From The Times Online:

San Francisco is to hold a vote on whether to rename one of its largest sewage treatment facilities after George W. Bush, in what supporters describe as “a fitting monument to the President’s work”.

Today Kevin Rudd, Australia’s Prime Minister, called for the G8 nations to “apply a blowtorch to OPEC” to increase oil production. While I agree that we should apply diplomatic pressure to OPEC to up supply, I find this to be a bit of a contradiction, given that Rudd recently signed the Kyoto Protocol on Australia’s behalf and tries to present himself as someone who’s serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. You can’t have it both ways – if oil production increases, so too must greenhouse gas emissions.

Presently in Australia, like many other countries, we have a ‘progressive’ tax system, where higher earners pay higher marginal tax rates. This kind of system is almost universal, and has been adopted on the basis of ‘fairness’, i.e. the age old social-democrat/socialist ideology that people should “pay according to how much they can, and receive according to how much they need”. The trouble with this kind of system is that it stifles incentive. The more successfull you become, the more inhibition there is to succeed more. To remedy this, many Conservatives and Libertarians, including myself, have strongly advocated a flat-tax. That is, a single income tax rate that is the same for everybody, independent of how much they earn. While I strongly support this kind of system I’m tempted to ask the question “why not go one step further and introduce a reverse progressive tax system?”. Specifically, one would have a cascaded tax system, but the highest marginal rates would kick in for the first dollar you earn, and then every dollar after that the tax rate becomes progressively less. This might seem a little radical, and probably it is. But it’s worth considering the merits of such a system. A tax system structured like this would massively add to the incentive to develop and earn more, and to seek promotion and bonuses. And the incentive would increase with every extra dollar that people earn. I realize that this idea is completely, 100% politically unviable, but I think it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

Here’s a great Ron Paul promo video that I stumbled across, called The High Tide. The video is made by a group of dedicated Ron Paul supporters and includes an original soundtrack and really well done 3D animation.

An extremely insightful video on the mindset of America’s religious right, taken in the days following the 9/11 attacks. For some reason I only discovered this video recently.

Australia’s newly elected Labor government recently announced its first budget since entering office. On the whole the budget had some merits – tax reductions and a strong surplus. However, the government unfortunately maintained the bloated social welfare system that grew under the Howard government. The opposition leader presented his budget reply speech, in which he vaguely advocated less spending, and reducing petrol excises, but without any real details. I’ll take this opportunity to present my own budget response as I believe that both major parties lack any serious new ideas for the future of the country, are simply maintaining the status-quo, and are essentially socialists. May I introduce Peter’s 6 point plan to prosperity:

1) Abolish all welfare except unemployment benefits, which should be tied to work-for-the-dole. This includes the complete abolition of the various family and child benefits. The purpose of welfare should be to help those who are genuinely going through hard times, not tax the middle class and give the money back to them via rebates and benefits. This implies unnecessary taxation which in turn undermines incentive in the economy.

2) Double the goods and services tax (GST). Taxation is necessary. The question is how to apply taxation. We should aim to apply taxes so as to encourage things that ought to be encouraged, while discouraging things that ought to be discouraged. It is undeniably in the long term interests of the economy if investment and saving are encouraged at the expense of immediate term consumption. Significantly increasing the GST paves the way for this.

3) Use all the proceeds from welfare reduction and GST increase to reduce income, capital gains and company taxes. These three taxes represent the ‘evil taxes’, the ones which stifle economic growth, incentive and entrepreneurship. As such they need to be minimized, even if that entails making up the lost revenue by increasing other taxes, such as the GST.

4) Flatten income tax to be a single flat-rate tax. The current progressive tax system massively undermines incentive for hard working individuals and families, and penalizes those who are successful. Success and hard work are not things which we should intentionally be undermining through economic policy. A friend of mine tole me a great analogy a few years ago – “We used to have a watering can principle to government. Nowadays we have a lawn mower principle”. Lawnmowers need to be eliminated!

5) Make the company tax rate the same as the income tax rate. This will close a huge loophole that effectively allows the super rich to designate themselves as companies and avoid paying the higher income tax rates.

6) Eliminate all tax deductions and offsets, thereby eliminating tax returns altogether. Australia’s tax system is incredibly bloated. I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a PhD in theoretical physics and yet I need help filling in my tax return because the system is so incredibly complicated and I can’t figure it out on my own. At the last tax season I enlisted the support of a friend with a master’s degree in economics to help me out. Even with his support we couldn’t figure everything out. If all deductions are eliminated then people will know where they stand financially. Furthermore, an enormous amount of bureaucracy will be eliminated.

I present the motion to the house.

Some interesting videos on McCain

A nice little cartoon I found on the web

Yesterday Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made a formal apology to the ‘stolen generation’, a generation of aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their parents and put into convents for their upbringing. Many of these children never saw their parents again. One of the most shocking aspects of these policies is that they continued right up until the early 1970’s, which is only 10 years before I was born. There are millions of Australians living today who were alive when this policy was taking place, and there are tens of thousands of aboriginals who were victims of it.

A national apology for these policies is something that is long overdue. The previous Prime Minister, John Howard, resisted calls for an apology for his entire 11 years in office. You can watch the apology on YouTube (part 1, part 2, part 3) [duration 30 mins].