Aljo-Log

Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

I am unfit for work, because a shrink diagnosed me with a mental condition. Now almost 25 years later I reckon this had political motives. My body was never athletic, that I had difficulty doing physical work. But I studied at a university so I expected to work with my brain. Maybe computer science where the accompanying mathematics were concerned was too abstract for me. Now over two decades later Information Technology has become much more a matter of creativity, that you don’t need to know how to program a Pentium 4 in assembler language. How programming environments are informing you instantly as you are typing what the possible options are. Or how about OpenGL, now you can program graphics without having to implement your own line drawing routines. Not to mention Internet where creativity is making all the difference. So today you can study computer science and not need to over stress your brain with math. Because while in university I demanded too much of my brain so it broke down. If the truth wasn’t that the Dutch wanted to get rid of me because I had fallen in love with an American woman. Anyway, I never worked for a living, and now I am handicapped so now I can forget about ever holding a job. It feels like as if the Dutch make me pay for my care by rendering my health worse and worse. How in 1990 I only had to take pills every day while I still could live a more or less normal life. But I smoked, so in 1991 I collapsed and it turned out that my heart rhythm had a small problem. These people who made me smoke wanted to make sure that I could never return to a ‘normal’ life, I think because they hated the American military which I knew a lot about. So in 1998 I got a pacemaker and that since then my freedom of movement has totally been taken away from me. How the Dutch made me live in a mental hospital for 5 years because they wanted to control me and envied me my freedom. When I finally got to live in a downtown shelter and liked it that I got weak legs so that I no longer could get back on my feet anymore should I fall. So today I never go outside by myself anymore. I am living the life of a detainee. Because certain people wanted to destroy me and deny me the freedom to arrange my life the way I would want. I can understand that I don’t work for my own meals, apartment and so on. But that a career in IT was denied to me and that the government and mental health carers didn’t have the right to destroy my health the way they did. The government wants to control me to such an extent that they can veto the very thoughts I am trying to think. I am like an animal in a zoo. If I could I would have to do a job for which you don’t need an education and such a job would only exist for the purpose of occupying mental patients. The job I would want to do, and which I could get is being denied to me by the Dutch government because these people deny me fame and fortune.

Aljo_

How now a large part of Europe is facing a cloud of volcanic ash, rendering air transportation impossible. Someone has to pay for my smoking addiction which was deliberately done to me to destroy my health and appearance and which has caused me so many problems.

Aljo_

Everyday, every hour I am being confronted with the fact that my mind refuses to obey me. That my consciousness simply isn’t my own, I cannot memorize anything anymore because there is someone else who is erasing my every thought as I am trying to think or remember or anticipate. I would read computer science text books if I were free to use my own brain! But that the Dutch government confiscated a large part of my thinking activity, time other people would spend thinking about job related matters, time I am forced to do absolutely nothing. So during working hours I am not free to think and unable to do things I would want to do. After working hours I am allowed to do certain things but not reading text books or do any programming. This gets me so angry! Shrinks don’t even believe it is possible that someone else is denying you your freedom of thought! As if I could trust any Dutch Medical Doctor who knows the truth about my health but who wouldn’t want to interfere with government policy. How my now deceased shrink prescribed me an anti depression medication, while depression didn’t have anything to do with my symptoms. That the Dutch must have realized that I would not become Dutch ever again so they transferred me to a geriatrician who had permission to demolish my health. So now I have a pacemaker which is really bad, and a muscle disorder making me unable to get back on my feet again by myself after a fall. I will never be able to live a normal life ever again! This is a government sponsored crime! The government envies me my freedom, that they tease me all the time about my inability to go outside and do things. I hate the Dutch for this! No wonder I am appreciating Canada so much!

Aljo_

This is a funny cartoon by Australian artist Kudelka, it speaks for itself…

Aljo_

Wir fördern Mittelstand und Unternehmertum. Wir wollen für einen sicheren Kapitalzugang für den Mittelstand sorgen. Für Existenzgründerinnen und Existenzgründer werden wir flächendeckend neue Anlaufstellen in Form eines One-Stop-Shops schaffen und ihnen den Zugang zu Wagniskapital erleichtern. Das Modell des High-Tech-Gründerfonds wollen wir stärken und ausdehnen.

