There is a rising tide of worrying economic news in this country and it highlights once more the need to cut back on unnecessary spending, like allowing single mothers to eat.
The Australian sounded a warning on May 29: “As mining and energy firms trim spending plans across Australia, the cooling investment boom would leave a 'significant economic hole in the short term that needs to be filled', Pimco analysts Adam Bowe and Robert Mead said in a research note today.”
BHP, for instance, has ruled out any new coal projects and is selling assets. The problem, Business Spectator says, is “the combination of soaring costs and falling prices has decimated its profitability”.
Manufacturing is in a worse shape. Ford is closing its operations in Australia, a move the ACTU says could cost up to 10,000 jobs.
Now Holden, which recently sacked 500 people, has said it would ask for more government cash on top of the $2.17 billion it has received over the past 12 years in subsidies. Last year, Holden made just $87 million in profit — about half the average amount it receives in subsidies each year. That is, our money does not just keep it afloat, but makes up its entire profit margin.
Already, fossil fuel subsidies for mining companies are set to cost the public more than $13 billion over the next four years. Yet it seems these large corporations are going to need even more.
These corporate giants are, after all, the “wealth creators” in our society — just ask their accountants how much wealth they've created out of our money (only don't say you’re from the ATO).
And if we want to ensure their accountants stay in gainful employment hiding their wealth from the tax department, we're going to need to find more money from somewhere. And if there is one sector of parasites who have had it too good for too long, it has to be single mothers.
Sure, the federal government has already made some important steps in this direction — slashing the sole parent payments by $207 million. Tens of thousands of single parents have had their payments slashed by $60-$130 a week.
But is such a shift of wealth from single parents to mining giants enough? The latest economic news suggests it might not be. What is more, Single Parent Action Group activist Sherree Clay said of the cut to payments: “Many families who have been switched to Newstart have as little as $6 a week left after rent and power deductions to feed their children.”
Now $6 a week might not sound like much, but the market conditions being what they are right now, BHP sounds like it could really use all we have to give. If even, say, 10,000 single parents find they have $6 a week left over after paying their bills, that is $60,000 a week, or $3.12 million a year to assist BHP's shareholders. It is, at least, a start.
Of course, we could consider that if these corporations can only be profitable when propped up by billions of our dollars, then perhaps we might as well just own and run them ourselves. But that would be socialism and socialism failed. Not like capitalism, which is going great guns wherever you look around the world.
It is going so well, in fact, that it can only function with huge injections of our cash, at the direct expense of the poor.