IS DEMOCRACY DEAD OR JUST SLEEPING?

Is democracy working in Australia?

Many people have talked about the value of democracy, in fact one of the most famous quotes about democracy is by Sir Winston Churchill, possibly one of the most famous and effective leaders the world has known.

Winston Churchill said “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”.

Today we wanted to talk about democracy and in particular about democracy as it is currently working in Australia, because there are some very interesting developments happening in Australia right now.

The Australian government has been a democracy since Federation in the year 1901.

It has always been a robust and interesting democracy with, along with the two major parties, a number of smaller and less mainstream parties which have had varying degrees of influence over the government over time.

However now is an interesting time for the Australian democracy. The previous government was formed by the Australian Labor Party and had it’s problems, and as a result at the last Federal election the Australian coalition, which is a coalition between the Australian Liberal party and the National party, was elected to govern.

However the Australian government is formed from a majority in the lower house, namely the House of Representatives. This Australian parliamentary system has two Houses of Parliament, the House of Representatives and the Senate and all legislation must pass both Houses of Parliament. Continue Reading →

 

IS THE US DOLLAR JUST ABOUT DEAD?

The $US is headed for zero

For the last century or so the world has traded on the US dollar. The US dollar was supreme in any international transaction and just about everything, when traded internationally, was priced in US dollars. For instance oil has always been priced in US dollars, and even where a country like China was buying oil from a Middle Eastern country the transaction was still priced in US dollars.

Is this a good idea and is this ending?

Over the last few decades the US dollar has taken a substantial dive in value. Since President Nixon removed America from the gold standard in 1971 there has been a gradual decline in the value of the US dollar to the point now where it is significantly weaker than it has ever been.

And since the financial crisis of 2008 there has been a continuing decline in the value of the US dollar, however this has also been matched by declines in the value of a number of other countries, including the European Union, and as a result the Euro and the pound have also declined substantially.

In fact it is the opinion of many that we are in the middle of a currency war, in other words countries are competitively devaluing their currencies by printing money to increase the value of their exports by reducing the cost of importing those products into other countries. Continue Reading →

 

Should Americans Be Allowed To Own Guns?

The day has come when the “right” to bear arms must end.

Everyone knows that the US Constitution, according to interpretation by the courts, allows every US citizen to bear a weapon.

This “right” to bear weapons has been around for a long time, and has been taken advantage of by citizens in the US for decades. But is this a good idea and should all of us, if we wish, be able to go out and buy a tool that kills people?

There’s no doubt that guns kill people, despite the argument that it is people that kill people. Someone with a gun is able to kill someone else more effectively than with just about anything else. There have been hundreds of school shootings in the US over the last century and in just about every case it would have been almost impossible to achieve the same result with any other form of weapon, like a knife for example.

Guns kill people. Guns kill people when it is intended that this be the result and guns kill people accidentally.

We have been horrified to read a recent statistic. It is said now that over 10,000 children are killed by a gun in the US every single year. That is a horrifying statistic and one which we think is unlikely to be reproduced in any other Western country in the absence of war.

In fact this is almost like a war on our children.

How can we, as a society, stand around and do nothing about the fact that 10,000 of our children are dying every single year because of our so-called “right” to bear weapons? How can we, as responsible parents, tolerate the situation where children in the US are more at risk from dying from gunshot than children air the Western country?

We know that a large part of the problem is the power of the NRA. There is no doubt that the NRA is like any other huge business, and they have enormous power at their disposal to protect their profits from the sale of guns. And we know they offer solutions to this problem, for example by promoting the value of gun safes. Continue Reading →