2 min read

Time in the Sun

Time in the Sun

The issue of regional employment in Australia in the carbon extraction industries is economic.

Highly paid workers feed their income into the regional areas they live in, a so-called multiplier effect.

To address regional employment in highly paid industries means therefore that transitional arrangements won't come cheap. But highly paid jobs are not a generational inheritance. New jobs might not be as well paid. Income support must be broad-based.

Ok. That is the decision point that Labor does not have the courage to grasp. Transition has to address the economic shock of the relatively higher pays of workers in carbon extraction. Many are older, many are highly leveraged and many face property
deflation as prices related to location change. This is the inflexion point that Labor finds difficult to transition.

They're wrong to resist what's necessary.

The Covid epidemic has demonstrated the state's capacity to be agile and fluid with the demonstrated need of the community.

Those who talk of transferring debt to younger generations don't understand accounting.

The economy still runs. It just becomes more relative. Australia has a long way to go before reaching the debt levels of the US. I will and can ignore the debt of my children.

The more important indicator is incomes distribution. Debt is merely an instrument that underpins property as the defining aspect of social relations. (more on this in a later post).

How come each new generation gets their own mortgage?

At a more macro level, the value of the dollar is still riding on the back of iron-ore, gas and coal exports, however coal and gas revenue will decline over time. What then?

From a marxist economists perspective, the value of the dollar is simply a measure of the value of Australian labour relative to that of other nation states with national control of currency. Iron-ore and coal inflate the value of Australian labour. The value of the dollar determines the cost of your mobile phone - but strangely international capital makes them affordable by even the lowest paid in every nation. The cost of living is determined at a national level.

The logic suggests that we can expect a decline in the value of the dollar over time without being able to replace the perceived value of coal and gas.

The question is whether Australia's time in the sun is transitioning to shade.

The truly bizarre aspect of the moment is that both parties of capitalism, the ALP and the LNP do not recognise the opportunity they have at this point in time. The politics are fluid.

Nation building is more than supporting small business.

Nation building is providing the resources and the environment for the expression of life by all of its inhabitants.

Australia has an underdeveloped energy capacity with solar and wind power that can only be realised with state support. Capital is actually ready and available to do it.

Defending the stranded assets of carbon  is a reactionary diversion  from developing future energy value.

The rules of the past don't provide solutions to the future.

Capital will remain decisive, whilst we let it be so, but lets be logical at least.