Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Australia, After America || Peter Zeihan" video.

AUSTRALIAN HERE: I wrote to Peter at the start of this series and spoke about some of this. I hope he pins this comment sorry if its longish - On the Chinese - Peter is 100% right. We are way too heavily invested in China buy our raw materials. I have worked in our mining industry for most of the last 20 years and when the Chinese hit the wall we will be screwed and their construction industry has been so out of control that it won't be able to do anything but collapse and with that the demand for our raw materials will vanish. We got a taste of it when the GFC hit and as Peter said we didn't learn from that lesson. Luckily we have the rise of India that will compensate for the loss of China. The question is what happens as China falls and India rises as in how much overlap there'll be. - On the value adding thing and manufacturing - Peter is 50% right. Before working in mining i worked in manufacturing for over a decade BEFORE OUR ECONOMISTS killed it. We used to make steel and smelt alumina and make cars. We do make flour but only for our market which isn't unusual because transporting flour is a hassle compared to grain. We do make sugar locally and export tons of it. We also export staggering amounts of dairy to Japan and Korea. What killed our manufacturing was our version of NEOLIBERAL ECONOMICS. America called it Reaganomics, the Brits called it Thatcherism and we called it Economic Rationalism. We had treasurers on both sides of politics who loved it (Paul Keating & Kevin Costello). They privatised everything they could promising "Competition would provide better services and lower prices" and it DIDN'T. They have spun everything that's gone wrong into "Its awesome because investors won." and yes its been awesome for INVESTORS but the other 90% of us have been smashed, screwed and thrown under the bus. - On the subprime comparison Peter is again 50% right. None of our home loans are guaranteed, its the banks who are guaranteed. Its another part of the Economic Rationalism -> Protect the investors and make everyone else pay for it. The effect is that our banks have been way too open handed at supplying money for home loans. that's driven prices to idiotic levels and when that bubble bursts it will be volcanic and we might not recover. - On the American links the main reason America will protect us before protecting a lot of other places, IS NOT just because we've been joined every fight America has invited us too. Its because of American has 2 of its most important bases in the world in Australia. There's Pine Gap and Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt (also known as Northwest Cape). Both have Wikipedia pages but neither really portrays how significant they are. FIRST - Because of where Pine gap is, its the ground station for the main US Security/Military satellites in geostationary orbit that look down on Russia, China and the Middle East. as well as being the ground station for any other satellites as they fly over Russia, China and the Middle East. Since 2000 the number of satellite antennas has basically doubled on the site. The YT channel RealLifeLore did a great video on this. SECOND - there's NSC Holt, which is much smaller than Pine Gap but no less significant. Its where the antennas that let the American Navy communicate with all of its submarines in the Indian Ocean are located. There's rumours that both these bases are nuclear powered, but there's NOTHING to substantiate those claims. So please don't bother me with that crap. The ACTUAL SIGNIFICANCE is these 2 bases in a "global exchange" is they are ZERO STRIKE targets. In other words they come BEFORE FIRST STRIKE TARGETS. Many Australians are under the delusion that if we have US bases with B52s we'll be a FIRST STRIKE target. So what - the fact is we have not 1 but 2 far higher value targets than 99.999% of Australians realise and have had them since the 1960s. If Russia, the Chinese or a few others really want to do something huge they have to take out BOTH Pine Gap and NSC Holt BEFORE THEY DO ANYTHING ELSE. That's because Pine Gap is the optic nerve for the "Eyes in the Skye" and NCS Holt is the auditory nerve for the "Ears in the Sea." Basically they are the 2 most important US bases for communications NOT IN AMERICAN territory. Hope that explains some stuff. Hope 2024 is better for everyone.
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@pondering1716 As I just said to Obcane if China goes away as Peter predicts its a massive issue. If the timing is right the we might be in trouble and the Indians can screw us on any deals. Right now some of their big players already have stakes in Australia. I actually spent time on a copper mine that was Indian owned and yes the food was awesome. So they already have a serious footprint here, but who knows where it will actually end up.
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@skippertunes Yeah sorry. I went to college with a Kevin Costello and flipped the names. And there was the Kevin Rudd vs Peter Costello rivalry. My mistake.
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@parrmik I remember once seeing the cars leave the Dandenong plant for GM. It was like watching an army charge into battle or a massive herd of animals suddenly move. It was one of the most bizarre things I ever saw.
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@SolaceEasy Yeah so I did apologise for the length right at the start.
