Labor doing the hard sell trying to convince Aussies the economy is doing OK

Slippery Jim’s finest hour… not! Another rate rise looms near and Al Bonzo’s circus still think there’s nothing to see and none of them to blame. How do we tell fake from real? Easy – it’s a lie if Jim’s mouth is moving.

Everything said to today was just more of the same from a government which looks to be pathologically incapable of ever admitting fault or shortcomings, believes passionately in its own b/s and views everything from the perspective of what does this mean – seat-by-seat – for our prospects in the next election?

In some respects, that’s pretty much business as usual for Australian politics for the last couple of decades, but the abandonment of any genuine view of the national interest in favour of shameless partisan advantage is plumbing new depths.

That way of doing things was bad enough when it was the modus operandi of parties which were genuinely representative of a wide cross section of the Australian community and economy, but it is dangerous territory under a conspicuously hollowed out Labor party which now relies so heavily on the votes of people whose income derives directly or indirectly from the public purse.

Anyone who thinks that this government is interested in, or capable of, a positive change of course need only look at the dismal long term forecasts in the recent Intergenerational Report.

Albanese and Chalmers made the biggest change to our tax system, in living memory, because investors were making it too hard for first home buyers, and the demand placed on housing wasn’t due to immigration.

Recently at the Press Club, Tony Burke said that immigration wasn’t causing housing problems, the problem was caused by Australians choosing to have less people living in their houses.

Chalmers then released an Intergenerational report that said by 2060 there would be more deaths than births, and that we needed more immigration.

In short, the government has been telling us that everything is our fault. They have been gaslighting us.

Now, they are trying to tell us that under their management, everything is tracking beautifully.

And then the RBA cranked interest rates today, again.

Any bet that that the I government will deny that it’s own expenditure had any thing to do with the interest rate rise?

It’s probably our fault again, for buying expensive petrol and diesel…you know that fuel that increases even further with every price rise because the government collects it’s 10% GST im addition to it’s fuel excise.

It’s all out fault because we should be buying Chinese EVs.

Any wonder the support for One Nation is rising

How governments can manufacture stagflation

Stagflation doesn’t always arise because merely of some external disaster. Government policies often slowly but surely create conditions for it while external factors (like an oil shock) pull the final trigger.

Higher taxes, energy costs, regulation and compliance costs increase the cost of producing goods and services. Lower productivity (again through regulations, red tapes and even assistive packages) makes the problem worse.

Businesses respond by raising prices, cutting margins, reducing investment and limiting employment growth.

Then comes the second effect: higher prices reduce people’s real purchasing power. Wages may stagnate or rise slower than the cost of living, while underemployment can increase even if headline unemployment remains relatively low.

The result is a particularly nasty combination:

Higher costs → higher prices → weaker real incomes → lower demand → weaker investment and productivity → stagnant employment and wages.

Government doesn’t need to deliberately create stagflation to produce it. Policies that systematically increase costs while reducing productivity are the ingredients for it.

The RBA Governor has called out grim Jim in the bluntest possible way today. ““Inflation is too high and has been driven by domestic capacity pressures” she said this afternoon.

Hmmm …. who to believe …. the RBA Governor and several leading economists …. or a Treasurer with no economic training or experience. Albo has to sack him.

“Yes,” Mr Chalmers and Ms Gallagher tell the Australian people, “our economy is doing just fine …. yours on the other hand….”

One problem is that the RBA is trying to fix inflation caused by reckless, wasteful, unrestrained Government overspending, with a tool that instead puts the brakes on consumer spending. And then they wonder why it’s not effective.

Every time Slippery Jim speaks, I feel a rat crawling up my leg. He is a fraud who has no spine. It’s easy to see him and the Gallagher goose have never run a business. The solution is simple, spend less than you bring in. Get the NDIS and Chris Blown under control and you’ll balance the books. Stop Al Bonzo spending up large on the local golf course and all the other ‘please, please vote for me’ waste and you’ll actually start to pay down debt. In short, do your job or resign.

The economy was always going to be in trouble after lockdowns and the money printing that went along with it. Indeed, that government action almost certainly caused more harm than the virus ever could. Even then, there hasn’t been a good economy in Australia for over a decade. While it is true that GDP has consistently increased, this is entirely because of mass immigration. GDP per capita has even gone done a few quarters. The Feds love mass immigration because all the benefits appear on their books, while the States have to deal with the fallout of their actions. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum running Australia now certainly haven’t improved the situation, for some reason believing that tax and spend will solve the problem despite that never having worked before.

There isn’t really a cost of living crisis. What we have is a cost of government crisis.