{"id":279,"date":"2009-05-06T10:02:15","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T00:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/?p=279"},"modified":"2009-06-17T16:40:24","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T06:40:24","slug":"the-federal-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2009\/05\/06\/the-federal-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"The Federal Budget."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s that time of the year again and with less than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.budget.gov.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">a week<\/a> until the official announcement the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com.au\/news?q=federal+budget&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;um=1&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=x7gASr2qMpO6tgONq9DvBQ&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=news_group&amp;resnum=1&amp;ct=title\" target=\"_blank\">budget buzz<\/a> has begun. Let&#8217;s take a look at what has managed to slip out from the cracks in parliament and see what that means for Australia at large:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/business.smh.com.au\/business\/federal-budget\/rich-face-higher-taxes-rudd-20090424-ahb7.html\" target=\"_blank\">Higher taxes<\/a> for the rich, primarily aimed at softening the large deficit that will last for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/stories\/2009\/05\/06\/2561839.htm\" target=\"_blank\">many years<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Salary sacrificed superannuation contributions <a href=\"http:\/\/news.smh.com.au\/breaking-news-national\/pensioners-benefit-as-rich-super-halved-20090506-au6g.html\" target=\"_blank\">capped at half<\/a> their current rates.<\/li>\n<li>Increase in the pension by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaustralian.news.com.au\/story\/0,25197,25243253-5017018,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">$30 a week<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>An increase to <a href=\"http:\/\/business.smh.com.au\/business\/federal-budget\/big-boost-to-push-defence-budget-to-20year-high-20090426-ajd7.html\" target=\"_blank\">defence spending<\/a> to the tune of 10% (or $2 Billion).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are interesting points, mostly for the fact that many of them mirror what the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/omb\/assets\/fy2010_new_era\/A_New_Era_of_Responsibility2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">United States<\/a> did with their budget. Most notable are the almost <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2010_United_States_federal_budget\" target=\"_blank\">direct copies<\/a> of an increase in tax for the wealthy as well as a large increase in defence spending. I can&#8217;t help but think that this is a little bit of me-too-ism from the Rudd government as the decision has been well received by the working class and <a href=\"http:\/\/business.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/business\/economics\/budget\/article6148125.ece\" target=\"_blank\">not so much<\/a> from the corporations. Saying all this though Rudd and Swan are making the best of a bad situation and will continue to look to score political brownie points throughout the economic crisis.<\/p>\n<p>The other issue here is that Swan has stood his ground firmly when it comes to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/stories\/2009\/05\/03\/2559300.htm\" target=\"_blank\">delivering the tax cuts<\/a> they promised a while ago. I can admire their dedication to delivering on an election promise but when they&#8217;ve stated that the budget deficit will last for such a long time it seems like a terrible move economically which won&#8217;t push their ratings that much higher in the polls. Again this mirrors the United States position of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Laffer_curve\" target=\"_blank\">cutting taxes to increase revenue<\/a> but when you&#8217;re in such a large hole of debt cutting taxes only serves to draw out the time the country stays in debt. It may soften the blow, but you&#8217;ll suffer for much longer because of it.<\/p>\n<p>Personally the bits of the budget that I&#8217;ve seen so far seem to lack a cohesive strategy that I&#8217;d expect from the people running the country. Many of the ideas seem to reek of robbing Peter to pay Paul, with revenue generation coming from all the wrong places (people&#8217;s superannuation is really the wrong place) and then spending it by giving it back to the people they took it from. A strange bit of circular logic there.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll still take all of this with a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Grain_of_salt\" target=\"_blank\">grain of salt<\/a> as the strategy the government is planning to take will become all the more clear next week when the full budget is announced. It&#8217;s easy to get riled up over small bits of information like this and what we have is really only a small part of a larger picture. Still the parts I&#8217;m seeing right now don&#8217;t give me the best feeling about the rest of the picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s that time of the year again and with less than a week until the official announcement the budget buzz has begun. Let&#8217;s take a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[273,35,275,276,274],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","tag-buget","tag-government","tag-revenue","tag-speculation","tag-tax"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppBqt-4v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}