Budget 2008

[tia]

How come no-one has created a thread yet?

Anyways what does everyone think?

[Rietie]

We had a budget breakfast today for all Politics, Economics, Commerce and (I think) Legal Studies students. It was good.

We basically talked about how it was a budget intended to stick with the promises the Labor Party made back in November, but that it also attempted to fight inflation.
We also talked about how because it was the first budget of Labour's term, they could have made drastic cutting of spending and made a lot of people unhappy (but would have fought inflation harder), but at the next election everyone would have forget it.
We also talked about the budget not being one focused on climate change.
And finally we talked about the annoyingness of Malcolm Turnbull and the nervousness of Wayne Swan.


Spiffing stuff, eh?

[Eriny]

I went to Parliament house to see the budget! Live!
Just thought I'd throw that out there...

In any case, it was an okay budget. I'm still undecided as to whether inflation should dictate government spending or not, altogether I think they should make a neutral impact to inflation with their spending and then implement some supply-side strategies for low inflationary growth and then let monetary policy sort the rest out.

It's very good in terms of equity though.

[Collin Li]

Curbing inflation doesn't really make sense if you have to do it by forgoing the opportunity of a freely stimulated economy (e.g: no handouts - just deregulation and tax cuts).

People forget what is the actual root problem in inflation: it's the printing of money that devalues the money of cash holders. Government spending is the problem - they can call upon loans (printed money) when they need it.

[AppleXY]

useful link : http://www.budget.gov.au/

[tia]

Useful Budget Info it's got an overview, stats and links to newspaper articles. pretty helpful.

I think the budget is pretty interesting, it has some positive aspects and some negatives too...