Rotate

I just attended a Rotarian breakfast in my new capacity as a non-concerned person.

140 north shore business types of which 138 were of Caucasian descent. The two dissenters were Asian looking. I am not being critical here; this was just an observation.

I will give them this though, there were plenty of women in attendance.

The speech was given by the NSW state treasurer (& I think the deputy premier).

I would say she has an average grip on finance at best. Not that this matters much because they aren’t hindered by paying taxes like businesses.

But any changes they do want to make are hindered by the need to deal with the “losers” and also the requirement to “sell” the changes to the rest of us.

Currently NSW is doing “well” and this is because of four reasons (that I could discern through the fog of oddly presented data):

1. There has been a freeze on hires in the public service and a total drop in employment numbers due to natural attrition.

2. There has been a reduction in pay rises in the public service due to some long term wages deal at a low rate of steady increase.

3. They have sold a number of long term leases to public assets. I have no idea what the upfront revenue versus the recurring revenue was from these schemes.

4. Due to the housing boom they have been doing well out of stamp duty income on property sales.

These factors combined have put the state government budget into cash surplus and thus also kept the interest rates on borrowing as low as possible.

It makes me wonder though why we don’t finance infrastructure through loans to state governments from money printed by the federal reserve.

I suspect this wouldn’t be that inflationary because infrastructure generally generates positive wealth over a long period.

It would keep all infrastructure debt in Australian currency and give the reserve bank a second lever on the economy apart from interest rates.

In any case, my take away from the meeting was that my new approach of attending as a non-concerned person is a winner. I wasn’t outraged at their incompetence nor by the racial profile of the audience nor by any inequities they might be quietly promoting, not anything. So I walked away whistling.

I should say I am very unlikely to do such an event again. But you know how it goes; the more amenable you are the more people invite you to shit. There may have been some method to my former madness after all.