“No country has ever taxed or subsidised its way to prosperity.”
Of the rambling, campaign-style speech delivered by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last night, that line was an interesting one.
It was certainly an interesting crowd to tell it to. Australia’s GDP per capita sits at around seventh in the world by most measures. Above it is Norway, which taxes at 50% and up, and equal or just below us — and lacking ours and Norway’s resources windfalls — are Denmark, Sweden and Finland, also 50%-plus taxers.
And those statistics are made more revealing when you look at estimated GDP per capita figures from 1900, where Australia sits at No. 2 (behind New Zealand), riding high on the sheep’s back. Sweden is 13th, Norway is 17th and Finland 20th. So we have gone down five or six places, while they have gone up, across a century in which they have applied consistently higher taxation.
When our resource boom splutters and dies and all we have are Gina Rinehart’s poems bolted to rocks to show for it, Scandinavian countries will have the schools, universities, compact cities, affordable renewable energy, etc, that they paid for with taxes.
So thanks for the history lesson, Tone. Will this be on the curriculum?
*We’re off to bone up on our national history and scoff down some lamingtons ahead of Australia Day. We’ll be off Monday, but transmission will resume as normal on Tuesday.
But Abbott is an economical baboon.
Klewso, Pls don’t insult baboons
Every time I see our PM on the world stage I cringe at his ineptitude.
Looking at how everybody reacts it would seem they feel the same way and he just creeps them out.
I mean his mountaineering small talk was so far beyond embarrassing it defies description.
If Ltd News shone the same spotlight on him as they did the previous govt then Australian’s would rise up in revulsion
Don’t worry guys. On international news the Rabbott’s speech doesn’t even get a mention. He’s barely a blip on a sideshow that nobody watched. The main story seems to be that Iran is open for business.
Unfortunately Scandinavia’s ‘affordable renewable energy’ consists overwhelmingly of hydro, which in turn depends on significant rainfall and suitable topography, both of which are scarce in Australia. Moreover, being sensible people they also have substantial (public) investments in nuclear energy, but this is banned in Australia.
I read a quarter of the way through his speech and blew an irony gasket.
Did he really, really say “No country has ever taxed or subsidised its way to prosperity.” and then “You don’t address debt and deficit with yet more debt and deficit.”?
Did he REALLY have the audacity to reference science as part of the solution to a global economic crisis?
My colleague suggested the speech was written by five people who wrote a paragraph each before passing the page on. I think the best that could be said for this speech is that it will provide caption gold for memes to come.