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You KNOW you're an economics nerd when.. (2 Viewers)

melanieeeee.

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gnrlies said:
Ok Ok Ok... I got it wrong after all. Secrety Julia Gillard is an economic conservative and is going to cut taxes, and lower expenditure for all.... Unlikely. Your issue with $10bn is besides the point. The fact is that she isn't an economic conservative and she has some grand plans that she has articulated numerous times. As I said if you have a look at the budget papers you will find that $10bn is a very minute amount. In fact it represents less than 1% of GDP. It would be highly improbable that spending will go up by less than 1% let alone this figure being innacurate. But as I said this is besides the point. Her plans for childcare alone are likely to cost a few billion dollars.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2220245.htm
no but you claimed that she did spend $10billion dollars without any evidence except from what you considered an educated guess

HELLO! this isn't a formal piece of academic writing. If its such a big deal go and read the citations listed within the text article. I would recommend anything by the Austrian or Chicago schools of economics when it comes to this.

No the wikipedia quote didn't describe why it wouldn't work but it refers to other texts that will (which is precisely why your statement was foolish because the wiki quotation did nothing other than refer to other works!). The critique is that there is no such thing as a mix between free markets and intervention. If you believe free markets work, then you should also believe that free markets will always produce the best results. If you dont believe in this then why on earth would you utilise free market policies? if you do believe in this then why would you intervene in markets? this is the central critique progressed by its opponents. Free market capitalism is a pure theory that need not be compromised. If you compromise it, you worsen the outcomes. Third way politics is an inconsistent approach that does nothing other than appease competing political interests. It doesn't produce effective outcomes.
the fact that it isn't an academic piece of writing is besides the point. its the reasons behind the fact that you aren't allowed to reference wiki.
And first of all you were the one that mentioned the third party thing. why the hell would you mention it if it doesn't exist. yes i see the critique is that but what has that got to do with the third party failing which is what you quoted me for. and just because it is a critique doesn't mean that it is necessarily true. it is just one perspective




??? why is it bad? havent we just been debating this whole issue since the beginning?

Rudd will do it. He's already done it. He couldn't even stand solid to political pressure when it came to the one of carers and seniors bonus. I will reserve judgement until a few budgets have gone by, but the signs arent promising. But thats to be expected. No Labor government in history has ever had the ethos of "small government" in mind.
firstly you can't see into the future even though you would like to think so. you are basically assuming that it will happen when this may not necessarily be true
secondly, you just said all governments waste money, so why should it be particularly bad if Rudd does it?

I know you are only studying year 12 economics so I wont expect you to have studied labour markets; but labour market deregulation produces positive outcomes for both employees and employers.
and what you have studies labour markets? that is the current system. don't you know that collective enterprise bargaining agreements are more of a deregulated system than regulated?also with the AWA's the majority of people are aware that it does not produce positive outcomes for employees but rather the opposite.
As for AWA's - these agreements actually enhance the protection of employees. We've always had individual contracts but these have been common law arrangements which means that if you have an issue with the agreement, or your employer, you have to pay a bloody lawyer to help you out. How is that a better alternative to an AWA that allows you to fall under the formal industrial relations system and give you the formal rights of concilliation and arbitration?
AHAHAHAHAHAH. dont crack me up!

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]At the time the OEA revealed that 100 per cent of AWAs cut at least one so called ‘protected award condition’ and:
• 64 per cent cut annual leave loading;
• 63 per cent cut penalty rates;
• 52 per cent cut shift work loadings;
• 51 per cent cut overtime loadings;
why do you think employees rally to have the AWA's stopped? oh yeah it must be because they are protected more :rolleyes:

As for wages, how does it improve the distribution of income if we artificially inflate wages such that we have unemployment as those with low skills are too expensive to be hired by employers?
so in your opinion its better that employers exploit workers? yeah that will really be a better option to improve distribute of income.
do you understand what a collective enterprise barganing agreement is? i assume you do. so you would understand that there is still a bargaining process involve.

there are in fact a lot of jobless people out there who would have jobs if employers could pay them the appropriate rate for a given job. Personally I do not advocate for the removal of minimum wages (although many do) but I do believe that our minimum wage is far too high. We have the highest minimum wage in the world.
if a company needs to hire people they will if they don't they wont. we arn't a third world country. people shouldn't have to choose from being exploited to being unemployed. do you know how low a minimum wage is? especially for low skilled staff? my friends mum that lives of minimum wage and i can tell you that she is having difficulty paying the rent, let alone providing for her family. the fact that we have a standard minimum wage is because the living standards in Australia is relavely high compared to other counties and this is because of these minimum wages. also the cost of living in Australia is relatively high compared to those third world countries which have low minimum wages or no minimum wages at all.

