From: dyfl@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Daniel Y Lam)
Subject: Re: Why pick on the kids? Let's get the fat cats!
Keywords: overpaid salary-cap wages tax complexity
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Distribution: aus
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 01:52:57 GMT

ednclark@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Jeffrey Clark) writes:
>My apologies for getting sidetracked fifty times in the one article, however
>if you had read on you would see how greedy capitalist bosses would beleive
>that their whiz-kid exec who landed 20 mill worth of deals last year is 
>worth mega-bucks to the company, not because the decisions made by whiz kid
>were the right decisions just the lucky ones that the firm cleaner could
>have made. I beleive Australian employers have been self-hoodwinked by the
>boom years, as if some star executives were responsible for their business 
>doing so well in good times.  When down times come they feel that it's
>because they haven't got talented enough staff and offer even higher wages
>for the positions that seemed to be responsible for the boom years. This
>topic is too complicated to not write a book about and I feel my tongue
>getting caught on the words I type.

So companies make bad decisions, and they pay for them.  I have no
problems with that.  No company has ever forced me to buy its
shares.

> But yes, though we need some lawyers and accountants in a just society, we
>do have too many now.  The reason we have too many is that our society is 
>constantly adding to it's legal complexity to fill loopholes.  This in
>turn creates more loopholes requiring more legislation and more legal people
>to oversee, enforce and advise about it. It is a self feeding process which
>will and is escalating.

I agree with this.  We have too many laws.  When was the last time we
had a decrease in the number of laws.  In my opinion, a few hundred
sessions of Parliament devoted to repealing laws would be in order.
Given the existence of government regulations, however, a comany
needs a lot of lawyers and accountants to satisfy these regulations.

>	We must clean out the whole legal system from constitution up, to
>simplify it and to make it more relevant to our society. If we did this we 
>would suddenly have thousands of previously overworked solicitors and
>accountants out of work and looking for other employment.  However, unless
>we are willing to drop our standard of living there is no way we can do the
>same thing to our primary and secondary producers (farmers,labourers,
>tradesmen etc). 

Yes.  If we get rid of unnecessary laws and regulations, the economy
would improve, by both removing regulatory constraints on the market
and by releasing "overworked solicitors and accountants" for other
work.

I don't understand the reference to living standards and primary and
secondary produces, however.

>	Finally, there is nothing wrong with free education and increased
>education for the masses so long as it doesn't come hand in hand
>with an expectation of a highly payed, high status job and a
>non-acceptance of physical labour employment when the opportunity
>presents itself.

There is everything wrong with "free education" because it involves
one group of people (those who don't get higher education) being
forced to pay for the activities of another group (those who get
higher education, like myself).  It is very likely that "free
education" involves a transfer of wealth from the poor (and also the
very rich who pays a lot of taxes) to the middle class, who are more
likely to go to university.

--
	Daniel Lam
	Melbourne, Australia

In my opinion, the opinions expressed here are my personal opinions.
Newsgroups: aus.politics