fuck tha pol-lies
Those that read my blog will know that I let my opinions be known, whether you generally want them or not. That's cool. I dig. And one of them is politics. It's no secret that my blog has a strong political bias, which tends to happen when the blogger in question can describe himself as a "semi right wing libertarian iconoclast with anarcho capitalistic sympathies". That's a lot of fucking big words for a two party preferred political system where you essentially vote moderate left or moderate right. However, I have curiously decided to stay neutral in this coming federal election for fear of prejudicing someone's vote. Hah! What hubris. Yeah, it could seriously happen, but anyone who'd actually listen to what I have to say on politics probably shouldn't be allowed to vote anyway.
Don't worry, I'm not backtracking. Tonight, I'm going to plead futilely for one thing. Please, please do not vote on the sole basis of who will be Prime Minister. According to the statistics I just made up five seconds ago, 70% of young voters aged 18 to 25 vote primarily on who they feel would be a better PM. No, no. This is a mistake. While Prime Ministers have a high level control of things, they have a purely helicopter view that will often overlook many issues that are important to you. Just as much scrutiny will need to be placed on the people that are implementing the party policies, the ones actually doing (or, as it often turns out, not doing).
Secondly, the federal elections are a chance to let the people have a say on how the country will be managed, via the party policies. This is the bread and butter of why your vote matters. It's irrelevant what you think of Howard or Rudd. It's the policies that matter - that's the stuff that will affect your life, not who nominally steers the boat with a million different rowers.
Lastly, please make an effort to study the policies and get the facts from the relevant experts on the matter. Do not believe the spin.
Policy spin debunked (Part 1)
1) Howard/Costello will manage the economy better than Rudd/Swan and keep interest rates lower
Governments have no control over monetary policy and thus interest rates. I have as much control over whether it will rain tomorrow. Interest rates are managed by the RBA (central bank), which determine the cash rate, independent of government policy. Governments can only affect interest rates via fiscal policy (government spending), which are relatively ineffective in a contractionary role (ie reducing inflation) as opposed to monetary policy. Fiscal policy can afight inflation by increasing capacity (labour/capital) but these often have significant time lags, the result being that people will only see the benefit of 4-5 years later, well into the next term.
Whoever you vote for won't matter because Rudd's "me-too"ism policy of aping Coalition tax cuts will mean that both parties will be implementing clearly inflationary taxation policy in the next term.
to be continued..
posted by jaseypoo! @ 10:28 PM
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