The Federal Politics Thread

[Dog]

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[stumpjumper]

So what do you do? Taking the miners' claims at face value, they are spending $1000bn to make $100bn profit after tax.

The miners say that Australia already benefits from the $1000bn they spend.

If you believe the miners, how would you raise the tax without destroying the incentive to mine and spend all that other money?

Re super: While mining shares are a good investment, super funds will buy them. Private super funds, union ones etc. No, I'm not calling investments by super funds 'nationalisation'.

[Shahkar]

stumpjumper vs Dog? Will this be the end of the world as we know it?

[Aidan]

The relationship between risk and reward is a concept not always well understood by economists of the Left. If the risk of failure and loss is high, the reward for success must be worthwhile, or there will be no activity.

The Left have a better understanding of the concept than the Right, because when those on the Right learn this they tend to base their decisions on it, whereas those on the Left investigate further. Indeed if those on the Right investigate further, they'll probably shift their position Leftwards as I did.

All other things being equal, it is true that the greater the reward for success the more activity there will be. But other things are not equal, and increasing the reward is a very inefficient way of increasing the activity. Making it easier to succeed is a much better option. And for this reason, low interest rates are better than low taxes. The latter only increases the reward for success; the former make it easier to succeed, often increase the reward for success as well (albeit usually to a lesser extent) and sometimes even reduce the penalty for failure.

[Dog]

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[monotonehell]

Either someone's setting up strawmen or you guys are talking at cross purposes.

Will someone clarify their original position?

[Dog]

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[dsriggs]

Not talking about nationalisation, just using our financial strength to start buying up the foreign companies that are exporting our profits and minerals.

What would you like to cut to finance the billions of dollars required to purchase foreign-owned mining operations?

[Dog]

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[Waewick]

So over the ten years that the $600bn profit is generated, up to $5400bn is spent in Oz, and a fair share of the $600bn is available to anyone who wishes to buy mining shares. Is that such a bad deal for us? And what is the alternative - nationalised mining? I'm no rabid miner of anything in any patch of ground, but I can't see too much wrong with the present setup.

Don't really see your logic you appear to think Just because the miners are spending big here, theres less need for them to pay tax? like most Australians I probably spend 100% of my income here, plus borrowed to invest in Australia (build a house) under your logic I wouldn't need to pay tax either.

Mining taxes would be less relevant if profits are staying at home but till that happens its logical to tax them.

84 % of the Aussie mining industry is foreign owned, only 15% of Rio Tinto and 40 % of BHP is still Aussie owned. Hence the $500bn of the $600bn in profits will go OS over the next 10 years.
What i am saying lets invest more of our rapidly growing $1.7 trillion in Super funds in buying back some of the farm not locked up in foreign government bonds.

Not talking about nationalisation, just using our financial strength to start buying up the foreign companies that are exporting our profits and minerals.

I say we can have our cake and eat it to. Buy these buggers up and list them on the Aussie stock exchange.

Was reading recently that super accounts for 16% of Aussie GDP but by 2030 it's value will exceed GDP and be 108% of GDP at which point it is estimated up to 80% will be invested OS so we have plenty of potential to both buy back the farm (miners) and keep growing.

People may say what does it matter who owns it, but it does. It was BHP's US investor funds pushing for cash v longer term returns, that was a major part of sinking the Roxby expansion, super is the ideal longer term investor




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are the $600B in profits all from Australian operations?

[Dog]

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[Dog]

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[Aidan]

Dog, if Australian superfund managers think they can make more money investing overseas than investing in Australian mining stocks, why should we try to stop them? Who would gain from such legislation?

[Dog]

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[Aidan]

Of all the electoral systems in the world, Australia's is the best and fairest IMO. By design it minimizes the amount of tactical voting - but it doesn't eliminate it (as no system can) so for those who care enough to vote below the line, there is a way of ensuring your vote counts for more than that of someone who votes above the line:

Christopher Cochrane is running for the Senate, but due to an administrative error (the wrong name on a form) his running mate failed to qualify to stand. Therefore Cochrane doesn't qualify for a box above the line - which means not only that most voters will ignore him, but that he was unable to do any preference deals so most preferences will bypass him. Therefore he won't get a seat. Hypothetically it wouldn't be bad if he did - his policies are better than most and not much worse than any.

In the election count, once a candidate exceeds a seat quota their votes are redistributed with a reduced weighting. So (for example) if Nick Xenophon gets 1.2 times the number of votes he needs to win a seat, all his votes are then redistributed (according to preferences) at 0.2 times the original value.

But if you give your first preference to Cochrane and your second to Xenophon and Xenophon gets 1.2 seat quotas, your vote will flow to your third preference at full value.

And if you do so and Xenophon doesn't attract enough first preferences to win a seat outright (before the preferences are distributed) your vote will still benefit Xenophon as much as it would if you'd given him your first preference.