A short video by Robert Reich lasting just 2 minutes 35 seconds landed in my news feed on Facebook a few days ago. For all I know it may have been around for months, but that’s irrelevant. The message is what is important.
Reich was US Secretary for Labor, from 1993-1997 under the presidency of Bill Clinton and besides now being Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California, Berkley, he is also an outspoken political commentator.
Read more at: The Australian Independent Media Network
If the Australian government was serious about jobs and growth, the introduction of an ELR here, would be an economic imperative. Yet no such plan exists and none likely. Why is full employment not on the table?
The year 2015 will likely be remembered as a watershed for the Liberal Party having surrendered what they perceived as the high moral ground of never having dumped a sitting Prime Minister. Sadly though, in terms of mediocre government, that watershed extends further. These so-called “adults” have shown us over the past 12 months that 2014 (as bad as that turned out), was just a rehearsal for 2015.
While the Australian economy continues sliding towards recession, the mainstream media seems more interested in focusing its attention on the latest popularity contest between Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten.
Remember all that nonsense about debt and deficit disasters, budget emergencies and how the Liberals were the only ones capable of managing the economy? What a waste of space Joe Hockey was as treasurer. What a similar waste Scott Morrison is threatening to be.
As most of us know, the term ‘printing money’ is a misnomer. Apart from a small percentage of notes and coin, today all money is processed via electronic transfers from the Central Banks to the private banks who in turn credit their respective account holders. Money today is, essentially, just numbers in a computer moved around in millions of transactions every day.
It may be early days but Joe Hockey’s second and final attempt to bring down a credible budget appears to be unravelling already. Even on the night of his budget speech in May it was clear that his growth projections were far too optimistic.
