Whether Australia’s budget has a surplus tells us little about the government’s worth – it’s all on the choices made | Greg Jericho

saltesc, 1 month ago

We don’t want surplus unless times ahead seem economically unstable enough that saving up is a better idea than progressing

abhibeckert, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Things are incredibly unstable right now and this surplus is evidence of that. Just a few years ago we had deficits around $100b.

The budget was designed to create a surplus of $4b which would have given government the ability to start thinking about how to recover from the recent massive defecits.

But because of the instability, the budget estimates were way off the mark — a large part of that was companies raising prices and making higher profits, therefore paying more tax. That’s both something the government has no control over and also something the government tried to prevent.