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Keywords: Superannuation

  • ECONOMICS

    Hapless Joe Hockey

    • David James
    • 10 December 2014
    12 Comments

    One of the fascinating aspects of Australia's political pantomime is the manner in which the Federal Treasurer is forced to metamorphose into a used car salesman who is spruiking the Australian economy. One reason for the relative impotence of the Treasurer is that the Federal government only has control over fiscal policy. Monetary policy, the interest rate, is set by the Reserve Bank, not the government.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Who wants to be a capitalist?

    • Moira Rayner
    • 31 October 2014
    11 Comments

    Affordable housing ought to be a hot election issue. Sadly it’s not a government priority, with ordinary people being taught to be entitled to look to capital growth in bricks and mortar as the best path to financial security. That is producing a housing price bubble and public housing is being squeezed. As a result, an increasing number of Australians can’t afford to put a roof over their head.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Ending feminised poverty

    • Kate Galloway
    • 11 September 2014
    14 Comments

    Despite historical gains for women in terms of formal equality, structural issues - wage gap, superannuation gap, childcare, unpaid caring, inequitable income distribution - have not gone away. I do not see why my older women friends should be burdened with accumulated poverty simply because they are women. They carry a material burden because their unpaid work was considered to be performed 'for love', undeserving of financial security.

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  • ECONOMICS

    SMSFs offer 'pension fund socialism'

    • David James
    • 13 August 2014
    1 Comment

    In 1976 management thinker Peter Drucker said the real owners of the stock market were workers, through their pension funds. A similar broadening of ownership has occurred in Australia since the creation of compulsory superannuation. But intermediaries called fund managers still stood between the people and ultimate control of their financial destiny, until the rise of the Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF).

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  • ECONOMICS

    Commbank plunder part of new world economic order

    • David James
    • 07 July 2014
    7 Comments

    As the Pope and economist Thomas Pikkety have observed in recent times, the inequity created by capitalism is a growing concern. But the problem with this argument is that 'capitalism' is too broad a term. The attack would be far better directed against the financialisation of developed economies. A new type of sovereign has emerged, and like all rulers they are cheerfully engaging in acts of plunder.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No, Mr Hockey, the Budget is not fair

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 June 2014
    28 Comments

    Many Australians, myself included, believed that the Federal Budget was unfair. So Treasurer Joe Hockey's recent speech in defence of its fairness offers a welcome challenge. Hockey is right to insist that fairness can co-exist with gradations of wealth within society. But fairness is incompatible with gross disparity of wealth because the concentration of wealth in the hands of few people and corporations destroys equality of opportunity.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Super's evil empire on shaky ground

    • Brian Toohey
    • 11 June 2014
    15 Comments

    The superannuation industry inhabits a cosseted world in which the money pours in thanks to a combination of government compulsion and tax concessions. The foundations of this empire are criticised for how the tax concessions create an expensive form of upper class welfare, and for the harmful effect of compulsory super's artificial expansion of the finance sector. The Abbott Government shows scant concern about either aspect.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Blessed are the moneymakers

    • David James
    • 16 May 2014
    9 Comments

    The 2014 Federal Budget has created a new hierarchy of virtue in Australian society, with well off investors deemed to be good and the disadvantaged bad. It is not so much class war as a war between capital and the rest of society. Those wielding significant capital are useful, while those who can save little, and have little to invest, are considered a burden.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Whose rule book is Abbott playing from?

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 15 May 2014
    48 Comments

    It took John Howard until his third term before he let his personal leanings completely off the leash. It led to his electoral demise. Abbott is doing much the same in his first term, over-reaching, thinking himself invulnerable to a political backlash. Whereas Machiavelli's prince could rule through force, Abbott must face an electorate whose trust in political promises has been completely eroded. Our political system will take a long time to recover.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Move over Lance Armstrong, the Budget is coming

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 May 2014
    13 Comments

    Heightened competitiveness does not foster interest in the common good but creates a narrow focus on the interests of the individual. The use of drugs in cycling illustrates the point. Doing what it takes meant taking competition out of the game by excluding competitors from the possibility of winning. In Australian politics the cult of competitiveness has led to a rigged competition in which the national interest will not be served.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Whose liberty matters as Dickensian budget looms?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 07 May 2014
    16 Comments

    French economist Thomas Piketty argues that current conditions have set us on track for a return to 19th century-levels of inequality. The Commission of Audit proposals suggest that the auditors and the Government are keen to expedite this neo-Dickensian era. It's all done in the name of 'incentives' toward 'personal responsibility', but this cannot remain coherent in the face of those who will be hit hard by the proposed suite of cuts and co-payments.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What Pope Francis thinks about Abbott's Audit

    • Michael Mullins
    • 05 May 2014
    17 Comments

    The National Commission of Audit believes spending cuts that produce a balanced Budget will make us all better off because we will have a stronger economy and more jobs. But Pope Francis is skeptical about such 'trickle-down' economic theories, which express 'a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power'.

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