Mostly rubbish

Jason Soon on twitter points with some approval to a column by the "hey, we only win by pretending we're the Liberal Party party" Senator elect David Leyhonhjelm.

Yet what's the first sign this is a column by an ideological goose?  This:

It is noticeable that advocates for big government are only Keynesians on the way down (when recession equals budget deficit) but they refuse to follow their own rules and advocate a budget surplus when growth rates have recovered. Economic growth has followed long term trend for the last few years so by any standard (Keynesian, Classical, Austrian) we should not now have a budget deficit.

That is flagrantly dishonest if he is suggesting (and I reckon he is) that Labor was not seeking to return to surplus.  The problem with getting there as promised was some out of kilter forecasts of Treasury; not the view that returning to surplus did not matter.

And then we go into the details:

the LDP proposed budget provides a modest drop in tax revenue along with nearly $40 billion in spending cuts, so that the 2014-15 budget moves from a $33.9 billion deficit to a predicted $3.1 billion surplus. It can be done, and it should be done.

Yeah, sure.  Government spending can be turned off like a tap and it's "hey, no big deal" only if you come from an ideological commitment that government always should be tiny.

But look at some of the things included in the table in the article as to where the savings are coming from:

$5 billion in savings from including the family home in the pension assets test!

That is ludicrous - to suggest that such a change could be implemented in one hit.  Just how many houses owned by pensioners does he want to see hit the market in an immediate effort to downsize?   Where does he think all the people who need to do this are going to move?  I don't see the capital cities having a hell of lot of $200,000 properties for sale, last time I looked.  Reverse mortgages?   Yeah, the LDP hates governments taking people's money in taxes - they would prefer they lose it instead on interest to the banks to be able to keep buying bread.  (And note - I am not suggesting that there is no scope for some adjustment of current pension policy on this - what I am objecting to is the ridiculous suggestion that you can do it and raise $5 billion immediately without dire disruption.) 

And then there's the immediate $5 billion dollar reduction to the higher education subsidy.  Yeah, sure, no disruption to the system there...

And there is a lot more, including some ideological driven points on taxes and how they are bad, bad, bad, but I can't go on right now - I got to do some other things.

It's clear enough, though, that the LDP "budget" is pure fantasy land.

Jason - stop getting into the boxing ring.  It's knocking some of the common sense out of you.

Update:  I am amused by monty's savage takedown of the bald one's "budget", too.