliged to buy other people gum. What would you hit me with in the future? ‘Is that a limousine you have?? Did you get a limousine for everyone here?’

Chewing Out: With an attitude like yours you will not get far in life.

Chewing Right: How dare you suggest such a thing to me! You have no right to talk to someone like that just because you’ve lost an argument. I think I have a good chance to get ahead because for one thing I don’t talk nonsense or play such stupid games. I don’t spout irrelevant nonsense to say something that can be said with just a few words! If I can’t chew gum here just tell me!! The way you were carrying on was as if I intentionally flouted the rules and was rude to you after being politely asked to stop which was certainly not the case! Then you have the nerve to blame me for wasting time!! You are the one who decided to play little games, not me! You are the one at fault here!!

Chewing Out: (indeterminate mutterings..............)

Putting Racism In Reverse

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One of the sillier terms to come out is the term ‘reverse racism’ which usually refers to racism towards white people. It seems to imply that being racist towards white people is not the same as when white people are racist towards other ethnic groups and that only whites can really be racist. This is of course a disservice to genuine victims’ of racism everywhere and ignores the reality that racism is racism regardless of who the perpetrator is and who the victim is. 

The problem of racism will never be solved while racism itself is actually segregated into different groups based on people’s ethnic background.

If you can have reverse racism what other types of racism are there? If a Nigerian was racist to a Pakistani would that be first gear racism? If a Pakistani was racist to a Filipino would that be second gear racism? What if a Filipino was racist to a Japanese? Would that be cruise control racism?
 
The problem of racism is never going to be solved by creating new names to call people or treating them differently by their race but that is exactly what having reverse racism as an acceptable term is doing. The reality is that it is just as unacceptable to be racist towards white people as it is for white people to be racist towards others, racism between any groups is unacceptable.

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But It's Only...........

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Here's some basic economics which is often intentionally ignored by the some as they push on us their money grabbing scams. 

It will often be presented as only an extra $2 a week or only an extra $50 a quarter or only an extra $500 a year depending on the spin they want to put on it. 

They claim it's a good cause that would only cost you less than $2 a week with the inference that if you object to such a paltry sum of money being taken from you then you are heartless and mean. It's less than a cup of coffee, can't you give up a cup of coffee to help? 

Such a schemes may come across as a good idea but for many people it’s the last straw. They couldn’t afford an extra grab on their earnings. 

Oh but it’s only the cost of a cup of coffee…….. 

That coffee that someone has to give up could be the very cup of coffee they rely upon to keep working so they can earn the  very money that’s being taking from them. 

In any case there are limits to how much money someone has and no amount of creative accounting will change that. 

To put it basically if someone gets $500 a week and the lot is being taken from them you won't get a single cent more out of them let alone $2. If someone earns $50,000 a year with $49,900 already spent and you hit them with another $104.00 in costs they are $4 in the red and can't carry those costs over forever, especially as they'll be hit with inflation in the next year.

Thanks to all these grabs at our hip pocket the economy is struggling to recover. Where people had money left over to spend they now have new taxes and costs and all of them presented as an extra couple of dollars here are a few hundred dollars a year there. 

Costs need to be brought down and wages isn’t the only place as is often claimed. The increases in electricity costs in turn push up the costs of goods and services elsewhere, same as the increases in rates and water charges

Every dollar taken from someone is one less for them. They don’t necessarily have another one to take its place and even if they did others are not entitled to them to fund their scams and people just can’t borrow large sums of money and hand the bill to others. 

Next time someone tells you any sceme (or scam, the two words are often interchangeable) they’re supporting ‘only’ costs so much a week, a month, a year etc. and won’t affect you and everything is fine and rosy look them straight in the eye and point out if they actually worked for a living they would see we their version of economics is not based in the reakl world.

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Debt Measures For The United States

Debt to GDP is misleading, your personal debt can't be measured against a collective measure such as the GDP so why should a governments debt be matched against it?

The figures shown are reasonable approximates which have been used due to conflicting numbers on various reports

Shown on the graph below is the United States yearly GDP, The amount of debt so far and the amount of the governments’ yearly income.

The debt is usually referred to as around 101% of the GDP. It is actually nearly seven years’ worth of government revenue and costing the US $1.2 Billion Daily a day in interest.

