Tim's Bits and Pieces

"Viva Cuba Libre"

How the government "injects money into the economy"¹. While it's true that the Queensland increase only amounts to 1.5% of the total stimulus, extrapolated out to the rest of the country it comes to around 20% (QLD Pop: 1.5M, Total Australian Pop: 20M), and then of course there's the Alcohol industry which probably experienced similar increases. (There's also smoking, illegal drugs, prostitutes, and other vices as well) In total we are talking around 40-50% of the the economic stimulus being wasted on vices².

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One of the guy's I work with said that "Obama was essential for the World as a whole!" (or words to the effect) and the idea has been running through my mind every since. What would the effect of Obama's election be on the rest of the world? He's for change sure, but what change? Would it be for the better or for the worse?

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I was rather shocked too find out just how much the government spends on welfare payments, from the Commonwealth Budget for 2007-2008 we learn the government receives $119,560 million in income tax and pays $96,450 million in "Social security and welfare". Gee so, %80 of income tax goes to welfare payments. According to the ABS the average weekly income for full time employees is $1,103.60 as of August last year. Using this figure, the cost to maintain the welfare system costs the equivalent of 87 ($96,450 / $1,103.60) million weeks of work a year. From the 2006 census we find that the employed labour force consists of about 9.1 (9.6 total labour force - 0.5 unemployed) million people. Therefore to maintain the welfare system each and every employed person is doing the equivalent of 9.5 (87 million / 9.1 million) weeks of basically forced, unpaid labour* for people who either can't or won't get a job, or you spend %18 of your life on this.

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