Suggestions For Improving Australia's Economy

[nioka]

I can`t tell the difference between a simpleton and a non-simple person.Io

That is because most of the simpletons masquerade as Economists, polititions, experts, etc. The simple people are not really simple at all, they usually just mind their own business.

 

[nioka]

1. Build infrastructure such as railway upgrades, lots of dams with associated hydro, improved roads, port upgrades etc.

2. Encourage innovative industries to remain in Oz and develop the industry here rather than sell it cheaply overseas.

3. Stop selling our businesses to overseas interests.

4. Live within our means and decrease the current account deficit.

 

[bassmanpete]

Build infrastructure such as railway upgrades, lots of dams with associated hydro

Talking about only Victoria, where would you build the dams to be able to guarantee filling them? Maroondah is only a third full and that only holds about one fiftieth of what the Thompson can. All you'll end up with is a load of dams less than half full & a stuffed environment. Not that it isn't getting stuffed already.

Rather than remove SA completely, dig a ditch from the sea to Lake Eyre (it's about 15 metres below sea level) and form a permanent lake/inland sea. The evaporation may well change the weather bringing more rain to SA. Much like the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union used to before rampant irrigation destroyed it, and the rainfall.

 

[pepperoni]

Love the maps!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had a frustrated idea today ... export tax the F*&^ out of resources and abolish income tax.

They are aussie property but they are benefiting a few giving the rest of us an inflation headache.

We will be asias answer to monaco. And dubai once we put a palm where SA used to be.

 

[pepperoni]

3. Stop selling our businesses to overseas interests.

Something like what they do in china and the middle east .... not sure whether there are any downsides to that though.

 

[disarray]

we need some vision and long term planning or we are going to end up being some pointless service industry tourist dump once the resources are all dug up.

i'd like to see

- half of the desert filled with hemp
- the other half storing radioactive waste (charging an obscene amount of $$$)
- lots of nuclear plants in the northwest to support high energy processing of our raw materials (seriously we should be doing this in-house)
- support for the CSIRO to work on a space mirror, develop carbon nanotubes, finish the scramjet and exterminate the cane toad and the rabbit
- a metro for sydney and improved public transport for the other capitals
- a good broadband infrastructure
- an end (or curtailing) of cotton and rice production
- further settlement of the northwest if we want to maintain current immigration levels so we don't keep cramming everyone into sydney
- a shift in government thinking from growth to sustainability
- a shift in personal thinking away from being an overconsuming fatass to being more responsible about your lifestyle
- national service for all 18 year olds with the army employed in engineering, construction, conservation etc. projects (like the romans used to do)

 

[nioka]

Talking about only Victoria, where would you build the dams to be able to guarantee filling them? Maroondah is only a third full and that only holds about one fiftieth of what the Thompson can. All you'll end up with is a load of dams less than half full & a stuffed environment. Not that it isn't getting stuffed already.

Rather than remove SA completely, dig a ditch from the sea to Lake Eyre (it's about 15 metres below sea level) and form a permanent lake/inland sea. The evaporation may well change the weather bringing more rain to SA. Much like the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union used to before rampant irrigation destroyed it, and the rainfall.

There will be room for some small dams east of the dividing range in Vic but the main areas for dams are in Tasmania and the east coast of Queensland and northern NSW. A lot of water, which is surplus to maintaining an enviromental flow, could be diverted to the murray river and the food bowl of western NSW and Vic.

I remember many years ago that there was a proposal to build the canal to fill inland Australia with an inland sea. I think it was another "Bradfield" plan. The problem is that it may end up a dead sea with evaporation building up very high salt levels.

 

[white_goodman]

change property taxation... allow for the best and richest homes in australia to be eligible for land tax and capital gains

 

[bassmanpete]

A lot of water, which is surplus to maintaining an enviromental flow, could be diverted to the murray river and the food bowl of western NSW and Vic.

There was a lot of water fell on the upper reaches of the Murray-Darling last month but, from what I've read, most of it was diverted into private dams. Maybe something needs to be done about that before we start diverting rivers.

You're probably right about an inland sea becoming too salty.

Maybe we could set up a whole new city complete with manufacturing base in the north-west. Make it self enclosed & separate from the rest of Australia, populate it with refugees and only pay them what they would get in their own countries. After, say, 4 years they'd get automatic Australian citizenship and could move to anywhere they liked. Just a thought :hide:

 

[chops_a_must]

While we are all offering up serious suggestions, I thought I'd give another one of mine.

