Fuck the IMF*

"Thanks to the IMF I have a rewarding career bartering cardboard for food instead of going to university. Thanks IMF!"

IMF praises economy, workplace changes

By Jessica Irvine
September 14, 2005

The International Monetary Fund has weighed into Australia's politically charged industrial relations debate, throwing its support behind the Federal Government's reforms in a move that has angered unions.

Issuing a glowing report on the state of the economy, the organisation praised the Government's welfare-to-work changes, particularly moves to boost the workforce participation of Australians aged 55 to 64, which the IMF described as "middling" by international standards.

The Treasurer, Peter Costello, seized on the support to bolster the Government's case for further economic reform. "The point of all of this is that we must keep the reform process going, if we want to stay near the front of the pack as one of the lead economies of the developed world," he said.

But a spokesman for the Australian Council of Trade Unions, George Wright, said the IMF was not in a position to advise on Australian working conditions.

"Peter Costello would be better advised to listen to the Australian people on workplace issues rather than a distant and out-of-touch international agency," he said.

The IMF found that, despite improvements, Australia still ranks ninth out of OECD countries in terms of GDP income per person. "Even with the gains made in the past 14 years, per capita incomes remain some 20 per cent below those in the United States, with only part of this gap accounted for by the effects of Australia's remoteness on productivity," the report said.

Pointing to the "relatively high" minimum wage enjoyed by Australians - at 60 per cent of median full-time male earnings - the economic watchdog nominated this as an area for reform.

SMH

Wow, you mean the 15% of Americans who don't have access to healthcare, who pay several times what we do for medicine and routinely die of treatable illnesses because they don't have money to pay for treatment up front? The Americans who work for $6 and less an hour, the Americans who have inadequate health care coverage? No thanks, I'll stick to our 'low' per capita incomes, whatever that means. If I was in an elevator with Bill Gates our per capita incomes would be $4 billion a year, of course it wouldn't mean shit to me, just as a high per capita GDP means diddly squat for the poor residents of New Orleans being eaten by dogs, tens of thousands of them scattered across the country, refugees in their own nation, victims of a country obsessed with the bottom line and financial expediency. No thanks. IMF, stick to screwing Argentineans. Assholes.

*Fuck you, I'm not a hippie. There's nothing conservative about throwing away hard won living standards for a short term buck. Who's going to buy all the stuff our retail driven economy sells if we do that huh?