Bryan Pape is challenging Krudd's bonus..

[dr00]

The liberals fucked up big time, they squandered the entire boom. During the boom they should have been taxing more, when we could afford it. Instead they cut taxes to make them selves look good and win elections. When they should have been putting money away for times like now they sold all our assets and let us waste it on big screen tv's and shit.

the liberals fucked up? by paying off the massive debt left by the last labour government? by consistently building up a massive budget surplus that put us in probably the best position of the western nations to wealth this depression? you owe a lot to johnny and costello and i think you know it but youd never admit it even to yourself.

mate if you tax more then you inhibit economic growth. if they had taxed more they would have been going against their basic policy as the liberal government they were voted in as and would have handed over the keys to an economy that was a lot poorer.

i think youll find it was a labour government that sold off commbank and the liberals went to the 1993 election with the privatisation of telstra as one of their policies. we voted for it.

finally, i cant believe you just said "the government let us waste our money on big screen tvs." what does this mean? do you think the government should pass legislation to open a "Personal Entertainment Equipment Approval Department" that you have to submit a form to if you would like to buy a tv?

[R6800]

the liberals fucked up? by paying off the massive debt left by the last labour government? by consistently building up a massive budget surplus that put us in probably the best position of the western nations to wealth this depression? you owe a lot to johnny and costello and i think you know it but youd never admit it even to yourself.

mate if you tax more then you inhibit economic growth. if they had taxed more they would have been going against their basic policy as the liberal government they were voted in as and would have handed over the keys to an economy that was a lot poorer.

i think youll find it was a labour government that sold off commbank and the liberals went to the 1993 election with the privatisation of telstra as one of their policies. we voted for it.

finally, i cant believe you just said "the government let us waste our money on big screen tvs." what does this mean? do you think the government should pass legislation to open a "Personal Entertainment Equipment Approval Department" that you have to submit a form to if you would like to buy a tv?

Every government blames the government before them it's a crock of shit. Don't get me wrong I am by no means a devote labor supporter, however the government before Howard had just come through a massive global downturn and recession, that may have something to do with the debt they handed over.

I didn't actually mean we wasted the money on tv's etc and you need permission to spend your money on what you want that is just plain silly. I meant that we should have been paying higher taxes during the boom adding to our surplus. Our economic situation right now could have been a shit load better if the boom had not been squandered.

Explain to me how during the biggest boom the modern world has ever seen raising taxes could have inhibited economic growth, in normal times yeah. What do we have to show for the boom, a surplus that was probably half what it should have been.

Any goverment could have come out of the boom with a surplus, hell you or I could have run the economy and come through with a surplus.

[Taylor]

I think what he is saying is that if we had put the money from the boom into capital investment fund rather than tax cuts we'd have more actual money now to build the nation and keep everything ticking along.

It'd mean we'd have smaller rises, but shallower drops. Then again, if you can just print money when times get tough and let future generations sort it out, that'll work too.

[R6800]

+1

What Taylor said.

[dr00]

like i said, liberal is the lesser of two evils. liberals by nature are low spending low taxing. labor by nature are high spending high taxing. if we had had a labor government through the boom (like the uk did) then we would have been taxed far more heavily but spending would have most likely been even higher and left us with a deficit going into this depression (like the uk has).

[dr00]

I think what he is saying is that if we had put the money from the boom into capital investment fund rather than tax cuts we'd have more actual money now to build the nation and keep everything ticking along.

It'd mean we'd have smaller rises, but shallower drops. Then again, if you can just print money when times get tough and let future generations sort it out, that'll work too.

its not the governments place to invest in anything. they are by nature utterly fucking useless at it (case in point: NBN) and it has nothing to do with what a government is meant to do.