A socialist will eventually run out of other people’s money to spend, but in the process they’ll find ever-more creative ways of getting their hands on it. Meanwhile, while his PM tries to act cool by wearing T-shirts of Nazi-iconographic ’70s bands, Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers is dragging the country back to the ’70s in the worst possible way.
The spectre of 1970s-style stagflation crisis looms following the release of hot inflation figures, opposition finance spokesman James Paterson has warned.
Stagflation is a combination of high inflation, stagnant economic growth and elevated unemployment. Unsurprisingly, it was first identified in Britain under the socialist Wilson government, before it really roared into life in the 1970s. In economic theory, there are two main explanations for stagflation: supply shocks, such as a sharp increase in oil prices, and misguided government policies that hinder industrial output while expanding the money supply too rapidly.
The Albanese government is guilty of both: by artificially driving up energy prices with its demented ‘Net Zero’ policies, while flooding the economy with ‘rebates’ and ‘assistance’ to try and hide the true impact of their own mismanagement. The result is an economy that’s stagnating under the heavy hand of socialism, while government spending and addiction to mass immigration keeps inflation high.
Stagflation.
Underlying inflation rose by three per cent in the 12 months to September, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday, materially overshooting the Reserve Bank’s staff forecasts and prompting economists to tip no further rate cuts would be delivered this year.
Reacting to the fresh figures, Senator Paterson cautioned that if the current rate of price growth continued, inflation would accelerate to four per cent, constituting a “really disastrous situation”.
“Don’t forget we also have increasing unemployment in this country – unemployment is ticking up and inflation is ticking up,” he told Sky News on Thursday.
“The last time that happened in a sustained way was in the 1970s: it created a phenomenon called stagflation, and that was an utter economic misery for Australia.”
Meanwhile, Zippy is scrounging for every cent of other people’s money he can get his claws on.
Jim Chalmers is accelerating government plans to unlock billions of dollars from Australia’s $4.3 trillion superannuation system to underwrite Labor’s policy priorities through an overhaul of rules that will remove “unnecessary obstacles to investment”.
He’ll be going around smashing kids’ piggy banks next.
