Fascinated by the collision of unions, students and ideology. Tomorrow, on the Ides of March, we have a world wide withdrawal of attention by school children, who will protest against Climate Change. This is supported by the Australian Education Union.

At the same time Sally McManus, Secretary of the ACTU, is campaigning for an increase in the basic wage because it will stimulate the economy:

“Within two years, we can make sure no full-time working Australian lives in poverty while also stimulating spending and generating economic activity and growth,” she said.

Sally’s theory is that if you take money from people who would have spent or saved it (in this case employers), and give it to other people who will spend or save it (in this case employees) we will actually have more wealth.

We could give the problem to the primary school maths kids and they could express it as:

x-x>0

Now some of you might be outraged by that formula, but there are mathematicians who can take that equation and make something of it in ACTU land.

And given the costs associated with coping with climate change, such maths would come in handy abolishing the cost problem in the first place.

Now here’s the proposition I want to put to the kids. If employers taking some of their money and giving it to their employees increases the size of the economy, then it should also be the case that if parents give children larger amounts of pocket money, then that would also boost the size of the economy.

The kids could then prioritise climate change with their own parents’ money, which would fix the problem while growing the economy, as well as punishing their parents for being selfish baby-boomers.

How’s that for an idea? And I’ve got the chant worked out already. Ho Ho, Hey Hey, mum and dad have got to pay. It’s not Haku, or even Limerick, but it’ll more than do, and we wouldn’t want to stretch them too much on their day off, would we???