16/11/2025
Why Victoria is Doomed
Victoria is a State - Not a Nation
It can only tax certain things - mainly land and property.
For the last 10 years, Victorias economic growth has relied on 3 things:
- Spending a ton on labor backed public infrastructure (level crossings, trainsets, and road tunnels)
- Bringing in hundreds of thousands of immigrants and just letting that money flow into the economy
- All underpinned by 200B of debt. That's 20B a year pumped into the ecomony that was never earned.
For a while, that led to a dynamic fluid economy.
Problem is - all those people they brought in, also brought in their elderly parents.
And the pressure on Hospitals and Schools exploded. And the amount of traffic exploded.
But all the money was going to the train set.
And as the debt piles up, the amount in the kitty gets lower and lower for that stuff - and now the bills are coming due.
To try and fix the problem, Victoria has increased all sorts of land and business taxes. Which ironically just takes away real enterprise.
Those productive people then shift to non production industries that contribute more to the debt problem.
All of this has raised costs, to the point that no-one who actually lives on a government wage can even live here anymore without being taxed into oblivion.
And there is no way to really grow out of it.
If it cuts public projects - the real economy tanks and unemployment soars.
If it lowers taxes to stimulate investment - the budget becomes completely unmanagable.
If it cuts hospital, road and education spending - the hospitals collapse and society stops functioning.
This is basically where we are at.
In my mind there's an obvious way to grow out of it.
Tap the 1T of Natural Gas under east Gippsland. That'd be a start.
Two - Fire every non frontline bureaucrat.
If we did both of those things we'd stand a chance.
There is a silver lining in this crisis however.
They're going to have less focus and attention on tweaking 4WDers. They don't really have the support to keep playing that game much longer. So I expect in a perverse kind of way, we'll be left alone more than ever as people try to survive.
And when the bankers say enough is enough, it's going to be not great.