Joe was Great! There was not a moment in the whole of Q&A tonight that I thought he was behind, and this is enemy territory. But most importantly, this was even when the one-eyed Labor Party stooge, Tony Jones, tried to sandbag the Treasurer with a NATSEM study that had not been released EXCEPT TO THE ABC!!! And without showing the level of disgust he no doubt felt at such obvious ALP-ABC gotcha attempts to undermine the Treasurer, he simply turned it aside. He embarrassed the ABC for its obvious duplicity.

But I would have left this alone, except that there is one thing I think the Treasurer needs to tighten up on. He is trying to get there, in fact he is almost there, but his Keynesian minders or whoever it is that surrounds him, don’t quite let him see through to the point he is obviously trying to make. But if he gets there, he will be impregnable.

He was asked something like this, which I almost thought of as a friendly question, from Gai I think it was:

Why is household debt good but public debt bad?

Why are you encouraging people to borrow and spend at low interest rates when they may end up in serious trouble when interest rates go up?

Spending is not what you want. Joe, listen to me. Spending is not what you want to encourage. Growth and employment is not a the result of spending. Growth and employment are the result of VALUE ADDING production. That is, the result of production where the value of what is produced will, within a reasonably short period of time, create an income flow even greater in value than the value of the resources used up. That is the meaning of value adding.

Private households do not create value ever. A household uses up value, but it is not from households that economic growth occurs (except for the occasional plumber that gets called in). Growth comes from business. If you confuse personal spending with business spending you will never get these things clear in your head. There is personal consumption, which is the point of economic activity. And there is business activity which is continually trying to add value to the resources they use up. Please, Joe, stop looking for consumer demand to lead the recovery. It cannot be done.

One more reminder in the video below about the difference between those bad Keynesians, who used to be in government, and who thought about spending, versus you supply-siders, bless your hearts, who have replaced them, who are concentrating on value adding production.