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Yukle

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thoughts on suppression orders? I wonder if they are remotely effective for people sufficiently high-profile that they attract international attention. Australian news mentioning that they can't report on someone's guilty verdict and then mentioning that it's freely available on international sites and on twitter, and then running "George Pell removed from Pope's cabinet" on the next article over seems to defeat any point. 

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I think this whole thing is a perfect illustration of the failures of this system in the face of the modern world with a high profile defendant. While I dislike suppression orders as a general rule, protecting the victims and ensuring a fair trial for the defendant are both important outcomes and I understand where the spirit of it is coming from. But it clearly doesn't work and if he winds up with a mistrial because of it, I'll be more than a little angry.

Ultimately I'm not sure that trials with a jury of peers are going to remain a workable approach in the future. I'm not a legal expert so I'm not sure what should replace it, but I'd assume a panel of judges as the starting point.

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On 12/13/2018 at 3:11 PM, karaddin said:

I think this whole thing is a perfect illustration of the failures of this system in the face of the modern world with a high profile defendant. While I dislike suppression orders as a general rule, protecting the victims and ensuring a fair trial for the defendant are both important outcomes and I understand where the spirit of it is coming from. But it clearly doesn't work and if he winds up with a mistrial because of it, I'll be more than a little angry.

Ultimately I'm not sure that trials with a jury of peers are going to remain a workable approach in the future. I'm not a legal expert so I'm not sure what should replace it, but I'd assume a panel of judges as the starting point.

I think the prosecution's biggest worry is a successful appeal on the first set of charges. I believe the second set of charges relates to allegations of much older conduct, which I'd think are less likely to be proven anyway. 

On trial by jury - I guess that's why the appellate courts don't have them!

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On 10/4/2018 at 11:33 AM, Paxter said:

Well the above bolded statement is probably true if we keep seeing broad-based income tax cuts like the Coalition's most recent ones:

  • $200,000 will get a cumulative tax cut of $11,815
  • $160,000 will get a cumulative tax cut of $8,415
  • $120,000 will get a cumulative tax cut of $6,935
  • $90,000 will get a cumulative tax cut of $4,685
  • $80,000 will get a cumulative tax cut of $3,740
  • $50,000 will get a cumulative tax cut of $3,740
  • $30,000 will get a cumulative tax cut of $1,400

Personally I'd much prefer to see us increase the progressiveness of the tax system, kill-off or reduce tax breaks/loopholes mostly available to wealthy individuals (e.g. the CGT tax concession, using discretionary trusts to minimise tax) and introduce (admittedly unpopular in Australia) land and inheritance taxes.

Sales taxes like the GST might give economists a constant hard-on due to their high efficiency and simplicity, but they do nothing to promote a more equal society. There are other ways to raise revenue if vested interests are given the middle finger for once!

ETA: On land tax, it's worth having a read of this recent article. It may be a very unfashionable idea in most Western countries, but it still has a lot of merit (Friedman called it "the least bad tax"). 

Why stop st land tax. Tax assets (except Super and home). The poor and middle class get taxed twice - income tax and GST (and rates if you own your home, or you hold it for the bank). The rich because they spend so much less on goods and services get taxed once. Add in their ability to avoid income tax. 

So tax all assets (other than super to a limit and the family home to a limit). 

The idea even has the advantage that it will drive people to use assets effectively and capture taxes on foreign investment in Australia. 

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On 12/21/2018 at 5:52 PM, karaddin said:

Horza is around in Sydney again till early Jan so we should organise another lunch or something @The Winged Shadow @Paxter and err...one of the Screaming Turkeys and I cant figure out which one to ping. Harry lol.

I probably won't make it to this one. Did you want to organise the Syd peeps? I can send you their numbers, or let me know a time and i can send off some texts.

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On ‎12‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 6:08 PM, ants said:

Why stop st land tax. Tax assets (except Super and home). The poor and middle class get taxed twice - income tax and GST (and rates if you own your home, or you hold it for the bank). The rich because they spend so much less on goods and services get taxed once. Add in their ability to avoid income tax. 

