by Karl Fitzgerald | Nov 1, 2007 | Talking Points
The Howard government’s industrial relations agenda is supposedly about job-creation, as if the cost of labour — including wages and salaries, penalty rates and other perks, and the difficulty of reversing bad hiring decisions — were the last remaining barrier...
by Karl Fitzgerald | Nov 1, 2007 | Talking Points
In every marginal electorate, politicians promise to take revenue raised by nationwide or statewide taxes and spend it on projects that confer purely local economic benefits. This practice is corrupt and unnecessary — corrupt because a minority of taxpayers are bribed...
by Karl Fitzgerald | Nov 1, 2007 | Talking Points
The Mitcham-Frankston tollway, also known as EastLink, will reduce commuting times in suburbs serviced by the tollway and in suburbs serviced by alternative routes, such as the untolled Springvale and Stud roads, whose congestion levels will be reduced by EastLink....
by Karl Fitzgerald | Nov 1, 2007 | Talking Points
In this age of internationally mobile capital, we are repeatedly told that if we want to attract and retain investment, we must make our tax system more “competitive”. Very conveniently for the investors, competitive taxes are taken to mean low taxes, in...
by Karl Fitzgerald | Nov 1, 2007 | Talking Points
The flat tax fanatics are back. They say that if there were only one rate of income tax, the system would be simpler, and the rich couldn’t reduce their tax by converting one kind of income into another kind taxed at a lower rate. In the case of a pure flat tax...