dear K.Rudd

[Priest of Evil]

Dear Mr Rudd,

Please find below our suggestion for fixing Australia's economy.

Instead of giving billions of dollars to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them $1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Ten million job openings -

Unemployment fixed

2) They MUST buy a new Australian car. Ten million cars ordered -

Car Industry fixed

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -

Housing Crisis fixed

4) They MUST send their kids to school/TAFE/university -

Crime rate fixed

5) They MUST buy $100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week .....and

There's your money back in duty/tax etc

6) Instead of stuffing around with the carbon emissions trading scheme that makes us pay for the major polluters, tell the greedy bastards to reduce their pollutions emissions by 75% within 5 years or we shut them down.

It can't get any easier than that!

P.S.. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances

If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know. If not, please disregard.


Yours sincerely,

The people of Australia

 

[phlogiston]

There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them $1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

$1 million isn't enough to live on for 40 years. Most people don't have enough super to retire on when they're 65, and you're taking away 15 years of earning potential


1) They MUST retire. Ten million job openings -

Unemployment fixed

Except in my case, where all the business experience goes away, which causes my company to fail, which in turn puts me and two or three others out of a job and causes at least 9 other Australian companies to go out of business, not to mention the damage to our international customers.


2) They MUST buy a new Australian car. Ten million cars ordered -

Car Industry fixed

The Australian car industry couldn't make ten million cars in a reasonable time frame. If I've got $30,000 to spent on a car, I don't want it just sitting around doing nothing for 5 years while they get back to me. And what happens after those cars are bought? It'll just be in the same position as it is now.


3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -

Housing Crisis fixed

How/Why? This doesn't make more houses appear. In fact, probably makes it worse, as now they can't rent so *more* houses are needed.


4) They MUST send their kids to school/TAFE/university -

Crime rate fixed

Now the government's make career choices for kids? What if my kid wants to be a chippy, or a sparky? Or a street sweeper? You're taking away another 4-8 years of earning capacity.

Plus I don't see how this fixes the crime rate.


5) They MUST buy $100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week .....and

There's your money back in duty/tax etc


Another $100 on stuff I don't want? Pfft. Why not make me go to a hooker as well? Or buy gardening forks?


6) Instead of stuffing around with the carbon emissions trading scheme that makes us pay for the major polluters, tell the greedy bastards to reduce their pollutions emissions by 75% within 5 years or we shut them down.

You're gonna shut down the power stations/airlines/transport companies? Way to save the economy!


It can't get any easier than that!

P.S.. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances

If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know. If not, please disregard.

Disregarded

 

[Blitzkrieg]

 

[Stonewall]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaa. Only costs $10,000,000,000,000 to save Australia.

 

[Stonewall]

Dear Mr Rudd,

Please find below our suggestion for fixing Australia's economy.

Instead of giving billions of dollars to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them $1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

That would cost $10 TRILLION dollars. In 2008 Australia's GDP was $1.02 trillion dollars. Therefore to fix the economy first requires soundly fucking it.

1) They MUST retire. Ten million job openings -

Unemployment fixed

Echo the disaster of losing the most experienced segment of the workforce. Recent employment figures put about 650,000 Australians out of work. Even generously allowing up to 1 million unemployed for fudged government figures that leaves millions of unfilled jobs.

2) They MUST buy a new Australian car. Ten million cars ordered -

Car Industry fixed

Uncompetitive car industry supported by public money. You may as well pay everyone employed in the car industry to take up ballet, and then pay everyone else to go and watch them perform. Ballet industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -

Housing Crisis fixed

The 'housing crisis' pertains to a lack of affordable housing and accommodation. Sure, the country could go into debt to remove the debt of individuals but that seems a little silly.

4) They MUST send their kids to school/TAFE/university -

Crime rate fixed

How big will class sizes be when all teachers over the age of 50 are forced into retirement? Guess education won't matter so much when there are 9 million job vacancies just waiting for young people to walk into.

