When I read comments on social media with commentators remarking about trickle down economics and how it has never worked, how it will never work and how it is designed by the rich to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

So when I read a comment or tirade about trickle down economics, I pretty much know this individual has probably never taken an economics class. Much less macro-economics and is just parroting some dribble they heard from someone else supporting their left-wing political views who has never studied macro-economic policy.

I\’m not saying supply-side economics is not without its criticisms, but give me a well researched and articulated argument without resorting to butt-hurt emotional names. Nor am I stating that I am the authority on macro-economic policy as I am not an economist. Now, I know there is are warring factions on macro-economic policy based upon individual’s personal political views. Supply-side economics focuses on reducing the barriers for producing goods and services by decreasing regulation and reducing taxes.

According to the theory, consumers benefit by the reduction of prices increasing the opportunities of full employment in response to the stagflation, that is simultaneous high inflation and high unemployment that Keynesian theory was unable to solve. Supply-side economics generally opposed Keynesian economic theory and the failure to tackle the problems associated with stagflation – that is simultaneous high inflation and high unemployment.

Keynesian theory is interesting as British economist John Maynard Keynes argued aggregate demand, and not supply determined economic activity calling on fiscal and monetary policy to counter recessions. Notwithstanding, Keynesian economic policy was successfully implemented countering the laissez-faire failures of the great depression of the 1930s when the economy didn’t rebound as expected.

Even more interesting is Keynesian fiscal policy includes increased government spending, tax cuts or a combination of both. As such, the standard Keynesian response to a recession is a fiscal stimulus to increase total demand as they argue a leakage from the demand side exceeds investment.

Then an injection to the economy in the form of increased spending restores the equilibrium. A criticism of increased spending is increased taxes to support such spending. If increased spending is financed by increased taxes then reduced spending is the likely result. If increased spending occurs with tax cuts then the budget deficit increases and eventually taxes have to rise or increased borrowing occurs driving up interest rates.

In Australia, a large number of working households receive more in government benefits than they pay in tax with 40% of all households and 30% of working households paying no net tax. Both supply-side and aggregate demand models generally include tax cuts initially with the tax cuts viewed from totally different perspectives.

Interestingly, as tax rates are progressive in many countries, or known as marginal tax rates in Australia with a greater percentage of tax paid as income increases. The concept is based on the ability to pay with lower tax rates for lower income earners and higher tax rates for high income earners. The whining about tax cuts making the rich richer and the poor poorer really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

What a disaster this trip was, I paid too much for a ticket to a destination that I really didn’t want to go. It would have been easier to just cancel the ticket, take a loss on that cost and not go. Instead, I pushed on with the trip and lost out big time.

As I was preparing to head to the airport, I received a job offer but we still had to work out remuneration. I ended up stuck in the poor part of Mactan Island in the Philippines and although I had notified them that I would have limited communications, business needs certainty and that cost me. This was a poorly constructed application, this was not a recruitment agency I wish to ever use again.

That being said, I went through a recruitment agent that I found to be less than professional. They must place people otherwise they wouldn’t have a business but based on my observations, I really don’t see how they generate revenue – they are really that bad. The recruitment agents are supposed to perform a through check of the candidates they put forward, I had to provide all the effort for the recruitment agent, they did no background checks at all.

The financial consulting industry is a tricky industry for consumers, we all want financial independence but the unscrupulous advisers who remain in the industry damage personal finances.

In Australia, government regulation has forced advisers to gain tertiary qualifications in finance and financial products. This is a pretty good initial step, but more needs to be done to rebuild confidence in the financial services industry. Like the law and accounting industries, professional associations should be empowered to register advisers, maintain registration through ongoing education with the ability to sanction members for violation of standards.

Needless to say, professional qualifications are the first step in registration, an industry examination should be required. A reporting mechanism for misconduct needs to be implemented where members of the public can make reports of poor and unethical behaviour. The industry association would have to require individual membership for registration along with corporate membership for organisations to adequately represent the industry. Only this way could the registration board generate sufficient funds to operate effectively.

I’m a diver not an aviator so I generally don’t go for the pilot’s timepiece. However, the Bremont ALT-1 P2 is a stunning example of why I may need to reassess my attitudes – this is a seriously beautiful timepiece.

The ALT-1 P2 with cream dial is fairly different to the classically styled aviator’s timepiece, you generally don’t see too many chronographs as aviator’s timepieces based on WWII specifications, upgraded versions are more complicated. I love the distressed leather strap on the ALT-1 P2, the strap contrasts the dial well. The 43 mm hardened stainless steel case is water resistant to 100 metres utilising Bremont’s Trip-Tick® construction. I had no idea what this was, so some research was in order as I had viewed this term on the Bremont page and was a little perplexed.

The three-piece case design is meant to be distinctive; the case consists of a bezel, case mid-section and case back. The case was designed to have an aerospace appearance with multiple axis CNC (computer numerical control) machining. The COSC certified movement has 27 jewels, from what I can gather the BE-53AE automatic chronometer is fitted with a glucydur balance, an anachron balance spring, a Nivaflex 1 mainspring that is a variation of the Valjoux 7750 chronograph – that’s a pretty heavy-duty base movement.

It was a Friday night and I wanted a decent warm weather wine, I like Riesling in summer and sitting out the back with my old man is a decent lead into the weekend. So we tried something a little different from what we normally have, this was my father’s choice and I am happy with his selection.

I like white wine dry, I like fruit but I don’t like sweet so a balance of fruit and dryness is important for me. I find Riesling is pretty acidic and it gives me nasty reflux, yet I don’t mind – dry is better than sweet. This Riesling is light pale straw in colour with a greenish hue. I am finding aromas of zesty lime and citrus flower, the palate has flavours of lime juice with mineral notes that develop with length to a finish that is crisp and fresh.

Power and politics, this is a chapter from an organisational behaviour textbook. An interesting concept, how power is gained, how influence is determined and how the political process within organisations affects power. Whilst power is very overt in many instances, certain positions possess high degrees of positional power that carry influence regardless of who holds the position. This is not the area that interests me, nor is how these people gain these positions as they are rarely awarded during a competitive process.

From my observations, these positions are offered to friends, hangers-on or done through favours and this includes sexual favours. Cronyism is a recurring theme that is mostly given to yes men and that doesn’t add any value to an organisation whatsoever. Soft power is exhibited through shoring up support, this is generally non-performers who owe their positions to a person holding and abusing positional power. Performing favours, calling in favours and bypassing merit selection principles is the domain of weak leaders exerting power in a government job.

I see plenty of kickstarter articles flash across my Facebook newsfeed with claims this start-up watch company is disrupting the $19 billion dollar luxury watch industry – what absolute bullshit.

Firstly, we need to define what is a luxury watch and what is a fashion watch. Let’s start with the fashion watch brand, the most notable trait is these watches are produced by the major fashion houses to round out their fashion accessory business with brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors and Daniel Wellington. There is nothing uniquely wrong with a fashion watch, many people revere and follow fashion trends, these timepieces are matched to current fashion trends with the fashion watch emergence in the 1980s.

Following on from the quartz revolution of the 1970s, the fashion watch era lead by Fossil, Guess and Swatch were less about the technical capabilities and more about ascetics. The branding was not about accuracy or innovation but original designs – some would argue outrageous design. I would argue that fashion watches are now less about original design as they tend to shamelessly rip-off the designs of luxury brands. The trend is now towards the watch wardrobe; that is matching the watch to the wardrobe with multiple watches required for casual or formal wear.

These tend to be relatively cheap in comparison to the luxury watch market as not too many people can afford a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar for formal wear, a Rolex Explorer as a sports watch, an Omega Planet Ocean as their dive watch and a TAG Heuer Carrera for their motorsport activities. The fashion watch has again transformed with mechanical movements from ETA and Sellita now available to power the fashion watch brands complete with display casebacks and skeletonised dials.

The NATO strap appears to be de rigueur for not only some luxury brands but fashion brands as well with many trends taken from the luxury watch segment. No longer are fashion watches purely quartz movements although interestingly plenty of luxury watches are frequently powered by quartz movements.

