Reference : - Considering all the economics degrees gracing parliament these days, there seem to be a lot of mistakes with numbers .
Well golly , Mr Morrison , sir . Don't you just hate the way the press is now harping on about how you misled everybody when you said 100 % of that 100 million in sports grant money went to eligible clubs ? It looks awful when they point out that 43% of the clubs that received grants were in fact ineligible , but clearly that means 57% were eligible . That's well over pass mark in most exams , as far as I am aware . Well economics ones at least . I mean , if a surgeon had 43% of his patients die on the table , or an engineer had 43% of his dams collapse that would be utterly unacceptable .
But economics is a different bucket of prawns . Now that the fundamentals of neoliberalism have become entrenched , the western economies operate via a model they call the economic cycle . This means the economy grows for a few years and then goes into recession for a few in an endless series of unmanageable cycles . These cycles cause chaos and despair for many, and waste diminishing resources and expensive infrastructure .
It sounds like a pretty crap system to me . Even an economist with the credentials and ego that Alan Greenspan boasts has admitted that he made the wrong decisions about a third of the time . ( Later he admitted that the entire economic model he relied on was wrong , though criticising free market capitalism is so unthinkable that it might mean he is losing his marbles. )
In the light of that , only being 57% accurate when discussing a sports grant rort is simply the industry standard for someone with your qualifications . If I were you Mr Morrison , I would point this out now , so that when all your other predictions about the economy are not fully realized , people are already clued up and expect no better .
My son , Ken junior , has noticed that there is a lot of talk about whether your promised budget surplus will still appear . Not that we wanted or needed one anyway , but you did , and a promise is a promise after all. Doubtless there will be lots of talk about fires , floods, droughts, corona virus, plummeting tourist numbers and so forth . Ken junior reckons you might try to blame Labor and the Greens , which is like the driver blaming the back seat passengers for steering the car off a cliff. But he has another idea . He reckons , behave like Donald Trump , and simply lie . Say that you have kept your commitment to the Australian people and achieved a budget surplus of whatever made up figure you think sounds plausible . You might be able to juggle the statistics around to give the figure a facade of legitimacy , but why bother ?
Ken junior often tells the transient European backpackers who work as barmaids at the Kooralya pub that we own all the land between here and Brisbane , and all the farmers are our tenants .
How are they to know the truth ? I don't mind backing up his claim on occasion .
And if it smooths the path to romance , what harm has been done ?
One last thing. Don't quit your empathy training classes just yet. You have a way to go before passing the 50% mark in that particular subject .
Your comrade , Ken
No comments:
Post a Comment