Tim Dunlop has the best coverage of the Labor policy including a comparison with the Liberal announcement. Doing the same analysis with the Labor tax brackets as
with the Liberal ones leads to this graph.
Again it is from the
2003-2004 Tax Statistics which is the most up to date publicly available data.
I have to say, I like this proposal. I am wary of it being in 2013 and six years in the future as most governments and treasurers tend to renege on their promises. However, knocking out a tax bracket entirely is good policy. By removing the 37c bracket they have negated bracket creep for the majority of Australian income earners for the foreseeable future. Bracket creep is an issue with the Liberal Tax Brackets as they are pretty much just adjusted for inflation - rather then being a tax break.
The other thing is that this
is very close to a flat tax. Something that I like the simplicity of. It also becomes very affordable to remove the 15c and 40c brackets. As they are under the current 34B windfall that suddenly appeared this year.
Knocking out the 37c bracket gives future Australian governments all manner of flexibility in adapting the tax code to people's, government's and the economy's needs.
The other thing that needs to be compared is that the Liberal Party has been in government for over a decade and has not implemented any policy like this. Their income tax policy has just been to shuffle the brackets up with inflation when it has become embarrassing at how much money the government is making from income earners.
Update I was intrigued by how many people (net) were in each bracket. Turns out they are nearly all in the 15c and 30c brackets.
There are 4.6 million income earners in the 15c bracket and 3.9 million in the 30c bracket. In comparison only 90,000 are in the 180+ bracket.
Now compare the amount of tax earnt from those 4.6 million in the 15c bracket which is 16B dollars (about the same as the yearly defence budget) with the 67 Billion from the 3.9 million in the 30c bracket.
I think it becomes good policy to remove the 15c bracket altogether and free 4.6 million Australians from having to deal with the hassle of income tax. It is very affordable too, only costing 16B.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