I support death duties if it is the only way to get someone to actually pay tax even once. I don't really see how you can say the GST is avoided, the children or the grandchildren always blow the inheritance. 

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On 12/31/2018 at 1:42 PM, chuck norris 42 said:

I support death duties if it is the only way to get someone to actually pay tax even once. I don't really see how you can say the GST is avoided, the children or the grandchildren always blow the inheritance. 

So because the children or grand children may blow the inheritance, then they're not really avoiding GST??? This neatly ignores that the family will have generations of compounding return on their investments which are taxed far less than the GST amounts that the poor and middle class get hit with as they use their money to actually survive. They'll probably be using that other great tax avoidance scheme - trusts - to reduce what they're paying in tax as well.  Assuming the rich families do go bust to the degree you mention - any evidence to back that up?

If assets are taxed, then both "uses" of money (spending and investing) are being taxed and the huge tax avoidance system for the rich would be reduced.  If you tax assets such as brands and property you may even make it harder for corporations to avoid paying tax.  It neatly solves your problem of people avoiding being taxed at all as well.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just dropping in to say, what the fuck, Clive Palmer.

I have his fucking terrible twisted sister ripoff / aussies not going to cop it song stuck in my head on permanent repeat, I've heard it so much on TV during the cricket and tennis.

Does he honestly think people are stupid enough to vote for his vanity project party after the shit show last time? Are people's memories that short?

(Yes, and probably, depressingly enough)

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4 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Just dropping in to say, what the fuck, Clive Palmer.

His ads are pretty lame and I think (hope?) anyone with a memory of more than 30 seconds won't pay them any attention.

Re: taxing the rich. I'm not a fan of inheritance taxes mainly because they're an unpredictable source of revenue, and the rich will simply transfer assets down earlier in their lives or find other ways of avoiding it.

I think a more effective way is to get rid of the capital gains discount (where individuals can claim a 50% discount on capital gains tax if they have held the asset over a year, I presume to try and encourage the rich to hold onto things and not flip them willy nilly). This is one loophole used solely by the rich when it comes to investing in shares and property. Either get rid of the discount entirely, or at least reduce it substantially.

One of the main reasons the rich get ahead (and stay ahead) is because assets are effectively taxed at half the rate of income. An inheritance tax is an indirect blunt instrument that addresses the symptoms but not the cause. If the capital gains tax essentially is the same as income tax, then you're levelling the playing field at the start.

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On 1/17/2019 at 1:36 PM, Jeor said:

One of the main reasons the rich get ahead (and stay ahead) is because assets are effectively taxed at half the rate of income. An inheritance tax is an indirect blunt instrument that addresses the symptoms but not the cause. If the capital gains tax essentially is the same as income tax, then you're levelling the playing field at the start.

The problem is that we are not even close to being 'at the start'. Wealth inequality is already massive in the Western world, so simply tinkering with income taxes is not enough to change wealth distribution on any sort of decent scale. To do this you would need wealth taxes, like inheritance and land taxes.  

Personally I think wealth taxes are very difficult to implement, but ultimately they are a lot fairer than other policy tools cherished by economists, like VATs.

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On 1/17/2019 at 1:36 PM, Jeor said:

I think a more effective way is to get rid of the capital gains discount (where individuals can claim a 50% discount on capital gains tax if they have held the asset over a year, I presume to try and encourage the rich to hold onto things and not flip them willy nilly). This is one loophole used solely by the rich when it comes to investing in shares and property. Either get rid of the discount entirely, or at least reduce it substantially.

One of the main reasons the rich get ahead (and stay ahead) is because assets are effectively taxed at half the rate of income. An inheritance tax is an indirect blunt instrument that addresses the symptoms but not the cause. If the capital gains tax essentially is the same as income tax, then you're levelling the playing field at the start.

Actually, that CGT discount on assets actually does have a semi-reasonable basis. It replaced the system of inflating assets before calculating the true capital gain, which was taxed. A fair system that most didn’t understand. 

So Howard simplified it, while giving the people investing in really high return assets a huge bonus. Of course, that tended to be the really wealthy. 

If we were getting rid of it, we’d need to bring back the inflation adjustment. 

