AUSTRALIA'S ECONOMIC PROWESS

Which country will have no government debt within a year, contributed the most to help those in need after the tsunami, and was described by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development as a "model for other countries", America or Australia? You've guessed it. Australia. For so long simply seen as an adventure playground for gap year students or a breeding ground for sportsmen, Australia has now graduated into the world of big players....

The Australian economy is now in the 15th year of the longest economic expansion in 50 years - perhaps, according to John Howard, the Prime Minister, "the longest since the gold rushes of the 19th century". Today this continent, much of it desert, ranks 53rd in terms of world population, but is the world's 13th largest economy; eighth in the world in income per head from 18th two decades ago.

John Howard (and to be fair, in some areas such as currency deregulation, his predecessor Bob Hawke) practised what he preached: the foundation of a nation's success is economic growth, and that growth is rooted in economic stability, free trade and rewarding hard work and investment. Out went tariff protection. It was no use hiding under the duvet, hoping that the growling Asian tigers on our doorstep would disappear. "Bring 'em on," became the Australian warcry. Down came the national debt and borrowing. Australia's net debt position has fallen from 20 per cent of GDP to 1.3 per cent. And within a year, Australia will have no net government debt at all. Read that again: no debt. Down from $96 billion to zero in a decade....

The burden on the private sector fell, helping it to create more jobs - more than 1.5 million new jobs since 1996 alone. Not bad for a country of just 20 million people. Today, unemployment is at a 30-year low - and inflation is under lock and key despite high oil prices.

Much more here

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

What should we expect from Bernanke now that he is the Fed's chairman? : Why Bernanke's policy of stabilizing prices will generate a boom-bust situation
Liberal Party stuffs up its workplace reform arguments against the unions: Why has the Liberal Government failed to persuade the electorate that reform is good? Because disdainful arrogant economic illiterates have been in charge. This article lays out the case for reform by demolishing the unions' argument
How capital gains taxes retard economic growth: Shows how capital gains taxes damage economic growth by sapping investment and punishing success
The Great Depression and the paradox of thrift - another Keynesian fallacy: It is nonsense to claim that the Great Depression was caused by excess savings. The evidence flatly contradicts this view
Scooter Libby v Fitzblooey: a 'crime' against the process: Is it now normal practice for prosecuting attorneys to allege a crime and then set traps to elicit falsehoods upon which they can then indict a target without having to prove a crime was committed?
Iranians boycott regime's anti-Jewish rally: The Iranian regime's vicious anti-Jewish rally was ignored by the vast majority of Iranians
Mugabe unleashes his fanatical thugs against the poor: Mugabe has unleashed his infamous 5th Brigade on the poor. Having learnt well from their North Korean mentors the 5th Brigade murdered, tortured, and raped about 20,000 Zimbabweans in the early '80s

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ELSEWHERE

Theodore Dalrymple notes that suicide bombers and other Islamic terrorists are often fairly Westernized. He says that Leftist victim-talk makes them resentful of their failures in our society and Islam gives them an outlet for their anger. But this is definitely a "read the whole thing" article.

A good article here shows that the whole of Islam is complicit in Islamic terrorism. Excerpt: "So, here we are: part of the Muslim community is in the thrall of a totalitarian ideology which turns young Muslims into human bombs. Photos of Muslim and non Muslim civilian body parts flying in the middle of markets, mosques, discos and hotels have become routine. Beheadings of Christian and Jewish men and women are no longer surprising. And what do the ever-silent and passive-defensive Muslim countries, Organization of Islamic Conference and the Arab League vociferously condemn? They are condemning the publication of cartoons featuring Muhammad in a Danish paper. The absurdity of this action is only matched by its hypocrisy."

An amusing explanation here of how GWB's proposed tax changes would screw the "Blue-staters" who have made themselves his political enemies.

There is what is alleged to be a speech here by a Chinese general that speaks of attacking the United States. Is it just the fantasies of an old man or totally phony? I don't know but maybe we should try to find out. There are a lot of comments here that throw doubt on the story. The "learning from the Nazis" part of the speech does not sound to me like anything any Chinese Communist would say.

A good summary from Dennis Prager: "Judeo-Christian America -- American exceptionalism America -- loves John Bolton, has contempt for the United Nations, mistrusts the World Court, regards Amnesty International as another morally confused leftist organization, thinks little of the world's media and academic elites, and regards "world opinion" as morally confused and left-wing media manipulated. On the other side are those, like the ACLU, who regard even the smallest cross on any county or city seal as a religious threat to the secular republic, who think it America's fault that this country is not highly regarded in public opinion polls from Canada to Germany to South Korea, who passionately opposed John Bolton becoming ambassador to the U.N. because he is highly critical of that institution, and who believe that other nations' laws should be cited in U.S. Supreme Court decisions".

Carnival of the Vanities is up right on schedule this week with lots of goodies to read.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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