Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

****ASF Breaking News****

Jump to new
SirRumpole said:
An economy that is more internally self reliant need not worry as much what happens elsewhere if it can sustain itself.
Click to expand...

Australia cannot shut itself off from the world; Argentina tried and failed. If nothing else we need large amounts of oil. Heavy machinery has never really been manufactured in Australia – cushy government defence contracts aside. We are not the US that has the population to sustain a large internal market with production scale. We have a small population that is geographically isolated. We will never be totally self-sufficient and will always need to trade with the world. We also have resources coming out of our eyeballs that the rest of the world wants and we can produce them cheaply and in vast quantities.

Free trade has worked pretty well for us. The obsession some people have with manufacturing is bizarre. It's not a panacea that will take us back to some golden age.
 
McLovin said:
The obsession some people have with manufacturing is bizarre. It's not a panacea that will take us back to some golden age.
Click to expand...
It's more a question of what comes next?

If you look at our big resource exports then coal, gas and iron ore will all be stuffed within the working lifetime of a child born today. Coal because the world's moving away from it, gas and iron because at the rate of extraction there's only a few decades of worthwhile reserves left in both of them.

So it's more a question of saying OK, we've got this temporary thing with mining, but what do we do when that comes to an end and a declining resources industry becomes an ongoing drag on our economy?

Other countries in the same situation such as Norway have tended to be better forward planners than we are on this one. Of the non-mining options, manufacturing looks to be among the better ones given that many service industries struggle to pay good wages.
 
McLovin said:
Australia cannot shut itself off from the world; Argentina tried and failed. If nothing else we need large amounts of oil. Heavy machinery has never really been manufactured in Australia – cushy government defence contracts aside. We are not the US that has the population to sustain a large internal market with production scale. We have a small population that is geographically isolated. We will never be totally self-sufficient and will always need to trade with the world. We also have resources coming out of our eyeballs that the rest of the world wants and we can produce them cheaply and in vast quantities.

Free trade has worked pretty well for us. The obsession some people have with manufacturing is bizarre. It's not a panacea that will take us back to some golden age.
Click to expand...

It's all a matter of degree. I'm not suggesting shutting ourselves off completely, just developing a few capabilities that we haven't already got for the sake of increased self reliance. We don't have to reduce everything to a dollar value and say that if we can't compete cost wise then it's not worth doing. I see no reason why we have to be totally dependent on others for computer chips for example.

Keeping the weeds out of your garden and watering the plants is the best way to make a garden grow. I doubt if the now dominant companies around the world were founded in a totally competitive environment.
 
Smurf1976 said:
iron because at the rate of extraction there's only a few decades of worthwhile reserves left in both of them.
Click to expand...

Thats not true, there is centuries of Iron ore left, we have barely scratched the surface.

But a big problem with tariffs, is that the positive effects are easy to see, the negative ones are often hidden and totally unmeasurable.

For example, Trump might think he is giving his steel industry a boost by limiting Chinese steel imports and that would be true, But all the other industries lose points.

And if lower Chinese steel exports cause Australian Share holders and miners to get smaller dividends and wages, we might not consume as many American products.

I mean the USA benefits from Fortescue metal dividends when I make my annual pilgrimage to Disney, pay my Netflix subscription and when I finally get my Tesla, It's a global economy, there are no independent variables, trying to game the system to increase your stake won't work, except for a few selected groups.
 
Smurf1976 said:
It's more a question of what comes next?
Click to expand...

What comes next is what we do well, not putting walls back up to protect things we do poorly. If that takes the form of some sort of manufacturing I don't care. I'm not against manufacturing, my parents ran a manufacturing business for 35 years. I've got some idea of how it works; when they first started it would take months to get components because the local manufacturers . I've argued on here before that manufacturing needs to move up the value chain if it's going to be competitive. If the best we can come up with as a country is "we need to start making cars again" then we're screwed.

I think the government needs to be more involved in industry development. America's dominance in health and technology is pretty much because of the NIH and NASA. In Australia both sides of government have used the CSIRO as a whipping boy for budget cuts fo decades. The only thing Abbott and Hockey ever did right was that stillborn medical research fund. It was budgeted poorly – basically a tax on the back of the poor to see a doctor – but it would have been a great long term investment in an industry that has created CSL, COH, RES, SRX etc.

Smurf1976 said:
Of the non-mining options, manufacturing looks to be among the better ones given that many service industries struggle to pay good wages.
Click to expand...

How many people getting into manufacturing will be able to work until they're 75, which is where the retirement age is heading?

SirRumpole said:
Keeping the weeds out of your garden and watering the plants is the best way to make a garden grow. I doubt if the now dominant companies around the world were founded in a totally competitive environment.
Click to expand...

