A: Ummm…
Yes. Get ready for expensive, rubbish public services and a Tax Freedom day falling on
June the 2nd.

To me, this is basically the definition of political evil. While I disliked Howard’s huge public expenditure, and traditionalism for the sake of it, at least the guy seemed to have a consistent set of principles and wasn’t afraid to be unpopular from time to time.

I agree with Kevo. I speculate that encouraging self pity is what the masses are looking for – it relieves people’s underlying feelings of fear and guilt.

So what I am fairly certain of is that the Rudd government will actively attempt to perpetrate the myth identified by Bastiat when he said:
“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else”

I was actually thinking last night about why petrol stations are demonised and I guess it’s because other “essentials” don’t have such price volatility. Prices might change from week to week at supermarkets in accordance to their latest catalogues, but overall the prices are quite static. I was thinking it might be interesting to open a dynamically priced supermarket with digital price tickets- during peak shopping hours prices might go up 10-20% and early morning prices might drop by the same. I wonder what that would do for people’s shopping habits? I know that I only ever buy a BBQ chicken from Coles at 11pm at night when they are discounted down to half price so I’m sure there’s some consumers that would like such a system.

As for the single mothers thing, while being from a single mum family I’m empathetic to single mums (although mine was never unemployed and maintained at least 12 hours of part-time work throughout my entire childhood and has been working 30 hour weeks since my brother turned 14). What Rudd seems to be doing is merely tokenism and does nothing to help single mothers. If he was really serious he’d try reducing the EMTRs and have a lower phase out rate of benefits for part-time employed single mums.

The juggling presently requires three legs.

Throw symbolic bones to those who decry the absence of symbolic gestures during the Coalition government. Hence we will soon have “Sorry about the plastics bags” day. Big sop for those who prioritise appearances – no names, no packdrill – you figure out who ? And achieves nothing.

Tell as many people as possible that they are members of ‘victim’ classes, especially out in the mortagage belt. This keeps them focussed on their discontent and anger and ready to embrace Big Brother populist platitudes. The NSW state Labor govt seems to have refined keeping the electorate in a state of equisite misery and dangling the carrot of pork barrel populist promises without actually delivering services to a fine art.

Step Two also throws a further sop to the Public Intellectuals like Clive Hamilton, David Marr and Ross Gittens who inhabit symbolism zone one above and who like to see reinforcement of their mantra that capitalism and consumerism are corrupting and oppressing the helpless mortgage-belt masses – who of course akso need to be saved from themselves by regulation.

In the meantime while everyone is nicely distracted above, start to work the levers and grab the reins that will result in asphxiation of resources for the opposition and permanent entrenchment of the True Believers in power. Julia seems pretty on top of that side of the game.

eg – while it may simply have been poor reporting earlier this week, the mere suggestion that certain enterprises could be designated of ‘national importance’ AND hence subject to some sort of state mandated surveillance of communications and thus control opens up whole vistas of possibility to apply pressure to the business world and oversee the exchange of ideas – like weblogs for example.

Give it time – if they didn’t figure it out when the story first broke, they will in due course.

Further to what Pommy has said I would argue that the effects of regulation you mention IE: being confident enough to buy a product without knowing how it works is a bad thing.

Regulation can cause false confidence and some would argue that the current financial crisis we are currently experiencing is due in no small part to hubris on the part of the lenders and the borrowers.

Caveat emptor!

I’m not singling out single mums – Kevin Rudd is. My post is about his proposed policy changes not the status quo.

What is the evidence that all of these marginally employable people found work because of the changes versus because 10 years of world economic growth caused an employment boom everywhere?

Well, australia has experienced the same 10 years of economic good times. Is welfare lower now?

Without this trust, I would be hesitant to buy something if I didn’t understand how it worked. But this is due to a regulation.

First sentence is spot on. But it is not due to regulation that you trust a product. It is because of the power of its branding.

Take the recent mess surrounding margin lending and the collapse of Opes, Tricom, Lift, Chimaera etc. Every man and his dog is calling for further regulation. But the damage has been done. The ANZ ‘brand’ name has been shattered. Its shares trade at a steep discount to its competitors and customers are becoming wary of doing business with them. this will take years to repair. It is the prospect of brand damage that keeps companies honest – not the threat of regulation.