Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

A high rate of taxation won't help Australia moving forward. In fact it will probably result in less tax revenue - through declines in production and consumption. The easiest way to avoid taxation is by not making any profit. An even easier way is avoiding doing any business there at all.

Australia is in the Asian region. It's not in North America or Europe. It should stop pretending that it can deal as if it was.

Europe will soon have its power and economics replaced by Asia - if it hasn't already. The sad truth is that many European nations could've been collecting 99% tax rates, and they would still be in exactly the same position. Debt up to their ears and lenders not willing to give any more. Many European nations have controlled their finances like the worst type of wastrel, the more they got the more they wasted. Now it's time to pay the piper.

Greece for example had working conditions of a thirty hour week, a fifty year old retirement age, and the kicker, a life indexed pension at 80% of a person last wage. Most Greeks work for the Government, which just happens to be in the business of not earning any money. How could any person Greek or otherwise believe such a fairy tale could come true? Deep down every working person must've known they would never actually see this come to them. And of course now it's certain it never will.

Obviously Australians know what problems they potentially face. And everyone must know what it means if those problems drag on and on. People must also know the world they are living in, and how competitive it really is.

Charity doesn't exist when everybody is asking for it. In a year or two the Greeks will be able to tell everybody all about it.

Wall Street has created a system of economic institutions that gives a small elite control of the world’s biggest and most powerful corporations, the funding of political campaigns, and the mass media. It maintains that it is not only the right, but as well the moral duty of members of this elite to use this power to maximize their personal financial gain without regard to the consequences for others.

It is an audacious ethical perversion that elevates the seven deadly sins of classical Christianity to the status of moral virtuous. The resulting economic, environmental, social and political devastation is totally predictable. The curious piece is that so many bright people and otherwise ethical people seem to have accepted this moral perversion.

During the latter part of the twentieth century we were taught that we were limited to a choice between two economic models: Wall Street capitalism and Soviet communism. We chose Wall Street capitalism based on its claim to being the natural champion of democracy and market choice. Now we see the reality that Wall Street capitalism seeks to limit our political choices to politicians who serve Wall Street interests and our market choices to those that maximize Wall Street profits.

 Our choices are not limited to rule by global financiers or socialist bureaucrats. The current system of economic rules and institutions centralizes decision-making power in narrowly focused global financial institutions that operate beyond the reach of democratic accountability to serve purely financial interests.

This vision of economic possibility is based on the premise that human nature is not limited to competitive, individualistic, and materialistic drives, but includes equally natural tendencies to be cooperative, caring, and respectful. This premise is supported by our daily experience as well as by scientific findings that our brains are wired for life in community and that societies that feature greater equity and community enjoy greater health and happiness than more unequal and individualistic societies.

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We find hope in the realization that the economic transformation we must now navigate to secure a viable human future is consistent with our nature and holds the possibility of a better life for all.

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that Europe's debt crisis risks plunging the global economy into a "lost decade", saying it was rich nations' responsiblity to shoulder the burden of restoring growth and confidence.

Christine Lagarde told a financial forum in Beijing on Wednesday that European plans to bolster a rescue package for Greece were a "step in the right direction", but that the outlook for the world economy remained dangerous and uncertain.

"There are clearly clouds on the horizon. Clouds on the horizon particularly in the advanced economies and particularly so in the European Union and the United States," Lagarde said.

Speaking on the first of a two-day visit to China, Lagarde said Asia was not immune to the problems currently sweeping the eurozone.

A lost decade for sure, but Japan's lost decade is now two decades of stagnation.

It was Christmas Day, 1989, when the Bank of Japan raised the benchmark interest rate to 4.25%. The move was supposed to prevent an asset bubble and curb inflation. The result: the market crashed, the economy stagnated, and a debt crisis ensued. And in the more than 20 years since then, little has changed.

Japan has struggled through over two decades of weak growth and deflation. And the Nikkei index is still down something like 80% from its peak in 1989.

When will we realise that we have come to the end of continuous growth, we have to accept that we need a sustainable economy. Not an economy that will grow forever.

When we move to alternative, sustainable energy the price of energy should fall. That should apply stimulus to the stagnating global economy.

We should write off all debt and invest in sustainable energy, Throwing good money after bad is never going to solve our problems.

The Libs would be insane not to preference the ALP ahead of the Greens across the country next election and explain why and in great detail. The Greens are a nasty bunch of blackmailing extremists. They don't need to do a deal, dirty or otherwise, to do that. They should just do it.

The ALP is then on the spot. If they preference the Greens ahead of the Libs, that would be a gift for the Libs. They could then portray a vote for the ALP as a vote for another minority Govt or some other seedy coalition with extremists.

Moreover there is a strong and growing anti-Green wing in the ALP. A dirty pref swap deal with the Greens would seriously damage party cohesion.

Both parties should preference the Greens last of course. No deals. Just do it. That should break their insidious grip immediately and get rid of them entirely from every legislature and chamber in the country, including the Senate, within six years. Just like they did with One Nation.

Thank you, John, for a timely and well thought out piece. I thought I'd take a few days to absorb it, before making a contribution.