Whilst workchoices itself didn't entail lowering or removing minimum wages - it did allow employers to negotiate a contract that that made it feasible to employ people that they otherwise couldn't.
also i will say this again we currently have COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS. i hope you do know what that means.
 
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gnrlies

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melanieeeee. said:
no but you claimed that she did spend $10billion dollars without any evidence except from what you considered an educated guess

No I didn't claim she HAD spent $10bn; I had claimed shes got $10bn worth of wishlist items. The whole original point was to speculate what happens when the rest of the Labor party demands their pound of flesh. Rudd is just a centre right catylst who was similar enough to Howard such that he would be elected. This doesn't mean that the wishes of the rest of the party are ignored.

the fact that it isn't an academic piece of writing is besides the point. its the reasons behind the fact that you aren't allowed to reference wiki.
And first of all you were the one that mentioned the third party thing. why the hell would you mention it if it doesn't exist. yes i see the critique is that but what has that got to do with the third party failing which is what you quoted me for. and just because it is a critique doesn't mean that it is necessarily true. it is just one perspective
Maybe when you go to university you will understand a little more about why it is that referencing is important. Referencing is important to allow people who read your articles to source the information you have used (to come to whatever point that is) so that they can do further reading as required. Universities do not encourage referencing wikipedia, because no original information is contained on wikipedia - it is merely a synthesis of existing work. Many people claim that wikipedia is a bad source of information. This is incorrect. It is probably more reliable than other sources like Encarta because it is peer reviewed. The only reason why this is ever brought up as an issue is because it can contain errors. This is not to say that it does contain errors. But as I said all of this doesn't matter because I wasn't writing an academic piece of work. I was simply looking for a nice description of some of the major critiques - and the wikipedia entry was a reasonable one that referred to some of the main people, and arguements that as I originally suggested; you could follow up if you cared to.

As for your comments on the third way. I dont think you understand what it is. I am not going to explain it to you, so do some more research before you comment on something you dont know about.

firstly you can't see into the future even though you would like to think so. you are basically assuming that it will happen when this may not necessarily be true
secondly, you just said all governments waste money, so why should it be particularly bad if Rudd does it?
Well I hope you are right and they dont become a big spending government. But when you try to decide who you are going to vote for you form an opinion on the likelihood of a desired outcome happening. In this case the likelihood of Rudd championing small government principles is virtually impossible. Well a dollar wasted by rudd is no worse than a dollar wasted by howard or whoever else, but a hundred dollars wasted by rudd is worse than 50 dollars wasted by howard.

and what you have studies labour markets? that is the current system. don't you know that collective enterprise bargaining agreements are more of a deregulated system than regulated?also with the AWA's the majority of people are aware that it does not produce positive outcomes for employees but rather the opposite.
Yes I have. Collective certified agreements were a step in the right direction when we only had awards; and was a form of deregulation. in 1996 we went one step further and had a new type of agreement known as an AWA again, this was deregulation and was a step in the right direction. Now, in 2008 we are re-regulating by removing AWA's which is a step in the wrong direction. Even if you accept that workchoices was bad (which I do not) then this provides no arguement for the abolishment of individual agreements. How can you say that being forced to bargain with other employees rather than being able to do it yourself is anything other than a centralised and highly regulated form of bargaining? People might have been fooled with blatent lies that AWA's were bad (remembering the factually incorrect ad's run by the unions), but not many people understand what an AWA really is, or why an AWA is apparantly bad. Productivity based bargaining is the only way forward for both employees and employers. It lowers unemployment, increases wages, and reduces the effect of inflationary expectations (something the RBA has been concerned about). Here is an interesting site if you would like something other than union brainwashing:

http://www.hrnicholls.com.au/

AHAHAHAHAHAH. dont crack me up!

