Giving Business What it Wants
HEAR FOR YOURSELF the voice of the invincibly self-interested business class. Proclaiming Australia’s inconclusive election result as “bad for business”, Christopher Niesche, consoles his readers with the observation that “it doesn’t look as if Labor will be able to form a government.” A good thing, presumably, since, in Niesche’s view, Labor’s Bill Shorten is “an opportunist and a populist who would have pursued an antagonistic relationship with business”.
As if such a thing were even possible in this neoliberal age!
Seven years a journalist at Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper, Niesche now runs his own shop, condensing corporate messages into digestible chunks for his increasingly time-poor readers. To these he bore – via the NZ Herald’s Business Section – the distressing news that “it doesn’t look as if [the Liberal leader Malcolm] Turnbull, will be able to give business what it wants, either.”
And what was it that business wanted from the Australian election?
Two things:
“The first is budget repair. Australian governments have been spending more than they take in taxation for several years, and the problem is structural or ongoing, not just due to a couple of bad years.”
Niesche’s analysis is drawn straight from the ‘frugal housewife’ school of economics which ignorantly elevates the fundamentals of successful household management above the vastly more complex task of determining the economic and social priorities of a modern democracy.
At least Niesche understands that his simplistic prescriptions will not be universally appreciated:
“Any government wanting to fix this will need to make brave decisions about spending cuts, which will inevitably upset many sections of the community.”
Notice the way Niesche equates the imposition of hardship on his fellow citizens with bravery. The implied suggestion being that only a cowardly government would attempt to minimise social hardship by stoking demand, boosting employment and running a deficit.
No prizes for guessing the second thing business wants. Tax Reform.
“Turnbull promised to cut the company tax rate from 30 percent to 25 percent and while there’s broad support among the Coalition for the policy, we have to now ask how he’ll be able to find the A$50 billion to pay for it.”
Ordinary Australians should take note that figure. Fifty billion dollars is the size of the fiscal bullet they have just managed to dodge.
Niesche further laments that the indecisiveness of the Australian electorate has almost certainly put off the day when GST can be raised from 10 percent to 15 percent. (He understands, of course, that GST is a deeply regressive tax, falling most heavily upon those whose minimal income requires them to spend virtually everything they earn on the basic necessities of life.)
Poor Mr Niesche, so much has been lost by the distressing vagaries of democracy:
“With the government hanging by a thread, business won’t get the stability and certainty it was hoping for. It will damage confidence and businesses will stop taking risks and will curb their investing for growth.”
Having failed to get what it wanted, Niersche is telling us, business will now go on strike. Striking workers withdraw their labour and form a picket-line. Striking capitalists put away their chequebooks. The effect is the same. If capital is not put to work, then economic activity eventually falls away to nothing. The intent is also the same. Give us what we want or we’ll make you suffer.
The difference, of course, lies in the scale of the suffering inflicted and who, ultimately, is required to bear it. Striking workers can always be starved back to work. Business, on the other hand, has only to persuade voters to elect a “brave, powerful and popular leader” to put capital back to work again – but not before meeting all of its demands.
Yes, the arrogance, the audacity, and the MSM parroting this off all over the show, as if this is some unwritten rule of the law.
I get sick of these commentators, economists, usually the banker culprit ones, the business “leaders” and government leaders such as John Key.
I remember one “economist” a couple of years ago praising the Chinese model, that is the Mainland Chinese model for modern day business, where “things get done”, where they do not spend so much time debating and moaning, like in those horrible democracies.
That is the crux of it, modern business leaders want to have a government that just gets things done, so they can do business as they like, to grow, to increase profits and to serve their elitarian interests. They really prefer dictatorships, such as the former one under Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
The obligatory preaching of “we need jobs, we need jobs, jobs, jobs” then usually follows, telling people to shut up and think of the bread they need on their tables. Oh you are so lucky to have a job, no matter if it is just a casual, temporary, underpaid job, be “lucky”, it may be a “stepping stone”, which it usually is NOT.
A better election result would in my view have been a solid win for Labour, but better one where the Greens have more votes and support, so that the Aussies get moving and address the challenges of climate change.
But that is what the mining businesses will not like.
Maybe also worth looking at in this context:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/party-over-how-west-went-bust/
+1 Mike
+100 – how the hell has the world got to the point where it is help ransom by big business and the concept of business is now replacing people as some sort of artificial elite that gets preferential treatment?
