1. I'm going to simplify this. Read this: http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2011/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/Report/The-Australian-economy-and-the-global-downturn-Part-1-Reasons-for-resilience

As for the housing bubbles, I do not deny that those bubbles bursting made it hit those countries harder... but the GFC itself affected every country, around the world, including those that didn't have housing bubbles. It was the American bubble bursting, and associated causes (banks-wise), that drove the GFC. The others were relatively minor.

2. I'm not ignoring deductions. As I pointed out, deductions, etc, just serve to complicate the system. And you also forget that Australia also has a variety of tax offsets and benefits provided to further reduce tax levels - the benefits actually serve to push some of the effective tax rates for low incomes into the negative region. And to be clear, this isn't welfare payments we're talking about. And yes, the rich that minimise their tax burden aren't paying less in total tax dollars - that's entirely beside the point. They're paying less in effective tax rate. That's the point.

3. I refer again to the link I just provided. Actual analysis shows that the impact of the stimulus was to boost the economy by more than 1% over the year that it was primarily spent. Since the GDP growth dipped below 1% in that same period, the stimulus is what prevented recession. The first round of stimulus spending meant that our downturn in growth was much gentler than others, prior to the second wave of impacts... and then, when the second wave hit, our downturn in growth was similar to those of other countries... until the second stimulus was put in place.

Our Mining sector, on the other hand, provided only 0.4% growth. Our connection with China helped to dull the effect of the GFC, but it wasn't what prevented the recession.

4. There's an episode in the final season of The West Wing, where the Democratic presidential campaign is 9 points down, and at first, they're happy, because once you factor in statistical error, they could be very close... but after a while, when one of the lesser staff comes in reporting 9 points down as though it's good, the communications director says "when the polls keep saying the same things over and over again, it's time to stop talking margins of error".

What's the relevance of this to the point? When all of the indicators, all of the comparisons, favour the Canadian system, it's time to stop arguing based on "fraudulent" numbers. Sure, things like homicide rate will impact life expectancy (not as much as you think - the homicide rate is 5.3 per 100,000, while the mortality rate is 746.2 per 100,000). Sure, there might be subtle differences in the national definitions of infant mortality - although I'm assuming that the source of the numbers I was comparing is international, and thus using the same definition.

And I would consider obesity problems and smoking to be part of the health responsibility of the government. Part of the Australian government's health expenditures includes campaigns to reduce obesity and smoking. As for the "two towns" element... I'm sorry, but while that's true when you're talking about populations of the order of 1000, when you're talking about 35 million people in one "town" and 314 million in the other, statistical variations and "outliers" will be miniscule. It's just not, speaking in terms of actual statistics (the field of mathematics, that is), a valid argument.

1) Oh wow.  The Australian Government's economists, behind the australian bailout, believe what they did to combat the recession, is what combatted the recession.  I'd suggest looking at other countries that avoided the GFC, wasn't just austrlia.  That is... assuming they do avoid it.

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2012/article/impact-of-gfc-not-over-for-australia

2) And my point is... they actually,aren't paying less in effective tax rate... a very small amount are paying less them the printed rate for the middle class, and paying slightly less then other rich people who are less rich.  (100K +)

3) Repeat above, lots government treasuries do are political.  I can point to a lot of economists who say that wasn't the reason... and ones whose jobs and reputations aren't based on it working or not.

4)  You seemed to have missed the point.  The book is called outliers, because it shows how society creates them, and how sociology and often times completely unactable things VASTLY change consequences.  Sociology makes EVERY country and outlier, because it's peoples are all on different scales.

A billionaire will care about a $100 fine?  it is hardly an punishment. 

1% business transaction tax?
Target those rich bitches :)

FUCK YEAH

FUCK ANYONE THAT IS MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN ME !!!!

I DESERVE IT MORE ANYWAYS...

A 1% business transaction tax doesn't generically target rich people. It targets "rich bitches" - specifically, rich people who keep investing their money in very short term bursts, trying to "play the stockmarket".

Those who actually earn their money would be practically unaffected - if they invest in long term investment options, which serve to help boost the economy, they only get hit by that 1% tax once, and thus are only slightly impacted.

Those who shuffle their money around constantly, which does not serve to boost the economy at all and instead only serves to make the stockmarket and related trading context more volatile, get hit by the 1% tax every time they do it, so it all clocks up as they keep doing it.

If they want to, say, put money on one stock each day, then take it out the next day to invest in another stock, then in one year (365 days - ignoring the issue of weekends and holidays), assuming that their remaining money after the 1% tax removal is all that is reinvested, and that they make no net money, they pay 97.45% of the money they started with in tax. They effectively have to make 1.01% profit on each transaction in order to break even after tax - and that's a tall order when you're making such short investments.

Such a simple tax serves to severely discourage shuffling of money, and thus greatly prefers long investments over short ones. It's a much more efficient method than a capital gains tax that works differently for long-term investments than for short ones, because capital gains taxes only work on profits, and thus there's no risk of losing your money to the government due to shuffling of money with a capital gains tax.

You could call this a capital revenue tax, in a sense.

Do you mean VAT tax, where value added to a product or service is subject to a tax?  Or do you mean one on financial transactions.  The former is used in Europe and a lot of countries around the world to fund things.  The later was proposed, not necessarily to sock the rich, but to curb flash trading and things where they will perform like 1000+ trades a second, causing instability in the market.  Also, it was seen as a way to raise money to help offset any future financial meltdowns.

VAT is a universal tax, I was referring to the latter which targets a specific group. Its a reasonably sound proposal. Have to do a bit of research to see if any traction has been made thus far, but it looks like a case where sheer political will is needed.

Well it's not like that's never happened before.

Sweden had a Financial Transactions tax for a while.

It ended up creating such a drop in trading that the tax ended up being "Revenue neutral"...

it ended up greatly hurting their stock market, only returning to form when the market tax was lifted.

So, I'm a little curious as to why people think it's a good idea... though if your wondering why Sweden is against such a tax...

that's why.  They implemented one it caused their stockmarket to plunge until they removed it.

If you want to stop high frequncy trading there are much better ways to do so.  Espeically since a LOT of high frequency trades get canceled before the order gets filled.  Which is often what's seen as the "Distorting" aspect.

What are some of the proposals for dealing with high frequency trading?  What I see gets lost is that it is either, REDUCE regulations which means getting rid of laws and cutting enforcement, or increasing both.  Things get so partisan that doing it better isn't discussed.  Maybe this is because the details are to complex for people who vote to really care about.  It is just spin government or rich folks as the bad guys, use emotional language to charge things up, and then attach what you want to this language.