The Australian Federal budget was released today, and as expected, the media is picking through it trying to create some drama, by singling out the "winners and losers" without recognizing that everyone loses.
Everyone loves a handout.
300 dollars rebate for energy costs.
This was one of the "headline" returns, but all this really is is kicking the can a little further down the road. If they really wanted to give Australians a rebate on energy costs, they would have increased the taxes on the "supernormal profits" that the energy companies have been making, driving the cost of living crisis even harder.
Handouts are not free money, they are future tax costs and while popular for those who get them, the fact is that most of that money is going to just end up back in the same pockets again, except with a slight difference. It is like paying a credit card off with a credit card, because essentially nothing has really changed, except being further indebted.
When governments take debt, they are taking it "on behalf" of the population. The government is never liable, the obligation lays solely on the taxpayers. However, this debt is money that doesn't exist yet, but it will exist in the future, except it won't be worth as much. So, what that debt is doing, is creating money out of thin air to give to the corporations and investors now, even though that money doesn't exist yet, and puts it into their pockets now, at a value higher than it will be valued at in the future. But then, the taxpayer will be paying interest on it to cover the future devaluation, but it will be paid at a higher rate than the devaluation will be, meaning that there is a continual skimming of the value by the lender, which happens to be largely owned by the group of investors who were the ones who first got paid that thin air money in the first place.
Handouts might feel like a win, but it is putting even more money in the pockets of the people who are already profiting, to inflate their profits even higher. But worse than that, because it is on debt, we the taxpayer are going to pay even more to them for the privilege of feeling like we are getting something back.
Scam.
It is essentially forcing more of our money (assuming we are all taxpayers) into the hands of the wealthiest corporations and people, without us actually getting anything for it. Just look at the "energy rebate" which is meant to ease the burden of the energy companies making record profits. They aren't offering anything more, there is no more service or better quality electricity or fuel, it just means that their price increases have been a success, because not only have we been forced to pay the higher price, there is no penalty for their price gouge.
Tax breaks for clean tech corporations, no incentive to buy
ENVIRONMENT
- $13.7bn in production tax breaks for green hydrogen/processed critical minerals
- $1bn for solar panel production
- $566m over 10 years to map what is under our soil and seabed
- $520m to deepen net-zero trade/engagement with our region
- $519.1m for farmers for drought preparation
- $330m to big business for decarbonisation
- $625m to help rural communities cut emissions/prep for climate change
The children are our future
EDUCATION
- $3bn worth of HECS debt wiped for 3m+ Australians, backdated to July 1, 2023
- $319.50 a week for eligible teaching students on mandatory placements from July 2025
- $350m for fee-free uni-ready courses.
- $90m for 20,000 new fee-free TAFE and VET places and pre-apprenticeships
- $6.5m for trial of age verification tech to stop young people seeing porn/violent content online
Oh no... I meant war is our future
DEFENCE
- $101.8m to create industrial workforce for next-gen military programs
- $5.7bn boost over four years; $50.3bn over a decade
- $1bn to accelerate long-range strike capabilities
- $11.1bn for navy’s new surface combat fleet
- $14-18bn to bolster northern bases/support Indo-Pacific security
- $7bn-$10bn for 26 army landing craft
- $53bn-$63bn for AUKUS nuclear-powered subs
- $100m for Ukraine
As you can see, "defense" is going to be one of the areas where those corporations will be sucking tax money from over the next years. This is happening globally. Defense is like an insatiable blackhole, sucking continually into it under the guise that it is there to keep us safe. The only ideologies and causes of war, centers around money and power. War is the game of power played by the minority authoritarians, funded by the masses.
All of these "budgets" are really just a game of smoke and mirrors, moving resources around in ways that will maximize the profits of the already wealthy a little more. It is all meaningless in the grand scheme of things for the individuals, other than that we are going to be on the hook for it when the game inevitably fails, because the economy is built to fail. Nothing a government can do will stop the economy from failing eventually, because no matter what they do, a car with a broken engine doesn't run, no matter how much fuel you pour into it.
It is just money.
Our money. Wasted time and time again.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]