Word: laborities
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...trust to keep the Australian economy strong and to protect family living standards?" Howard asked at the start of the election campaign. The answer has not been in doubt for a long time, given that the Labor alternatives have been miserable. According to a Newspoll published last week, 58% of those questioned said Howard was more capable of handling the Australian economy (Latham was preferred by 27%). Since the conservative government was elected in March 1996, the economy has grown by one-third. Unemployment has fallen from 8.5% to 5.7%. Mortgage rates have dropped from 10.5% to 6.5%. Inflation...
Howard and his ministers have grown accustomed to taunting Labor about the high interest rates that choked the economy to a standstill at the start of the 1990s. That interest rates have stayed low, as they have internationally, is as much a matter of luck as prudent policy. But it's also the payoff for market reforms over two decades that have raised productivity in almost every part of the Australian economy. Beating down inflation and expectations of future price rises for goods, services and labor has been the country's most impressive economic achievement. In any case, an independent...
...future growth - in infrastructure and human capital. Indeed, these surpluses have been slight exercises in prudence in an era of prosperity. Asset sales, such as the partial float of Telstra, have helped create the illusion of fiscal frugality. Other than two hard years of spending cuts to rein in Labor's excesses, Canberra has barely been squeezed. Compared with the hard, lean predators who dominated the Expenditure Review Committee in the Hawke-Keating years (1983-96), the incumbents are pussycats. On Sept. 10, the Commonwealth Treasury and Finance Department, under the charter of Budget honesty, released an up-to-date...
...longer is it just the blue-collar workforce—the Midwestern hardhats, the Southern millers, the Rustbelt miners—who watch their plants close and their jobs replaced because foreign labor is cheaper. Now, we are told, it is all of us whose (future) jobs are at risk. Or, more precisely, it is every service sector worker who need not appear in person: today’s Bangalore customer service callers could become tomorrow’s investment bankers...
...running undefeated champion in the history of Jeopardy! but also the show's greatest money winner. Going into Jeopardy!'s annual late-summer hiatus, Jennings had won 38 consecutive games and $1,321,660, and delivered a much welcomed ratings boost for the program. When the show resumes after Labor Day, people will be wondering: What's next for Ken Jennings...