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.
Of course this 40-50% is based on the somewhat odd assumption that buying a brand new plasma when you've already got a perfectly fine TV is somehow not wasting money. Where do you suppose that the money spent on a new TV goes? It's made in China, so there's probably a decent chunk there, and then the rest of it will go to big business. For sure a lot of that money that goes to big business will eventually trickle done to employees and the such, but why not just cut the company tax rate?
