THE economic outlook, with interest rates rising amid global uncertainty led by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and soaring energy costs, looks bleaker than at any time since the onset of the COVID pandemic sent markets into a tailspin from which they soon recovered, thanks in part to massive licks of government money the world over.
Yet thanks to a confluence of events - including record prices for Australian commodities - the nation as a whole is doing well, with Treasurer Jim Chalmers this week welcoming a predicted $114 billion boost in budget revenue over the next four years.
But the money our governments have spent on COVID - a lot more than $300 billion - is money that can't be spent on anything else.
What's more, it has to be repaid, at higher interest rates, and that's money that must eventually come from the pockets of taxpayers.
While a healthy corporate sector is, by definition, a good thing, it has been instructive this week to see Australia's biggest airline, Qantas, announce it expected to make between $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in pre-tax profits in the six months to December 31, not so very long after it and the rest of the aviation industry were going hand-in-cap to Canberra to ask for - and receive - substantial financial assistance.
Corporate tax receipts will recoup some of the public help but history shows a tendency to "privatise the profits and socialise the costs".
As companies, including Qantas, race back to profit - and with the burden of a worsening economic outlook set to fall, as ever, on working families - it is worth asking whether we do enough, as a nation, to recoup the money we provide in corporate support once the initial crisis has passed.
Should there be a future-profits levy, for example, for those taking assistance?
Qantas defended its post-COVID profits to the Newcastle Herald yesterday, and said that its $2 billion in assistance was split fairly evenly between JobKeeper going to employees and direct subsidies (to all airlines) as "fee for service" on government-ordered repatriation and freight flights.
But the reality is that a corporate sector buffeted by COVID has been able to lean on government in a time of dire trouble, and now march on ahead with no particular mechanism for the nation to claw back at least some of the help it gave.
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