The Importance of the GDP to You
Recently, the game-show host currently running America gave a $1.5T gift to business by way of tax cuts. $1.5T is more than double the total amount of money that our Australian Government has to spend in an entire year on all services provided. In short, it is a massive amount.
Now the justification used was that it would stimulate the economy and drive the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). A higher GDP, in really simple terms, means that there is more money going through the system, the economy. Now, if that were going to go towards lifting up people’s standards of living, fairness in the health system, increased wages, better education and other issues that help the masses, you might well see an actual impact on people’s lives as a result of the higher GDP. But if you simply see more profits going to the super-rich, providing no benefit at all to the broader people, then it is really just a gift to billionaires.
The reason that I write this column is because I am completely outraged by the concept that our own Federal Government are trying to claim that Australia must now give the same tax gifts to our own super rich and international corporations that already pay almost zero tax anyway. It is complete stupidity.
We need more money for hospitals, not less. We need more investment in regional Australia to help increase equity in living standards and life outcomes. We need more investment in our climate actions to prevent a catastrophic warming of more than 2 degrees. We, in Australia could be doing so much more, on all fronts, if our Government had more money, more “taxes”, to spend on all fronts. And with the exception of the billionaires and multi-millionaires amongst us who will argue otherwise, this starts with those super wealthy paying their fair share of tax, not less!
If our Australian GDP goes up or down by 5% on any given day, it will not make a single iota of difference to your day. Mr Prime Minister, please, get your head out of the sand and give the game-show host a big miss on this absurd idea of tax cuts for the super-rich.