Companies who need it, need encouragement. Remember the idea of lifters and leaners?
How do you assess those who need it and those who don't?
Jobs need to be decently paid so that it is an incentive to work. Also if you can't afford to pay decent wages, your business is not viable. Also see the Harvester judgement, it IS one of the pillars of Australian society.
From my memory, most industries in Aus have continually won improvements to workers' conditions and remuneration. I don't know the figures on whether the average wage has gone backwards in real terms over the last 40 years that I'm aware of - I suspect not. Unions are always striving for better pay and conditions for their workers. Bosses are always trying to pay less, of course, but most good Bosses and Companies know to reward good staff - otherwise they might go elsewhere; and they do. So, there
are folks out there paying people well for their positions.
3) Govt needs to steer economy into more sustainable and clean techs. Australia has a reputation for clean agricultural produce. And people in Asia as they get richer will want more.
I agree, but the forces of free enterprise de3mand cheaper and cheaper - we all want cheaper everything. Hence; if a company can deliver a cheaper product from an O/S supplier in order to be competitive; they often do. I don't like it - I want to see Australians only buying Australian products, but the public as a whole won't do it because we are too expensive in many cases.
4) Education. "Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense." Quote from the West Wing. BTW Should I get a subsidy for having a private security guard if I don't trust the police to protect me?
I agree that education is very important.
5) R&D. What on earth was the village idiot Abbott thinking when he chopped the CSIRO and reduced R&D tax breaks.
It's possible that a lot of R&D was not actually that, but companies rorting the system?
6) Mining tax. A must. We get only 20% of the total income for our rocks. A modest 5%-10% mining tax without the dodgy exemptions is the go. Go check out Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
Read my earlier thoughts on the mining industry.
7) Carbon Tax. An absolute must. The country needs to change direction to more renewable tech. There will be a time when humanity starts to actually realise how bad the Climate Change situation is. (Deniers, shut up and publish your findings, then I will believe you). Jobs growth from this in high tech green jobs would be huge.
The CT was introduced to encourage less production of CO2 I believe. It hasn't been confirmed that this measure will do anything at all to lower the world's temperatures at all. The best guestimate has been that it
might lower the temp by 1/4000th of a degree by the end of the century. Let's call it 1 degree by the end of the Century...might. Noone actually knows or will verify a figure that it will.
Same with sea levels ; they " they may rise by X metres"
It is a joke.
8) Negative Gearing. What a rort. Apply it only to NEW housing. That will increase supply.
Usual response by someone who is either a victim mentality and anti-rich, or owns no property and can't afford the house they want, or both...FHB's are usually the loudest complainers about NG.
NG has been around since I was a kid, and from my experience it has had little bearing in the overall cost of housing prices. It has not suddenly become the cause of unaffordable housing in recent years.
And, it is available to every single Australian...if you choose to partake in it.
Without it, there will be far less investors, which will create more demands for rentals by renters - forcing up the rents, and forcing folks to find other accommodation arrangements, tor the rents will have to increase to provide a return attractive enough for an investor to bother going through all the grief associated with purchasing a property.
If you want to point a finger; point it at the Gubb for the raft of fees and GST costs associated with every single step of a house being planned, approved, permits, construction and traded. That is where a lot of housing costs are built in.
9) Super concessions. The age pension currently costs $39 billion and superannuation tax concessions will cost the budget around $35 billion in 2013-14. The Commonwealth bill for these concessions is projected to rise at a staggering 12 per cent annually to be $50.7 billion in 2016-17.
Super concessions are there to encourage everyone to plan and provide for their retirement and take the burden off the taxpayer. Most super contributions are funded by Employers.
This is a business cost which is either forcing up Aus prices for commodities/services/manufacturing, etc - or costing jobs. One bloke I know had an increase of $5,000k per month last July when the Super contribution went up.
And the overwhelming majority of this assistance flows to high-income earners.
How does this occur? Is it because they receive a higher % concession rate than a lower income earner? If that's the case, then I agree it's not equal. But if it is based on volume; this would be correct because higher income earners are providing more in contributions and salary sacrifice. Everyone is able to salary sacrifice - I would wager that most lower income earners don't participate in that.