Human beings are wired into two contrasting survival instincts. The original instinct is self-survival, but as we evolved from reptiles, into mammals and finally humans, our genetically wired instincts evolved to promote group and community bonds, and acts of selflessness.

Human evolution is three dimensional. We evolve genetically. But we also evolve culturally, as human culture is shaped through generations. Finally, each of us evolves as we grow older.

Capitalists like Alan like to claim that modern human progress is due to the advent of capitalism - the selfish instinct in trade. But this is not true. Human progress is due to the social instinct, the instinct to work together, for the common good, to share. It is, above all what has given us science.

Yes, humanity is at a cross-roads, and the cross-roads is primarily of choosing between selfishness and the common good. If we chose either path cleanly, humanity can easily survive. If we choose selfishness, the 1% will survive. If we choose selflessness, then humanity will still survive, and be happier for it

But, more than likely, we won't decide either way, bungling along, and creating a dog's breakfast. I suspect that his is partly because while we, as a population overwhelmingly favour selflessness, the way we create leaders tend to favour the selfish. There is some interesting research that suggests that the same behaviours found in psychopaths are more common among leaders.

Who was the greater economist--Adam Smith or Charles Darwin? The question seems absurd. Darwin, after all, was a naturalist, not an economist. But Robert Frank, New York Times economics columnist and best-selling author of The Economic Naturalist, predicts that within the next century Darwin will unseat Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. The reason, Frank argues, is that Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. And the consequences of this fact are profound. Indeed, the failure to recognize that we live in Darwin's world rather than Smith's is putting us all at risk by preventing us from seeing that competition alone will not solve our problems.

Smith's theory of the invisible hand, which says that competition channels self-interest for the common good, is probably the most widely cited argument today in favor of unbridled competition--and against regulation, taxation, and even government itself. But what if Smith's idea was almost an exception to the general rule of competition? That's what Frank argues, resting his case on Darwin's insight that individual and group interests often diverge sharply. Far from creating a perfect world, economic competition often leads to "arms races," encouraging behaviors that not only cause enormous harm to the group but also provide no lasting advantages for individuals, since any gains tend to be relative and mutually offsetting.

The good news is that we have the ability to tame the Darwin economy. The best solution is not to prohibit harmful behaviors but to tax them. By doing so, we could make the economic pie larger, eliminate government debt, and provide better public services, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That's a bold claim, Frank concedes, but it follows directly from logic and evidence that most people already accept.

The Robin Hood Tax, carbon tax, and mining tax could all be used to increase global productivity, fight global poverty, and provide the necessary funding to move to a sustainable economy.

Providing electricity to the 1.5 billion people — 45 percent of them in Africa — who currently live without it would be a step in the right direction, Mr. Orme says. Electricity means children can study at night, electric stoves can be used instead of pollution-emitting coal, and people can have access to a wider community through television or radio. “We can do this without increasing global CO2 by even 1 percent,” he says.

The agency proposes an international tax on foreign exchange trading to raise $40 billion toward that goal.

With a stroke of a pen leaders of the G20 could make a huge difference if they were to focus on ways to overcome poverty  in the third world.

These 1.5 billion people are truly part of the 99 percent.

Cameron said he agreed that corporate greed should be curbed, adding: "The archbishop speaks for the whole country when he says it is unacceptable, in a time of difficulty, [that] people at the top of our society are not showing signs of responsibility.

"It's this government that's consulting about proper measures to make sure we get transparency in terms of boardroom pay, proper accountability, more power for shareholders – all of those things we are doing."

But he refused to back an EU-wide financial transaction tax – the so called Robin Hood tax – unless it was adopted on a worldwide basis.

The Green MP Caroline Lucas asked Cameron whether he was prepared to be a "leading advocate" for the tax at the G20 summit later this week and to ensure the revenue was earmarked to tackle sustainable development. The prime minister replied: "There is widespread support for the principles behind such a tax, but it has to be adopted on a global basis."

With the G20 leaders meeting this weekend, surely a tax that takes from the rich and gives to the poor is a no-brainer.

Of course it should be adopted on a global basis.

Agree with above and think it fits in well with Fiona Reynolds' last posting concerning the Democratic Audit.

As stresses and strains start to show with the global politic, the continued irrational depletion and deployment of scarce resources away from genuinely productive projects and processes in favour of the misguided interests of a global plutocracy will be advocated by its shills, along with more of the sort of obnoxious tactics seen with Qantas management here. Also, consider our politicians current avoidance of their responsibility as per frac drilling and duty of care re refugees who events have brought under our control. On a big scale, the bail out of the big banks in the USA, Britain etc, recession for large parts of the globe and increasing polarisation of the electorate there, here and in Europe.

The increasingly trails of humanity trying to escape from war, famine or dire poverty are useful as easy targets for demagogues usually from the right within the wealthy nations, as fears of globalisation and the way it is implemented are stoked by tabloid press and media, almost the fifth column of our time. Unstable government makes for easier marauding from globalised capital at  precisely the time when a little harnessing of capital without necessarily much disturbance of the social position of the actual elite, could still see hundreds of millions of poor people dragged out of their current dollar a day existences on the margins of humanity.