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SILICON
CHIP
www.siliconchip.com.au
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2 Silicon Chip
Publisher’s Letter
Big challenges lie ahead
for Australia
As I sit down to write this Publisher’s Letter, Australia, the United States of America and Europe are
facing dire challenges which will affect their peoples’
welfare far into the future.
In the USA, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis has
just been launched on its final mission, ending a 30year program which has sent 135 missions into space.
What comes next? The answer appears to be “not very
much!” The USA is a very different nation to when
the US race to the Moon was launched some 50 years ago by President John F.
Kennedy. Those were heady times and the USA was booming, confident and
up to the challenge of beating the USSR in the cold war and in the race to the
Moon. And we all know that it won both races, convincingly. The US space
program was the stimulus for the vast amount of innovation in electronics and
all other areas of technology. All the world has benefited, in countless ways.
But today the USA is sick. It could not afford the space race as it did in
1961 and it can’t afford to maintain its shuttle program. It is now reduced to
using rockets from Russia to continue its manned space activities. Its federal
government debt is $14 trillion dollars, equal to its annual GDP. Many states
in the USA are virtually bankrupt with California, that once gleaming edifice
of technical innovation, now mired in debt, strangled with regulation and
weighed down with high unemployment and the aftermath of the financial
turmoil which started in 2007. The USA is still has the largest economy in the
world but it is in very serious trouble. Can this dire situation be turned around
and will the USA boom once again? Perhaps.
As for Europe, once the cultural and intellectual engine of the western world,
well it is an economic basket-case. Except for a few countries such as Germany
and the Netherlands, it is weighed down with incredible amounts of debt, high
unemployment and stifled with regulation by the EU. It is doubtful whether
its problems can ever be solved, unless, perhaps, the various countries decide
to split from the EU and take back control of their own destinies.
And then there is Australia; beautiful, bountiful Australia. We truly are the
“lucky country” (somewhat ironic, since Donald Horne coined that phrase
intending an entirely different meaning). But we have been fortunate. Our
economy is booming and literally racing along, growing strongly for the last
20 years. Australia’s terms of trade are the best they’ve ever been and our GDP/
capita is at the top of the G20 countries.
In fact, except for about half a dozen small rich countries such as Qatar,
Luxembourg, Switzerland and Denmark, Australia is the richest large country
in terms of GDP/capita, ahead of former leaders such as USA, Canada and
Sweden, and way ahead of France, Germany and the UK. To put it in simple
terms, the standard of living enjoyed by the average Australian is well above
that in America. Unbelievable, isn’t it?
Sure, Australia is doing well because of its coal and mineral exports but it
has also been doing well in so many other areas over the last two decades. On
the other hand, over the last decade or so, both state and federal governments
have seemingly been acting to bring it all undone. And just coincidentally, at
the same time as the last US shuttle mission is on its way to the International
Space Station, Australia is about to launch a so-called “carbon” tax. For the
moment, as I write this editorial, the details are unknown apart from leaks over
the previous few days about who might be compensated and will be able to
carry on doing what they always did, with not too much incentive to change
continued on page 99
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