On Fri, November 7, 2014 8:43 am, Michael Scott wrote:
And your point is?
It was an offer for you to point out which "large" debt you are referring to.
Interesting that you refer, in your second paragraph, "to national debt, which is indeed "large"", compared to what?
All the others which I cited. My apologies for not making that clear.
I could say a mouse was large. Compared to an elephant it's small. I said our government had a large debt. Compared to "other OECD nations" it's not large. All I said was it's large, and you argued that point.
Compared to Australian historical debt levels it's not large either.
Compared with the USA, our national debt is minuscule, yet you call it "indeed large".
Actually, you're completely wrong on that. Australia's net external debt is 95% of GDP, whereas the United State is 106% of GDP. We are not "miniscule" on that ratio. What is relatively miniscule is the Australian Federal government's contribution to debt relative to the national debt as a whole. But rather than rein in a powerful private sector which is responsible for most of our national debt by increasing taxation levels on the highest income groups and companies, the Federal government has decided that cutbacks on scientific research, universities, and the most vulnerable is the way to go. It is fairly clear who they are governing for. -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt