The core concept of Jobkeeper was all right, to make sure no one was deprived of the ability to buy because they had lost their income. The data in the graph are however insane. Does no one any longer have a sense of proportion, and can no one any longer look forward for more than a day at a time? And it comes with this, also at the link:
It comes from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and it shows how much more money Australians are making than the year before. It’s a lot. We’re flying.
The black line is now at 16 per cent, which means we’re making 16 per cent more money in 2020 than last year.
Think about it like this: Australians who were banking $1000 per week last year are banking on average $1160 now. That’s a lot of extra money each week.
Where is the cash is coming from? Up until the start of the pandemic, the black line was being held up by the blue bars: earnings from work, i.e. salary and wages. We were 4 or 5 per cent richer than the year before, because more wages were being paid.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic starts. The blue bars turn slightly negative – wages and salaries went down (they would have gone down even more if not for JobKeeper!). But the red bars shoot up. That’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg turning on the money taps.
JobSeeker is the big one, and the two $750 payments that went to pensioners.
We’re paying out 16% more in incomes while productive output must have fallen along with business profitability by some massive percent! If these numbers are anywhere correct we are heading for the rocks.
I will add that if the government, any government, still believes that the level of demand is what keeps the economy moving ahead or adds to job numbers, they are about to find out once again just how wrong that is. Not that they will learn, because they are too stupid, but they will find out all the same.
“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”
Just came across the quote today at Ace of Spades. Had said something similar just the other day but not quite as well.
What seems essential for the future is that everyone becomes educated in the Leninist addition to Marxism. Lenin added into the mix how the capitalist system could be overthrown. He was a strategist. We are watching Leninist practice before our eyes.
The point Reagan was making was the same as mine, that unless you understand Leninist principles and practice you will have no idea what is going on when you are dealing with a modern Marxist. And if you think you can reason with such people, or can point out their mistakes in the hope of getting them to change direction, you are as misguided as it is possible to be.
Daniel Andrews will drive the Victorian economy as far into the ground as he can if we let him. We are dealing with a committed Marxist (who might also be nuts but that is something of a side-issue right now).
I will just point you to something that occurred a few months back that went on before your eyes but with no general understanding of the Leninist principles that lay behind Adem Somyurek and the branch stacking story, which basically led to Somyurek – a leading member of the ALP right – being driven from a position of influence within the ALP in Victoria. Have you ever seen a political leader move so rapidly to get rid of someone on his own side from within his own government? From the ABC on which side you know they are on:
After a summer of bushfires and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews now finds himself dealing with a disaster in his own political backyard.
Somyurek also stands accused of industrial-scale branch stacking, and the use of ministerial staff for factional activities, which he denies.
My advice is that the Prime Minister do everything to ensure Daniel Andrews cannot continue along the path he has chosen. If he is allowed to continue he will bring the entire country down. He is not working for the common good. To think he is merely trying his best to deal with Covid is not demonstrated by any facts in existence.
The insane is obvious. The invisible is the Liberal Leader of the Opposition in Victoria, in fact virtually the entire Liberal Party within the state. The whole world can see what a massive disaster is unfolding. This however is the mealy-mouthed pusillanimous statement produced by the Victorian Opposition about the arrest of a woman in Ballarat for her Facebook notice of an impending protest that the entire world has been condemning:
Thursday 3 September 2020
Statement from Shadow Minister for Police & Community Safety
Victorians across the state have been deeply concerned by footage of the arrest of a woman in Miners Rest on charges of incitement relating to a planned anti-lockdown protested in Ballarat on Saturday.
Victoria Police continue to perform an outstanding job in difficult circumstances yet the community rightly expects consistency of enforcement and everyone to be treated equally before the law.
This arrest stands in clear contrast the Andrews Labor Governments green light to 10,000 Black Lives Matter protesters in June and 250 CFMMEU members protesting at a Hawthorn East worksite in July, events which sent a clear signal to every Victorian that it is ok to protest as long as it is not against Premier Daniel Andrews.
Current COVID-19 restrictions are in place to protect the health and safety of the community. With new COVID-19 cases remaining stubbornly high and more Victorian lives and livelihoods lost every day – no one should be protesting in public or encouraging others to deliberately breach the Chief Health Officers directions.
This incident has demonstrated an unacceptable inconsistency in the enforcement of COVID-19 restrictions and Daniel Andrews must now answer why it is one set of rules for left-wing and union protesters and another set for anyone critical of his government.
This is near on the most cowardly statement I have ever seen from any opposition in my life anywhere over an issue that should be infuriating anyone with a liberal soul. This is what allows Daniel Andrews to get away with murder. Where’s the outrage? Where’s the fury? Where is the defence of our freedoms? Where’s the condemnation of the grossly disproportionate actions taken by the Andrews Labor Government?
The Liberal Party owns this disaster almost as much as Labor for its profound weakness and its clear inability, as with Daniel Andrews, to understand any of the issues which are infuriating at least half the state and millions more in the rest of Australia never mind everywhere else.
Daniel Andrews may be a low-IQ psychopathic authoritarian thug but cometh the moment cometh the man.
So what if future generations will look back on us as the greatest collection of simpletons ever to have called themselves Australians. They will have no idea of what terror is when we have lived through a period in time when 0.0024% of the population has been carried off – or at least partly carried off since most had other co-morbidities – by this global pandemic.
I don’t know if anyone else has commented on this, but I find it interesting that this protest was to be in Ballarat, the same city as The Eureka Stockade. I no longer expect the same result if it goes to court as the first time round, nor the same reaction of the people of Victoria, since we no longer seem to have the same kind of reaction to oppressive authority we were once famous for.
Thousands of Melbourne residents celebrated the acquittal of the rebels, and paraded them through the streets upon their release from the Victorian Supreme Court.
Of course, the miners were part of a tax revolt. The Covid adventure has been presented as a freebie to save us from a virtually non-existent death threat. You want to see what’s coming. This was the lead story at the Oz today: Josh Frydenberg’s plan to fight back from Covid collapse. The first para should strike terror into the hearts of everyone, but it won’t:
Josh Frydenberg is preparing a five-year plan to create millions of jobs and reignite business investment, to anchor Australia’s recovery from the most severe recession since World War II.
Has the Dan Andrews economy gone national? Hope not, but maybe.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called for COVID-19 restrictions to be relaxed, arguing officials have become trapped in “crisis mode” and that governments need to consider “uncomfortable questions” about the number of deaths they are prepared to live with.
“From a health perspective, this pandemic has been serious. From an economic perspective, it’s been disastrous,” he said.
“But I suspect that it’s from an overall wellbeing perspective that it will turn out worst of all. Because this is what happens when for much more than a mere moment, we let fear of falling sick stop us from being fully alive.
“Now that each one of us has had six months to consider this pandemic, and to make our own judgements about it, surely it’s time to relax the rules so that individuals can take more personal responsibility and make more of their own decisions about the risks they’re prepared to run.”
His key points:
Mr Abbott said governments approached the pandemic like “trauma doctors instead of thinking like health economists”
He accused Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews of wanting to extend a “health dictatorship” by pushing for an extension of state of emergency powers
He said the media had spread “virus hysteria” and people should be allowed to make their own decisions
Speaking in London to the UK think tank Policy Exchange, Mr Abbott said the media had spread “virus hysteria” and people should be allowed to make their own decisions.
For the ABC Daniel Andrews is more their kind of guy.
The moment was, of course, when he looked at his watch while Julia droned on. No one, of course, ever mentions how Kevin Rudd shoved her aside just before the 2013 election.
The chance of contracting COVID-19 in Victoria at the moment is less than 0.002 per cent. If Victoria were a country, it would be the 90th least dangerous place on the planet in which to shelter from the pandemic.
In the light of these reassuring facts, it seems surprising so few Victorians are protesting at their government’s gross over-reaction to the virus.
The severity of the spread in Victoria is roughly similar to Canada, which is also experiencing a second wave. Yet there are no reports of Canadians receiving six-month prison sentences for crossing a state provincial border or being wrestled to the ground by police for exposing naked faces.
There is, perhaps, this one extenuating circumstance to explain our craven submission to authority, and particularly Victoria’s, that Australia was founded as a penal colony, so there may remain an overlay of a marshal-law mentality that lies very near the surface within Australian governments, with a matching tendency to submit to this authority within the community. But we were also an English colony with a legal foundation built on the English common law, so that one can still hope there is still somewhere within our national DNA a love of freedom and a hatred of dictatorial restraint.
And to provide some perspective
Not saying it definitely won’t kill you, but it is still very unlikely.
Just remember, Daniel Andrews is the kind of guy who if he gets to take your freedom from you will be very reluctant to give it back.
That’s the middle of Melbourne in the middle of the day in the middle of the week
The Covid pandemic has brought on our modern version of The Stockholm Syndrome which you will recall are: “feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.” We now have the Melbourne Syndrome, which I come across versions of every day:
Feelings of trust or affection felt during a lockdown by its victims towards their most authoritarian political leaders.
