But we should always remember that the wealth created by the private sector is not for the nation; it is for themselves. The nation always comes second. By continually producing surpluses, governments are treating the nation as second class citizens by restricting their own investment in the creation of a nation’s wealth. Surpluses deprive a nation of reaping the rewards it could gain through investment.

Business is always wary of governments who borrow, regardless of the need. The business attitude is to let them do the borrowing and make the profits. Governments should control the money supply so that inflation is kept in check. They should also extend to business lots of grants and subsidies to help sustain employment levels while business makes more and more money.

For business, all this could be seen as economic heaven if it really worked that way. But business is brutal and unforgiving. Things can, and do, go wrong and when they do, generally greed is the culprit. Business’s get greedy, take on more than they should. Then, they forget how they started, they forget the principles of developing a business case, they get sloppy and careless.

When this happens those at the top of the tree make sure they are protected to the exclusion of those who work for them. Those who work for them suddenly find themselves redundant, out of a job, thrown on the scrapheap or pressured into working for less. That is how the gap between the rich and the poor is maintained and widened.

It should come as no surprise that it is conservative governments, generally, that foster this kind of freelance wheeling and dealing. They are more likely to encourage private investment at the expense of building national wealth that should rightly be owned by the people. They are the ones who, generally, sell off government owned assets, even highly profitable ones to improve their household budget mentality.

Reform governments are the ones who then have to come in and restore government services, particularly health and education, areas left in crisis due to funding cuts conservative governments make to create their surpluses. Reform governments clean up the mess and rebuild services essential to a properly functioning society.

So, why is it that most people think it is the other way around? Why do most people believe conservative political parties are the better financial managers? How many times have we heard Tony Abbott score political points when he refers to Labor’s “debt and deficit disaster” when we know that the debt Labor incurred during the post GFC period kept Australia on a growth trajectory while the rest of the developed world went backwards?

I blame the economists whose voices we can’t hear. Not the ones in the private sector; they are complicit. The voices of the rogue economists, the stalwarts who understand what is really happening are the culprits. Their voices aren’t loud enough.

This is the real conspiracy. Remember, it is the borrowers of money that make the money, not the savers. When governments borrow and invest in infrastructure, like the NBN, invest in transport, health and education, the nation profits; the dividend is the future.

When governments sit back and let the private sector run services that governments should run, like Medibank for example, they forego the wealth inherent in those services. When that happens the nation as a whole, is the loser.