5) They MUST buy $100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week .....and

There's your money back in duty/tax etc

Tax on this amount of spending by those over 50 would be far outweighed by astronomical public health costs. Not only that, but the piddly and undereducated remaining workforce might resent paying taxes on their income to fund smokes and booze for all the bums north of 50.

6) Instead of stuffing around with the carbon emissions trading scheme that makes us pay for the major polluters, tell the greedy bastards to reduce their pollutions emissions by 75% within 5 years or we shut them down.

Except us as end users of the products these major polluters sell also surely have some obligation to pay a realistic price for cleaner energy. I mean, if we are paying everyone over 50 to send $50 worth of cigarette smoke into the atmosphere every week, why should it be wrong for us to pay the polluters to pollute less?

It can't get any easier than that!

P.S.. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances

If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know. If not, please disregard.


Yours sincerely,

The people of Australia

This is one of the stupidest things I have ever read.


Nana and Pop might like it though... :Smokin:

 

[Goreripper]

I am not even going to comment on this.

 

[Spiff]

This reminds me of that "don't buy petrol on this particular day!" thing.

 

[Goreripper]

The whole thing is retarded. Australia's population is only 22.1 million, and the average age is 39. If 45% of the population was over 50, the average age would be much higher.

 

[Spiff]

And how much money would the over 50s have left if they had to buy a house ($500k these days on average), a car ($30k), $100 a week on booze ($5200 for how long? Another 30 years? $156000), etc... and their pension probably wouldn't kick in until they were nearly broke.

 

[Stonewall]

It's almost socialism that is being proposed.

 

[Priest of Evil]

I'm sure it will make it way to all your inboxes soon! Crazy stuff, it was obviously written after beer o'clock!

 

[FerretallicA]

That would cost $10 TRILLION dollars. In 2008 Australia's GDP was $1.02 trillion dollars. Therefore to fix the economy first requires soundly fucking it.

Sounds like what they're already working towards anyway.

 

[FerretallicA]

I'm by no means a fan of Alan Jones but in this instance he's at least sticking to fact.

A note that was sent to me which explains to me that the six leading members of the Government from Mr Rudd down, the top six have a collective work experience of 181 years. But only 13 in the private sector. If you take out of those 13 years the number that were spent as trade union lawyers, that total 11, of the 181 years only two years were spent in the private sector.

So the people who will rack up a net Federal debt minimum of 188 billion, the highest in our history, have virtually no experience in business.

So out of 181 years:

- no years spent running their own business
- no years spent starting their own business
- no years spent as a director of a family business or a company
- no years as a director of a public company
- no years in a senior position in a public company
- no years in a senior position in a private company
- no years working in corporate finance
- no years in corporate or business restructuring
- no years working in or with a bank
- no years of experience in the capital markets
- no years in a stockbroking firm
- no years in negotiating debt facilities with banks
- no years running a small business
- no years at the World Bank or IMF or OECD
- no years in Treasury or Finance.

But these people have plunged Australia into unprecedented debt.

Well, in a way you can't blame them. It's clear that the electorate did not do their homework, because the Government is there by right. They were given a thumping majority to lead the country.

It's just that no one seemed to ask, most of all the press gallery in Canberra , in what direction. _____ Then Greenwood the money man, did the maths for us and said Right now the Federal Government is at pains to tell everyone -
including us the mug-punters to the International Monetary Fund that it will not exceed its own, self-imposed, borrowing limits. How much? $200 billion. And here's a worry. If you work in a bank's money market operation; or if you are a politician; the millions turn into billions and it rolls off the tip of the tongue a bit too easily.

But every dollar that is borrowed, some time, has to be repaid. By you, by me and by the rest of the country. Just after 5 o'clock tonight I did a bit of maths.
it's so staggering its worth repeating. First though ... here's what Chairman Rudd has been saying about – what he calls – these temporary borrowings. Remember those words ... temporary deficit .. but the total Government debt could end up around $200 billion.

So here's a very basic calculation ... I used a home loan calculator to work it out ... it's that simple.

