Taxes are important and necessary to keep running all the things no one wants to take responsibility for eg. roads. But they've gone too far to cover too much...examples provided already by other people. I have no problems with income taxes, though going up to almost half your income at the top rates is a bit high...

Super is another matter. While I see that some people would otherwise spend the money and be left with no retirement money, there's another whole group of people who are responsible stewards of their finances.

Who will pay for those poor people who didn't save? Them or their families, as someone else said. Why should I be supporting the other 10 people who live on my street because they didn't look after their money?

I for one am incredibly frustrated that I have money tied up in super that I can't access for years and years. If I invested that money myself instead I'd have 10 times the final amount by the time I could access it(10 times? Maybe 50, 100...anything's possible if it's not rotting in super).

Pretend I have my super money on hand, and add to it as per normal super...from that I invest in shares, real estate, and start a couple of businesses. Within 10 years that money's grown to a couple of million. Wow! Now I can live off the interest and work as little as I want...

Now same scenario, but it's in super. I do similar things with real estate through an SMSF...maybe 30 years, I manage a couple of million. Yay! I can live off the...oh hang on, I can't access it for another 20 years...

The real issue to me is to make government more accountable and transparent for what they WILL get and spend. Generally, governments enable their own activities through Acts and constrain others, rightly and wrongly, through Regulations.

I tender that most of us are complete amateurs when it comes to understanding why an Act or Regulation is written the way it is. And even worse at comprehending its economic impacts. When it comes to complaining about a rule, or attempting to alter it, I fear we do so from a generally self centred or narrow view point, and therefore our efforts are ineffectual.

A very useful tool for constraining wonton (and occasionally unfair) government legislation writing are regulation making guidelines which can be found here http://www.obpr.gov.au/bestpractice/handbook.pdf and here http://www.obpr.gov.au/publications/external/coag/coag.pdf.

One problem however is that the States still don't have as clear and robust guidelines (yet), especially Western Australia. I feel they do that because they know it makes it hard or virtually impossible for Mr John Q Public to demand or even expect government compliance to their own guidelines, so that a few can write what they want.

"With the population getting older, who is going to support these people?"

Err.. they support themselves ? Or their families ? Whatever, its not my business to impose my will on others.

Geez, the whole aging population thing is really over dramatized.

People are usually healthy and productive enough to put in 40 - 45 years of work before retirement. Are you telling me people are stupid sheep who can't think about the future... they just reach retirement when they can't go on any longer, and then realise they've got no savings to live off ?

I'm only 29, and I can already figure out roughly how much cash and investments I have to build up before I can retire. If I get there earlier than 50 or 60, why should I be forced to wait many more years till I can access my superannuation ?

Tax is an evil necessary. At best it is applied to ensure that we live in a safe, civil society, public infrastructure and to redress a few market failures here and there. I agree with you that a lot of our taxes are wasted by government ( Iraq war, complex bureaucracy, excessive regulations and most importantly the Doctors Union).

There are inevitable compromises associated with living in a community with a lot of other people. Nobody will get their own way on everything.

I don't trust what future governments will do with my super contributions (about 23% of my income ). As other posters here point out, the majority of people don't earn anything close to enough money to support a basic retirement. With the population getting older, who is going to support these people? Some will come through income tax but the ratio of workers to oldies will be less. Some may come from Company Tax and resource royalties but this is not likely to be enough either. The only other source I can think of is that huge pool of money called super.

So there you have it! We are putting money into super schemes for the future support of both ourselves and our neighbours. I hope they appeciate us for doiong this kind act.

Don't any of you appreciate the fact that firstly:

1/ Tax is an evil in itself and a violation of property rights. It strips the rightful owner of their wealth by using violence and coercion. If you don't pay your taxes, you end up in jail.

2/ Government spending and central planning has an abysmal record. We have the last 100 years to study and come to the overwhelming conclusion that government cannot co-ordinate and allocate resources.

Whether it be Soviet automobiles, Chinese agriculture or any state owned industry in Zimbabwe, Cuba, North Korea, or Venezuela, we have massive shortages, rationing of goods, inferior quality and huge bureaucracies.

3/ In Australia, the amount states spend on health and education has DOUBLED in the past 8 years. Have things improved ?

4/We can improve outcomes in these sectors by allowing people to keep more of their taxes, and allowing private enterprise to enter and compete without government coercion and a government monopoly.

Holding taxes at a rate over the long term has its benefits. I.e. they have a natural convexity (increasing in absolute terms in good times, and falling in absolute terms in bad) - the 'shock absorbers' of the economy.

Reacting to peaks or troughs in a tax planning seems stupid to me. Rather one should seek optimal tax outcomes over the longer term.

Afterall, its politically easy to cut taxes, much harder to raise them. I would think you run the risk of amplifying the business cycle.

I’m not an economist like you guys. So I’d be intrigued to read about how the government saving surpluses (S) leads to equal pressure on inflation as (C) consumers spending it. Or are you saying consumers would save it (S)? I’d also be interested to know if there are numbers/estimates for how much of prior tax cuts were saved versus consumed. I just find it hard to understand your point that tax cuts would not be inflationary –despite what Milton says.

So far we have seen many such Tax cuts and they all have vanished into thin air.

The right approach is to invest it in improvement of health,education etc. The money in turn would flow into the economy and the inflation would come down. It's same as Tax cuts. It will also increase employment participation.

Basically Howard's team are afraid of responsibility. So they are leaving it to the public. It's like me giving some money to my children and ask hem to look after their needs. Unfortunately Howard over the last 11 years has changed the culture of Australian people.

I strongly hope that the electorate won't fall for any such gimmicks.

VENKAT

That doesn't mean each and every one of those individuals is better off. There may even be a few of them struggling to put clothes on their back and pay for enough food and clothing for their families. If you let them keep 10% of their pay instead of forcing it into super funds, they might be a lot happier.

Nonetheless, I don't think super is the worst government program. The income tax has got to be much more harmful and we could do without it.