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]At the time the OEA revealed that 100 per cent of AWAs cut at least one so called ‘protected award condition’ and:
• 64 per cent cut annual leave loading;
• 63 per cent cut penalty rates;
• 52 per cent cut shift work loadings;
• 51 per cent cut overtime loadings;
why do you think employees rally to have the AWA's stopped? oh yeah it must be because they are protected more :rolleyes:
Are you totally oblivious to the alternative to an AWA? employers can issue individual employment contracts through common law contracts that don't have any of those protections. And if you have a problem - you have to pay a lawyer thousands of dollars. As for the statistics you posted - you are conviniently neglecting to also mention that all of those benefits are given to the employee via higher overall wages. How is it better to be paid time and a half on sunday as opposed to a higher rate throughout the week that equates to the same wages??? This is the whole problem with this arguement. The AWA still had to meet all minimum wage criteria which makes your arguement flawed. The only thing that the abolishment of workchoices did, was prevent the negotiations of a mutually exclusive contract.



so in your opinion its better that employers exploit workers? yeah that will really be a better option to improve distribute of income.
do you understand what a collective enterprise barganing agreement is? i assume you do. so you would understand that there is still a bargaining process involve.
I was recently surprised when I went into my Woolworths supermarket. You know what I found? I found these wonderfully expensive looking machines that would allow me to process my groceries without the help of a checkout assistant. Now Woolworths isn't stupid. They are pretty rational in fact as they would fully cost any decision they make. Woolworths has worked out that it is cheaper to let a machine do the job of a checkout assistant. What does this say about our minimum wage? lets say we didn't have a minimum wage and the market could work itself out. Woolworths would offer those jobs but at a lower wage so that it was better than the alternative (expensive machines). If that wage was not sufficient (pathetically low and undesireble) no employees would want to do the job and they would buy the machines anyway. But if someone put their hand up and was willing to do the job, what right do we have to deny that person from getting that job? This is effectively what the minimum wage does. It hurts low skilled individuals more than anyone else. Most australians earn well beyond the minimum wage in any case so lowering it will not impact on these people. But if you lower the minimum wage, you create jobs that otherwise cannot exist as the marginal product generated by that employee is less than the minimum wage. Australia has skills shortages and all these things yet we still have 4% of the labour force unemployed. How can this be??? well the majority of these people are low skilled and people who cant get jobs, simply because they arent out there. So yes. Loweing wages will help those most in need. You are effectively allowing unemployed people to find work by marginally reducing the artificially inflated incomes of others. Low skilled unemployed people earn the lowest income out of any other category so why do you suggest that these people should remain unemployed?


Also, why do you assume that employers will exploit workers? this isn't 1907. Most employers recognise the need for efficiency pay. The type of jobs that you assume result in workers being exploited dont even exist anymore because we have priced ourselves out of the market (for example in manufacturing...) How is that losing a job altogether is a better outcome?

As for collective bargaining... The key flaw is in the word collective. How can a one size fits all approach work? Are you the same as me? No. Is a single mother going to have the same needs as a male without children? No. This is the problem with Awards and collective agreements. They take a one size fits all approach which is never the best outcome, so it encourages employers to offer common law contracts which is a far worse option than AWA's (for both the employees and employers). This is why the majority of employment contracts made in australia are common law contracts. Individual contracts are the west way to create incentive contracts which allows for a mutually beneficial outcome without creating wage price spiral tendencies.


if a company needs to hire people they will if they don't they wont. we arn't a third world country. people shouldn't have to choose from being exploited to being unemployed. do you know how low a minimum wage is? especially for low skilled staff? my friends mum that lives of minimum wage and i can tell you that she is having difficulty paying the rent, let alone providing for her family. the fact that we have a standard minimum wage is because the living standards in Australia is relavely high compared to other counties and this is because of these minimum wages. also the cost of living in Australia is relatively high compared to those third world countries which have low minimum wages or no minimum wages at all.

also i will say this again we currently have COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS. i hope you do know what that means.
You are a perfect candidate to watch or read free to choose by milton friedman. If a company needs to do a task, they will usually do it at the least cost. If this means phasing out checkout operators they will do this. Do you think this is good considering that there would be many low skilled (and often young) workers wanting these jobs? Again this word exploited. You assume this too readily. How is it that you are being exploited if you accept the job? if you dont like the job you can go somewhere else (oh wait, maybe you cant because the minimum wage is too high!). Australia's minimum wage is very generous. Employers arent charities there to help people like your friends mum. They have their own stakeholders that they need to look after. Small businesses in particular raises another curious point. Why is it that we are more concerned about the ethical implication of low wages on employees, yet we wont consider the rights of a small business person who may be just getting by? Australia's living standards are high, but not if you are one of those 4% of people who dont have a job. This is the problem. If we had full employment then it would be a different issue, but we dont and we havent since the 1960's.

Yes, I am not stupid. I know what certified agreements are but so what?
 

lionking1191

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* you know you are an economics nerd when argue about economics on an online forum and actually research info to back yourself up.

and freeing up labour markets is NOT good for everyone. increased productivity reduces cost of production and increase int'l competitiveness which will stimulate the economy, which is good for the everi1 assuming there is an equal distribution of income.

unfortunately that isn't the case, and while it is in the best interest of the economy it is not the case for "working families" that rudd refers to every half a sentence. and bear in mind that political considerations too often takes precedence over economic concerns. whatever rudd/swan believes much of their policies are dictated by their political platform.
 