Now why should it be the “Melbourne” syndrome? There are plenty of place similar where you find similar attitudes. In my view, I believe it should be called the “Melbourne” Syndrome because Melbourne has now implemented the hardest lockdown at the hands of one of the most far-left and incompetent political leaders in the world, a leader who nevertheless retains high approval ratings, within a state in which the corona virus issue went from benign to statistically explosive (although the death rate is still near invisible at something like 0.002% per head of population). I therefore believe Melbourne should have the “honour” of bearing the name of this widely observed form of political insanity. Others are welcome to suggest alternative places and names.
And not only do we have the hardest lockdown possibly anywhere in the world, we also have the most incompetent leadership since unlike virtually everywhere else, following the initial peak, things in Melbourne managed to get far worse whereas the norm everywhere else, including the rest of Australia, was for conditions to have improved. And let me provide a reminder of what we are being asked to endure. These were “the Stage 4 Lockdowns” that were put in place by the Victorian Government at the the start of August when out of nowhere there was a large statistical increase in the number of cases although trivially small relative to the size of the population. Melbourne by the way is the capital city of the state of Victoria.
The “state of emergency” in Victoria has been upgraded to a “state of disaster”, meaning police can now enter your home to carry out spot checks even if you don’t give them permission and they don’t have a warrant.
Between the hours of 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., you’re not allowed to leave your homes except for work, medical care and caregiving.
Outside those hours, you may only leave your home for four reasons: shopping for food and essential items, care and caregiving, daily exercise and work. “We can no longer have people simply out and about for no good reason whatsoever,” said the Premier.
Daily exercise can only take place within a 5km radius of your home and cannot last longer than an hour.
You cannot exercise in groups of more than two, even if they’re members of the same household.
Apart from daily exercise, you are only allowed to leave your home once a day for essential supplies and food.
In the whole of Victoria, you cannot buy more than two of certain essential items, including dairy, meat, vegetables, fish and toilet paper.
Schools have closed again, with all Victoria school students returning to remote learning from Wednesday (except for vulnerable children and children of permitted workers). Childcare and kindergarten will be closed from Thursday.
Golf and tennis venues, which were open, have now been closed.
Weddings will no longer be allowed from Thursday, and funerals will be limited to 10 people.
Face masks anywhere outside your home have been mandatory for people in metropolitan Melbourne since July 22nd, but that rule has now been extended to the entire state of Victoria.
You cannot have visitors or go to another person’s house unless it is for the purpose of giving or receiving care. However, you can leave your house to visit a person if you are in an “intimate personal relationship” with them, even during curfew hours.
If you have a holiday home or were planning a holiday outside Melbourne, you must nevertheless remain in the city for the next six weeks.
The maximum fine for breaching a health order currently stands at $1,652.
Are people upset by these restrictions? The figures below are for Australia as a whole. Will get to Victoria in a moment.
As for the nature of the statistical collections, this is the Chief Medical Officer of Victoria specifically stating that to be classified as a Covid death only requires that the virus was present, not that it had been the actual cause of the fatality.
With this kind of approach, you could turn any common sickness into a statistical killer. Think of this as well, which is the first of the comments on the video.
I am a provider. One of my patients admitted herself into hospice d/t kidney failure and tested negative for “COVID.” When she died, they put on the death certificate death d/t “COVID.” We are in the early stages of a democide. THIS is what it feels like to have the governments force you to live in and breathe NONSENSE. War is peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength and 2+5=5.
And are the numbers in Victoria exaggerated. Here are some stats for Victoria versus the rest of Australia that were published the other day. Victoria has around a quarter of the country’s population.
New Cases Australia – 25,205
New Cases Victoria – 18,608
New Cases Outside Victoria – 6,597
Recent Deaths Australia – 156
Recent Deaths Victoria – 149
Recent Deaths Outside Victoria – 7
Total Deaths Australia – 549
Total Deaths Victoria – 462
Total Deaths Outside Victoria – 87
So this is where we are:
[The Premier] said restrictions would be in place until next year if Victorians didn’t adhere to them and case numbers didn’t decrease.
“It won’t be a 6-week strategy, it will be much longer,” he said.
“We will be into 2021 with significant lockdown in place.”
And do people resent this fantastic intrusion on their lives? Do they feel the heel of the state and wish to see it lifted? Here are the results of a poll of Victorians over whether they support the measures that have been taken:
The lockdown might be draconian, but Victorians overwhelmingly support the public health restrictions imposed to curb the second wave of coronavirus infections….
