One big point I think that liberals miss, is that you need to keep the masses happy to some extent. No point living in a nice house if theres a lot of people struggling enough to turn to crime/violence. No point in a nice car if youre gridlocked on the freeway for an hour and a half per day.

Its all about getting the right balance of socialism and capitalism, rewarding those who work hard, while keeping the slackers content enough to stay out of trouble. Otherwise you will end up spending more cleaning up the mess than what it cost to keep the crap out in the first place. (This doesnt even include the human cost).

Works the same way with the other end of town too. Need to give the capitalists enough incentive to run a business and make profits.

In saying that though, I think Abbott has really missed the point this year. The good economic times have put massive strains on our infrastructure and we need to spend the money to implement these improvements.

We wont be running out of ore any time soon. It is important to save incase the good times end, but can we wait any longer for these improvements? How long til we're in a downturn and need the money to spend on keeping our population in a job? I think we're at a pretty lucky time where we can have our cake and eat it too.

Something I thought was interesting was how is Abbott going to pursuade these independants without spending money? Hes talking about 'doubling' the surplus is 4 years, but thats only $6 billion (if i recall correctly) as opposed to labors $3b. To do this he wants to remove $36b (42-6) of NBN, but only comes out $3b in front.

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[S]kid[S]