I got a copy of the concept policy statement of the SPD (The German Social Democratic Party). I found this paragraph of the plan, which is 44 pages in total, interesting, because it clearly says that the SPD too will support people who take economic risks by starting their own small businesses. As it says here, it is very similar to the motivation of the stereotypical voters who were assumed to vote for Liberals and Christian Democrats in Germany. You can be an entrepreneur and vote Social Democratic at the same time in Germany! Of course it makes perfect sense that if you lose your job because of the global economic crisis that starting your own business could be easier than finding a new job. So that you create your own job, and might even be able to hire more people if your business is successful. But that all this may require the need for a loan to start your business, and that banks might deny you such a loan, where the German government has a special fund which will assist you financially with a business loan.

Aljo_

This is the Treasurer telling the Australian Prime Minister he can stop burning money any time he wants to. Kudelka the cartoonist who drew this picture likes to display the Prime Minister as Tin Tin. How Australia is the only developed country in the world to not have its economy in a recession.

Aljo_

Kudelka is a cartoonist for The Australian, today I found this drawing by him in The Australian. This is really funny and well thought.

Aljo_

This unprecedented economic crisis in the world has got nothing to do with efficiency of local economic players. We in Europe have state of the art factories, there is no way we could produce our goods at a lower cost. The ‘fitness’ of our economy is at a peak, cutting spending and cutting taxes would only have a negative impact on our economic performance. This global economic crisis is a matter of global fairness. For instance China is rapidly advancing its ability to build really good small cars at a low cost. Should these cars enter the European market that they might become really popular. Didn’t most kids learn in school that a global market without protectionism is best for all participants? Realizing this, wouldn’t it make sense to introduce a global trade law which says that in principal the import and export between two trading partners should be of about the same value? This would be fair. It doesn’t make any sense to turn the global economy into a race about who can produce products at the lowest cost. Instead this is a matter of Fairness over Fitness. If two trading partners agree that their economic ties are fair that this also means that there is trust. Of course it is important to produce goods at the lowest possible cost but this shouldn’t be the pivotal factor regarding the success of the economic process.

Aljo_

Even before the global economic credit crisis hit most developed countries already had budget deficits. There are two main ways of fixing a deficit, a government can cut spending or can  raise taxes. The third way to fix a deficit is by significant economic growth, but that governments only have limited control over growth rates. We in Europe expect our governments to provide: health care, education, pensions etc. For most countries cutting budgets is not possible, because over the past 20 to even 30 years there have been budget cuts made many times. We need to fix our budget deficits because countries have borrowed far too much already! So tax raises make sense. The main task for the tax payer is that they monitor the government to spend their money wisely. As it is there is more money around compared to the 1980s. We can afford to pay the government for their funding of services like health care and education where we all benefit from. People know nothing is free, and I am sure that there are people who would want to invest in for instance education and child care. When we go to the dentist we find it normal that we get a bill. Instead of Dutch politicians thinking “Where can we cut our budget spending?” they should be thinking: “What would the Dutch people want to spend their money on?” It would be financially unwise to cut taxes even further, because taxpayer money is like lubricant for the local economy. Remove it and the people might get a little more money to spend but at the same time the local economy is slowed down instead of accelerated. We pay taxes to  get  the government services we want and need. It is okay if it costs some because we all benefit from these services. For instance, we wouldn’t cut spending for keeping our cities clean, now would we? There are so many examples where we know that we would spend our own money just the same as the government does. If we had to pay ourselves for cleaning our own streets, that it would become much more expensive to begin with. City governments have always cared for cleaning streets etc, they know this business. Only big ticket expenses like new jet fighters for the Air Force should face public scrutiny, because this kind of money takes a lot of time to gather and people will wonder if it is really worth it. Most items on government budgets are probably small in price and help a lot of people. For instance city council money to a city quarter for social gatherings is nice, this improves our quality of life and it doesn’t break the budget. Of course a government has so many items on its budget that it would be logical that the government pays for things nobody wants or needs, but that the government monitors its expenses all the time to find out what needs more and what needs less public money. We need to trust our elected officials to do the right thing where spending taxpayer money is concerned. Most elected politicians know this game, but that civil servants in charge of budget planning are professionals who are much more creative in managing their money streams than an average citizen. Even though you wonder why Dutch government organisations lost a lot of money by investing in banks in Iceland which failed. So professionals can get it wrong too!