New research shows 72% of the sample backs the decision of the Victorian government to impose a curfew between 8pm and 5am, 71% supports curbs on leaving the house, while 70% endorse restrictions on business and the requirement that people travel no further than 5km from their house.
It’s the Melbourne Syndrome all right, unless someone can come up with an example even more absurd yet with the kind of wide support as we find in Melbourne, which used to be and was for many years the World’s Most Liveable City. Well we do still have very nice parks and restaurants, if only we were allowed to visit them, or our children, or our friends, or sit in a cafe, or go to the movies, or just to walk along the street or the beach more than a couple of miles from our home.
Really, is there anywhere else to compare with this? It is one of many such emails that have been sent to me from friends and family around the world who have found Melbourne mentioned in the local news. Melbourne does however stand well out from the pack.
You can therefore still see traces here in Australia’s origins as a penal colony.
That’s from Johannes Leak in The Oz today, reminding me of my post on August 6: The Melbourne Syndrome. As I wrote then:
The Covid pandemic has brought on our modern version of The Stockholm Syndrome: “feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.” We now have the Melbourne Syndrome, which I come across versions of every day:
Feelings of trust or affection felt during a lockdown by its victims towards their most authoritarian political leaders.
Since Melbourne has now implemented the hardest lockdown at the hands of the dumbest and most incompetent political leader in the world, I believe that Melbourne should have the honour of bearing the name of this widely observed form of insanity.
Was asked to leave the park today sitting in the sun with a friend. Very friendly and all, but still. And not only do we have the hardest lockdown possibly anywhere in the world, we also have the most incompetent since things have only managed to get worse and we are far and away the state with the worst record in Australia. And just a reminder of what we are being asked to endure (this may be a bit old, but if so, they have only been tightened):
The “state of emergency” in Victoria has been upgraded to a “state of disaster”, meaning police can now enter your home to carry out spot checks even if you don’t give them permission and they don’t have a warrant.
Between the hours of 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., you’re not allowed to leave your homes except for work, medical care and caregiving.
Outside those hours, you may only leave your home for four reasons: shopping for food and essential items, care and caregiving, daily exercise and work. “We can no longer have people simply out and about for no good reason whatsoever,” said Kim Jong Dan.
Daily exercise can only take place within a 5km radius of your home and cannot last longer than an hour.
You cannot exercise in groups of more than two, even if they’re members of the same household.
Apart from daily exercise, you are only allowed to leave your home once a day for essential supplies and food.
In the whole of Victoria, you cannot buy more than two of certain essential items, including dairy, meat, vegetables, fish and toilet paper.
Schools have closed again, with all Victoria school students returning to remote learning from Wednesday (except for vulnerable children and children of permitted workers). Childcare and kindergarten will be closed from Thursday.
Golf and tennis venues, which were open, have now been closed.
Weddings will no longer be allowed from Thursday, and funerals will be limited to 10 people.
Face nappies anywhere outside your home have been mandatory for people in metropolitan Melbourne since July 22nd, but that rule has now been extended to the entire state of Victoria.
You cannot have visitors or go to another person’s house unless it is for the purpose of giving or receiving care. However, you can leave your house to visit a person if you are in an “intimate personal relationship” with them, even during curfew hours. So no “bonk ban”.
If you have a holiday home or were planning a holiday outside Melbourne, tough cheese. You must remain in the city for the next six weeks.
The maximum fine for breaching a health order currently stands at $1,652, but Kim Jong Dan said he would have more to say about penalties later today, i.e. he’s going to increase them.
This video is about Daniel Andrews. Not literally, of course, but you watch it. If you don’t know there is a political agenda beneath all this, if you leave the lockdowns in place, and allow our freedoms to be stolen from us, you will eventually find out.
In Australia there is only one premier who is actively seeking to continue and almost certain extend this totalitarian lockdown yet it is the handling of this virus that has been more comprehensively bungled than any other premier. Look at the numbers.
New Cases Australia – 25,205
New Cases Victoria – 18,608
New Cases Outside Victoria – 6,597
Recent Deaths Australia – 156
Recent Deaths Victoria – 149
Recent Deaths Outside Victoria – 7
Total Deaths Australia – 549
Total Deaths Victoria – 462
Total Deaths Outside Victoria – 87
Why would you give this power hungry incompetent an extension of power? Now watch Tucker Carlson again.
The insane is obvious. The invisible is the Liberal Leader of the Opposition in Victoria, in fact virtually the entire Liberal Party within the state. The whole world can see what a massive disaster is unfolding. 
Law of Markets 