The Coalition is clinging to fear and delusion as it stares down election defeat

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion

Australian politics

Greg Jericho

It is sad but not surprising that Josh Frydenberg is reheating the same tired old cliches about the ALP

@GrogsGamut

Sun 27 Jan 2019 08.45 AEDT Last modified on Sun 27 Jan 2019 19.23 AEDT

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, suggested there was a ‘growing chorus of opposition’ to the ALP’s polices. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

My goodness they’re getting scared. Their world, which has them at the top of the heap, setting – nay, rigging – the rules, and where they can repeat to themselves over and over that their success is all about merit and personal brilliance, is cracking all around them. They’re scared and have retreated into stupidity and fallacy.
This week the wealthy parked their private jets in Davos in Switzerland for the annual “Yes we really think we’re better than you” conference, otherwise known as the World Economic Forum.
It’s a place where concerns are focused mostly on worries about wealth and where interlopers such as New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, pointing out the obvious on climate change is seen as revelatory.

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We’re now a decade past the global financial crisis – an event that completely revealed the abject failure of capitalism unfettered by strong government oversight – and yet the conservatives have taken on board the lessons of the GFC by pretending it didn’t happen and hoping in spite of all evidence to the contrary that the world has not greatly changed.
We are now many decades into climate change revealing itself as the greatest market failure in human history, and yet still we find intransigence and delusion from the conservatives, who cry socialism in response to policy proposals in the vain hope that anyone is still scared by such a notion and the misguided belief that we cannot all see their lack of clothes.
Consider the reaction to Democratic congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposing a tax plan with a marginal rate of 70% for incomes over $10m. Yes, ten million dollars a year.
At the moment the top marginal tax rate in the US is 37% on income of more than $510,300 for individuals and $612,350 for married couples.
That a tax rate kicking in at such an absurdly high income is enough to bring out a fit of vapours among the conservatives in her nation and those in Davos this week reveals just how scared they are that people have cottoned on to their rigged system.
In a forum in Davos, Michael Dell – the 39^th richest person in the world – was asked if he was in favour of that tax proposal. Naturally the audience tittered, and Dell responded by talking up his own foundation and made the rather weird claim that he has contributed more to that over the past 20 years than he would have through the 70% tax rate.
Dell seemed unable to grasp that he could still give to charities (and enjoy the tax benefits of doing so) while paying a higher tax rate. Indeed given his foundation provides money for urban education, such a tax rate might actually reduce the need for his personal support.
But then such billionaires often think the world just needs more Ebenezer Scrooges after he has learned his Christmas Carol lessons rather than an employment, education and health system in place that does not have children like Tiny Tim subject to the whims of wealthy.
Dell, however, then overplayed his hand by claiming in what he thought was the coup de grace that he didn’t “think it would help the growth of the US economy ... name a country where that’s worked – ever”.
At this point fellow panellist and MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson helpfully responded: “the United States”. He further noted that the tax rate had been at that level “from about the 1930s through about the 1960s” and what is more “there is actually a lot of economics that suggests that it’s not necessarily going to hurt growth”.
At least Dell wasn’t as silly as Ken Moelis, chief executive of investment bank Moelis & Co, who in an interview with Bloomberg television suggested “It would be disastrous for the economy”, because “you have to incentivise people. Even in the US, what’s going to happen to the two-workforce family? You forget where 70% starts to kick in.”
Remember – we’re talking ten million dollars of income a year, and a 70% rate only for income above that amount.
We of course have also seen fear disconnected with reality here in Australia. For example, after the budget, the AFR tried to convince people that the government income tax cuts were for middle incomes earners by suggesting someone earning $200,000 could soon be considered middle class. (Yes, in 2056 by my calculations).
And we saw it again this week in a speech given by the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.
Fortunately for Frydenbrg, coverage of his speech was smothered by the prime minister talking about James Cook, because so filled was it with dead phrases such as “the invisible hand of capitalism delivers far more than the dead hand of socialism” that not only would anyone in the audience have done well to stay awake, Frydenberg himself should be commended for not drifting off part way through.
It is sad but not surprising that Frydenberg has continued on from last year with warnings the ALP is indulging in “class warfare” and that it wants to “tax itself into prosperity”.
Sure no one is listening but it would be nice to see the treasurer at least try for some originality, or failing that at least some reality.
Frydenberg suggested that there was a “growing chorus of opposition” to the ALP’s polices, which I guess he might come to believe if he keeps saying it. But as he also thinks saying “Labor’s tax and redistribution agenda is one of the most radical, aggressive and dangerous Australia has ever seen” is a winning argument, I suspect there is little chance of that chorus every becoming a reality.
Radicalism used to mean something. Changing the treatment of dividend imputation to how it was when set up by Paul Keating in the 1980s is hardly the return of Leon Trotsky.
Yes mostly this is about the Liberal party realising it is facing an election defeat and thus is hoping scare tactics will be enough. Governments always do this when approaching defeat. But the rhetoric from the government and its media supporters reflects that of those who have used the policies of the past 40 years to entrench their positions and who now are confronted with people saying the jig is up.

Whether it came via rising inequality, reduced government services, climate change or just a growing realisation that the story being told does not reflect reality, change is coming, and those in power are scared, and are powerless to offer anything other than fear in return.