On Thu, Sep 03, 2015 at 09:17:56AM +1000, Peter Ross wrote:
Playing a devils advocate;-) Having decades of unbalanced cash flow is not healthy either. If I have to borrow _more_ money every year, I will come into trouble, sooner or later.
Greece is an example for it, at one point the lender is not willing to risk more if he fears that his money will never return.
(BTW: That is a risk for the lender.. he makes money by taking the risk so I do not think he needs my compassion if it does not work out once in a while)
a little known fact about the greek crisis is that greece has actually paid back over a trillion dollars servicing that debt. the creditor nations have well and truly got their money back several times over so could easily afford to forgive the debt without asset-stripping the nation and impoverishing the greek people. instead, most of the "bailouts" go back to the creditors as debt installment payments, plus they inflict austerity measures on greece forcing them to destroy public services, and privatise utilties and tourism assets.
Anyway, Australia is not Greece(yet). But it forgot to use its good run to improve the balance, and invest in its future.
that wasn't "forgetting". that was the deliberate policy of the Howard govt, which was desperate to find ways to uselessly get rid of the enormous surpluses being generated by the mining boom, so that they wouldn't have to provide useful services or build useful infrastructure or keep some in reserve for when the boom inevitably ended. some of it went to vote-buying exercises like the baby bonus, but much more just got pissed away for ideological reasons. Tax cuts for the rich for example. And instead of spending more on medicare or expanding medicare to cover dental care, they subsidised private health insurance by 30% and forced people onto private health insurance by allowing insurance companies to charge a premium of 2% per year over 30 years of age that you weren't a subscriber, and an extra medicare surcharge if you earned over IIRC about 60K and didn't have private insurance. what happened in greece and what happened here in australia are the inevitable results of free-market theology ideologues who hate government and government services. craig ps: i'm a "beneficiary" of the private health insurance subsidy, i was forced onto it by the medicare surcharge (i.e. i acted as i was supposed to act and thought "if i'm going to pay extra anyway i may as well get some benefit for the extra payment"). As it turned out, i ended up with serious medical problems and have made significant use of that insurance BUT i still think the subsidy was wrong...wrong in every sense - politicially, societally and morally. The money (billions per year) *should* have gone into medicare, not into subsidising private health insurance. and, in any case, the benefit of the subsidy has been more than wiped out by regular increases to premium prices of around 5+% pa (which also increases the subsidy paid by the govt) -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>