$200 billion is $200,000 million. The current 10 year Government bond rate is 4.67 per cent. I worked the loan out over a period of 20 years.

Now here's where it gets scary ... really scary.

The repayments on $200 billion come to more than one and a quarter billion dollars – every month – for 20 years. It works out we – as taxpayers – will be repaying $15.4 billion in interest and principal every year ... $733 for every man woman and child – every year.

The total interest bill over the 20 years is – get this – $108 billion.

And remember, this is a Government that just 18 months ago had NO debt .. NO debt! In fact it had enough money to create the Future Fund to pay the future liabilities of public servants' superannuation ... and it had enough to stick $20 billion into the Building Australia Fund last year ...

Now get back to havin' a good weekend, secure in the knowledge that we're in good hands and it will soon blow over! Like hell it will!

 

[Goreripper]

That would be fair enough if it took export earnings and other things into consideration, but it just dumps everything on "taxpayers". Taxes alone aren't going to repay the debt, which is why we've sold our souls to the Chinese. Rudd's dropped the ball in a lot of areas, he's made a bunch of promises he can't or won't keep about things that sounded like good ideas at the time (overhaul health, rebuild schools - even ones that didn't need rebuilding), but as much as he's fiscally incompetent, I shudder to think what would become of our basic freedoms and rights if Abbot and his arch-Conservative bullies get in. Hitler would have been proud of the front shadow benches as they stand right now. Not only that, but at least he's made promises to fix things that Howard should have done in the eleven years he was there. Sure, he hasn't actually done anything, but what exactly was it that Howard spent all that taxpayers' money on? Better schools? Hospitals? Medicare? Old people? Part of the reason Rudd inherited so much from Howard is because Howard didn't spend it on anything. He just put it away for a rainy day that never came. A lot of hand-wringing has gone on about the money Rudd threw away during the GFC, but I've yet to read a convincing argument as to what the other side of politics would have done. I find it highly, highly, unlikely that we would have still been in surplus even if Howard/Costello had been there.

Also, Alan Jones is a Liberal Party stooge only slightly more balanced than Andrew Bolt or Piers Akerman. It's his job to point out the ALP's mistakes. Rudd's making it easy for him though, I'll admit.

 

[TinMan666]

wot gorey said!

 

[FerretallicA]

Part of the reason Rudd inherited so much from Howard is because Howard didn't spend it on anything. He just put it away for a rainy day that never came.

See definition of "rainy day" in the sentence immediately following:

A lot of hand-wringing has gone on about the money Rudd threw away during the GFC

I can't really argue a great deal on the matter because I'm by no means anything remotely resembling even an expert on economics (where's Dän when you need him most? ) but, while I still doubt we'd be in surplus either under the Liberals either, I would be surprised if we didn't at least pull through in a similar condition now and more importantly in far better condition in the near and distant future when the consequences of the surplus splurge hit.

 

[Goreripper]

It's possible, but without any clear idea of what exactly their plans were, it's hard to say. I do believe that instead of just doling out wads of cash to bogans to enable them to buy vast TVs, Rudd could have spent the money building a couple of nuclear power stations. The electorate would have gone bananas, but it would have been money well spent and in ten years when ratepayers saw their power bills actually going down instead of constantly up, he would have been praised as the PM who actually did something, instead of the Nero act he's pulling at the moment.

 

[Sydo]

Did you just compare the Liberal front bench to Hilter's Third Riech??
Magda will be so pissed.

 

[Shannow]

Gorey, or fixed the Pathetic Highway, or done SOMETHING that the country needed.

My children's school is getting a hall. The Principal argued that they needed a bus shelter, but the answer is "you're getting a hall", and there goes the basketball court.

They argue that they had to get the money in at the ground level, and get it spent, that's why the bogans got their teles.

I argue that bussed in road gangs are heaps more effective at spending money, locally, and pretty freakin' quickly.

 

[Southy]

Maybe make the bogan work for their cash would of been a decent idea, as clean up crews and such, and those of us already working hard for something could of got the decent break somehow or other