Showing posts with label trading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trading. Show all posts

Australia is Heading for Economic Disaster

The Australian economy is heading southward and this does not mean we are moving closer to Antarctica. Our financial health is still in primary products. The price and demand for iron ore and coal still drives the economy. At the moment the foot is really off the accelerator and we are idling downhill. We will eventually reach the bottom. Then the country will have big problems.
Tax revenue is already falling due to lower demand by China. US demand for Chinese good remains sluggish. As the world economy falls it impacts strongly on Australia. We have not made the move away from agriculture and manufacturing. This is mainly because our resource bowl has kept wages high. Manufacturing countries always have a wage differential advantage. In time, wages will rise in China as they have in Japan. Then companies will probably move to Southeast Asia.

The hope that Australia will have a increase in IT start-ups to offset the fall in resource exports is not well founded. Products in the Internet sphere have short lives, a few years at most. IT moves on the initiative of individuals. It never will be a mass employer. We need to forget this pie in the sky and concentrate on something else.

It will cost to improve employment. Government will have to subsidize companies to keep jobs here. Politicians make the same incorrect assumption over and over again - the free market will solve all economic problems. The free market has never done much without human input.  International trade exists due to comparative advantage. If a country does not have this in a sector, other sectors that do must pay.

A start would be tax breaks for enterprises who bring home their support services from India and the Philippines. To allow mining employment to fall without stimulation elsewhere is economic suicide. The country will fall into a very deep hole down the track. Opening more shopping centres is not the way go. This is not increasing the capital base. It is dividing up the market between too many sellers.
Economics by Ty Buchanan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
            Australian Blog   Adventure Australia
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)

Couriers Do Not Deliver

The quality of customer service is getting worse. Being left on the phone while the answering device takes a break is common. Being told they will fix it later when you inform the bank that the ATM is not working is also the usual way of things. Having no one on checkout duty at a supermarket is another complaint.

Another "con" doing the rounds is couriers not delivering parcels. On many occasions they don't even leave a contact number on your phone. They just leave you waiting. You eventually find a contact number and they tell you they couldn't find the address, when normal mail deliveries continue with no problems. They are lying - they haven't been out. Think of the money they are pocketing by not sending someone out.

It is easy for them to tell you to pick it up at the office, but what about the inconvenience and cost of taking a day off work to pick up a parcel? Putting it bluntly - they are stealing! They have already been paid to provide a service, usually by you when you pay for post and packaging.

As long as people accept this and do nothing this con will continue and get worse. Complain through your consumer affairs or fair trading body.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
History
Australian Blog                         
ALL BLOG ARTICLES· ──► (BLOG HOME PAGE)

Surely Australia Could Pay a Little More for a Cleaner Planet

It is so strange how support for Kevin Rudd's Emissions Trading Scheme has totally evaporated. Kevin Rudd rightly claims that his backing down from trying to pass the legislation cost him leadership of his party and the country, so great was public support for it then. Times have changed. With big rises in water charges and electricity charges across the country people just don't want a bar of it anymore.

The proof of global warming is considerable. Ice is disappearing from the North and South Poles. Those who still contend that it is made up just to get money out of the public must be living on another planet - in their minds at least. No one wants to be paying higher prices for essential items than consumers in other countries, but the world is changing. China is making major changes. to reduce pollution. Finland introduced the world's first carbon tax in 1990. That is two decades ago. Sweden followed in 1991. Great Britain brought in a climate change levy in 2001. Boulder in Colorado has had a carbon tax on electricity since 2007. There has been a tax on all fuels in Quebec from 2007. British Columbia initiated the most efficient carbon tax in 2008 with $10 tax per metric ton rising to $30 in 2012. So Australians would not be alone in paying higher prices.

Young Australian families today have never known hard times. Economies go in boom and bust cycles. Australia has been lucky in avoiding the busts due to a small population "owning" a tremendous resources base. It is the only country in the world with this economic advantage. Surely Australia can do it a little tougher and help show the way to a better world.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Society