A luxury watch brand will generally have serious heritage involved along with technical innovation. A brand such as TAG Heuer, founded in 1860, has been described by some as a fashion brand is incorrect even though TAG Heuer is now part of LVHM (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) along with Bvlgari (1884), Zenith (1885) and Chaumet (1780).

As a technical innovation, in 1916 Heuer designed and manufactured the Mikrograph, a chronograph capable of measuring time with a precision of 1/100th of a second. A Heuer stopwatch worn on the wrist of Astronaut John Glenn onboard Mercury spacecraft Frienship 7 in 1962 was the first Swiss timepiece in space.

The TAG Heuer Monaco and Carrera ensures the TAG Heuer brand will forever remain aligned to the luxury watch segment through their motor racing involvement. Despite manufacturing quartz powered timepieces such as the entry-level Formula 1 series. The Aquaracer is the mainstay of their professional dive watch collection rated to 300 metres.

There is the holy trinity of haute horology that includes the prestige brands of Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. These really are the top end of watchmaking – I certainly appreciate their style. Just missing out on the group is Breguet, not because of any lack of technical innovation or style but because they were originally a Paris based French business before relocating to Le Locle in 1793 during a period of exile. This was due to Abraham-Louis Breguet being apparently in line for the guillotine during the French Revolution.

I don’t know the exact point in time I became a fan of Fermoy Estate, but once onboard – I am now a huge fan. A number of years back, they had this minty cabernet sauvignon, when chatting to the staff at the cellar door.

They kind of deny this, but then they say they have so many people talk to them about their old minty cabernet sauvignon, they are starting to believe it themselves. You read the tasting notes and you sometimes struggle to identify the nose and palate described on the notes; while we might not be trained like a winemaker.

We know what we like and as consumers are willing to pay a premium for a good product. So at the Perth Food and Wine Show I signed up to their wine club after a pretty good day of tasting and I’m pretty happy I did as every couple of months a new carton of wine arrives and I can reacquaint myself with this wonderful selection of wine.

What I learned in working back in private enterprise after working in the public sector for an extended period is the urgency to get the job done. The results driven approach requires action and I have learned to escalate, then escalate some more.

In my world of emails and meetings, an email chain with multiple recipients requires multiple headings where multiple tasks are explained so all involved know their task but the role of the others in the organisation. In order to achieve results, the position required organising people and resources, you couldn’t let a project fail by allowing the job to drift. You needed to ensure the people who were doing the work had all the resources required, their schedule and their objective.

For a large part, the job requirement is coordination of resources following the four defined principles of management through planning, leading, organising and controlling. The efficient use of resources allows the organisation to maintain high levels of employment and high salaries through the maintenance of efficiency gains. So when you need to support team members, the strategy is to escalate issues to get the task completed, your job is to support them and ensure they are well resourced.

Is the Assistant Instructor a relic of history? What roles are really available for the Assistant Instructor these days? If you work with a PADI Master Instructor, they can put you through an Assistant Instructor course, to many, it means you haven’t been to a PADI Instructor Development Course.

As an Assistant Instructor, you work under the direct supervision of a certified Instructor demonstrating confined water skills to entry-level students, indirectly conduct the academic presentations, in-directly assess surface skills or conduct non-diving specialty courses. The question is – but why? Well, to support course certification numbers, PADI allows Staff Instructors to certify Assistant Instructors. In fact, PADI wants their Staff Instructors to certify at least five Assistant Instructors to qualify for Master Instructor status.

The Assistant Instructor is a throwback to the military training days, there is no need to burn your hard earned cash on an Assistant Instructor Course – you won’t be making a living out of this certification. You get the feeling the Assistant Instructor is only really around for Staff Instructors to build their credits. The Assistant Instructor is really there to conduct academic presentations, they are not an Open Water Scuba Diving Instructor, so there is no unsupervised confined water or open water sessions.

The only exception is some dive resorts that have a Staff Instructor in the ranks, the Instructor will probably be looking to build their certification numbers and is willing to do a pretty good deal where you can actually run some of the courses, don’t part with money for the course though, just deal for it – everything is negotiable.