An Iraqi who saved Norway from oil (2009)

Post by djrobstep » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 4:57 AM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #79

djrobstep wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uhh, this is private property, the result of individual households setting aside a portion of their own wages to save for the future. Yes - and that was a terrible decision. Australia could have put super contributions into a collective pool, and used the money to increase equality and fund above-poverty-line universal pensions, but it didn't. Instead they put it in individually owned accounts - inequality and pove…

> This is incoherent - both oil and mining resources require labor to extract. Again, what is special about oil is that profits from extracting oil are very large, but the profits from mining coal are quite small. Therefore a nation sitting on a pile of coal has a great jobs program for employing coal miners, but not a lot of surplus industry income that can be taxed to give everyone in the country an extra 200K. A n…

> but not a lot of surplus industry income that can be taxed to give everyone in the country an extra 200K

Are you aware of how Australia's superannuation system works? Contributions are literally paid from company income. You are saying it would be impossible for Australia to save trillions from surplus income when this has already happened and is the basic design of the scheme!

Post by billyruffian » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

webmobdev wrote: post #78

billyruffian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of that is correct, the Queen has soverign immunity (a bit wider in scope than, say, the immunity afforded US presidents), and her household has excemption from some laws. Some of the power you are referring to is the Royal Perogative in which the monarch is important constitutionally but not practically because the use of the Perogative is reserved for the Prime Minister. Some of the things you mention, such as…

I didn't know about the crown / state context, and that makes more sense than the Queen herself owning the Swans and Dolphins. :) But no, I am not confused about the symbolic roles vs what is written in law. I am an indian and our current Parliamentary system is a British legacy. We understood the need of a titular role like the Queen in our system, and thus created the position of the President for it. So in India,…

> If I remember right, didn't the Queen refuse to give her assent to table this bill to the Parliament?

The Queen, acting upon the advice of her government, refused to grant her consent for the Bill to be debated.

You see how this works? The Queen didn't just decide for herself.

Parliament is sovereign, it can vote to do away with any of these customs and traditions at any time it likes. But we like custom and tradition, it's part of our culture.

> it is only in the last 3 - 4 decades that they are being interpreted more "democratically" in modern parliamentary traditions

That is a ridiculously narrow view. There have been plenty of times we've had constitutional crises. We have an election to resolve them, such as the 1909 finance bill that resolved the issue of which chamber was supreme.

Re: An Iraqi who saved Norway from oil (2009)

Re: An Iraqi who saved Norway from oil (2009)