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General Climbing Discussion

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Welfare and climbing 16-Dec-2008 At 2:47:02 PM DaCrux

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On 15/12/2008 Wendy wrote:
>If you wanted to complain about meaningless welfare, I reckon the round
>of financial crisis handouts is a good place to start. Something like 1.4
>billion dollars given to pensioners, carers, seniors and familes on the
>meagre incomes of less than $100 000.
>
>What a bizarre world we live in when the govt spends the 1st half of the
>year increasing interest rates so that people will stop spending and making
>life hard for poor people with mortages, then the 2nd half handing out
>$ (after interest rates have gone down again so people are less financiall
>stressed) so that people will spend more. Of course if they wanted to give
>money to the self supporting impoverished, I'd happily help them out by
>spending it. Or they could put 1.4 billion into job creation schemes that
>help the environment and alleviate a range of problems at the same time
>as getting $ into circulation.
>
>Economics. And they call it a science? I fail abysmally to understand
>it.

Interest rates are increased/cut by the reserve bank, not the government. They were increased to reduce inflation and then cut to stimulate growth. There's no point spending $1.4 billion if the economy goes into recession and thousands of people lose their jobs anyway. When people get money, they usually spend it which means more people are needed to produce and sell things, which means more people get/stay employed. Economics is an abstract science.