[LINK] This makes me angry.

[TKoltai]

I expect the man in the street not to get it, after all, he's there to
pay taxes, consume beer, buy cinema tickets and shop at Coles, not to
understand why he pays taxes....

But when an organisation like Get-up [Can you spell Publicly Funded
Political Lobbyist] deliberately misleads the public... Then I get angry
under the collar.

Here is a excerpt of their latest advertisement:

Quote/
http://www.getup.org.au/end-billionaire-welfare 

Mining magnates such as Clive Palmer and Gina Reinhart continue to rake
in record profits at the same time as receiving billions of dollars in
handouts (our tax dollars) from the Government.  

Each year, mining subsidies on offer include (but are not limited to): 
- $1.89 billion under the Diesel Fuel Tax Credit Scheme [1] 
- $330 million under the exploration and prospecting deduction [2] 
- $250 million via an accelerated deprecation scheme that lets them
write down their assets early [3] 
- $390 million in various research & development deductions [4] 

This billionaire welfare is occurring at the same time as nurses,
teachers, aged-care workers and other public sector workers face further
budget cuts. 

/Quote

I don't understand what the hell public sector workers have to do with
mining companies...

Who does Get-up believe is leading the charge in Australian Economic
Stability...

Is it those public sector workers ?
Could it be Wayne Swan ?
Would it be well thought out and long term sound economic Government
policies ?

or would it be the Mining Industry ?

A paltry 3 billion in subsidies to provide direct jobs for how many
Australians ?
A paltry 3 billion in subsidies to provide how much percentage of
Australia's export earnings ?

Politicians are almost never about assisting the economy.  Politicians
are about assisting politicians. Our job is to try and pick the least
greedy amongst the job lot on offer. Sometimes we choose wisely, and
sometimes, not so wisely.

Australians need to be aware that a mining company is no different from
any kind of organisation. If you pull out the financial rug from
underneath it, it will lay off staff, maybe not today, or even tomorrow,
but there will be a long term negative knock-on effect. Anyone that
doesn't get this needs to stop pretending to play at politics.

Whilst I'm a strong believer in social services, I'm also a believer in
a fair, equitably and balanced approach to funding a welfare state.
Leaning too far to the left ensures that our young fairer sex will find
reasons to emulate their UK peers where the average house mother has
five kids by the time she's thirty to ensure her financial future.

In theory, as this increases the fertility rate, it could be argued as a
valid Keynesian tactic. (One host mother with five children equals -500K
tax now in exchange for +2.5 mill tax tomorrow.) However, if the
corporations that have the only jobs left, in a stealth grey market
driven industrially denuded country, aren't adding any new jobs, but the
population continues to grow... Hello ? 

Get-up is wrong on this one.

A small two minute [victory] sound byte for politicians today, will cost
the country hundreds of direct and thousands of indirect jobs tomorrow.

Instead of taxing the mining companies, if I were Julia, I would turn
around and force them to become 35% shareholders in entrepreneurial
start-ups in the towns closest to where they are mining.

Let's get business to invest in business to produce win/wins for the
mining companies, the outlying population centres, the Government (in
lowered unemployment figures) and consequently higher taxation revenues.
Let's make Australia work.

How ?

(This is the simplified, non failure contingency built-in option - and
needs refinement.... But):
Let's say the mining companies have to invest 75,000 with 40,000
Australian entrepreneurs and each of those entrepreneurs had to hire
five employees within twelve months. 

That results in an increase of 200,000 jobs with tax revenue of
approximately: $2.9 Billion

And; as a bonus a decrease in social welfare unemployment benefits of
approximately $1.8 billion.

(Of course in the real world, 90% of the businesses would normally fail,
unless the Mining companies have to guarantee their performance for
three years. In which case the Government fixes three problems at once.
For the mining companies, this would preferable to an out and out tax
hike or removal of subsidies because :

A.  They have established Schema in place (and it costs a lot to attempt
to rapidly alter the direction of a behemoth).
B.  They could invest wisely.
C.  They could mentor their investments by placing a senior executive on
the board of every investee.
D.  With the savings from (A), and benefiting from their choices in (B)
and being active in (C); why they could make a profit out of each and
every investment.

PLUS: with no middleman (Canberra) more money gets into the hands of the
electorate who of course would immediately recognise how wise and clever
their Government was.

Get-up, you should spend your members donations in a positive fashion
helping to grow the nation. Not destroy it. 

P.S.: This will only work if Government stay the hell out of it.

Commercial decisions by commercially savvy persons for the financial
benefit of the whole country is a far bigger long term political win
than a bit of political resume kudos and 30 seconds of "fame" on a
Television News Program that 68% of the country are not watching anyway.
(P.S. the 32% of persons actually watching Television are all over 55
and therefore mainly confirmed Liberal voters.)

Imagine the Australia wide meme with 40,000 new business registrations.
Imagine how many people will be mentioning it on Facebook, Twitter,
Google and their personal private online diary blogs.

Dear Diary,
Today I applied for a job at Joes Mt Isa Widget manufacturing.
I'm so excited - until Joes started up the only job a girl could get in
this town was at the Maccas or as an usherette at the local cinema.
This sure beats having to move to the big smoke to find a job...
Now if we could just get these iPhones to operate at faster than 20 bits
per second my life would be complete.
Well that's all dear readers, until next time I have some secret that I
will share with the 4 billion of you that know how to find my blog
diary.  (Pssst, my mum still doesn't know where it is. I'm pretty sure
that she thinks Google is just for looking up big words, like a
dictionary.)

/RANT

TomK