I remember giving a speech in school, about anyone over 65 being forcibly used for medical experiments. I think it would be a boon for our bio-tech industry. What do others think? That way an otherwise unprductive sector of the community is useful, and considering they spend most of their time in hospital, it should provide easy access to these people.

 

[nioka]

While we are all offering up serious suggestions, I thought I'd give another one of mine.

I remember giving a speech in school, about anyone over 65 being forcibly used for medical experiments. I think it would be a boon for our bio-tech industry. What do others think? That way an otherwise unprductive sector of the community is useful, and considering they spend most of their time in hospital, it should provide easy access to these people.

A touch of Hitler's thinking there. Sounds like it was/is the inexperience of youth showing.

 

[disarray]

i think it might have been a joke nioka

the question of what to do with all the old people is a good one and will have a huge impact on the future economy. if we were a more homogenous community then old people could be well employed in social programs, doing local charity stuff or teaching kids. it might work in smaller communities but not in the big cities because of all the different cultures and so on.

everyone knows the baby boomers don't have enough saved to retire, and the younger generations have no intention of paying for them, many are barely able to manage their own finances, so what is to be done?

many people would probably consider suicide, and as others object to mass immigration to support them, its probably time for a raging public debate about our values towards the elderly and death.

 

[chops_a_must]

A touch of Hitler's thinking there. Sounds like it was/is the inexperience of youth showing.

Who's to say what is right and wrong when it comes to materials for making my lamp shades these days? Especially in this modern age of silicon chips and so on.

 

[MRC & Co]

While we are all offering up serious suggestions, I thought I'd give another one of mine.

I remember giving a speech in school, about anyone over 65 being forcibly used for medical experiments. I think it would be a boon for our bio-tech industry. What do others think? That way an otherwise unprductive sector of the community is useful, and considering they spend most of their time in hospital, it should provide easy access to these people.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, now that was funny!!!!!!!!!

Of course, a joke, but very witty!

 

[nioka]

i think it might have been a joke nioka
everyone knows the baby boomers don't have enough saved to retire, and the younger generations have no intention of paying for them, many are barely able to manage their own finances, so what is to be done?
.

The movie "The Great Dictator" was a joke made about Hitler too but It didn't change history.

The younger generation have no intention of paying for them!!!!!!!!!!!!!. The younger generation OWE them.

I've posted this before, it needs revisiting. The year I started full time work,1947, the government introduced a pay deduction that went into a fund to guarantee that EVERYONE would be able to draw a pension on retirement. A few years later a greedy government transferred the fund to consolidated revenue, maintained the deduction and included it with tax, saying at the time that the pension would be paid from general revenue. Another government decided to means test the pension. We were robbed. As it turns out only the ones who owned property that has increased in value are able to maintain a reasonable standard of living through old age.

The younger generation have employer paid super deductions, they should not be entitled to the same pension arrangements. If they can make the country as prosperous as has the generation before them they should retire in comfort. They will in turn be the older generation and be relying on the younger ones as did the older ones when I was young. CORRECT THAT. If their super is "stolen" by one way or another I hope they can rely on the younger ones for assistance.

As for oldies not pulling their weight, go and see who does the volunteer work at opp shops, hospitals, coastguard, soup kitchens, welfare centres etc. They keep working because they are a dammed lot more used to hard work than a lot of the young ones I see around today who can only think me me me.

And so endeth todays soap box oration.

 

[Sprinter79]

By the time we're 'ready for harvest' we're already a walking mineral deposit. Over our time, we've ingested/inhaled so much heavy metal, so much gold dust, so much asbestos, that it would make really savy business sense to start prospecting in our elderly. We know that most elderly women haven't had a shaft of any kind in them for years, so we can be sure that the resources they offer are untapped.

We might also start to take our role in this seriously from a young age. Encourage our children to play in the local industrial areas, eat particular cake, lick batteries and stick unidentified things up their nose, all with the eye on the future. Gives a new meaning to the term "investing in our youth..."

 

[subaru69]

If their super is "stolen" by one way or another I hope they can rely on the younger ones for assistance

Is this a new 'Stolen Generation' I have to apologise for?:

 

[subaru69]

Encourage our children to play in the local industrial areas, eat particular cake, lick batteries and stick unidentified things up their nose, all with the eye on the future.

Homer's already leading the new generation by example.

 

[numbercruncher]

Launch lots of nationalistic policies and lead the way by Going Green !

 

[Sprinter79]

Some people are taking this thread waaaaaaaaay too seriously :