Pearls of wisdom, from The Age readers

Its a busy day down at the Spencer St Soviet, with the Your Say section open for comments about the estimated $17bil budget surplus. Here are some of the gems:

Economics 101 - the whole idea of a budget is to break even.

That Peter Costello can get it WRONG to the tune of 17.3 billion dollars is ridiculous.

Obscene!

• Posted by: lish on August 22, 2007 11:09 AM

Damn you Costello.. quick spend on some chewing gum, or other useless junk, like the ABC and get rid of that surplus !

geez, you'd think a surplus like that could be spread around evenly too... with a universal healthcare system, quality secondary/tertiary education for all who want it... but lets just wait and see the porkbarrelling start over the coming months as honest john and co attempt to squeeze 50.01 % of the votes in 50.01 % of the electorate to contrive another re-election.

i can sense the dog whistles blowing already.

• Posted by: Jay on August 22, 2007 11:37 AM

Wow.. quality health and quality education = government ownership ? Someone needs to read their history books. Hey remember when communist China had state management of food and agriculture during their Great Leap Forward ? How did that work out for them ?

And what, Rudd isn't going to try his own efforts at pork barreling in the next election?

If you have a large deficit the government of the day is spending too much and if you have a large surplus the goverment is not spending enough.

You can't eat money so a huge surplus sitting there doing nothing is not good economic management!

• Posted by: Tony N on August 22, 2007 12:22 PM

He's right.. swap those dollars for some french fries now ! I have $5mil in the bank and it doesn't do me any good, I can't see what good money is.

Budget surplus? Do the numbers. You'll probably find that all the students of Australia have provided the budget surplus via HECS. Now if we were truely the clever country, education would be free!

• Posted by: murray on August 22, 2007 12:50 PM

Yeah I know the numbers. The government SPENDS $3 for every $1 of HECS debt. Try again murray.

Budget surplus because 30% GST not 10% GST,just check any product from material to finshed product (3 steps,each step pay 10% GST) and at the end to the consumer's hands the tax cumulation comes up to 30% or 40%. Should you know Australia population are 21 millions, all working pay tax can not reach much billions like this unless dream.

• Posted by: Mai tran on August 22, 2007 1:35 PM

Yes agree I, should I know !?