As I said above, America made a huge investment in the space race. Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft etc they've all benefited from that multi-billion dollar investment in STEM that happened in the 1950s-1980s. That's the sort of government support I favour over tariffs.
 
Rego, electricity, rents, rates, water, insurance, everything is too expensive. Between people cutting back on food, or being able to shop cheaper, then I'd rather they eat. Money must be tight for everyone to be shopping at aldis.

Woolies is bloody expensive and their meat looks like hammered sht lately. About 2001 I could get 2 trolleys full for around the $200-$300 mark. Lucky to get one at that price now.

I didn't mind some of dick smiths range.
 
McLovin said:
As I said above, America made a huge investment in the space race.
Click to expand...

And you can bet that British, German , French , Japanese or Chinese companies weren't invited to tender for any of the moonshots.

Countries that are ahead now limited competition to their own companies.
eg the Japanese car industry.
 
Value Collector said:
Thats not true, there is centuries of Iron ore left, we have barely scratched the surface.
Click to expand...
63 years worth of reserves worth mining according to Australian Government data. The rest is too low grade to be worthwhile unless nobody else in the world has any decent stuff left at that point.

That’s official government data not mine.

More will be found no doubt but it’s not unlimited and we haven’t had centuries worth of either iron or gas ever since the mining boom ramped up the rate of extraction without a corresponding discovery of new reserves.

In the same way as Australia’s oil is now virtually gone it’s inevitable that other finite resources will go the same way someday. If it’s not 63 years then maybe it’s a 100 but it’ll happen someday that’s a given.

Smart thing to do is use the one-off wealth from mining to build up other industries be they manufacturing, services or whatever.
 
SirRumpole said:
And you can bet that British, German , French , Japanese or Chinese companies weren't invited to tender for any of the moonshots.

Countries that are ahead now limited competition to their own companies.
eg the Japanese car industry.
Click to expand...

I the Brits are the leaders in satellite technology now?
 
moXJO said:
Rego, electricity, rents, rates, water, insurance, everything is too expensive. Between people cutting back on food, or being able to shop cheaper, then I'd rather they eat. Money must be tight for everyone to be shopping at aldis.

Woolies is bloody expensive and their meat looks like hammered sht lately. About 2001 I could get 2 trolleys full for around the $200-$300 mark. Lucky to get one at that price now.

I didn't mind some of dick smiths range.
Click to expand...

Lol...a decent argument until....
 
I think in order for Australia to move forward we first need to take care of our own security. If we don't do this we will always have unsurmountable walls placed in our way. We have the Uranium the world needs we just have to value add and turn it into Nukes. People around the world like us...surely we can be trusted with them...
 
The end game for Australia IMO is, the resources run out, there is no manufacturing and we are still looking around for someone with money that we can tax. :D
So we can pay the welfare bill. :roflmao:
 
Smurf1976 said:
63 years worth of reserves worth mining according to Australian Government data. The rest is too low grade to be worthwhile unless nobody else in the world has any decent stuff left at that point.

That’s official government data not mine.

More will be found no doubt but it’s not unlimited and we haven’t had centuries worth of either iron or gas ever since the mining boom ramped up the rate of extraction without a corresponding discovery of new reserves.

In the same way as Australia’s oil is now virtually gone it’s inevitable that other finite resources will go the same way someday. If it’s not 63 years then maybe it’s a 100 but it’ll happen someday that’s a given.

Smart thing to do is use the one-off wealth from mining to build up other industries be they manufacturing, services or whatever.
Click to expand...

Yeah and in 1985 he world only had 30 years of oil left, things don’t work like that.

Not only will loads iron ore be found, but the vast amount of resources currently considered worthless will be mined.

In 1952, the Minnesota Iron range in the USA was considered “finished” because they ran out of high grade, however today they are mining more ore than they ever have,

Watch video at the 6.50 minute mark, and you will see what I mean, there are way to upgrade low value ore when we need to, it’s just currently we have lots of high grade so don’t need to yet.




And here they are today still mining that area that “scrapped bottom” in the 1950’s, watch from the 3.00 minute mark

 
Last edited:
BlownAccount said:
I think in order for Australia to move forward we first need to take care of our own security. If we don't do this we will always have unsurmountable walls placed in our way. We have the Uranium the world needs we just have to value add and turn it into Nukes. People around the world like us...surely we can be trusted with them...
Click to expand...

Nuclear weapons would be a total waste of money.
 
moXJO said:
Woolies is bloody expensive and their meat looks like hammered sht lately. About 2001 I could get 2 trolleys full for around the $200-$300 mark. Lucky to get one at that price now.
Click to expand...

Simple, don’t meat, and you will get a lot more groceries.
 

Similar threads

Glen48
Life in the USA
Replies
4
Views
4K
Monkey C Doo
M
R
IRAQ: the Big (neo) Con
Replies
1
Views
5K
basilio
basilio
Top