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17 hours ago, ants said:

Actually, that CGT discount on assets actually does have a semi-reasonable basis. It replaced the system of inflating assets before calculating the true capital gain, which was taxed. A fair system that most didn’t understand. 

So Howard simplified it, while giving the people investing in really high return assets a huge bonus. Of course, that tended to be the really wealthy. 

If we were getting rid of it, we’d need to bring back the inflation adjustment. 

Ah, thanks Ants. Makes more sense, although I take it the discount is still a fair bit more than the inflation adjustment. I guess it depends on whether simplicity or accuracy/fairness is the better thing for the tax system.

Other things that benefit the wealthy would be negative gearing for property (which I am coming around to, in terms of getting rid of it or at least limiting it to new properties, as Labor proposes). So for mine, CGT and negative gearing are probably on the hit list.

Of the rest, personally I wouldn't touch private health exemptions, superannuation contributions (which are now already partly limited) or go for an inheritance tax. But in general, I do agree that we probably need to decrease the amount of wealth inequality in the system - we don't want to go the American route.

 

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I'd get rid of the private health stuff because private health insurance is a scam. If it was actually covering more legitimate medical expenses I might feel differently, but its just subsidising a bullshit industry and I'd rather invest all that money directly into the public system. I've seen a piece recently indicating that more people are dropping it and once you've been out a while, the penalty that Howard introduced basically guarantees you aren't going to pick it back up anyway so even this system is going to fall apart.

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Pretty big blow for the Coalition with O’Dwyer announcing she won’t recontest the next election. Putting aside the small but increased risk of losing Higgins, Morrison is going to find it hard to find any sort of gender balance in his next Cabinet/Shadow Cabinet.

O’Dwyer made it very clear that she expects to be replaced by a woman in Higgins!

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On 1/19/2019 at 7:52 PM, karaddin said:

I'd get rid of the private health stuff because private health insurance is a scam. If it was actually covering more legitimate medical expenses I might feel differently, but its just subsidising a bullshit industry and I'd rather invest all that money directly into the public system. I've seen a piece recently indicating that more people are dropping it and once you've been out a while, the penalty that Howard introduced basically guarantees you aren't going to pick it back up anyway so even this system is going to fall apart.

The private health system may fall apart, and there are legitimate questions on whether or not it achieves its intended purpose.  But the idea that most of the costs aren't legitimate medical expenses is plain wrong.  The major people getting use out of private health insurance are old people in hospital and people starting families (i.e. pregnancy costs).  Those are most definitely real costs.  

Although one of my major bugbears is the way the system exploits the youth.  If you're under 40 and not going through a pregnancy, you're generally getting a very low return on your risk mitigation. 

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39 minutes ago, ants said:

The private health system may fall apart, and there are legitimate questions on whether or not it achieves its intended purpose.  But the idea that most of the costs aren't legitimate medical expenses is plain wrong.  The major people getting use out of private health insurance are old people in hospital and people starting families (i.e. pregnancy costs).  Those are most definitely real costs.

Agreed. The question is whether the private sector is bearing those costs efficiently. The universal system might well do a better job at a lower cost.

Similar arguments abound with superannuation - Canada went down the path of a universal fund and I think that has delivered a more efficient outcome.

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3 hours ago, ants said:

The private health system may fall apart, and there are legitimate questions on whether or not it achieves its intended purpose.  But the idea that most of the costs aren't legitimate medical expenses is plain wrong.  The major people getting use out of private health insurance are old people in hospital and people starting families (i.e. pregnancy costs).  Those are most definitely real costs.  

Although one of my major bugbears is the way the system exploits the youth.  If you're under 40 and not going through a pregnancy, you're generally getting a very low return on your risk mitigation. 

Poor phrasing on my part, I meant "it doesn't cover enough" rather than "it doesn't cover anything that is legitimate". I have significant health costs from multiple issues and even when I looked at the top tier plans it covered almost nothing of my expenses. I think it would have improved a little in value as codeine isn't PBS but is prescription since the scheduling change so I suspect would be a covered medication now from private insurance. 

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