A few days again our PM, Scott Moribund, warned that there was a real risk of a recession in Australia under a Labor government. Well, given the polls and the state of the world economy, one would have to say that he’s right.
I mean, he didn’t say that Australia wouldn’t end up in a recession if he were re-elected, he spoke about the likely possibility of what could happen under Labor, and given that he’s not likely to be PM in a few months, there’s almost no chance of Scottie being there if a recession hits, so it’s far more likely that we’ll have a recession under Labor than the Liberals. In much the same way, Roger Federer is much more likely than me to lose the final of Wimbledon this year.
Still it IS hard to imagine a recession hitting Australia in the near future given how much jobs and growth the Liberals have “created” with their plan. I still haven’t heard them articulate exactly what their plan is beyond ensuring that the economy is STRONG, growth is happening and we keep bringing out people on temporary work permits to hide the unemployment rate. What’s their plan for ensuring that the economy is strong? Well, sound economic management? What does that mean? Ensuring that the economy is strong.
Apart from Mr Morrison’s tricky way of suggesting that if the world economy hits the wall and we have the GFC Mark 2, then it will all be Bill Shorten’s fault even though the Liberals keep suggesting that Labor will be running an expansionary spending program, while the Coalition intend to suck money from the economy through running Budget surpluses, we’re going to hear another slippery use of data quite frequently in the coming weeks.
Last year, school funding was changed so that it was the taxable income of the parents rather than where they lived that would determine funding. While it seems fair on the surface that people with low taxable incomes should get the most in terms of funding, you only have to remember that adding the word “taxable” in front of income means that I’m wealthier than many of the multinational companies that grace our shores, generously providing jobs even though they’re seemingly making less profit than if they sold up all their assets and invested the money at two percent interest. While in some cases the taxable income will reflect the lack of wealthy parents at a school, in others, we’ll just be rewarding people who’ve managed to minimise their tax by giving them more in government funding.
Yes, we’re hearing about these poor people who are going to miss out because of those bloody socialists taking away their franking credits. An article in “The Financial Review” the other day suggested that it was mainly women who were going to miss out, while adding that they were taking money away from “Nana”. The writer used the word “Nana” a number of times. Why that’s even worse than when they hurts the “mum and dad” investors. Of course, nobody ever points out that Rupert and Gina are “mum and dad” investors.
Personally, if Nana is going to lose twenty thousand dollars under Labor’s scheme, I say bad luck but I’ll certainly be nice to her in the hope of being part of her will. While Josh and Scott have been telling us that some of these people are on very low taxable incomes, they never point out that retirees over 60 aren’t taxed on their superannuation earnings at all. So even if Nana is has a Self-managed Super Fund from which she draws a million year, her taxable income will be zero from this.
However, if we’re not talking about Nana, but one of those mum and dad investors. Let’s call him, Ken. If Ken has negatively geared twenty properties and managed to reduce his taxable income to somewhere near Nana’s, he too can claim the franking credits back in cash from the government.
Of course, there haven’t been many stories in the papers which point out that if someone was going to lose out, for example, $12,000 under Labor’s changes, they’d need to earning dividends of around $40,000. This would mean that they had over a million dollars in share holdings. Ok, I understand that if they have no super they may not be holidaying on their yacht, but it’ll be a few years before you have to use your house for a reverse mortgage.
There may need to be some tweaking so that someone who only owns a handful of shares -which they bought when John “Shifty” Howard assured them that Telstra 2 was a great investment and we’re selling it for ideological reasons not because we want to grab your hard earned money – doesn’t end up struggling to pay their energy bill… Although, we have been assured that energy bills are coming down so that should be ok.
Franking credits were introduced to stop people being taxed twice. Once when the company paid the tax and again when your dividend was added to your other income. If you don’t have enough taxable income to pay any tax, then your not being taxed twice, you’re not even being taxed once because you get the money that the company paid to the government and the government get nothing.
On another matter, I noticed a tweet today from John Riddick, who wrote Make The Liberal Party Great Again (Again? Someone needs to break it to him gently):
“Zali Sunday, Banks today & more to come. Phelps & Sharkey plugged into these campaigns. These ‘indies’ are not independent. They are part of a co-ordinated well-organised national campaign … also known as a political party in disguise.”
Personally, I don’t think that Independents should be allowed to be part of a “co-ordinated well-organised national campaign”. It’s unfair on the poor Liberals who haven’t been able to co-ordinate anything apart from their blue ties.
Cheers.
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