More Goodies and Baddies

So on Thursday morning we were greeted by the thoroughly unedifying spectacle of Federal Treasurer and Irredeemable Incompetent Scott Morrison pitching up the idea that there is now “Good Debt” and “Bad Debt”. You have got to be kidding me. After years of relentless talk of “Debt and Deficit Disaster”, people are starting to notice that under this government, the debt and deficits continue to climb, yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, inflation has been well below target, and consumer confidence is shot. Which begs the question: what the hell are they spending this money on? It clearly isn’t going anywhere useful.

So now ScoMo is going to rewrite the rules, and retrospectively declare some debt good, and some bad. Furthermore, entire functions of government will be rated on their net debt, as if the whole thing were some corporation implementing an internal charge-back model, rather than, well, government programmes: doing the unprofitable things of positive social worth. It’s just idiocy. You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that this is going to lead to an apples and oranges comparison of all debt under Labor, versus (what they hope will be) a downward trajectory of “bad debt” under their so-called superior economic management. Ignore the “good debt”, nothing to see there, folks! That’s investment! Jobs and Growth. Just ignore that man behind the curtain.

So how will debt be classified?

This unmitigated disaster of an NBN, that will be worth a fraction of what’s been spent on it when completed, that’s a “good debt”, presumably? Obviously welfare will be “bad debt”, that goes without saying. Where does the Health Insurance Rebate fit? How about the Chaplaincy programme? Wars on Terror etc?

This mob truly are irredeemably incompetent. They’re obsessed with what the ratings agencies think of them despite it being of zero consequence to anyone, and fixated on how many dollars they can claw back out of the economy, as if they’re some scarce resource we might run out of, rather than the renewable fuel necessary to makes the economy work.

And whilst they bloviate, millions of hours of productive human potential are wasted every day, lost forever.