I do respect your point of view, Dan. And having read through your posts both here and in the economist thread, it's clear that your opinion comes from a purely economic viewpoint, inasmuch as you are an economist. The problem I have with economists is that they do tend to see the way you do, ie. that we exist as an economy and therefore economic issues must always have preferences over social ones. No economy can continue to run this way. If you don't look after the parts that make it work, it will collapse. In spite of what Sydo said earlier, I don't think the current government has the mix between economic and social solutions right. If they did, I'm sure they wouldn't be suffering in the polls. One thing to remember is that the majority of voters
always vote Labor. The only reason the Liberals have ever been able to form government is because they are in a coalition with the Nationals. The only time in the last 40 years where the Libs won with a clear majority, where they would have won whether they had the Nationals to lean on or not, was in 2004. That isn't likely to happen this time, and that's why Howard gets antsy everytime the Nats talk about splitting off (which they aren't likely to do, but it's a good way for them to exert their influence). Clearly something has happened to the electorate to make them shift away from the party they so overwhelmingly supported only three years ago and, clearly, the state of the economy has very little to do with it. This is where economic rhetoric falls down: people
should be happy, but they're
not. Economists need to ask why that is, and it's not as easy as merely suggesting we're all pinkos, naive, or foolish.
That string of posts was gold!