Aljo_

Joint Press Conference with
Senator Conroy and
Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett
Devonport, Tasmania

Subject: National Broadband Network

PM: Well good morning everybody and it’s great to be here with the Premier with local members including Sid Sidebottom and Dick Adams, as well as the Minister Stephen Conroy. This is a good day, it is a great day for Australian infrastructure, a great day for Tasmanian infrastructure and a great day for jobs, here in Tasmania and for the nation at large. What we are designing here and what we are about to roll out across the nation is the infrastructure we need for the 21st Century. So much of this nations’ productivity was built on the back of rolling out our railway network in the 19th Century, rolling out our electricity grids in the 20th Century, but the big turbo charge of productivity growth for the 21st century is going to come from high speed broadband, so what is the problem? Nationwide, we have I have got to say, one of the slowest and most expensive broadband networks across all the developed countries. We can’t afford to be in that position any longer. We can’t afford to be down the bottom of the OECD table – when it comes to speed, when it comes to price, when it comes to take up. Because this will so much underpin productivity growth for businesses, productivity growth for small businesses in the services sector and also productivity growth for manufacturing long term as well. Really important for business in the economy, really important also for communities and for Government service delivery also through our hospital network and health network and our schools. Here in Tasmania we actually have a problem which needs to be fixed as well. And it is like this: currently Tasmania has the lowest proportion of households with broadband of any State or Territory. 39 per cent compared with the Australian average of 52 per cent. The national average isn’t good enough by global standards and the Tasmanian average isn’t good enough by national standards. That is why the Premier here has been so strong in taking the lead in the proposals he has put to the Federal Government on rolling out broadband in this State. So what we are on about is making sure that this happens here in Tasmania and happens across the nation. And the good news for Tasmania is that this new National Broadband Network is going to start its rollout here in this State, because the Tasmanian Government has been so far ahead of the game. And can I also say this: that what it therefore means in Tasmania is that we are going to be in the business, with Aurora, of constructing a fibre to the premises network, which will deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, to something like 200,000 premises across Tasmania, businesses, households, to make sure that they are all linked with the global economy of the 21st century. It also means that this fibre to the premises network will be connected to all hospitals and some 90 per cent of schools. This again is a terrific outcome for this State. We want to make sure that it works well for everybody, and for those with whom we cannot make the connection to this fibre optic to the premises network, we will also be deploying of course, a wireless network and new satellite technologies to make sure that those communities have speeds of 12 megabits per second. This is critical for the future. Can I also say what this means in terms of jobs for Australia and jobs for Tasmania. This new National Broadband Network is critical for building the economy of the 21st Century but also in providing jobs in the here and now. We can see some of the jobs which are being provided through the work already being done here in Tasmania through Aurora and the Tasmanian Government. But nationwide, let me just confront you with this figure, when this rollout starts nationwide, for each year, out to the seven or eight years it will take to complete this rollout nationwide, we are looking at 25,000 jobs each year rising to 37,000 jobs at peak in that particular year. This is a big shot in the arm at a time when we are in the midst of a global recession which is impacting jobs right across Australia and in particular in this part of Tasmania. Therefore, we want to do our bit, play our part by providing this injection of stimulus now. So what does that mean for Tasmania, we will be having hundreds of jobs generated off the back of this state-wide rollout, this state wide rollout of the National Broadband Network. Good for Tasmania, good for Australia, good for the future. One disappointing thing which has emerged overnight is the statement from the Liberal party and Mr Turnbull that they will now block this, vote to block this in the Australian Parliament. The Liberal Party has indicated that they will vote to block this 21st century equivalent of the Snowy Hydro scheme – that the Liberal Party has said that they will vote to block 25,000 jobs a year for Australia, including what happens here in Tasmania. That the Liberal Party will vote to block this necessary piece of infrastructure to build productivity growth for the future. I think it is time that Australians made it very plain and very loud and clear what they think of this blocking opposition tactics. This is serious stuff. The Liberals have enormous influence in the Senate. This therefore is not just a political debate, it goes down to the core question of whether the underpinning legislation for changes to regulations and for the corporation we are proposing to establish, will find its way through the Senate or not. That is why the position of the Liberal Party is important. So I would simply say loud and clear, for Australians who want this infrastructure rolled out, make it very plain, absolutely crystal clear what you think about this proposal and what you think about a political party which for opportunistic reasons wants to vote it down. And I conclude by saying this: it is absolutely wrong for Mr Turnbull and the Liberal Party, to be voting to block 25,000 jobs a year and to vote to block the 21st Century equivalent of the snowy hydro scheme.

Statement by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.