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@krisushi1 On AUKUS, I am NOT (and keep saying it) against it in principle. I am against the terms of it. Here's an allegory. Imagine you are selling the next generation of giant dump trucks to BHP or Rio Tinto and YES your trucks are the best. They use less fuel, they require less maintenance and they have all round better features. Plus your company has a long history of making good quality trucks. As part of the contract that you put in front of BHP/Rio Tinto you ASK B.H.P./Rio Tinto to PAY YOU MONEY to fix YOUR factory because after years of neglect by your management its starting to break down and cannot deliver the trucks its supplying to other people. Do you think that's a contract BHP or Rio Tino would sign knowing that among their shareholders are smart people who would understand how stupid that is? We (as in Australia) are sending $3 Billion to upgrade the Huntington Ingalls shipyards at a time when they can't even deliver submarines (as well as ships for that matter) to the USN Navy on time. If that makes sense to you then I have no answers for anything else you might ask. Then there's the fact we hired a pack of Americans on monster pay packets starting at about AU$1.2 Million a year to tell us this garbage plan made sense. Here's an additional point of grievance I have. I recently found that one of the Australian Think Tanks (ASPI) not only gets money from the Australia Government to advise it, but also gets money from the US State department. Its there on their website which they have to do by Australia Law as a think tank & lobbyist. SO WHY TF is the US State Department funding an Australian Think Tank that's consulting to the Australian government even if its in unrelated material? More importantly WHY TF hasn't anyone in the media made a fuss about it?
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@goodo4668 What do you think is wrong with the Costello remark? He and Keating weren't that different. They might have described things differently but they didn't act differently. labor and Liberal have been very close on economics since the 80s. Did you forget that Keating once railed against John Hewson's GST and then brought it in himself. Keating never once stopped a manufacturing sector go under. and then Costello came along and declared manufacturing was a sunset industry and we would be moving towards a service based economy. Labor with Keating kicked of the privatisation era and the Libs with Costello finished the job. Costello just put a different colored badge on the same policies. About the only difference was Costello didn't hide the fact he didn't care about the unions.
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@stylembonkers1094 Did you ever take a class in even basic economics? The market price is what people are agreeing to buy and sell things at a given moment in time. It changes with supply. It changes with demand. Sellers always want it to be higher. Buyers always want it to be lower.
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@lostbrewerycavesrecoveryte3423 Actually Elvis Costello would have done a better job or even Lou Costello for that matter. In fact that party even had an Abbott (Tony Abbott). I never knew why nobody made the connection.
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@krisushi1 I think your right on most points, On the ownership of the bases, maybe not. The land might be Australian but most of and maybe NONE of the hardware on those bases is NOT. Especially the base on the North West shelf that has the coms for the US Subs in the Indian Ocean. That base is one that most Australians are simply not even aware of. On the first strike and what I call zero strike. That tern zero strike is one I came up with to describe to people just how high of a priority Pine Gap would be in a US v China or US v Russia event. I don't know if you have seen it but the YT channel Real Life Lore did a great video that highlights the importance of Pine Gap. Just search ""real life lore pine gap" and you'll find it. About 7 minutes in they chow a diagram of the area that 3 satellites cover and that region goes from London to Alaska. So it covers all of The Middle East, all of Russian and all of China AND Pine Gap is the ground station for those 3 satellites. So if the Turks, Saudis, Iranians, Russians, Pakistanis, Indians or Chinese do anything. Pine Gap is the first place that knows. So for any of them especially Russia and China that if they want to do anything they need to deal with Pine Gap. Sorry but that's something anyone should understand and why I call Pine Gap a Zero Strike target.
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@jiancao1523 Yes and no. Its damn hard to get to either but then its also damn hard to protect them as well.
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@brendanalfo411 And one of the few operating mines outside China right now is in Western Australia (Lynas Corp) in the same region we dig up all the iron ore.
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@daniangoodman-jones3931 Your right my mistake. Sorry. I do remember Keating doing something that he'd railed against in that almost bizarre contest he had with John Hewson who pushed for a GST. There was that debate where Keating just Howled 15% at every comment Hewson made. It might have been that he didn't bring in the GST but he flipped on part of it. Let me know if you know what it was.
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@dilligaf8349 Your 100% right that its all a game - an economics game that nobody asked for. Do you know the new head of the productivity commission is an economist? Do you know the guy put in charge of rebuilding Australia's skill base is an economist? Do you know that the guy who designed the system for how our water is distributed is a Harvard Trained Economist? Gigi Foster the famous UNSW economics professor proclaimed on ABC QandA she had the "empirical data" that proved the government's efforts only saved at 10,000 lives during COVID. SHE LIED the real number was at least 50,000 and if you want I can explain what she did to create that lie. Can you see the pattern? Economists can't stop lying and they can't keep out of everyone's business and we (the general public) are the ones paying for their games.
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@edbalboni Absolutely correct. That's something Jim Comey pointed out when he was here in Oz in 2017. He said the trust in among a lot of the security people went very, very deep and NOT even Trump would be able to mess it up.
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@daniangoodman-jones3931 Yeah the more I look into economics the more I realise that economists don't understand economics. They are like those sports administrators who don't understand sport.
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@evanburrows1697 Thanks there's also some really good other comments in this too. So check them.