SomeoneCool

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BackCountrySnow said:
an hour??
lol?
Yep, an entire hour. It was apparently very important to our understanding of the concepts of Economics.
 

gnrlies

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lionking1191 said:
* you know you are an economics nerd when argue about economics on an online forum and actually research info to back yourself up.

and freeing up labour markets is NOT good for everyone. increased productivity reduces cost of production and increase int'l competitiveness which will stimulate the economy, which is good for the everi1 assuming there is an equal distribution of income.

unfortunately that isn't the case, and while it is in the best interest of the economy it is not the case for "working families" that rudd refers to every half a sentence. and bear in mind that political considerations too often takes precedence over economic concerns. whatever rudd/swan believes much of their policies are dictated by their political platform.
I didn't do any research... Not for this forum anyway (my ideas of course are researched). No shit that a labor party is going to be influenced by its union roots. You gain a much better distribution of income by providing everyone with a job. Not by excluding some so that others can have artificially high wages.
 

Sparcod

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You know you're an economics nerd when.....

-You start a thread called 'You KNOW you're an economics nerd when..'

-You post in a thread called 'You KNOW you're an economics nerd when..'

-You hear that inflation is high so you cut down on your own spending and tell your friends and neighbours to follow.

-You believe that Australia is the best economy in the world but should definitely diversify its export markets away from commodities and into services and manufacturing.

-You want to become the RBA governor and have REAL power.

-You believe the word real in any context is 'minus inflation'.
 

michael1990

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Sparcod said:
You know you're an economics nerd when.....

-You start a thread called 'You KNOW you're an economics nerd when..'

-You post in a thread called 'You KNOW you're an economics nerd when..'

-You hear that inflation is high so you cut down on your own spending and tell your friends and neighbours to follow.

-You believe that Australia is the best economy in the world but should definitely diversify its export markets away from commodities and into services and manufacturing.

-You want to become the RBA governor and have REAL power.

-You believe the word real in any context is 'minus inflation'.
LOL!

Priceless.
 

sarahaussiegirl

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melanieeeee. said:
no it doesn't.

besides tim riley is shit! dixon for life...
I've both and my teacher has made it compulsory. I have found it very effective when combining the two.
 

BackCountrySnow

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Sparcod said:
-You hear that inflation is high so you cut down on your own spending and tell your friends and neighbours to follow.
Very, very bad idea.
 

danthemanly

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Pull out your calculator at the shopping certain to work out cheapest item in cents per mL or gram

You look on the ASX website every day at four o'clock when trading has closed
 

michael1990

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You're going to the HSC Economic Lecture with Ross Gittens at 9am on a Saturday MORNING!
 

Skeeter

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michael1990 said:
You're going to the HSC Economic Lecture with Ross Gittens at 9am on a Saturday MORNING!
hey man when is that and how much does it cost?
 

Telekinetik

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zimmerman8k said:
*You associate with people who, despite not studying economics, are not ignorant morons.
I know right? Haha, "you know you're an economics nerd when you start adopting all the typical elitist BS of a someone who does well in a subject, and wildly assume that everyone who doesn't do Economics must be ignorant idiots".
 

michael1990

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Skeeter said:
hey man when is that and how much does it cost?
14th June. Saturday Morning. 9am.

Penrith. Buy tickets at the door.
 

BackCountrySnow

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danthemanly said:
Pull out your calculator at the shopping certain to work out cheapest item in cents per mL or gram
economics nerd, not general maths nerd.
 

danthemanly

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BackCountrySnow said:
economics nerd, not general maths nerd.
That's harsh man. I do 3unit and am coming 3rd in that and 1st in 2unit so really unnecessary.
 

BackCountrySnow

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^^
lol, the example you gave has little to do with economics.

danthemanly said:
Pull out your calculator at the shopping certain to work out cheapest item in cents per mL or gram
 

michael1990

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BackCountrySnow said:
^^
lol, the example you gave has little to do with economics.
Well not really.

CPI.
National Savings.
Consumption.

I thought it was good.
 

BackCountrySnow

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michael1990 said:
Well not really.

CPI.
National Savings.
Consumption.

I thought it was good.
what? cpi measures the increase (or decrease) in general prices. Not the diversity of prices...
NOTHING TO DO WITH CPI.

national savings and consumption depend more on the MPS and MPC than buying a product which is cheapest in a market that is not homogenous...
 

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