What is Wrong in the Australian Economy? - Personal Responsibilities & the Economic Crisis

This is the third and final article in this series commenting on various aspects of the current crisis as applicable to Australia.

The first commented on the Australian political scene, the second the effect other countries' policies have on Australia. This focusses on personal responsibilities.

In recent years the buzzword amongst libertarians has been “peoples' rights”, which completely overlooks the indisputable fact that every right carries with it a corresponding responsibility.

This, unfortunately, has been carried into schools and has led to a generation or two of adults who know all their rights, but are oblivious to their responsibilities in general and in particular the need to live within their means and support themselves by their own efforts.

Because of the deficiencies in the current education system in Australia & I suspect in other parts of the English speaking world, most will not have read any of Charles Dickens' classics, and so will be unaware of Micawber's famous quote in the novel 'David Copperfield':

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Unfortunately some academics with political influence have not assisted by arguing that credit is good for the economy and that printing money is not only a necessary, but a good thing whenever a correction occurs in the market. They completely overlook the fact that it should be a responsibility for all sectors of society, individuals, organisations, bureaucracies, and politicians, to live within their means.

Even more unfortunately, politicians no longer accept responsibility for any mess made by their departments. Instead they clearly feel it is their right to misappropriate taxpayers funds, already gouged from the workforce and companies, to fix a mess like the insulation debacle, or to run expensive advertising campaigns explaining why they think they are right, like proposing the asinine Resources Super Profits Tax (RSPT).

The companies opposing the RSPT have the right to do so to protect their international competitive edge for the benefit of Australia and are using company funds. In doing so they are also discharging their responsibility to protect the interests of their shareholders who have advanced the funds, after paying tax of course, to develop mineral resources for the benefit of all Australians.

By the same token, if politicians, on the advice of their departments or personally, make a bad decision, they have the right to fix or explain it to taxpayers. However, their responsibility is to ensure that the funds, in the interests of equity, come from their or the relevant department's existing budget, which has already been funded by taxpayers, and the persons responsible demoted or sacked, as they would be in private enterprise.

Unfortunately, the apathy of voters has allowed this situation to develop. However, this apathy appears to be disappearing fast as the current correction bites into their savings and they see how they have been and are being used. Even politicians' attempts to assuage public feeling about their mistakes, by spending lavishly on welfare projects that have little real benefit & which should rightly be the responsibility of individuals, seem to be loosing any appeal they might have had.

Perhaps the pendulum is beginning to swing at last to a position of equilibrium between rights and responsibilities.