Will Scomo's big budget give a big economic push?
Will Scott Morrison's big spending, big taxing, big borrowing budget impart a big fiscal stimulus to the economy in the coming financial year? Not so much.
Ross Gittins is economics editor of the SMH and an economic columnist for The Age. His books include Gittins' Guide to Economics, Gittinomics and The Happy Economist.
Will Scott Morrison's big spending, big taxing, big borrowing budget impart a big fiscal stimulus to the economy in the coming financial year? Not so much.
Of the government's four goes so far, this is its best budget. For a budget aimed squarely at improving Malcolm Turnbull's ailing political fortunes, its economics is much better.
I have a lot of strong views, and I hope it isn't hard to detect an internal consistency in them, but they're not driven by loyalty to any party.
A lot of the problems we cause ourselves arise from the way we've evolved to economise on thinking time by taking mental shortcuts.
Since the reform push has degenerated into little more than business rent-seeking it's neither surprising nor regrettable that voters have called a halt.
Our foreign debt will grow and it already exceeds $1 trillion deficit. But that's not necessarily bad.
I realised Australian government was fast approaching peak fake when I read Laura Tingle of the Financial Review's revelation that Malcolm Turnbull's Snowy 2.0 announcement was timed to favourably influence the imminent fortnightly Newspoll result.
If I was on the minimum wage, however, I wouldn't start spending the increase yet.
Smoke signals from Canberra suggest that all the government will manage to get through the Senate is a reduction to 27.5 per cent in the tax rate applying to companies with turnover of less than $10 million a year.
Economists may not be much chop at forecasting how fast the economy will grow in the next year or two, but that doesn't mean they haven't learnt a few things about how economies work.
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