Re: We are paying $238,000 in tax dollars for every single auto manufacturing employe
withoutaface said:
Just because they make up a large chunk of our economy does not mean that there are huge numbers of people employed in them. It employs 1.3% of the nation's workforce, who just so happen to contribute disproportionately to the GDP at around 5%. Ergo commodity prices could be cut in four before that industry would even be considered 'below average', and obviously if/when we do exhaust supplies of these minerals it's not all going to happen all of a sudden.
No, no, the economic importance of our commodities is disproportionate to their GDP contribution because they contribute so much to our
export performance.
And I am pro-nuclear, too, but that doesn't change much. More scientific and medical reactors, a few nuclear power stations where appropriate, but not much would change in terms of our commodities or domestic energy consumption? It'd still make more sense to sell our nuclear fuel overseas and stick mostly to coal, for example, because our coal is generally the best (clean, efficient, and easy to access) in the world, and nuclear obviously wouldn't displace renewables.
Something Australia should focus on regarding commodities is processing. We often ship our coal, uranium, oil, steel, etc overseas in its raw form. But if we bothered to refine it here instead it would be a lot better for our economy (we could sell it for shitloads more, it would create jobs, it would dampen commodity volatility, and it'd make our economy more politically potent).