Chris, why are you surprised? That the same spin and lies they have woven into the fabric here, have taking root in Australia?
That the so called lucky country has finally given up on social democracy?
Or that they are now so open about it?
Here a tip – unless people rise up against this class, we looking at neo-slavery to go with our neo-liberalism.
Ever eagre to see the bright side ( :p ), the good thing is that the reason all this is happening is your average fair suck of the sav Australian seems not to be as tolerant of self-serving neo-lib, neo-con politicians.
I think there are ‘learnings’ in that for Koiwoi politishuns, don’t you possum?
It might not happen overnight – but it will happen – with apologies to Rache and Split Enz.
I’m not sure Okker politicians get it yet though, but we’ll see. So far, NZ politicians sure as hell haven’t caught on, but there are signs.
Neische et al are getting pretty desperate though – or maybe it’s just that they’re getting scared.
1000% ONCEWASTIM,
YOU HAVE THE PICTURE RIGHT.
EVEN IF THE COALITION TORRIES WIN IT WILL BE A VERY SLIM RULING AGENDA WITH HEAVY RELIANCE FROM UNSTABLE ALLIES LIKE THE INDEPENDANT MP’S AS THEY HAVE ALREADY.
THEY HAVE ALERTED THE MEDIA ILLEOLOGALLY THEY WILL STAY AT THE CROSS BENCHES NOW.
SO VERY FEW BILLS WILL BE PAST GOING FORWARD NOW ACCORDING TO THE PUNDITS WE ARE WATCHING ON SKY TV FOR THREE DAYS NOW.
THE TORRIES ARE SHITTING THEMSELVES NOW.
SO IT’S GOOD TO SEE FINALLY, AND WE HOPE THAT BAD KARMA SPREADS TO NZ AND KILLS OFF THE ROTTING CARCASS OF THE NATZ.
“Ordinary Australians should take note that figure. Fifty billion dollars is the size of the fiscal bullet they have just managed to dodge.”
A large number of “ordinary Australians” are very aware of the $50Bn bullet – it was one of the reasons they have started turning to minority parties and independents in much larger numbers. Even the missus – who has never voted in her life, was moved to vote – “to get those bastards out, or at least knacker them with a hamstrung parliament so they can’t do as much damage to society as they have done.” !
Somewhere along the way business stopped paying its fair share in a very deliberate coordinated world-wide move. I note George Osbourne Chancellor of the Exchequer is using Brexit to lower corporate tax to 15% to attract business to stay. Yet another piss poor excuse to help the rich.
I am of the school the believes in stuff-up over conspiracy in most political settings. And in ignorance over ill-intent for the media.
For way too long the keen but callow young journalists writing on political topics have based their opinions on governmental press releases and schmoozing from government-inspired right-wing spin doctors.
It would do them the world of good to be locked up and forced to read your columns, Chris, until light dawn in their benighted eyes.
Actually, I’m not being facetious. It would.
Couldn’t resist posting this link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyePCRkq620
Great Helena says it all, we are like rats in a barrel owned by corporates, who are lost!
To big to fail eh!!!!
The world just about comes to an end when business can’t screw the general population for all they have, so rich people can go on endless holidays in lovely sunny locations, oh how unfair the world is for business.
“Australian governments have been spending more than they take in taxation for several years”
And who has benefitted? The Tooth Fairy?! ‘Course not! Businesses – with orders, bribes for hiring, subsidies and other goodies as the Aussie taxpayers try to haul the economy out of River Tick using tax money to prime the pump.
“businesses will stop taking risks and will curb their investing for growth” – this one has them rolling in the aisles every time. Most businesses are conservative and highly pragmatic. They don’t take risks. Repeat: they DON’T take risks – unless some other mug pays the price.
Innovation and ‘investing in growth’ is up there among the Great Lies. (Think ‘investment in trained staff’ – the cost of which has been shifted from business to tax payers and job seekers).
Bludgers, scroungers, and purse-snatchers who want a ‘sweetener’ or several, to go with ‘rewards for taking risks’.
(Not so for small businesses which are usually operating as the worst sort of work going.)
I’d want their souls in hock before I’d give them anything more rewarding than a Mexican wave.