Just as in the well documented historical cases of the war for American Independence and the Great Depression (among many others), the greatest economic difficulty for centuries now, has been the scarcity of money.

Money is not wealth. It is the measured value of wealth, and is the major means of distribution of goods and services (the real wealth).
It is a ticket system which enables all production to be distributed to all consumers.
The spending power of the nation should not, as is currently the case, be restricted to wages, salaries & dividends - since all the money that Australia can earn is not enough to buy all that Australia produces!
The refusal to address this fundamental issue results in what we see today - the chronic and pervasive lack of purchasing power and the subsequent need to prop up the economy with:
1) Exporting more than we import (to increase purchasing power inside Australia)
2) a. Expand production in an attempt to approach full employment and
b. Increase productivity by maximising automation and efficiency.
This is a paradox - you can't have both!
3) borrow out of future earnings for today's expenses (at interest - which merely forces us all - government included - into the debt cycle)

My suggestion is this:
The Government of Australia should resume its Constitutional and moral responsibility of issuing and regulating money which it abandoned to private banking institutions many years ago.
This will enable government to make effective, manageable policy for the prosperity of the public of Australia without fattening the purses of the money lenders, or having to resort to the massively concentrated efforts on the props listed above.
Then, and only then, will we be able to enjoy a sustainable, and containable economy - a position from which real progress can be made on issues like world poverty and environmental responsibility.

Terence Holmes of Melbourne.

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Our success as an society is measured by GDP and related indicators. Lets move this to more meaningful indicators. Who really thinks that the health of the nation is measured by how much stuff we produce? Working towards sustainable development or general social wellbeing should be the governments targets rather than superficial targets like GDP. Lets discuss what targets would be best?

Cheers, Dale

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Wealth is distributed through the mechanism of business ownership / shareholding. The majority of economic regulation revolves around control of business activity which aids the development of business. These same laws do not particularly enhance the prospects of a PAYE earner. The best and most promising idea the Government has introduced in recent years has been the "Future Fund", this will save a lot of financial pain in the future. I believe that the Government has not gone far enough with this concept. Given the prosperity of the mining boom which is adversely affecting mortgage holders in most cities and has not translated into prosperity for the ordinary PAYE earner and also consider the turbulence of the local and global economic market both for good and bad I believe it is time not for Government to simply collect and spend our wealth but to collect, invest globally and reap the rewards of global business activity. We export iron ore which comes back to us in the form of cars. The Government could easily invest in our export companies and invest in those businesses which import into Australia. There is a sense of irony in watching great wealth being made by all our major businesses during a time of economic growth yet 1,000,000 households are mortgaged stressed. This can easily be defined as Government and business arrogance. It is conceivable that income tax could be dropped as per previous posts on this site and the abundance of money could solve a lot of our problems with costs of education, health and other significant public services. The conflict of interest in Government owning assets is nothing in comparison to the misery of hospital waiting lists, education behind world best practice, primitive telecommunications infrastructure, families losing their homes because the PAYE earner can not work any harder. The next time the BHP, NAB, CBA, TOYOTA, EXXON, SINGTEL, RIO TINTO, MICROSOFT, CISCO announce dividends Australians “can all rejoice”.

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