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@LackofFaithify Yep, that's almost identical to what someone said to me about it way back in the 90s. I think they said something like "what's rational about sacking people and telling them they are now better off because they can by cheaper stuff made in other places." There's a really great point made Nick Hanauer in his TED talk "Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming" when he talks about Henry Ford bringing in a $5/day which was DOUBLE the prevailing pay rate of the time. Henry Ford pointed out to others that his workers could now buy what they produced. His factories were more productive. His workers were better off. His sales went up and he made lots of money and for a while the Rust Belt wasn't the rust belt it was an economic power house.
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@krisushi1 While I looked for something the a story from ABC News In-Depth titled "The United States' growing military footprint in Australia explained | 7.30" Listen to what they say at the start when America first started deploying to Australia. Also when they say Perth is getting $8 Billion that's ALMOST DOUBLE what the original proposal was ($4.3 Billion). I have spent a lot of the last 20 years in the mining industry building new mines. When I compare what's proposed in Perth to the sort of works needed for a mine there's some similarities because MOST of it is the infrastructure to support the main activity. Things like power, water, offices , accommodation, workshops,....... etc. I've spoken to people I know and asked if we did A, B, C, D,..... would it cost $4.3 Billion and NOBODY has said anything other than "WTF are they doing?" Remember how the Victoria Government cancelled the Comm games when the costs blew out? Remember back to the Schools program Julia Gillard funded in the aftermath of the GFC. They spent over $4.5 Billion and over $2.5B of that vanished in management fees. In engineering there is NOTHING more profitable than a clown with a pile of other people's money doing a PR exercise as they strive to put their name on a brass plaque attached to an edifice.
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@sampainter8151 As I have said to others I went to college in America in the late 80s at a time when people still did things like Civics at high school. So I have been around long enough to know what happened with de-regulating the American Savings & Home loans industry. When it was properly regulated I think it was one of the greatest things any nation has ever done for its people. I remember seeing a documentary on the 90s S&L scandal and they went right into the history of the S&L system so that they could explain what happened when they de-regulated it. The brilliance of that system was that it not only secured the banks form bad debts it also protected the home owners from bad times. It also meant that they didn't need to pay home loan insurance every year like we do in Australia. AND SO WE ARE CLEAR him loan insurance in Australia does NOT protect the home owner it bails out the bank. If we had a similar system here people would be putting that extra money each month into their home loans instead of into the pockets of some seriously greedy people. Because Australia has had this insane housing bubble caused by some stupid policies all geared towards protecting investors we are now at risk of having so many loans fail at once that NOTHING can prevent a massive collapse. Not only will people be unable to sell the banks wont be able to sell the repossessed homes because NOBODY will have money for them except the billionaires who'll screw everyone down to pennys on the dollar. It will be a death spiral of epic proportions.
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@stylembonkers1094 Well SHlIT4BRAINS let me explain it this way. There is the market price and THAT'S ALL THERE IS because market price is called REALITY. There is no such thing as what it should be. There's projections, estimates, guesses, desires, controls, manipulation and even hope BUT THERE IS NO SUCH THING as what it should be. So NOBODY not even the God of free market capitalism Milton Friedman can answer your ignorant question. And yes I did take a class in economics that's how I know this.
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@stuartstibbs2069 Why am I supposed to specifically talk about Lima DlCKHEAD when the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), NAFTA, the European Common Market and other free trade agreements have done a lot more damage to Australia and for a lot longer. Lima was nothing but something for ignorant clowns like you to squeal about. It wasn't even a real agreement like the FTAs. The loss of Australian manufacturing had NOTHIGN to do with UNIDO or Lima or the declarations. We lost our car industry because Australian economists like Keating and Costello didn't like manufacturing and wanted to re-model Australia into a service based economy. So go waste someone else's time.
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@davidmallender7878 I think you'll find that Gough was just another link in a very long chain. Its just some of those links are more problematic than others and trying to figure out which link was or is the weakest link is almost impossible.
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@dougdownunder5622 I think I get where your going but can you give some more details rather than trying to assume what you mean because I think your comment might apply to a lot more than just migrants. For example what about first home buyers and even those who have moved to a larger home because they now have a family or people who've down sized because the kids have fled the nest. Plus right now we know Australia has a lot of household financial distress and a lot of home loans are in distress. So my gut says YOU'RE RIGHT but there's indicators that don't agree. On Wikipedia there's a page that lists countries by wealth per adult. On MEDIAN wealth Australia ranks 4th and on MEAN wealth Australia ranks 6th Interestingly Iceland, A country that was bankrupt beyond bankrupt after the 2008 GFC is. On MEDIAN they're 1st and on MEAN they're 5th. Of real interest on that page is the column for GINI which is a measure of wealth distribution and is indicative of wealth inequality and on that Australia drops to 9th while Iceland is 6th. I think there is something wrong that these indicators don't show. So I'm honestly asking what it is that you know or feel about this?
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@krisushi1 And finally I really do appreciate your comment. You brought up a lot great material.
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