lev.lafayette's blog

On day 7 the hysterics of privilege hit. Much as been made about about Labor's plans to end a loophole in our tax system which allows for people who have paid no tax to receive a subsidy when they already have a high income. How is such a thing possible? Because under Howard and Costello the sensible system of dividend imputation (introduced by Labor in 1987 to end a "double-tax") was modified to allow for a fully franked system even when no income tax had been paid - and this includes superannuation payments for those over 60 which doesn't count as taxable income.

Day 6 of the election campaign and the LNP is already preparing for defeat with Tony Abbott raising the possibility that he would return to the Liberal Party leadership if the party asked him after the election. Given the popularity of Tony Abbott, I raise the possibility that this is a weird psy-op to get people to vote for ScuMo so we don't have to put up with Abbott.

Liberal candidate for Chisholm, Gladys Liu, has made the top story for day 5 of the campaign. First, she claims LGBTI issues as "ridiculous rubbish", then tried to claim it was "fake news" (we have recordings, you know), and then tried to say that it was the views of the Chinese community. Congratulations, Gladys! Not only are you a vile homophobe, you also managed to lie about what you said, and then you also tried to smear the Chinese community as being as homophobic as you are. You know what its called when you use a generalised smear against a community? That's racism.

Day 4 of the election and we turn to those who think should treat all of this as a big joke.

LNP Senator for putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Matthew Canavan, shows that he as as smart as Tony Abbott by chowing down on a whole raw onion.
https://twitter.com/mattjcan/status/1117170594318041089

On Day 3 of the election campaign, the Prime Minister was introducing himself to anyone of vaguely SE Asian appearance with a "nǐ hǎo" only to do so to a woman who informs him that she's Korean. Once again, his exceptional skills in marketing are evident.

More importantly, it's the dumping season. The Tories have ditched three candidates already because two of them have dual citizenship issues and a third because they won't give up their job at Australia Post.

Day one of the election campaign: LNP engages in a shocking level of corruption and nepotism.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-11/morrison-government-appoints-coll...

Federal election campaign day 2.

When Peter Dutton accuses the Labor candidate for Dickson, Ali France, of using her disability as an "excuse" for not living in the electorate.

In Intermediate Public Economics by Hindriks and Myles (2004) there is a comparison chart of the market concentration in US manufacturing (1987) using the 4-firm concentration ratio and the Herfindahl index (p227). I am thinking of a deviation from perfect competition that the 4-firm concentration ratio can illustration. In perfect competition, the proportion of a market that a firm would control would be equal to the 1/n, where n = the number of firms in the market. Thus in Laundry Manufacturing, there are 11 firms and the 4-firm concentration is 0.93, which looks pretty bad.

A poster submitted the following meme with this claim:

"Every recession since the 1930's has started under a Democrat congressional majority. Democrats' tax-and-spend approach, regulating businesses to death, suing them to death, mandating them to death, fining them to death... Not rocket science."

I couldn't help but notice that the 2001 one is incorrect for starters.

The 107th Congress has a Republican controlled House and the Democrats controlled the Senate until Jan 20, 2009. After which it was Republican House and Senate control.

There are currently two unbelievably bad matters of corruption and mismanagement facing Australia that have been subject to a Royal Commission in the past week. The first was into the banking and finance sector, and various cover-ups and predatory activities. The Federal government, on no less than twenty-three occasions, blocked motions to have an investigation. When Commissioner Hayne handed down his report, the incumbent treasurer (my local member) tried to turn it into a photo opportunity.

Following a number of deaths due to tainted drugs at music festivals there have been arguments that pill testing should be available at such events. One prominent critic of the idea is former leader of the social democratic Australian Labor Party, Mark Latham.