Countries like Greece, the UK, Ireland and Italy to name a few also have massively high debts and look at where they are now. The UK and the US are teetering on economic disaster and the others have had to be bailed out and are slashing services and pushing the cost of these disastrous debts onto their citizens, many of whom are in the process of losing everything. everything.
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Debt Measures for Australia

Debt to GDP is misleading, your personal debt can't be measured against a collective measure such as the GDP so why should a governments' debt be matched against it?

The figures shown are reasonable approximates due to conflicting numbers on various reports.

Shown on the graph below is Australia's yearly GDP, the amount of debt so far and the amount of the governments yearly income.

When it's said the debt is 30% of the GDP. It is actually nearly one years' worth of revenue and costing Australia $8 million a day in interest.

Countries like Greece, the US, The UK, Ireland and Italy to name a few once had a debt that at one point was only 30% of their GDP and look at where they are now. The UK and the US are teetering on economic disaster and the others have had to be bailed out and are slashing services and pushing the cost of these disastrous debts onto their citizens, many of whom are in the process of losing everything.
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Debt, The Real Picture

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With accounting there are some very creative ways of presenting information in a way that can make something bad seem not so bad.

One of these creative ways of accounting that is accepted by reputable financial institutions and experts everywhere is the government debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measurement.

This method is actually considered quite acceptable to use but isn’t the best representation of how things really are.

I have selected Australia and United States for this to help demonstrate how this creative accounting is used and what the real picture is. Both are major economies and have debt.

The figures used are approximates as various sites list the figures with some variation on the amounts. The amounts used however are close enough to help get the point I want to convey across.

In Australia the debt to GDP comparison is around 30% of GDP.

That puts Australia’s debt at around $250 billion compared to a GDP of around $1.23 trillion.

Doesn’t sound too bad does it?

The United States debt is around 15 trillion compared to a GDP of $14.58 Trillion. It’s slightly over 100% of GDP.

Not good but not hopeless right?

And remember, this is the accepted and respectable way of gauging debt and helping show possible impacts on the economies in question.

Thing is governments do not possess their countries entire yearly GDP, the governments actual revenue stream is only a small portion of it.

From the Australian GDP of around $1.23 trillion the Australian federal government ends up with around $250 billion.

From the United States GDP of around $14.58 trillion the United States federal government ends up with around $2.6 trillion.

A debt to revenue stream measurement is a much more realistic way of measuring debt. After all if you borrow money the amount you can borrow is measured against your own income which is the revenue stream at your disposal, not, for example, against a combined income figure such as the income of your neighbourhood or of the company you work for.

A GDP is a combined national income figure. Since no one person or entity has that combined amount at their disposal no one person, entity’s or governments borrowings should be measured against it.

Based on an actual ‘revenue in possession’ measurement Australia’s federal government debt is at 100% of actual revenue and the United States federal debt is around 500%.

Now the debts sound worse than the previously mentioned measurements against GDP don’t they? That’s because it is a more realistic presentation of the debts and of the real impact on their countries economies.

Which is more realistic and paints an honest picture of the current fiscal situation?

The Australian annual interest payments of over $5 billion measured against the GDP of $1.23 trillion or the Australian governments’ actual revenue of $250 billion?

And for the United States, annual interest payments of over $148 billion measured against the GDP of $14.58 trillion or the United States governments’ actual revenue of $2.6 trillion?

And that’s the interest only, to reduce the actual debt it costs much more.

Now what do you think the real impact is of the borrowings of governments is having on their nations’ economies and the world’s economy in general?

How many problems in Australia such as hospital waiting lists could $5 billion fix? Or maybe it could help fund the construction of much needed infrastructure.

What could $148 billion fix in the United States?

Despite what some would have you think these are massive sums of money. Sure it doesn’t sound much when you talk in the amounts of trillions of countries’ economies but the reality is these are substantial sums of money leaving with others getting the benefit, not the people it’s supposed to belong to.

Government debt is not a bad thing when the money is borrowed to get something needed such as a bridge or helping the economy during economic or natural disasters but care needs to be taken.



And while these debts mentioned here are technically 30% and 100% of GDP respectively they are realistically presented as 100% and 500% of actual available revenue and don’t include the debts of states and councils.

Include those debts and the money going towards them and it’s a wonder any money is left in our economies.

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